Quick Look: Valkyria Chronicles 4

Anime... Anime Never Changes...

The Great Anime Wars.

Ah...the anime economy...

How are they reading Darcsen as Darkskin?

If I really want to play this, I'll probably just play the original that I never beat in my Steam library. There's a lot of exposition here and it's really not delivered in a way that works well, from what I can see. I know it's not that different from how the first one did things, but I don't remember having to go through five or six different stiff, boring cutscenes to get to the turn-based strategy.

Or that was a thing and I just didn't mind as much back then.

EDIT: Oh wow, they straight-up made racism a mechanic.

Ooh this is a nice surprise.

It's not the same word but I'm pretty sure they sound similar for a reason.

EDIT: Apparently a "darcsen" is someone with blue hair and it doesn't necessarily reference skin tone. All right, sure.

I finished Valkyria Chronicles 4 last week and thought the game was fantastic! This year I played through all of Valkyria Chronicles 3 , replayed most of the first game and played a good chunk of 2 and I would say that 4 is one of the best in the series. The gameplay is certainly the most polished.

Also, dude, Darcsens are not "dark-skins". They are a fictional race of people that have dark navy-blue hair. Raz is a Darcsen. Viola, and several other characters, are still racists but not in the way you are thinking of.

Also there is permadeath for non-plot important characters.

Also Scout units are way more important than you think.

It literally doesn't say "darkskin" this is stupid

A lot of people very particular about their flavor of anime racism, huh.

I'm stopping this quick-look at the Darkskin misread. People just really want to find reasons to dismiss this game, I'm not stopping them but I rather not hear about it anymore.

Guess if you are going to have your game have an anime look, you have to pay the perception toll that comes with.

@justin258: The Darcsens are basically this universe's version of the Jewish people during WWII.

How much did they got wrong about the game this time and how much do they "hurr-durr-ANIME!!!!" in this QL?

@justin258: They are all white from what I've seen. Granted I've only played through the first game. Trying to read this as Darkskin is attributing intent that I can't imagine even crossed the writers' minds. Especially considering the writers are Japanese.

Now if the Japanese is some weird, racial word that the English translators changed into Darcsen, then I'll accept that the word is inappropriate. Doing a quick google search doesn't really tell me much in that regard though.

I'm having trouble figuring this out as well.

Oh god jan no. Noooooo jan JAN NO

I'm not sure how they managed to both play through the first game in the series without knowing about Darcsens, considering it's a fairly significant part of the plot and character development during that game.

Though I guess maybe they skipped over all the story sections in that one too?

Anime.... Anime never changes.

Edit: As a fan of Anime and the series, I'm not going to get outraged like some are, because I understand. The point of GB is to be to bring a human element to the video discussions, and if a game just isn't doing it for you, there is no problem in showing that in the video. However, there is a limit.

Scouts are maybe the most broken class in VC, to the point where I'd say it kind of makes the game less interesting than it maybe should be. You could run through most maps in VC1 using them and capture the main base in a turn or two, and seems like the same can be said for this entry. The worst part is that the game's scoring system seems to expect you to do this for the most part, which makes it feel like you're being punished for actually trying to use other units or strategies.

Yeah I'm sorry but this goes a bit beyond a simple misunderstanding.

You guys accidentally made the game come off as racist against minorities because

1. You didn't pay the faintest bit of attention to the story of either the first OR the fourth game

2. YOU MISPRONOUNCED A WORD!

This is a very silly oversight and I'm honestly kinda disappointed

The tack of Darcsen as a persecuted minority isn't wrong, but they're an amalgam of Romani/Jewish people and culture, not "dark skins".

(There's also points in the story where most of the major characters who start with the "Darcsen Hater" trait flip to a trait that powers them up when around Darcsen allies because they learn their lessons about how prejudice is wrong, if it heartens anyone to hear that.)

@mindbullet: Later in game, you can use hero units that can basically grab 2 other units to move along in one turn (up to a limit each cycle based on a separate rechargeable thing). So a lot of the late game scoring is about being able to slingshot slower units to better positions.

All your hero units can do this ( except for the tank) and then later you can give that ability to one of the other sub characters freely. Same with the APC, you can have them hop on, move to a better position and make them use their turn starting from the APC's position and even go back into the APC.

Scouts are still quite powerful, but only after they get the grenade launcher. Naturally a scout hero ( which is also you get later) is quite advantageous.

Ok, I thought the Darcsens misread was being overblown...damn Jan and Ben, c'mon. I do like this game better than the original but it does have pacing issues with the story and some missions having surprises that can be frustrating.

I'm about halfway through the game and Raz has become a good character after starting out as kind of a garbage person. The other prominent characters are also much better than the ones featured in the original.

The new grenadier class is a solid addition as are the various quality of life tweaks such as vehicles only using one command point instead of two, higher weapon accuracy across the board, better skirmish missions, squad sub stories, etc.

Whooooooooa you guys really misinterpreted what darcsen means and took this QL in a very weird direction.

Regarding accuracy. It IS conveyed in the game, the large orange circle when you are aiming represents the variance. Your shots will always hit within that circle, but not necessarily where your crosshairs are pointing.

That’s why Lancers are usually not great against infantry, because the variance is far too large to hit anything smaller than a tank.

Unrelated, but I probably don’t recommend people play these games skipping all the story. It’s actually one of the stronger points of the game, there are probably tactical games with less story that you can play if you don’t enjoy story based games.

@matiaz_tapia: That's good to know. There was that initial reaction of "Oh, it's still this" when it came to the Scouts, but hearing things change up later is maybe the best reason to keep going I've heard so far.

I’ve signed in for the first time in several years just to call this review an embarrassment.

Congratulations.

I don't think I've ever seen a less energetic Quick Look on this site, especially considering its length. And to get very basic information super wrong early on, just to use that as a (further) excuse to not care ...
All in all a terrible showing, Ben and Jan.

@emeritus: I'd be embarrassed if I'd watched Giant Bomb vidoes for serveral years and think that a quick look is a review.

If anyone is interested in a more deep-dive overview of the game, the Three Moves Ahead podcast did an episode with Rob and Austin from Waypoint and Heather from Kotaku. It's a really good discussion about the tonal dissonance present in the narrative as well as the evolved battle mechanics.

How is Darcsen pronounced Dark skin?? You're really misrepresenting the game in this point, in a really ugly way..

Apologize for this embarrassing video

Seems very similar to the previous game, there was some positive character development with regards to the darksen racism agenda in the previous game and I'd hoped perhaps new issues could be tackled, but then anime is anime, as much as we expected....

Turned it off at "I've been skipping the story"

People helped finance this.

Yeah, this quick look was something else...

I'm usually a fan of the Jan and Ben combo, but man; it comes across as if you were given devastating news immediately before starting. Low energy, baffling misinterpretations and just a weak showing overall.
I can respect not liking the game, and Jan brings up some valid criticisms, but the Red "??" confusion when it comes to killing a unit seems odd given that you guys have history with the series and skipping the story? (I reviewed it, I know it drags but it's all vital to understanding the world they're in). I'm not saying it's a great tale woven by the Gods of Plot, but I'm really surprised at the two of you.
Most of the old-school GB crew I'd expect it from, being "anime! eurgh" for a long time, but I really thought you guys would be better.

Still got a lot of respect for you both by my take on your take is that it's a bad take.

@muftyriots: However, this isn't actually true and the unjust racism against the Darcsen people is something explored a lot more in the first game.

Once the "darkskin" scene happened, I unlocked a potential of my own: "Giant Bomb West hater."

@muftyriots: Yeah I was just adding that to your comment in case anyone wanted to known.

Worst QL I've seen in a while. I barely remember anything of the first game and still know Darcsen is not read as "darkskin". I hope they remove this video.

To quote the wiki:

"Throughout the continent of Europa, Darcsens are still subject to ethnic discrimination which stems from an historical fact that their ancestors repeatedly initiated war and scorched all of Europa. Due to their ancestors' crimes, Darcsens are only identified by their first name as form of punishment. An extensive period of oppression, along with their reserved stance not to retaliate against offenders have made Darcsens easy targets during the war (especially EWII), as many Darcsen communities and families in Gallia were ethnically purged by foreign invaders. Our nation reports very few cases of criminal activities related ethinicity, however, Darcsens are considered dirty and inferior people who are never freed from prejudice or hostile feelings in public."

So to sum up:

- It's not dark skin.

- But the perk is still racial in nature.

- Let's be honest this is the website that had a Phoenix Down moment.

@apothaeos: Nobodies saying that characters aren't racist towards Darcsens. They're saying that characters in the game are NOT racist towards people with dark skin. There's an incredibly huge difference.

Ouch. I feel like this is one of the rare times when the GB community has some good, honest, constructive feedback for some of the staff, and I worry that they'll never see it. This was not the finest moment for either Ben or Jan.

@curenio: That sounds great, thanks for the heads up. I am behind on my 3MA, but might skip ahead to this one.

Darcsens refer to indigenous people who are called "stinky and dirty" on both sides of the conflict and are a fill in for Jews, not dark-skinned people. They're bigots not racist. Get it right guys.