Quick Look: Valkyria Chronicles 4

Hype! VC4 one of the best turn-based strategy games and the true sequel to VC. The map design is so good throughout the game. Loving it on the Switch, too, plus all the extra content.

Definite must buy for any strategy fans.

Hey guys, guess what happens when you skip the story of a narrative based game?

@80poundgames: No its racism because Darcsens are an ethnic group that all have dark blue hair. There are even Darcsens in the series who do not share any of the culture's beliefs, such as Imca from VC3, who are still the subject of hatred and discrimination purely because of their race.

Dude, accusing a game of discriminating agains "dark skin" people is a baaaaaaaaad accusation no matter where you stand on the matter. Specially with it is definitely not the case. It going one step to far into misrepresentation.

It's like going outside without pants for god's sake. You cannot just chuck it off to "anime people are mad again" (and you probably cannot use "w**bs" either because it's against forum rules)

Wow this video is pretty bad, jfc. Them mistaking Darcsen for dark skin (Wtf), saying your units don't die, not knowing how accuracy works, not knowing range, not knowing the option for enemy battle speed, ect.

Also, getting offended by content when it's a series that explicitly deals with and dwells on treason, murder, racism, pillaging, dehumanization and other horrors of war. They give you people with flaws and biases and that's a big part of the game, managing imperfect people in an imperfect situation where you're the bad guys sometimes.

Real bad representation of the series, tbh.

@matiaz_tapia: They didn't accuse the game of discriminating against dark skin people. They made a passing mention to a name and moved on. Yeah, they're probably wrong and stretching it, but I could see how they might interpret it that way. I am absolutely chucking it off as "anime people are mad again," because anime people are always mad when people "miunderstand" their precious anime. For a recent example, see: Nier: Automata fans.

Also, I like anime. Just like your thing and move on. Righteous indignation and hatred is unnecessary.

I'm not going to have a conversation with someone who makes wide generalisations of this kind. I was foolishly hoping you would try and tone it down rather than double up.

The issue, as I see it anyway, is not that they've confused one particular type of in-game prejudice for another, but that Ben and Jan misread and then interpreted the game itself as being racist (or, to be fair to their words 'skeezy' is I think the term they used.)

It's an honest error, but one that is a bit surprising when they both state they've played the first game, and also not helped by misreading the words on the screen, or making even a cursory effort to evaluate that judgement beyond the initial reaction. The reason I think it's worth flagging up this specificity is that throwing such claims around without thinking can cause undeserved damage. There may well be people who have no knowledge of the game that were interested in it, or who had heard of the original, which has a fairly positive reputation. It could turn them off playing, or sour their opinion on the game creators, which isn't right.

After Googling Darcsen I guess they are supposed to be the jewish people of this game?

This is a pretty embarrassing video. Not sure what it says when you see Darcsen as "dark skin". I can sort of see how when bigotry is involved, but not a great look.

@apothaeos: One refers to real people and one does not.

Like everyone else probably have pointed out by now, Darcsens are, in the context of Valkyria Chronicles, a fantasy equivalent to gypsies and Jews. For instance, the first game has you liberating an Imperial concentration camp for Darcsens.

In the lore of the game the Darcsens are hated because of the "Darcsen Calamity", which supposedly was this great event thousand of years ago, where various Darcsen tribes battled each other with Ragnite weapons (basically had a nuclear war). However, as events unfold in the first Valkyria Chronicles, it is discovered that it wasn't the Darcsen that was at fault at all, but the invading Valkyrie.

game looks great :] . i'll definitely be buying it now, thanks for the quick look jan and ben

I like how a guy says "Siegval", saying it with a germanic "f" sound for the letter V, but true American Jan ignores that and just says it like it's written.

I mean it's really not the end of the world but they are literally having voiced lines showing how to pronounce it, and it always peeves me when Americans can't say "von" or "van" or more or less any other German or Dutch word that has that as a thing.

Thee comments are are pretty bad. Some of you are acting like you are taking things personally. Mistakes do happen, and its the games fault for making its exposition so trite and boring. I have no qualms of Jan skipping it entirely.

On topic, I honestly don't know why they took the weakest part of VC2 and extended their High School Anime characterization into this. VC1 had the perfect combination of Seriousness and goof, but this one goes full on Anime.

yikes. Not a great video.

Honestly this one deserves to be taken down more than the 4th of July series

@subscryber: Oh you mean..those kind of people?

Embarassing video. Not as bad as the one guy here who was clearly bullied by anime at some point, get some help dude jesus.

@ateatree:

It's hard to get that if you just skip the story an are dead set on what you think is the point of it.

Doesen't Mass effect have racism and if somone say it is making no sense as the are skipping all the story. It has nothing to do with it being anime. It's just world building.

Except the "not-real" people are obvious analogies to real-world people (of all kinds, throughout all of history on every continent) who've been scapegoated by the political elite to tell the average citizen, "Hey, these people here, who are somewhat different than you?

Yeah, they're the source of ALL of your problems. Do what you will with that information."

EDIT: It's a shame Jan and Ben didn't really pay enough attention during the QuickLook to avoid spreading mis-information about the game, but the pseudo-outrage about them getting some story beats wrong is also pretty weird.

The prejudice against Darcsens (and it's a hard "c", so Jan and Ben can be forgiven in thinking the game said "Darkskins" when the word is pronounced "Dark-senz") is meant to show (in the typical, heavy-handed anime way) that people fighting on the side of "good" can sometimes have an ugly side to them as well. It also gives the prejudiced characters an opportunity to evolve and overcome their own flaws by recognizing their prejudice as the story progresses (c.f. the Rosie-character in the first Valkyria Chronicles.)

All this other bullshit aside, tank to tank, shooting straight on can't be the best way to do it right? I mean, that is where tanks are most armored. I'm not sure if it matters but it should.

@adamcboyd: Weak spot is usually in the back. Big blue glowing square. You are supposed to flank and hit that spot for a one hit kill with either a lancer or tank.

@adamcboyd said:

You are correct - tanks are best attacked by infantry units shooting their big glowing Ragnite generators (rear center of the tank usually,) firing with your own tanks toward the sides or rear of the enemy tank, or (in a pinch) trying to lob a grenade at the same portions of the tank that an infantry unit would shoot at.

Is there any air support or superiority in the game?

For those of you not named Eileen:

Good golly, can you imagine being named Eileen after that song came out?

@lyndbako: what was wrong with the 4th of July video it's a holiday and they were being patriotic I don't see the issues

Is there any way to turn off that hideous white vignette they have it the whole game? Like why...it makes the game look worse than it is.

Now that the defending of heavy handed political analogies in anime and anime-esque media is out of the way, let me get the obligatory complaining about using the dub out of the way.

Wow what an absolutely awful quick look.

I’m surprised no one from the site has said anything about this video yet. Do they just really not read the comments anymore? If they’re not going to bother then they really should just turn them off. I understand that sometimes it can be hard to read the comments but nearly every comment is about how poorly they handled this and honestly checking to make sure everything is ok should be part of the job. I’m hoping it’s just them taking some time to discuss it internally before doing anything but it’s been up all day...

I really loved this game. It was my first VC game and I ended up putting about 60hrs into it. The tactical combat is pretty unique and was fun although it really values rushing units to win in 2 or 3 turns which ok I suppose. The story was kinda meh, but most of the charterers in the squad were strong enough to keep my interest.

Also fuck Raz, obnoxious sexual harassing prick.

It does bother me when these guys, who are suppose to be informing people about the game, are badly misinformed or not informed at all. I understand it is hard to play and talk but people on the site frequently just plain skip important mechanics and story points of the game. It baffles me when these guys put in hours to a game and don't understand a mechanic that is explained and understood in about 30 seconds. I get they plat a lot of games with limited time and you cant learn everything 100%, but if I would rather them just not do a video with bad information than misrepresent a game.

Also, I can see how the whole Darcsen/"darkskin" thing could happen pretty easily. And the Darcsens are stand ins for racial minorities anyway, and people discriminate against them, so really the mix-up isn't that big of a deal or misrepresentation. But it does sound pretty bad, especially out of context. It just goes with them glossing over the other stuff. It all adds up to a sub-par video. I hope (and know) they will do better next time. Sometimes things fall though the cracks. Much love to Jan and Ben.

Content like this, and the consistently bad premium videos, is why I cancelled my subscription. I don't know why this QL even exists. They obviously don't want to be doing this QL which is weird because the game came out weeks ago so I dunno why they're doing it now. Skipping all the story in a story game on its own is stupid but at least show it in the QL. And the whole "darcsen" thing is just a mess. The game does have its weird tone issues but you could at least talk about the ones that exist rather than misreading darcsen as dark skin on purpose and making things up.

Mechanic wise, just like he did in the bombcast a few weeks back, Jan gets a lot of it wrong. Grenadiers do show how many hits it takes to kill something but you need to target the thing exactly, not just near it. He says there's no indication of where a shot will hit when there's a circle around the crosshair that says exactly that. He also complains that the enemy turn takes too long but you can just turn that off in the options.

Does giant bomb even care if they talk about games accurately anymore?

The story of the VC games are basically alt-history WWII. With an off-putting amount of anime mixed in starting with VC2. Yes, the Darcsens are basically the Jewish people of the VC universe, yes they are horribly discriminated against. That’s kind of the point.

@anupsis: Really I feel like it's more than just this video alone, this is just a particularly egregious example of a consistent lack of reading/attention paid to games they're playing. Like yes this is a content-based site not a "consumer alert" site, it can be really frustrating when people want to know what the guys think about a game and these habits taint that. It's funny for like Mario Party Party or Breaking Brad something like that where them hating it and/or making stupid mistakes is part of the fun. I really hope they address their attitude in quick looks as a whole and not just this specific issue.

@anupsis: Are you suggesting Giant Bomb remove a video aolely because a few users have criticisms about it? To me, that would be an extremely heavy-handed knee-jerk reaction to please the people who shout the loudest.

Also, the purpose of the comments section is (and always has been) primarily for the community to interact. It's not to dicrltate our demands to GB Staff.

Additionally, Ben and Jan arevthe newest additions to GB and don't have the almost-decade long QL experoence that, say, Jeff and Brad do. Hopefully they take the constructive criticisms to heart (amd ugnore the childish insults),and hopefully we get many more quicklooks from them to come.

Lastly, if there is a significant volume of critcism regarding a feature, the GB crew is very good at addressing that criticism on there podcasts.

i love how jan says "darcsen" a different way the first time and then immediately jumps directly to "dark skins" and then just assumes that it must be referring to Jean, even though those two characters are friends

@niko_of_death: As much as I love this site and sincerely respect Jeff and crew for all they've done and continue to do, I very much doubt anything will change. The primary driving force of Giant Bomb has been Jeff doing what Jeff feels is right and not being swayed by any outside forces - for better and worse. At best they will just keep doing what they've been doing, at worst they will mock the community for being nitpicky and not really care.

@anupsis: Or maybe it's not big enough of a deal to issue some statement on. They got something wrong on a Quick Look, it wouldn't be a first in any case.

I hope anime and anime fans stop being a punching bag for video games media soon. It's getting old.

I would say that this entire comment section is the perfect example why you can construe that shitty anime fans deserve the derision they get.

@dstopia said:

people are being a bit hyperbolic in the comments but at some point why even do this video if you clearly aren't going to make an effort to get anything right? it's not like valkyria chronicles 4 videos weeks after the game's actual release are some hot piece of content all the kids are going to tune in for. like what is to be gained by purposefully misrepresenting a game like this?

"A bit hyperbolic" at misreading a word and getting the details of fictional racism wrong? You should probably reread the comments, take a deep breath, and think about what it really means when people are being complete fucking assholes over something like this.

And I would consider myself someone who enjoys anime quite often. The fandom is just chock-full of awful, nightmare people.

@sundowner: Saying Ben and Jan are *deliberately* misleading people about VC4 is, ironically, also hyperbolic.

Also, verging on weird conspiracy-theory.

Given that VC is all about a fantasy WWII setting, naturally the jews & gypsy's will be represented. This game decided to call them darcsen. Now is that name chosen to be close to dark skins? I bet that has come up in development for sure. As this very on-the-nose signal that the hatred against those people is bigoted in nature. Just like you will (hopefully) immediatly realize that someone is bigoted as soon as they talk about 'those dark skins are always... '

Now if the series ends up with the darcsens actually being the problem of everything, that's one thing. But just having a group that represents the jews & gypsy's and characters being bigoted towards them is to be expected. And it's not like this is a new factor to the series. I haven't played Valkyria Chronicles for more than a year but i still remember that your dude is a biology lover, everything is powered by these blue reactors & that there are characters that hate darcsen at first and over time realize that the reality is different than what they were led to believe.

Much of this series is modeled after the World Wars, and Darcsens (dark - sins) are what others have pointed out, basically Jewish people, who no matter where they went in what empire, they faced discrimination. It's pretty central to the plots of the games. It is not that they are dark skinned, but they are depicted as having dark hair and eyes as recognizable traits.

It had nothing at all to do with Jean.

You probably destroyed what would have otherwise been a good quick look (I quit watching based on the comments and what I saw for myself on the "dark skin", the bikini shaming, and the comments).

I hope the two of you facepalm yourselves pretty hard after this, and if you have a question of the nature of an in-game term, you consult its in-game glossary, if available, or Google it.

Yes, they all have teeth.