GotG Round 1: XCOM: Enemy Unknown vs. Valkyria Chronicles

@chaser324: Gotta love ultimate aim.

I got begged for like two years to play VC before I eventually got around to it, and while I'm not one of those who will defend it to the death, even I never noticed any weird movement/cover issues whatsoever. If you're trying to move for every last millimeter you can squeeze through without getting targeted, then I could see someone getting attacked and stuck in position, but you're not really supposed to be playing that way.

All the problems in that game comes from the weird spikes in difficulty (including That One Level that's already been mentioned, and led to me savescumming my way through the level and losing characters I really liked just because the plot demanded this random character appear out of nowhere and kill everyone she came into contact with) and how easily the mechanics are broken. Using all of your orders on a single person (a scout, for example) can effectively make them invincible and capable of running across the entire map in a single turn, and how so many bosses lend themselves well to just being cheated. (I beat the final boss by abusing a loophole in the way the game calculates defense, and reloading until I got skills to activate in a certain chain. It was either that or banging my head against the wall for 6 hours.)

The story, characters, and aesthetics are pretty good, though. And outside of a couple levels the gameplay is such an effective kind of turn based strategy done fair that I really liked it. Also, really awesome music.

So, I lend my vote to VC, as it is, not so surprisingly, the underdog.

That's one strategy, sure. Or you could destroy the nodes with snipers or accurate lances and use the smoke screen to get shock troopers behind Maxamillian. Once one shocktrooper gets him turned around you can have another on the other side. You can get him going around back and forth till you run out of CP. I think it takes 2 or 3 turns to finish the mission.

@mosespippy: I promise that I gave it the good college try for a couple hours. It's been a couple years since I played it, but I distinctly remember that everything just sort of spiraled out of control for me if I didn't nail the first few turns. I probably would've had more patience for it had I not dealt with two or three other super shitty levels that tried my patience. I still think it's a good game, mind.

Edit: I also marathoned that game within a three day period, so I had fried my nerves at some point.

@marokai: Marathoning is not the way to play that game. When I went though it I was playing Rock Band with my room mates every other day and having Warhawk clan practice daily, so I could only play one mission a day. Sometimes I could only get through the story part between missions before I had to switch to something else. I think that's the way to play it. VC2 and VC3 on the other hand are much easier and have shorter missions. It's easy to blast through 4 or 5 in a sitting, as the settings are smaller and aren't as important plus there are less cutscenes between missions.

While that combo is indeed over powered compared to your other options, it's nowhere near enough to get you through Impossible by itself or with ease, and it only sort of starts working again once you get plasma snipers on impossible.

Plus if you found the difficulty lacking and too exploitable, the game had not only impossible and ironman modes, but also the second wave options which raised the difficulty even further.

Oh and squad sight being OP is one thing they are addressing in the expansion, by nerfing squad sight and buffing snap shot. (tho imo they should have done that in a patch earlier)

This.

I will vote for Xcom, but man Valkyria did so much I didn't expect. It was simply a joy to discover. The more I think about it, Xcom played it safe compared to Valkyria

I really liked X-Com but about half-way through it became very repetitive, very quickly. I never finished Valkyria Chronicles but I did get at least half-way through the game. I had a lot of fun with it and is one of the few JRPG's I actually liked this generation (aside from Resonance of Fate). VC for me.

I've ceased to be sad that one of these games has to lose, and now I am happy that one of these games will definitely win.

I feel like one of the few people that didn't like X-COM. I never played Valkyria Chronicles; no vote here.

This thread reminded me that I own a copy of Valkyria Chronicles and haven't played it yet. Probably should get on that at some point in time, probably next year.

somebody doesn't know about "all heavies, no medkits" :(

I need to play Valkyria again.

XCOM scores a critical hit and wins with 72% of the vote and 698 votes cast.