Valkyria Chronicles

November 17,2008 - With all of this next-gen power, very few genres have really taken advantage of it to evolve and feature a new experience for veterans of the genre. Sega’s Valkyria Chronicles aimed to bring the strategy RPG genre to the next-generation with an infusion of third-person shooter mechanics to give it a feeling of freshness that strategy RPGs have not had in a long time. Games like Disgaea 3 and Operation Darkness were pretty much next-gen in what platforms they were released on, so does Valkyria Chronicles succeed in standing above the rest?

Valkyria Chronicles is set in an alternate version of Europe, called Europa, in the 1930s where the Second Europan War is starting. The two warring factions include the Imperials, which are the game’s form of the Axis that covers Eastern Europa, and the Federation, which are the Allies of this war that covers Western Europa. Stuck in the middle is the neutral country of Gallia, which was a peaceful country and source of Ragnite, a valuable source of energy, before the Imperials invaded their country. The main character of Valkyria Chronicles, Welkin Gunther, is swept up into this war as the citizens of Gallia are forced to band together and fight back. The main campaign is set-up in the form of a book with chapters that are split up with short cutscenes to push the story along and a mission or two as far as gameplay is concerned.

It’s really the gameplay where Valkyria Chronicles sets itself apart from the rest of the strategy RPGs out there. When you pick a unit in your squad during your turn, the camera zooms in from a map-style overhead view to behind your squad member as you gain control of them like you’re in a third-person shooter. You get to move as far as they can move according to their class then you have the option to take a shot with your gun, toss a grenade, or use some Ragnaid, a form of Ragnite with healing powers, which are your typical strategy RPG moves. You can aim for their bodies or their head, with the latter being a bit more risky if your aim isn’t so good and the former requiring more shots. During your turns, you have a set amount of moves to make, which can be used to give a unit as many turns as they have enough ammo or room left on your movement meter.

The levels are also a huge part of Valkyria Chronicles’ evolved gameplay, as the new third-person shooter’s influence on the game means that the environment plays a bigger role than in past strategy RPGs. You’ll find trenches, buildings, sandbag walls, and remnants of destroyed buildings that offer cover that you can crouch behind or just hide from enemies that are nearby. The other part of that is that while you’re moving around, enemies can shoot at you, so cover and taking out enemies quickly and efficiently is necessary, the same can be said for enemies, as well, so you may take out some without the need to even spend a turn on killing him.

Valkyria Chronicles’ campaign does a great job of utilizing unique environments and missions that keeps the gameplay feeling a bit fresher than the typical “kill everything until you win by default” goal that most strategy RPGs have. That’s emphasized by the rating system it has, which rewards efficient success over long, drawn out missions where you take the time to kill every enemy with better grades, more experience, and more money. Once you see Welkin get out of his hometown after a minor invasion by imperials and get down to the Gallian Army’s headquarters, you begin your service as the leader of Squad, which lets you draft up to 20 soldiers into your squad, spend experience points on leveling up your classes, upgrading the equipment your squad uses and the special tank Welkin commands, and a few other things. Outside of the headquarters, you gain access to some resources that let you get more background info on individual characters, weapons, and even more stories about the war that let you really get into the story if you want to. There are even some extra cutscenes that show other perspectives of the story, generally outside of Welkin’s troop, that are optional, but a good addition for those that like to get really involved in the story of their games.

Valkyria Chronicles does have the basics down for a fairly cool strategy RPG, but it’s the little things that it does that really show how much Sega’s changed for the better of this genre. Instead of everyone in a squad being the same, outside of the different classes, the soldiers you can pick for your squad in VC have special abilities that activate on their own in battle that could be as simple as getting better in a desert or city map or as complicated as being a racist that hates Darcsens and gets worse when around them, so you need to pick the best solders for your squad or the mission to take advantage of your enemies or surroundings. It’s also great that VC gets rid of the individual experience system that nearly every strategy RPG uses so you just use the available experience you’ve collected to upgrade classes as a whole instead of individual units. That gets rid of the cliques that tend to form when you have to focus on using a core set of fighters that are the only ones that get experience, outclassing those on the bench that would require even more effort just to keep them in the mix. Skies of Arcadia fans will be glad to see that Vyse and Aika are recruitable characters while Fina shows up as the medic that comes by when players are killed by the enemy.

If you haven’t noticed it yet, Valkyria Chronicles is a beautiful game. Sega’s new CANVAS engine helps give the game the look of a mix between a watercolor painting and manga. This is matched by the general style of the characters being that of anime characters, so it all fits together into a visual style that really sets the game apart from the rest of the pack, as far as cel-shaded games are concerned. Load times can be a little long at times, though you do have the option to install some necessary data to the hard drive, about 3.5 GBs worth, to reduce those load times to a very quick few seconds. The beautiful visuals are backed-up by some great orchestral music that does a good job in setting the mood. The game is voice-acted by some actors you may know if you follow the anime world and they do a good job with the English dub, but those tough-to-impress people can switch it back to the original Japanese, but it seems that the only subtitles available were made for the English dub, so the two may not be exactly the same for those who can understand Japanese.

Sega’s done an admiral job in updating the strategy RPG clichés to better fit the gameplay expectations brought on by the games of this generation so far for Valkyria Chronicles. A lot of great changes have been made to the tedious strategy RPG formula that should be expected from this genre going forward, so we hope that this game inspires a few other developers to step up and meet the challenge they’ve set. If you’ve gotten bored by strategy RPGs over the years but want to get back into one of them, this game’s the perfect choice for those that need something new to play this holiday season. There’s a beefy main campaign to keep you busy for many hours to come and is a game that deserves to sell.

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