The exciting battles, interesting growth system, great visuals, and entertaining characters make Valkyria Chronicles 3 a fantastic handheld strategy RPG. Fighting battles and upgrading with these systems doesn't get tired. Some players might be able to run through it in 50 hours, some might take triple that long. Valkyria Revolution is such a gamble. It's an alternate-universe take on Sega's Valkyria Chronicles tactical RPG series, reimagined as an action-RPG with a few strategic elements intact.
A JRPG strategy game set in an alternate reality World War 2.Price: $20/£15Release date: Out NowPublisher/Developer: SegaMultiplayer: NoneLink:ESRB: TeenReviewed on: Windows 7, Intel i7-4960x, 32GB RAM, Nvidia GTX Titan.Play it on: Windows 7, Intel Core2 Duo @ 2.8GHz, 3GB RAM, Nvidia GTX280+, a toaster could probably run this game well.I hadn’t heard Valkyria Chronicles' familiar violin melody since Sega first released it for PS3 in 2008, but six years later, those strings whisked me back to Gallia and the familiar faces of Squad 7 with an instant hit of nostalgia. With a recent rash of Japanese games being ported to PC in a less-than-ideal manner, however, and a PC Valkyria Chronicles going from to to in less than three weeks, I was nervous it wouldn’t be anything more than a quick port. I'm happy to report that my delight with the PC version didn’t stop at the violins.Valkyria Chronicles is a turn-based strategy, third-person real-time shooter, alternate-reality World War II JRPG, and miraculously that all comes together beautifully. It breaks down like this: You command a series of turn-based battles from the perspective of a top-down map, and are given a fixed number of command points per turn. However, when you use command point to select a unit, the camera zooms in to put you in an over the shoulder perspective.
(See.) Your movement and weaponry is limited based on that unit’s class—Scout, Shocktrooper, Lancer, Engineer, or Sniper—and enemies will shoot at you if you get too close. When you aim, enemies stop attacking and you are shown a circle cross-hair to line up, representing that unit’s accuracy—but you only get one shot each time you select a unit, so a miss can be devastating to a strategy with no backup plan. When you are out of command points the enemy takes their turn, so positioning is incredibly important.This unique combat system forced me to learn strategies on a few different levels. The map view makes me feel like a commander, having to constantly think of the big picture, while zooming into a soldier is a completely different, more personal experience.
Whenever I make a wrong move and a unit is shot down, I'm always hit by the same reaction: anger over my mistake, then concern that I won't be able to rescue the unit. The possibility of permadeath for all but the story characters means that if a downed character can’t be reached in three turns, they are gone for good. But as the map zooms out, my sympathy fades and I start thinking about how my squad will need to adjust for the loss. Through all this, every victory and defeat feels like my own.The importance of my personal choices, not just on the battlefield, became even more apparent towards the second half of the 30-40 hour story. The missions ramp up in difficulty and a variety of different weapon choices open up. Each unit, who already differed in both their strengths and personalities, can now be diversified even further to fit niche roles in my squad. Ducktales intro 2017. Deciding what class to upgrade and which weapons to research means it’s no longer just a game about positioning.
Though battles can be played slowly and safely to ease the difficulty, the rewards I got for pushing the limits of my squad were worth it, and my connection and love for the specific characters grew stronger each time they made me proud.Each battle usually required about nine units, but my squad has 20 to choose from, all of which—except three story characters—I picked from a pool of at least 40. Every unit has their own personality, including fully-voiced dialogue, characters they prefer to work with (with whom they have more unique dialogue), and a full page of back story that is only revealed as they fight.
The amount of detail and choice is staggering. I grew very attached to my favorite soldiers, cut people from my squad based purely on their attitude, and am still astounded that a character sitting in my barracks unused has the same level of depth, whether or not I'll see it.Alternate realityThough its set in an alternate reality, Valkyria Chronicles doesn’t shy from the real-life horrors of its World War II inspiration, addressing issues that Western WWII games don’t even like to discuss. One mission tasks you with liberating a concentration camp filled with Darcsens, this world’s persecuted people. The story can be over dramatic and heavy-handed at times in a uniquely JRPG sort of way—you can switch to the Japanese voice actors and use subtitles if you are off put by the sometimes flat English voice acting—but I was legitimately invested in not just the lives of the characters, but the story of Gallia, the country I was protecting. It’s melodramatic, but heartbreakingly real at times—depicting war in the style of a documentary rather than a Hollywood blockbuster.The campaign is presented in a book format—each new chapter being some significant moment of the war—alternating between long cutscenes and dialogue segments, and battles that sometimes take an hour and a half.
The cutscenes lose a lot of their charm due to their fixed resolution, making them look downright terrible on my 1440p monitor, however the gameplay and dialogue segments were nearly flawless. Valkyria Chronicles doesn’t have a resolution or framerate cap and has fully customizable controls. The only issue that negatively affected gameplay was the finicky tank controls, which would move unexpectedly whenever I adjusted the camera and made the already hard-to-control tank units even more of an issue. Outside of that, I used mouse and keyboard controls for most of the game, and found them better than the gamepad controls. About the quality of the Valkyria Chronicles port, but overall Sega made sure the must-have features were included even if it didn’t go the extra mile.Valkyria Chronicles was an incredibly unique game when it was first released, and six years later I still haven’t found an experience quite like it. Apart from the cutscene resolution, its beautiful watercolor style and challenging gameplay haven’t aged a day.
Yet it’s now bundled with all of its DLC for only $20/£15; a fantastic value for strategy fans and PC gamers who didn’t get a chance to play it the first time around. While the port quality might not win any awards, it does the game justice and brings Valkyria Chronicles to a platform where it can shine with other strategy game elite.
Tactical RPGs have trouble jumping over the genre hurdle and making headway in a mainstream sense. It's not hard to pinpoint why: there's a level of patience and diligence required on the player's end that most other genres simply don't require. However, that's what makes them so satisfying to fans. Lost island blast adventure level 471 game.
That investment - in terms of time, tactical planning, and character leveling - makes every decision feel more important and, ultimately, gives the genre a heftier weight than most.It doesn't help that there's any extremely limited number of choices out there for turn-based strategy fans. Sure, portables have staples like Final Fantasy Tactics and Advance Wars, but consoles tend to get the short end of the stick. Earlier this year, Success brought us Operation Darkness - a 360 title - but its list of problems relegated it to an obscure gaming corner, garnering it one of those 'only fans of the genre need apply' tags. With the release of SEGA's Valkyria Chronicles, console tactical RPG fans are left out in the cold no longer. It's a stellar showcase for its genre, as well as a demonstration of proper developmental care - it looks great and plays exceptionally well, rewarding the player with a fantastic gaming experience. Graphically, Valkyria Chronicles' visuals serve as a form of enticement.
Combining elements of comic book style pencil shading and thick outlines as well as borrowing bits of watercolor painting, it sets its own identity in a strong manner. Not only is this approach unique, it's downright refreshing. While other games may tout enormous polygon counts, normal mapping tricks, and HDR lightning, Valkyria Chronicles sits comfortably with its painterly style.
Sure, the level of detail may feel minimal from time-to-time - some characters and objects look a little too simplistic - but the overall charm outweighs any technical deficiencies.With any PS3 title there's always the lurking suspicion of a required hard drive install. Thankfully, SEGA has taken a levelheaded approach to this increasingly common problem: it's entirely optional. You can run the game right off the disk and load times rarely top more than 10 seconds.
If you want to sacrifice the disk space (about 3.3 GB), then your load times are cut in half. Other developers should take note: make your installs optional; quit treading into once-PC-only territory.Like its tactical RPG brothers, Valkyria Chronicles' weakest point is its plot. Playing on the alternate history angle, the game is set in 1930s Europe, or, as the game refers to it, 'Europa.' Two sides - The Federation and The Empire (guess which one is evil) - are fighting over a rare resource called Ragnite, and the small nation of Gallia is caught in the middle. It's strange that the plot revolves around this RTS-like resource, reminding one of something like Tiberium from the Command & Conquer universe. The narrative unfolds mainly from the perspective of the 7th Platoon, led by recent college graduate/nature lover, Welkin Gunther.
Of course, all this has the trappings of anime, so there's plenty of speeches about valor, nationalism, and the tranquility of nature. It sets up a story that is rather generic (and its delivery ensures that you can easily predict most of the dialogue and plot twists), but it's completely serviceable - this is a game about tactics, so a premise that serves up plenty of battle scenarios suffices.Brushing aside the story is rather easy once you get into nuts and bolts of the strategy rules underlying the game.
During any fight you have two vantage points: an overhead map (the Command Mode), listing your locations as well as spotted enemies, and a 3D view (the Action Mode), that allows you to move around your characters. The Command Mode resembles a table-top game and lists your available Command Points (CP). These determine how many instructions you can issue each turn. For example, you might have seven CP.
That means you could move seven units, one time each, roll out a tank (since it requires two CP) and five units once, or advance the same unit seven times. Pairing with the CP system is the Action Points (AP) gauge. AP points differ depending on the unit, drain while you move, and don't recharge until the next turn. Since AP drains, this stops you from continually advancing one unit over-and-over again; it forces you to utilize most, if not all your units during each fight.Once you start moving around in 3D you'll notice a strange omission: there is no grid system. You move utilizing the AP you have available.
Since there are no grids, it means you can face odd diagonals to properly utilize cover - and cover is very important. A large rock can completely block a tank round; a pile of sandbags significantly reduces the accuracy and damage of enemy fire; and your troops can lay in tall grass to sneak up on enemies. Likewise, the targeting system takes advantage of this non-restrictive, fully 3D approach.
Body parts can be targeted, allowing you to perform head shots and take enemies down in fewer hits.