Valkyria Chronicles... PC?! - by Malf
Nedan on 23/10/2015 at 05:35
I got Valkyria Chronicles 2 on the PSP... although somewhat limiting on the system... it is still fun to play. But I would pay "Triple A" title price ($59.99 to $69.99 these days) for an HD port of 2 & 3 on the PC. These games were fun as hell when released & very few games can compare to these under-appreciated gems. But in reality... I would be willing to pay for even a new sequel as this game series needs more attention here in the states.
So really if it is a Valkyria Chronicles game of the same quality or higher (regardless of it being an HD port/remake or sequel), as long as it's on the pc... well SEGA...
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http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/264/241/9e9.gif
EvaUnit02 on 15/12/2016 at 04:02
Hey guys, if want a PC port of upcoming RPG Valkyria: Revolution I suggest that you tweet @SEGA and @SEGA_Europe. (
https://twitter.com/SEGA/status/809089499347099648)
[video=youtube;ybqR1SyNgbk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybqR1SyNgbk[/video]
Renzatic on 15/12/2016 at 04:30
I'm kinda stoked for it. I say kinda, because I hear it's more a realtime oriented game, a'la the newer Final Fantasies (fantasys? hell, I dunno), than it is turn based.
Due to that, it's been slapped on the wait and see list, rather than a DAY ONE OMG OLOL purchase.
Renzatic on 28/6/2017 at 16:49
Eh?
Meh.
Meeeehhhhhhhh.
icemann on 29/6/2017 at 03:31
Considering that FFXV was the first majorly successful game in the series since, X it can't be all bad.
Though in the case of the Valkyria games it doesn't sound like the best fit going real time with it. Turn based, far better.
Starker on 17/2/2019 at 23:49
After so much praise for it here and elsewhere, I played this anime-flavoured tactics game last week and... it's fine. No, really, it is. I get why people like it. But I'm just going to vent a bit and nitpick on the things that irked me, personally.
Before all that, I have to say that the art style has a nice painterly look and I think it works well for the series. In fact, it's probably its single strongest point. One moment you're looking at a sketch filling in and coming to life and the next you're inside a watercolour painting where tank engines have RUMBLE RUMBLE sound effects above them in big bold letters and machine guns go RATTA RATTA. It looks spectacular and is easily one of the most memorable things about the game.
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http://randomqoute.000webhostapp.com/vc/watercolour.jpgRATATATATATATA!
It's the animation in the cutscenes, however, that I feel brings it all down. The level of quality makes it look too cartoonish for its own good, to the point that you end up with a series of short vignettes of characters being exaggeratedly surprised or sad or doing whatever their quirk is. Okay, you can usually compensate for that in other ways. The voice acting does help, for example. But the writing really doesn't and the characters end up feeling very one-note as a result. And it doesn't help at all that everyone just immediately blurts out their intentions in the most blatant way and acts out their stereotype as if their life depended on it. "Hi, have I already mentioned today that I hate
Jews Darcsen?" "Oh, hello, have I already mentioned today that I only work for the evil empire to get independence for my country?" And so on...
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http://randomqoute.000webhostapp.com/vc/jaeger.jpg"I have got WHAT stuck to my arm? Oh, man, this is so embarrassing. I must have walked around with it all day."
Which leads me to the next complaint: it's basically Anime Tropes: The Game. Cute animal sidekick: check. Embarrassing stomach growling: check. Fanservicy beach episode: check. Did I mention this is a game about genocide and the horrors of war? All of this leads to some pretty wild tonal swings where you have cutesy anime hijinks in one scene and the next you have the equivalent of
human atom bombs wiping out armies in a kamikaze attack. And the game can't make up its mind about the horrors of war either. The empire is so evil... just look at all these soldiers gunning down fleeing civilians. Oh, but let's not forget the enemy is human too... look, there's one that's
basically still a kid crying for his mother as he dies. Oh, but there they go
burning children alive. Oh, but they have honour and
punish their war criminals, because torture is bad, kids. Except there they are again on one of their
Jew Darcsen hunts. War is hell, but the kind of hell where plucky anime girls run around the battlefield in miniskirts and the nobles are cartoonishly evil and the underdogs are cartoonishly noble and mass murder has less emotional weight than unrequited love and everything will work out somehow if you just
ganbatte. It's enough to give you whiplash.
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http://randomqoute.000webhostapp.com/vc/beached.jpgB-b-b-baka!
All of this is only made more dissonant in gameplay, where you have characters recycle the same lines over and over again, regardless of what's happening in the story.
The princess may be held against her will by the evil minister while a massive enemy dreadnought is advancing on the capital, but she'll give you an audience and dole out rewards with the same dispassionate tone that she always uses. People will cheer after killing the enemy on the battlefield and lament the necessity of doing so in a cutscene.
The gameplay itself is pretty straightforward once you figure out the game's quirks and stop leisurely walking around under enemy intercept fire. Skirmishes are basically easier versions of the same maps you have already solved, so they are there just to grind xp and money, but the main missions themselves are varied enough and keep things interesting. Overall, it's not as complex or difficult as X-COM, but I didn't really expect it to be. There are a few issues with balance, though. For one, some of your units get way too overpowered. The scouts basically become little stealth assassins who can run half-way across the map in one go and the shocktroopers almost make every other class obsolete when they get flamethrowers to deal with bunkered enemies (or, indeed, bunkers themselves) and especially when defence and damage orders make them unstoppable killing machines able to easily take on tanks and mow down multiple people in their line of fire. Also, things get way too luck-based when the only reasonable way to take down enemy aces is savescumming, because they have ridiculous dodging abilities and are hidden away in far corners of the map (as elite units are wont do do, surely).
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http://randomqoute.000webhostapp.com/vc/ty.jpgThe name is not a joke. I killed that guy at least three times in three separate locations.
What isn't straightforward, though, is the interface. Upgrading weapons and especially equipping tanks is quite convoluted and everything is done with menus. Even on the main interface where you ostensibly have tabs, you have to access the tabs through a separate menu, which entirely defeats the point of having tabs. And a lot of the wrestling with the interface just felt plain unnecessary, as I always had the funds to just upgrade and buy everything, so they might just as well have been made available automatically at that point. You do get a couple of choices in the equip screen (which is not accessible in mission briefings, for some unfathomable reason), but most of the time it's just the matter of making sure you have the best weapons equipped. Finally, do you really need to be asked to confirm whether you want to watch the cutscenes that you have to watch anyway in order to progress in the game? The game's full of minor annoyances like that.
Anyway, it might seem like I'm a bit hard on the game, but I did enjoy aspects of it. Of course, the look is great, as mentioned, and the voice acting is superb across the board, unsurprisingly for a Japanese game. I happened to listen to a bit of the English dub on Youtube and it was like night and day. I also had a decent amount of fun with the gameplay once I got used to the real time combat (which did take a bit longer than it should have). But I didn't find it to be the superb tactical JRPG that it gets touted as or deserving of the nearly universal praise it gets. It's more like a nice little casual tactics game chock full of anime cliches. 7/10 (good) is the best it gets, as far as I'm concerned.