Valkyria Chronicles
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Valkyria Chronicles
Valkyria Chronicles is set in a fictitious 1930’s war torn Europe, where you are part of a small country surrounded by a large and vicious enemy who wants your natural resources. As part of your countries militia you lead your men into battle how you want to, from which class of troop to bring, what their equipment will be, to how they are deployed in this well written, Japanese action role playing game.
Using a fantastic art style we have not seen before in a video game, some new and old gameplay as well as one of the better written and designed stories we have seen in the last couple of years. Do not trust the very limited demo, which is available on the Playstation Network for download, because this is one game with a ton of gameplay depth, perfect for role playing and strategy gamers alike.
Sega touted Valkyria Chronicles as a game for role playing fans as well for the action gamer. I must disagree on their claim that the average action gamer would like this game purely based on the in game action. The game is still a turn based game with only some basic on screen action, you will often wait for long periods for the other side to move and it feels like it takes too long for the artificial intelligence to finish moving most times. Perhaps if the game was more of a real time role playing game the action would appeal to action gamers.
As a role playing game, Valkyria Chronicles is excellent and offers a twist on the turn based action role playing we have seen with other most other Japanese role playing games. Choosing your team and their starting location is where you begin each mission and from there you will use cover, climb ladders to the top of buildings and towers and find your way through the map until you can engage the enemy. The enemy artificial intelligence is very smart, often using tactics against you which you will and have used yourself in the battles against the enemy.
Units under your command range from your personal tank, snipers, scouts, anti-tank soldiers, heavy machine gunners and engineers. How you use each and every one is very important as each ones skill set can overpower one of the other ones very quickly. Your tank is for heavy destruction, knocking down walls, anti-armor and anti-troop mortar fire, snipers are long range attacks and when they are leveled up with the right equipment are devastating against most of the enemy troops, scouts run fast and can quickly jump in and out of battle. Anti-tank soldiers or lancers are great for hitting tanks or smashing other troops to the ground, heavy machine gunners will quickly knock down the hit points of almost all of the units and engineers are great for healing your tank and removing mines.
When you use your units correctly you will find yourself on the winning side of battles most of the time, but when you forget the basics, you will be over run and destroyed very fast. Luckily if one of your men or women falls in battle, you can run one of your men over to them and call in your trusty medic who will pull them out of battle. You can then call someone else from your reserves to enter the battle and fight on.
Valkyria Chronicles also has a skirmish mode after you complete a few battles you will open up new maps to fight on where you can earn experience and money to beef up your equipment and men. This is a nice way to grind for what you need, with out it feeling like you are actually grinding. Once you have enough money you can purchase abilities and have new equipment built for your tank and your men, but it is up to you and your play style what you buy and how you use it. This allows for some added replay value to this great game.
Valkyria Chronicles is one of the more interesting looking games to be released on any gaming system. Graphically, its unique qualities are equal to or even more impressive then what we experienced in Okami. Valkyria Chronicles uses a new rendering engine to create a living world which looks like a fully animated 3D water color painting and it is very impressive visually. But there are a few minor issues I do have with the game graphically and while they are minor they do bring the overall score down. The first one is the lack of 1080p or 1080i resolutions, as the game only supports 720p. Another graphical issue is all of the 3D models in the game are jaggy due to the fact the game does not support anti-aliasing and honestly the jaggy lines on the models are very noticeable and hurt the game graphically. The PS3 should have easily been able to do the anti-aliasing and 1080p needed for this game and I am confused why Sega did not add those graphical features. Hopefully a patch can fix these issues.
Audio wise, all of the Valkyria Chronicles main sound effects, music and voice over work are done very well. Every character is spoken in a realistic and non-cheesy manner with the correct amount of emotion at the right time and the games dialogue is written in mostly a mature way so almost none of it comes across as out of place as many Japanese Role Playing Games do. The games music and sound effects are great and fit perfectly with the setting of an alternate 1930s world, with the sound fx for guns and explosions all sounding in a semi-realistic. But if there is one aspect to the sound effects that I wish could be better would be the gun sound effects, like I said they sound semi-realistic, but I would prefer to have them sound louder and heavier for specific guns.
Most of the RPG’s that come out of Japan now days lack any sort of replay and long term gaming value but the sheer amount of detail and different strategies you can employ during the game, as well as the skirmishes offer a good forty hours of gameplay and you can replay the game several times in different ways.
Valkyria Chronicles is one of the best looking games because of its unique water color art design gives the game a great look and feel. One of the few Playstation 3 only Role Playing titles that is actually worth owning and replaying, so run out and pick up this game today.Pros
+ Fantastic art design and graphics except for no anti-aliasing support
+ Voice work is very good
+ Sound effects and music are very good
+ Story is good
+ Great gameplay and concept
+ Extreme detail in the game for people, items and weapons
+ Lots of customization
Cons
- It needs anti-aliasing support badly
- No 1080p?
- No auto-save
Final Verdict
Here's a small guide to help you understand our evaluation of games.
PRESENTATION GRADE
Can be from the game's box to the contents of the booklet, and even the game introduction. (Intro, menus, options, etc)
GRAPHIC GRADE
Up to what point the graphics have been worked on my the developper. The design type, the effort used for textures and environments, as well as animations and framerate.
AUDIO GRADE
Is the soundtrack a good match to the game's style, he ambient sounds keeping with the gameplay and the sound effects clear and convincing?
GAMEPLAY GRADE
Placement of the controls and the inferface that the player with be using during the game.
REPLAY VALUE GRADE
The most important factor in the evaluation of a game. It identifies the lifespan of the game and the fun of coming back again and again.
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