I've been thinking lately and valkyria chronicles might be my favorite game of all time. Playing Enemy Unknown this year only reinforced my fanatical love for valkyria chronicles. X-com is a fantastic game I loved it, but it was missing the story and characters of a VC game. If you like x-com you really should play this. it's got all the same stuff, R&D;, unit types, leveling up your soldiers, pera-death which is insane because these guys aren't expendable and have full on social links. Also in VC you get two tanks and you go into overwatch automatically every turn. VC2 on the psp is also fantastic but on the psp, so pfffhh. I'd play 100 dollars for a vita port of VC3, but that's never going to happen.

Valkyria Chronicles wasn't made by a western developer and therefore received little or no consideration for GoTY across the industry, it's worth noting.

Edit: Also the PSP is excellent if you want to play Tactical RPGs, there's no reason why you have to play on a fullscreen as the graphics tend to be underwhelming and you don't have to use the crappy analog stick for most of them. Jeanne D'Arc, Disgaea games, and various others came into being there; certainly performed much better in terms of JRPGs than the main consoles have this generation. XCOM should receive a Vita port.

If it comes out on PC I'll play it...

If you like good videogames, you should play Valkyria Chronicles!

Such an amazing game, one of my favorites from this generation. The gameplay, art style, story, everything is great.

I really need to play this, its that game that I always tell myself I will get one day.

I started playing this right after I finished XCOM. It's really great. I'm probably only about half way through the game, but so far I have very few complaints. Any fan of tactics games should go ahead and pick it up.

It's also worth mentioning what I regard as one of its most unique features: the hybrid of turn-based strategy with real-time 3rd person movement.

X-COM is like Valkyria Chronicles? Neat, now I'm more interested in getting X-COM.

Every time I think of the story, I get all rilled up. It's just so good. If more people played it, it sound alot like the praise people give to the walking dead.

@FluxWaveZ: XCOM is unremarkable if you compare it to older, better tactical RPGs, though it is fun and addictive. The most amazing part of XCOM is that it came out during this atrocious year.

Tactics Ogre is on the PSP now I guess, ostensibly just as good as Final Fantasy Tactics and probably a fair amount better than Valkyria Chronicles: http://www.amazon.com/Tactics-Ogre-Cling-Together-Sony-PSP/dp/B003YVK5T8/ref=pd_sim_vg_2

It's only £10 on amazon which is very tempting but i wish they would add trophy support

I really enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles on PS3. It was a really cool and different kind of strategy game at the time.

Yeah, I always wanted to play this series, but I didn't have a PS3 and for some reason I never ended up buying the PSP sequel. Maybe when I've lightened up my "currently playing" list a bit, I'll visit PSN.

@JZ said:

it sound alot like the praise people give to the walking dead.

What...? How is the story structure in Valkyria Chronicles anywhere near that of The Walking Dead?

@JZ: Does a guy rip off his own head and regenerate? If not I'll be sadly underwhelmed by the storyline. Alternatively does one character manipulate the entire plot including the protagonist to his own benefit and come out on top?

Well FFT and disgaea are wonderful games , but comparing them to VC and X-com is very odd. Yes the are all strategy rpgs, but worldly different. It's like comparing a fps to a 3rd person shooter. Yes they are both shooters, but totally different.

I mean everyone says the walking dead has a fantastic story and there would be the same amount of praise. There is no choices in VC.

@JZ: VC is a great game and all, but there is absolutely no reason to compare it to The Walking Dead. People praise the game's story because of how it handles player choice and agency. It is not like VC at all.

Uh played through XCOM completely, felt it was a standard Tactical RPG with an addictive quality to it and virtually no storyline to speak of. The only odd thing about it is the variance and asymptotes provided by high damage values; luck plays much more of a role in the early game on higher difficulties than it would in other Tactical RPGs; many of which are much more difficult overall as XCOM nose-dives once you know how to play and luck your way through the first handful of battles on Impossible and I'd say most of the endgame is downright trivial with the appropriate build and approach regardless of difficulty.

Most often Tactical RPGs have a fairly progressive difficulty curve (so the game gets harder as it goes along), they're not the hardest games out there except for the universal exception which is the Wiegraf/Velius fight in FFT, a point at which I've heard hundreds of stories of people not keeping multiple saves and having to restart the entire game to beat, including myself. Generally the final boss fight of a tactical RPG will be quite a bit different than the rest of the game and usually a substantial challenge, the last boss/level in XCOM is one of the easiest fights in the game.

As for tactical RPGs with Permadeath (technically FFT has permadeath) Fire Emblem 3 and 4 are supposed to be the most significant examples in the genre, I've never played them though I've played 15-20 other tactical RPGs and have a pretty good feel for their design mechanics.

As for unsung examples of an excellent storyline (FFT's is still the best in the genre and top 5 overall thanks solely to Delita) Front Mission 3's Alisa scenario is one of the most impressive out there and the villain is an unstoppable relentless force of malice, I highly doubt Valkyria Chronicles measures up though it might turn out to be okay.

@JZ said:

I've been thinking lately and valkyria chronicles might be my favorite game of all time. Playing Enemy Unknown this year only reinforced my fanatical love for valkyria chronicles. X-com is a fantastic game I loved it, but it was missing the story and characters of a VC game. If you like x-com you really should play this. it's got all the same stuff, R&D;, unit types, leveling up your soldiers, pera-death which is insane because these guys aren't expendable and have full on social links. Also in VC you get two tanks and you go into overwatch automatically every turn. VC2 on the psp is also fantastic but on the psp, so pfffhh. I'd play 100 dollars for a vita port of VC3, but that's never going to happen.

Does it have the stereotypical Jrpg art style, characters, and/or story?

If the walking dead had no choices it'd still be a great story. Considering none of the choices actually make massive changes.

Yup! Valkyria Chronicles is preeeettry good, it's kinda sad that SEGA abandoned it.

I'd like to point out that it has some really good music too

@twigger89: Yes to all of those and the story is, no question, awful. Of course, it's still a great game, just don't listen to anyone who tells you the story is anything other than embarrassing.

And good voice acting too

I enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles, but I think people really oversell it when trying to convince others to play it.  It's a great game, but it does have some very real problems.  It's a shame they never got to do a real sequel so they could perfect the formula.

@chop what the hell are you talking about? Sorry your sucha cold hearted jerk and can't enjoy a good love story.

Well, I guess... But you're exaggerating Valkyria Chronicles' strengths a bit here... I just beat the first one a week ago, and maybe some of these systems got more complex in the second one but it seemed to me that:

• The R&D is pretty much just a mostly linear tech tree with incremental improvements on existing items which you buy with cash (and with the amount of cash I had by the end of the game I could afford all of the ones I wanted and practically all of the ones I didn't) not the limited resources wants vs needs balance thing that XCOM has...
• Only 1 of the unit types is really necessary for dominating most of the missions (really if you want an A rank on almost every mission, scouts are practically all you need. I'm tempted to attempt a no scout playthrough just to see if it's even possible to A rank some missions without the scout)
• Social links? There's a fire emblem like character support system but it mostly could be ignored. It had almost no impact on the game at all.
• The story's pretty good, if a little by the numbers, but it had some nice emotional beats. I didn't love how it was presented, breaking everything up into a book format was neat stylistically, but god damn it if I didn't just want to be able to put down the fucking controller at some point and stop having to press X. Just play the next fucking cutscene! Just autoscroll to the next line of dialogue! Why are you making me wear out the X button on my god damn controller?!
• Comparing the story to the Walking Dead?! That's an interactive story with decisions that affect your experience, whereas Valkyria Chronicles was a pretty nice, static story.

Valkyria Chronicles is legitimately one of my favorite games of this generation of consoles, and even back when it was released I did on a few occasions say that it was what I envisioned a modern XCOM game playing like. It's incredibly charming as well and has a great unique look

I wasn't as big a fan of VC2. I felt like it got a little too caught up in trying to tell individual stories for everyone in its less interesting cast of characters. The subdivided battle areas were also a bit frustrating. VC3 is apparently pretty fantastic, but it'll never be seen outside of Japan (however, there are some fan translation projects in progress).

Well yeah in #2 r&d; gets deeper and have full on go hangout with his guy social links.

@AngelN7 said:

Yup! Valkyria Chronicles is preeeettry good, it's kinda sad that SEGA abandoned it.

SEGA didn't so much abandon it as it completely mismanaged it to the point where the next version of VC is an online card game.

Valkyria Chronicles: Future Korean MMO!

@JZ said:

I've been thinking lately and valkyria chronicles might be my favorite game of all time.

Welcome to the club except I'm already certain it is my favorite game of all time. It's just so fucking good.

@twigger89 said:

@JZ said:

I've been thinking lately and valkyria chronicles might be my favorite game of all time. Playing Enemy Unknown this year only reinforced my fanatical love for valkyria chronicles. X-com is a fantastic game I loved it, but it was missing the story and characters of a VC game. If you like x-com you really should play this. it's got all the same stuff, R&D;, unit types, leveling up your soldiers, pera-death which is insane because these guys aren't expendable and have full on social links. Also in VC you get two tanks and you go into overwatch automatically every turn. VC2 on the psp is also fantastic but on the psp, so pfffhh. I'd play 100 dollars for a vita port of VC3, but that's never going to happen.

Does it have the stereotypical Jrpg art style, characters, and/or story?

You can take a look at the art style/game play on GB's own quicklook for the game. (It's one of the earliest Dave QLs I've seen too.)

Character wise, no, we don't have any spunky teen out to save the world, nor an overly reluctant and emotionally distraught teen out to save the world, if that's what you're asking. Welkin, the main protagonist, is a slightly aloof, but perfectly competent military officer that gets things done without any deus ex machinas involved.

Character designs are great for the most part though. Plot wise, it's a Japanese reimagining of the German invasion of Belgium if the Allies were giant dicks as well, the holocaust was happening at the same time, and a magical ancient race that people thought were good but turns out to be evil was also involved.

The game is very good. It is a pity the franchise went down hill from that lofty starting point.

I played about 15 or so hours and randomly stoped. Happens to me with any game of that type. It looks incredible and the gameplay is fantastic too. Story on the other hand I did not care for.

Funyy you bring this up OP. I was just talking to some friends who liked this game and wondered if XCOM would be similiar

Valkyria Chronicles is an excellent game, one of the very best it's genre has ever produced, any fan of SRPGs with a PS3 should absolutely play it.

@Turambar said:

@twigger89 said:

@JZ said:

I've been thinking lately and valkyria chronicles might be my favorite game of all time. Playing Enemy Unknown this year only reinforced my fanatical love for valkyria chronicles. X-com is a fantastic game I loved it, but it was missing the story and characters of a VC game. If you like x-com you really should play this. it's got all the same stuff, R&D;, unit types, leveling up your soldiers, pera-death which is insane because these guys aren't expendable and have full on social links. Also in VC you get two tanks and you go into overwatch automatically every turn. VC2 on the psp is also fantastic but on the psp, so pfffhh. I'd play 100 dollars for a vita port of VC3, but that's never going to happen.

Does it have the stereotypical Jrpg art style, characters, and/or story?

You can take a look at the art style/game play on GB's own quicklook for the game. (It's one of the earliest Dave QLs I've seen too.)

Character wise, no, we don't have any spunky teen out to save the world, nor an overly reluctant and emotionally distraught teen out to save the world, if that's what you're asking. Welkin, the main protagonist, is a slightly aloof, but perfectly competent military officer that gets things done without any deus ex machinas involved.

Character designs are great for the most part though. Plot wise, it's a Japanese reimagining of the German invasion of Belgium if the Allies were giant dicks as well, the holocaust was happening at the same time, and a magical ancient race that people thought were good but turns out to be evil was also involved.

The game is very good. It is a pity the franchise went down hill from that lofty starting point.

I thought I hear good things about the sequels other than the games being on a PSP so the graphics look no where near as spectacular, the 2nd game taking place in a more cliche anime military high school, and the 3rd one not seeing a release in the west.

Mechanically however I thought I heard they did more to ad some muscle to the behind the scenes strategy like the R&D or squad training.

I'd love to play 2 and 3 but I don't have a PSP.

I'd like to but have no PS3 and the sequel isn't available on the Vita without having one either.

@FluxWaveZ said:

@JZ said:

it sound alot like the praise people give to the walking dead.

What...? How is the story structure in Valkyria Chronicles anywhere near that of The Walking Dead?

he never said anything about structure. he said if more people played it they'd praise VC just as walking dead is praised, the idea being that they each have a great story in general.

@Nottle said:

@Turambar said:

@twigger89 said:

@JZ said:

I've been thinking lately and valkyria chronicles might be my favorite game of all time. Playing Enemy Unknown this year only reinforced my fanatical love for valkyria chronicles. X-com is a fantastic game I loved it, but it was missing the story and characters of a VC game. If you like x-com you really should play this. it's got all the same stuff, R&D;, unit types, leveling up your soldiers, pera-death which is insane because these guys aren't expendable and have full on social links. Also in VC you get two tanks and you go into overwatch automatically every turn. VC2 on the psp is also fantastic but on the psp, so pfffhh. I'd play 100 dollars for a vita port of VC3, but that's never going to happen.

Does it have the stereotypical Jrpg art style, characters, and/or story?

You can take a look at the art style/game play on GB's own quicklook for the game. (It's one of the earliest Dave QLs I've seen too.)

Character wise, no, we don't have any spunky teen out to save the world, nor an overly reluctant and emotionally distraught teen out to save the world, if that's what you're asking. Welkin, the main protagonist, is a slightly aloof, but perfectly competent military officer that gets things done without any deus ex machinas involved.

Character designs are great for the most part though. Plot wise, it's a Japanese reimagining of the German invasion of Belgium if the Allies were giant dicks as well, the holocaust was happening at the same time, and a magical ancient race that people thought were good but turns out to be evil was also involved.

The game is very good. It is a pity the franchise went down hill from that lofty starting point.

I thought I hear good things about the sequels other than the games being on a PSP so the graphics look no where near as spectacular, the 2nd game taking place in a more cliche anime military high school, and the 3rd one not seeing a release in the west.

Mechanically however I thought I heard they did more to ad some muscle to the behind the scenes strategy like the R&D or squad training.

I'd love to play 2 and 3 but I don't have a PSP.

Was not a fan at all of the reduced scope of battlefields, nor of some hilarious imbalances between the usefulness of classes of the second game. I don't have an opinion of the third since I never played it, but considering the 4th is an online card game...yeah.

The gameplay is pretty good but the story was kinda meh. I dunno, I kinda wanted my WWII game to be a little darker and not have a beach episode...

Characters were fine though (except Welkin who is kind of a moron) and a certain event in the story did kick me in the balls pretty hard about halfway through.

It's a shame the sequel is so off-putting in terms of setting, character and story that I can't even bring myself to enjoy the gameplay which remains good.

@Turambar said:

@AngelN7 said:

Yup! Valkyria Chronicles is preeeettry good, it's kinda sad that SEGA abandoned it.

SEGA didn't so much abandon it as it completely mismanaged it to the point where the next version of VC is an online card game.

Kind of like they do everything that isn't Sonic then blame it on lack of interest from customers when it's more along the lines of lack of effort from Sega.

I do think it deserved more attention, but don't think it's anything like as good as its fans make it out to be. Like XCOM, it stands out as being good simply by virtue of how few similar games there are. If the genre were more popular, I doubt they would be considered to be particularly great examples for very long. Stacks of room for improvement in both games, imo.

@Turambar said:

@twigger89 said:

@JZ said:

I've been thinking lately and valkyria chronicles might be my favorite game of all time. Playing Enemy Unknown this year only reinforced my fanatical love for valkyria chronicles. X-com is a fantastic game I loved it, but it was missing the story and characters of a VC game. If you like x-com you really should play this. it's got all the same stuff, R&D;, unit types, leveling up your soldiers, pera-death which is insane because these guys aren't expendable and have full on social links. Also in VC you get two tanks and you go into overwatch automatically every turn. VC2 on the psp is also fantastic but on the psp, so pfffhh. I'd play 100 dollars for a vita port of VC3, but that's never going to happen.

Does it have the stereotypical Jrpg art style, characters, and/or story?

You can take a look at the art style/game play on GB's own quicklook for the game. (It's one of the earliest Dave QLs I've seen too.)

Character wise, no, we don't have any spunky teen out to save the world, nor an overly reluctant and emotionally distraught teen out to save the world, if that's what you're asking. Welkin, the main protagonist, is a slightly aloof, but perfectly competent military officer that gets things done without any deus ex machinas involved.

Character designs are great for the most part though. Plot wise, it's a Japanese reimagining of the German invasion of Belgium if the Allies were giant dicks as well, the holocaust was happening at the same time, and a magical ancient race that people thought were good but turns out to be evil was also involved.

The game is very good. It is a pity the franchise went down hill from that lofty starting point.

I'll check out the quicklook, but the story sounds pretty dumb. Granted the story in xcom was dumb (and/or non-existent, depending on how you look at it) but I am always wary of Jrpg narrative conventions, as they just seem to rub me the wrong way. It's unfortunate, and I am a big fan of tactical and strategic games and like turn based battle systems.

Why do we need magical aliens in WW2? Shit is crazy enough as it is, don't make it hokey by adding fairies and shit.

I approve this message. I played VC recently and it was amazing.

@twigger89 said:

@Turambar said:

@twigger89 said:

@JZ said:

I've been thinking lately and valkyria chronicles might be my favorite game of all time. Playing Enemy Unknown this year only reinforced my fanatical love for valkyria chronicles. X-com is a fantastic game I loved it, but it was missing the story and characters of a VC game. If you like x-com you really should play this. it's got all the same stuff, R&D;, unit types, leveling up your soldiers, pera-death which is insane because these guys aren't expendable and have full on social links. Also in VC you get two tanks and you go into overwatch automatically every turn. VC2 on the psp is also fantastic but on the psp, so pfffhh. I'd play 100 dollars for a vita port of VC3, but that's never going to happen.

Does it have the stereotypical Jrpg art style, characters, and/or story?

You can take a look at the art style/game play on GB's own quicklook for the game. (It's one of the earliest Dave QLs I've seen too.)

Character wise, no, we don't have any spunky teen out to save the world, nor an overly reluctant and emotionally distraught teen out to save the world, if that's what you're asking. Welkin, the main protagonist, is a slightly aloof, but perfectly competent military officer that gets things done without any deus ex machinas involved.

Character designs are great for the most part though. Plot wise, it's a Japanese reimagining of the German invasion of Belgium if the Allies were giant dicks as well, the holocaust was happening at the same time, and a magical ancient race that people thought were good but turns out to be evil was also involved.

The game is very good. It is a pity the franchise went down hill from that lofty starting point.

I'll check out the quicklook, but the story sounds pretty dumb. Granted the story in xcom was dumb (and/or non-existent, depending on how you look at it) but I am always wary of Jrpg narrative conventions, as they just seem to rub me the wrong way. It's unfortunate, and I am a big fan of tactical and strategic games and like turn based battle systems.

Why do we need magical aliens in WW2? Shit is crazy enough as it is, don't make it hokey by adding fairies and shit.

Because Japanese settings are almost always fantasy based, regardless of the initial window dressings. The existence of the ancient magical race is largely relegated to setting justifications more than anything else though. You won't be seeing anything "magical" on the battlefield outside of two stages. The story is far, far from good, but I wouldn't call it awful either. It manages to have some good character moments.

@pyromagnestir said:

Well, I guess... But you're exaggerating Valkyria Chronicles' strengths a bit here... I just beat the first one a week ago, and maybe some of these systems got more complex in the second one but it seemed to me that:

• The R&D is pretty much just a mostly linear tech tree with incremental improvements on existing items which you buy with cash (and with the amount of cash I had by the end of the game I could afford all of the ones I wanted and practically all of the ones I didn't) not the limited resources wants vs needs balance thing that XCOM has...

• Only 1 of the unit types is really necessary for dominating most of the missions (really if you want an A rank on almost every mission, scouts are practically all you need. I'm tempted to attempt a no scout playthrough just to see if it's even possible to A rank some missions without the scout)

• Social links? There's a fire emblem like character support system but it mostly could be ignored. It had almost no impact on the game at all.

• The story's pretty good, if a little by the numbers, but it had some nice emotional beats. I didn't love how it was presented, breaking everything up into a book format was neat stylistically, but god damn it if I didn't just want to be able to put down the fucking controller at some point and stop having to press X. Just play the next fucking cutscene! Just autoscroll to the next line of dialogue! Why are you making me wear out the X button on my god damn controller?!

• Comparing the story to the Walking Dead?! That's an interactive story with decisions that affect your experience, whereas Valkyria Chronicles was a pretty nice, static story.

1. The R&D in the second involves collecting resources (iron, steel, ragnite, wood, etc) of different qualities as mission rewards. I played the Japanese version of the game for 300 hours and didn't have enough for all the upgrades. I'm short on money and resources. I can't remember if it's in the third one or not. With 7 different variations on each class in VC2 there were a lot of different R&D branches to go down. Engineers/medics/melodists use pistols instead of the riffles that scouts used and there is a whole new melee class so that's even more variety.
2. One of the DLC packs is class specific missions. The Expert DLC pack really requires multiple classes as well. There are class specific and character specific missions in the second and third games.
3. In the first one if you used a character a bunch then talked to Ellet the personel tab would update and the character would have new battle potentials unlocked. In the second and third games you would unlock character specific missions.
4. The third one did have branching missions. I'm not sure how much it affected things as once you beat the game you can go back and do the other branches. Also, I don't speak Japanese.

Overall I think VC2 and VC3 are improvements over their predecessors in terms of gameplay but they aren't better than the original. They are a bit ugly and don't have characters or narrative that are as interesting as the first. The second one is also painfully easy. The third is mostly easy but the endgame missions are brutally difficult. The best parts of both of them are the end game content which takes too long to get too.

@Neurotic said:

The gameplay is pretty good but the story was kinda meh. I dunno, I kinda wanted my WWII game to be a little darker and not have a beach episode...

Characters were fine though (except Welkin who is kind of a moron) and a certain event in the story did kick me in the balls pretty hard about halfway through.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Why, Isara? WHY?! GODDAMMIT!

It's a shame the sequel is so off-putting in terms of setting, character and story that I can't even bring myself to enjoy the gameplay which remains good.

Try playing it in Japanese. It's way more tolerable if you don't know what the characters are saying. You can get enough of the story from the visuals to know what is going on but not enough to know how terrible it is.

I loved this game. I have no idea why I don't own it yet.

@mosespippy: Was it talking to the reporter lady that triggered the new potentials to unlock? I did notice the using characters would sometimes cause them to unlock new potentials and that would coincide with an update to the personnel tab, but I never put 2 and 2 together on that one, I guess. And it seemed like the majority of potentials for the characters that I was using that unlocked always sucked. Oh great, now this character won't return fire if attacked? Or hates the main character and won't perform as well around him? Or occasionally won't be able to do critical damage? Gee, thanks reporter lady...

I bought the expert mission dlc, (not the other one though) but it would've been nice if the main game occasionally had made better use of the non scout troops at your disposal. You could force yourself to use the other units, but as I said, a scout or 2 or maybe 3 were all you really needed to get the best rank possible in pretty much every mission.