Note: There are spoilers. Don't read if you're super sensitive to them.

I first binged on the original Valkyria Chronicles back in the Summer of 2011, basically playing through it in some incredibly lengthy (and deeply unhealthy!) marathon sessions over the course of just a few days. At the time I thought it was a really fantastic game, with some rough edges, but nothing that couldn't be iterated on successfully in a way that had the potential to become one of the greatest and most unique SRPG series ever created. The then-novel blend of turn based strategy with real-time third person shooting controls within the turns, the class system, the large maps and phenomenal art style; while I thought it fell into some really absurd difficulty spikes as time went on, I came away from it thinking it was really something special, even if it occasionally had some infuriating flaws.

Being something of a binge-session player, though, by the time I was finished with Valkyria Chronicles, I was more than ready to set the series aside for awhile. So, when I told my friend who first got me into playing Valkyria Chronicles a few years back that I was finally diving into its sequel, he basically told me "Oh, btw, it's the worst one of the three. Enjoy." My reaction was basically "Ugh, you motherfucker, why have you gotten me into this series whose only North American sequel is apparently mediocre?"

Sadly, Sega (remember when they made video games?) decided to restrict the sequel development to the PSP for whatever reason, which was yet another layer of "Eh... I dunno..." that caused me to kick the can on continuing down the path of the series. I've just never been much of a handheld person; for me my interest in handhelds has a direct relationship with the complexity and length of the game itself. After already experiencing the original on the PS3, I wasn't all that excited to stare at a low-res, four-inch screen for forty hours. Especially having a PSP saddled with a barely functional D-pad due to an unfortunate cotton candy mishap. Long story.

So with a little creativity, a CFW'd PSP, and an emulator, I was able to mitigate the "PSP-ness" of the experience in a way that finally tipped the scales on me grabbing the PSN version and diving in. I'm glad I did, because it gave me much-needed motivation to finish it.

The story and general plot structure are just awful, and at a certain point, nonsensical.

At first blush, setting this story in a military academy, with the story and missions separated between months à la Persona, seems perfectly appropriate and a decent way to set a consistent pace. In between missions given by your instructor, you roam around campus, talking with party members, you can level up your classes at the training grounds, you upgrade weapons and gear at the R&D building; all of that makes sense and grounds the story in a way such that it doesn't require much explanation. You know what high school is, you know what a military is. Chances are you also have a passing familiarity with the general archetypes the characters fall into as well.

Each month you're given a general description of what's going on in the story at that point, and a set amount of missions to complete before the next main story thread is advanced. Once you've completed the requisite amount of missions for the month, and cleared out the red exclamation mark conversations on the Academy overview map, a story battle takes place where the narrative is advanced, and then the month cycles to the next, and you repeat the process. This is, on paper, just fine. After the first few months, though, it becomes clear that the way the story is told, and the story they're actually trying to tell, feel incredibly disconnected from one another.

See, in the background to the high-school class rivalries and whatnot, there's a civil war that's broken out across the country of Gallia. The Archduchess is a Darcsen, and many of the common-folk don't like those dirty impure darc-ies, and as part of the official military, even as cadets, you're obliged to fight the civil war and attempt to maintain order. But the story doesn't really focus on this for a really long time. Even though you will continue to see cut-scenes play out in the background covering the political machinations of the villains and the advancement of the civil war, something like half of the calendar year deals with covering a tournament between the classes of the Academy to determine which group has the biggest soldier dicks. Meanwhile, half the country is under siege and there are mad scientists facilitating mass slaughter of the Darcsen.

Ostensibly, the filler missions in each month are dealing with eliminating the rebels, but there's no real story to virtually anything you're doing there. They serve merely as repeatable missions with barely any context as to why you're fighting. Eventually the civil war storyline takes front and center after you've already gone through most of the year, and the narrative does the equivalent of skipping like thirteen chapters. Suddenly, Lanseal Academy gets attacked, it's exposed that a bunch of people had been experimented on by the corrupt headmaster to be turned into artificial Valkyria, and the main characters brother is one of them, fighting for the villains. Oh, and the rebels also take over the capitol of Gallia. This all happens in incredibly fast succession in like two cut-scenes-worth of time. Before you know it, suddenly Class G is at the forefront of retaking the country out of fucking nowhere.

Even more jarring is that, in between missions where you are clearly marching around the Southern half of the country on a now-linear story, you still appear back at the Academy (which has officially shut down, yet you're still going to classes for some reason?) to roam around chatting with people about school politics and relationship problems, hanging out in the R&D building, and doing drills on the yard to level up classes. I know there's something to be said in video games for suspension of disbelief. Afterall, I don't give a fuck about the reality of, like, the Resident Evil 4 merchant or something, but for a story that is suddenly taking itself seriously, it is downright jarring to constantly change settings.

And as I was warned, none of these characters are all that good. They are largely grating anime archetypes who take almost nothing seriously. Somewhat ironically, considering all the shit they get for basically being fantasy Jews, the Darcsen characters are the most interesting and humanized, and I continue to like the general idea of the Darcsens even if they're clearly not treated with the seriousness they deserve. There's also a melee unit named Alexis who is sort of the Naoto Shirogane of this game. She's pretty cool, and the reality of who she is is treated very lovingly in a less preachy way than Western games usually manage. Beyond these, I can think of very few characters that didn't get on my nerves. Except for Jaochim. He looks cute in a tuque.

The core VC gameplay is improved, but there's some pretty glaring hardware limitations.

So yeah, it's immediately clear once you get into a battle exactly how much of a PSP game Valkyria Chronicles 2 really is.

Map sizes are dramatically scaled back from its predecessor, as is the amount of units you can field at once: A maximum of five in a single area, as opposed to, like, nine from what I remember of the first game. A dramatically reduced field of battle reduces how much thought can really go into the fight in the first place. The game attempts to compensate for the individually small map sizes by segmenting the battlefield into various separate areas that you can travel to through base-camps or other environmental means. This is far too little of a gesture, though, and is honestly more of a hassle than anything, because you now constantly have to keep an eye on every single camp of every single map, turning strategy to tedium. Some battles are little more than trying to juggle units back and forth between various areas because the PSP restricts you to a total of six units to choose from.

Valkyria Chronicles 2 also commits the sin of liberally recycling levels, changing very little except where you start, and what weather effects are present.

It's lucky, then, that the core gameplay of the series remains fully intact. It may lack the detail of the original game, and the PSP controls may make certain moves a bit wonky, but the "BLiTZ System" (don't you love whenever a developer will coin some silly name for their gameplay systems? I unironically do) remains as solid and novel as it ever was. Adding to that is that the game introduces a completely new class, and new class permutations on existing roles, that improve on one of the biggest flaws of the first Valkyria Chronicles: that the class balanced was completely fucked. In 2, Scouts are not nearly as overpowered, Engineers are made more useful and survivable, and the addition of a hulking melee unit encourage you to slowly advance the line as opposed to rushing around the map with buffed Scouts.

The drawback to this, beyond the addition of far too much grinding and farming which I'll touch on in a moment, is that the PSP has such limitations that the increased depth of the combat systems can't really be taken advantage of. Wanting the player to move more methodically through battles is a wise change, but the size of the maps are such that there's no reason not to grab a couple melee units and rampage through the tiny areas all on their own. Increasing the class diversity with more optional class upgrades is a wise thing, but with only 5 units available in a single area at once, and only six overall, you can't really take advantage of such diversity. One of the only nice changes over the first game that remains unimpeded by the PSP itself is that there is no longer perma-death; units are merely removed from a few battles if they're gravely injured. But battles are so fast in contrast to the first game, this is barely a hindrance.

Much like Persona 3 Portable, once again due to the hardware itself, the game is restricted to a more visual novel style of presentation when outside of battles, with only animated cut-scenes sprinkled throughout. Much of the charm of the character interaction is lost when it's just moving character portraits and static backgrounds. Perhaps with other games it would be unfair to hold this against the game, but when you've already see what the game can be like on a better platform, it's hard to not feel disappointed.

Valkyria Chronicles 2 is longer and grindier than the first game for no good reason.

I'll try to keep this short, but it nevertheless demands attention: Valkyria Chronicles 2 is far more grindy than the first game. After about 7 hours or so into the game you reach the point where you should begin to give more consideration to upgrading your units to their advanced forms. Each advanced form requires a certain number of materials and awards dropped from various missions you can access in the briefing room. This sounds fine, but in reality takes ages and will stress your patience immensely. The end result of trying to upgrade your units is repeatedly running missions you've already done farming for random drops, padding out the game's length by hours upon hours.

When I was doing this, I thought to myself "This can't possibly be the way you did this in the first game. This is incredibly fatiguing." It had been a few years since I played Valkyria Chronicles, so I hopped over GameFAQs to read some leveling guides, and as it turns out, this was in fact not how classes used to work. You would merely level up, and upon reaching level 11 each class would automatically transition to the elite version of said class. No farming of random items required. So I have to ask: Why would they do this? A greater diversity of classes and abilities is always welcome, but if this is how it's achieved, I will happily take the more simple leveling system of the first Valkyria Chronicles any day of the week.

Another thing I discovered with re-reading those guides is that the original game tapped out at Level 20 for all classes. Valkyria Chronicles 2 goes up to Level 50. I know there's multiplayer, and perhaps that's why all of this factors in, but couldn't the multiplayer and single player character stats just be separated, instead?

In the end, this game is not substantially longer in terms of hour count than the first game of the series, but it sure as hell feels that way due to how much of the content is superfluous busywork that was never required before now. The first game progressed in a linear story, where things were constantly happening in that narrative, and repeating any of it was very rarely needed. You never got bogged down in menus and level management. In 2, this is largely how you spend your time. Doing filler missions to progress the month to the next story mission, only to be saddled with yet more filler missions and overly-complex class advancement. Greater character development for the backup cast doesn't make up for the sheer amount of tedium the game presents you with in-between the good parts.

The gameplay remains the shining jewel in an otherwise very disappointing package.

It is something of a lucky break for Valkyria Chronicles 2 that the core gameplay of the series remains so enjoyable, and so rarely done, because without the battle system that I absolutely adore, the game would simply be forgettable, perhaps only memorable for how tiresome and cliche it was. I find myself bewildered by the changes from the first game that do nothing but exhaust the player in a way the previous game was actually rather respectful toward the player's time; something I care a lot about.

It's a classic example of a game almost categorically inferior to its predecessor, in large part due to the platform, but I shouldn't give the devs a free pass. Boneheaded decisions regarding class advancement hold back the game just as well, and the story veers wildly back and forth between being one-part a story of school rivalries, one-part the tale of a lost family member, one part civil war epic. None of these mix in a way that makes sense. Any individual one of these things can be done well, but you have to pick one and stick with it, and this game doesn't do that. Where Valkyria Chronicles was a pleasant surprise, something new and legitimately innovative in a way that excited me, Valkyria Chronicles 2 is an unexpectedly huge disappointment for me.

When asked about bringing over Valkyria Chronicles 3, Sega cited "poor sales of the prior game in the series" as why they had no interest in doing so. Perhaps not being on the PSP would've improved its chances.

Gallery

For as much as I will gleefully mock the first game's tonal whiplash between the Anime funtime antics and the part where it's ostensibly about war, the second game is much, much, much, much, much worse in that regard. Throw in a story and characters that seem to be drawn from "anime cliches 101" and after a while I started to skip past most of the dialogue because of how bad it was, and not in an ironically enjoyable way.

I actually played this one before the first game, so the repetitiveness and grindiness didn't bother me as much as it did you (and given how broken Scouts are in the first game, it was nice to deploy a variety of units), but I'll agree with your ultimate assessment that it's categorically inferior in almost every aspect of its execution and part of that has to do with the limitations of the hardware. I hear the third one is pretty good! Maybe I'll play it one of these days.

I haven't played either VC game but Japan has this obsession with making everything set in a school or academy of some sort (*cough* Final Fantasy 8) and everything you do is either an exam or a tournament. It could have something to do with the fact that Japanese games (and anime) (and pretty much everything from Japan that we like) are marketed toward... oh I dunno.. Japanese school students. Depressing, isn't it.

That said, you are perhaps cheating by using guides to determine which game is better of the two. It's one thing if you simply refer to a guide to remember what you had forgotten since playing the game, but it's another to continue probing just to get more dirt on VC2.

Nothing if what I say is meaningful though until I've played vc2 for myself. If I had played it, I'd probably have a lot to say.

Just putting this out there; In Valkyria Chronicles 1 you have a tank that has to survive every mission. It's a giant bulls-eye for the enemy team and they zero in on it and one shot it despite any amount of armor / health upgrades you slap on it. This makes me hate that game far more than any number of Anime tropes Valkyria Chronicles 2 uses for it's large array of characters and setting. Image trying to do escort missions where the escort character is your highest damage dealer, bloody huge, and is basically required to do all the main objectives in every room/level and dies instantly if someone with a rocket launcher so much as glances at it. Totally unrelated. Just putting it out there. Not going to read the entire first post, because I haven't finished Valkyria Chronicles 2 just yet and I don't want to spoil any plot points. I'm enjoying it far more than the first game.

Never going to find another place to post this thought, ever, so ignore it's irrelevance.

I like Valkyria Chronicles 2!

@therealmoot: that's not true at all, I believe it takes at the very least 2 lance shots on the weak spot (a small square behind the tank) and far more elsewhere to kill it, and lances are wildly inaccurate, all I did was be careful on where and how I moved the tank and also always had 1 shocktrooper and 1 engineer nearby for defense and repairs when needed, don't think I ever lost a mission because the tank was blown.

If you just waltzed in right at the middle of the enemies all the time without being careful about it that's your own damn fault heh.

As for VC2 never played it since I never owned a PSP, for a long time I entertained the idea of getting a vita at some point and playing it since i loved VC1 so much, but now after reading this I'm sure it's not worth it ... too bad we may never see a VC game ever again...

Did anyone here aver played VC3? I understand that at some point there was a fan translation going around.

It's interesting that you described the game as a novel/game because for me the story, which I thought was quite dull took away from the good gameplay for me. I wonder how I would have felt if the game was pitched the same way that you put it when it came out.

Oh by the way I noticed your comment about the "dumb gear thing" on the gun and thought you might like to know that they are totally a thing. Or were in WW2, particularly on Lewis Guns and Degtyaryovs

Yeah, I'm not sure if I even had the AI take a shot at the weak spot let alone hit it.

Without that weak spot you could basically just God Mode your way through every mission with that tank. The game is mostly easy enough as it is.

God, it's like Balamb Garden all over again... Does the game at least go Time Compression crazy at the end so my FFVIII comparison can be complete? Human experiments sound promising but I need to know.

@egg: I'd never just blindly take a guide's word for it without having played the game, it's just that it's been a few years since I played the first Valkyria Chronicles and needed a refresher on how the class system worked. When dealing with the random drops for unlocking advanced classes I was incredibly frustrated by how much the whole thing was just a crapshoot, and was convinced the previous system couldn't possibly have been that grindy since I remembered loving the simplicity of the first game's classes.

@onarum: Yeah, I don't recall having any major problems in the first game with losing the tank, either. Perhaps if it was a new mission and I blindly moved my tank forward and several lancers came out of nowhere, but once you know where that sort of thing happens, it's not difficult to avoid at all. I'd never really thought of the first game as a constant escort mission, because really, with perma-death on everyone, you don't really want to be losing anyone at all in the first place.

A friend of mine played VC3 and considers it to be the best of the three, apparently the story is a lot darker, the class system is more like the FF job system in a weird way where class is determined by gear you equip to individuals, and I don't believe the maps work the same way as they do here, either. Supposedly you can patch the "Extra Edition" of VC3, which is on the Japanese PSN, if you were creative enough to get a Japanese PSN account, download it, rip it, then patch it on an emulator. Perhaps someday I'll feel adventurous enough to do so.

@hayt: I was hoping someone more knowledgeable on the history of firearms would tell me that was totally a thing. I'm so happy they exist.

@encephalon: Sadly no. The game actually spends very little time on that, which is a bummer. It's mostly just about the headmaster abducting the best students at the academy to be augmented into artifical Valkyria/weirdly brainless super soldiers. This plot thread is barely expanded upon after the reveal of its existence.

After loving VC 1 when it came out on steam, I of course explore the options of playing the sequels and then backing down when learning the sequels are not nearly as good. Also I don't really feel the need to play more VC, the gameplay was not the reason i love VC1. This blog gives still does not sway me on playing it or not.

Maybe some day.

Probably not.

OH MY GOD I am playing through this right now and I LOVE how dumb the story is. I hate it, but I love it too. I mean, it's an insult to VC1, but it's just so horrendously stupid, I just want to see more.

And yeah, there are limitations, but I like the new melee unit.

@twolines: IMO the melee class, and its various branches, is probably the best thing about the game. Even if it is a bit overpowered for the size of the maps that the PSP can handle.

@marokai: I might disagree with you on that. Some branches make their counterparts redundant. Do you want a sniper that kills most enemies in 1 shot and does nothing against Tanks, or do you want one that kills enemies in 1 or 2 shots and does that same thing to Tanks?

Otherwise, yeah, they do a good job balancing and making the classes unique in VC2. But that damn grind for materials...

This is a fantastic write-up. Valkyria Chronicles is one of those games that hits the mark for me on pretty much every front. It's my favorite game of all time (depending on the day of the week), so I was more than thrilled when they announced it was getting a sequel. Then it was announced for the PSP and I just knew, even then, that it was going to be something of a shit show.

You pretty comprehensively covered all of the reasons for that, but it just cannot be stated enough how absurd the grinding is in that game, especially if you decide to go for a more complete playthrough. Managing class disciplines through random drops is wrong-headed, but then going on to make some of the drops super rare is even more baffling and dumb. They even messed up the weapon development progression. Didn't get that one enemy ace back in May? Well then your rifles will be inferior of the rest of the game. That'll learn ya.

And don't get me started on the giant trope-y blobs that VC2 calls "characters." I don't think there has ever been a series that has gone faster down the road of anime tropedom from one game to the next. Every single character storyline is entirely predictable. The bookworm? I wonder if she'll learn a lesson about experiencing life outside of reading. The super popular way-too-good-to-be-true class president? Probably too good to be true, definitely has a dark side. None of the characters are dynamic at all outside of their particular story twist, even including the main cast.

In the end, I think a lot of the problems VC2 has can be chalked up to the game designers conflating complexity and depth. You can see this in the way they treat character interactions, the class system, the R&D of weapons and equipment, and even the multi-map gameplay.

You forgot to mention the most egregious issue of all...

But yeah, the game play was the main reason I scraped through all of VC2. It's a shame really, as you said it does a couple of things right; scouts aren't silly overpowered and while some of the classes make others obsolete, I really appreciated having way more customization options for my squad/tank.

The main reason I bought it was to try and convince Sega to give us VC3... But with all the love VC1 is getting on Steam I'm starting to feel slightly more optimistic we might see something else soon. Or maybe I'm just delusional, as VC1 was probably my favorite game of last gen...

Still a little annoyed I can't play VC2 on the PlayStation TV too.

@mwng: You could make an ISO file from the UMD and play it using an emulator, or use the PSP video streaming thing (via Custom firmware plugins) and stream to PC using a USB cable. The latter streams with PSP's resolution though, so it looks funky (but it's 100% accurate since it's still running on the PSP hardware).

All of that is overly complicated though, and not nearly as easy to get going as PS TV is, so I feel your pain.

I've probably said this before, but yeah, I do hate how VC2 is essentially "Anime High School The Game (oh yeah there's a civil war too)." I played a little of VC3's translation and the story is handled much better as you juggle a suicide squad of convicts. However, if you played through 2 like I did before jumping to 3, you'll notice how several maps are literally the same.

Also, SEGA made the "fourth" game into a Japan-only mobile card game, so I'm a bit annoyed at that.

Bang-up job on this article; I had heard it was much worse overall than the predecessor, and here I've had laid out how the complete dissolution between plot, themes, and characterization that began in Ch. 15 of the initial entry had accelerated.

Also, that art style. It's shocking how such a gorgeous (and immenently scalable) graphics x art direction package could get just thrown out both in later games and in anime tie-ins. It's a damn shame.

Balamb Garden (thuout the game as a whole) was cool and the level of tonality and quality these should aspire to.

@therealmoot:

Pfft most times I found you could leave the tank at the start of the map and progress through the map without troops ever looking at it.

Plus I think you get an expendable tank later on.

This was a good read, I got VC1 on Steam for christmas and I've yet to dive into it. Sad to see this game not living up to it's potential.

I am having a similar problem with Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. The concessions they had to make when they decided to put the game on the PSP is just too jarring to keep me interested more than a few hours. The design choices about building your own private army and sending them on missions also feel like an waste of time, but all together necessary to advance the plot and the development of weapons and equipment.

I might take some inspiration from this blog to write about my woes regarding Peace Walker

Oh, boohooo, an anime game is too anime. A JRPG is too grindy. PSP has worse performance than a full blown console.

What the hell is this review?! If we wouldn't like anime tropes, we wouldn't play anime. That is like walking into a heavy metal concert and complain about themes being too dark and people wearing too much black.

JRPGs are SUPPOSED to be grindy, that is the whole point of them - you EARN your victory and don't just get everything served to you on a silver platter.

And bad performance? Yeah, well, big surprise, it's a handheld console.

It's not a dumb gear-thing on top of the gun.

It's a magazine.

That's where the bullets live.

@kasseopea: Valkyria 2 gets panned because of the expectations set from the first game. Which was less anime, less grindy and ran well. 2 shitfting into a way more generic and standard anime design compared to other anime games is a huge bummer if you wanted more of the first game.

The metal concert comparison isn't all there, it's more like going to a launch concert for a new album from a band you like, and realise they've changed their sound to something you like less.

Really liked it. Probably put in 80 hours. Would have played more and looked at NG+, but I got to a mission where the boss could destroy every one of my guys and I couldn't even scratch him. I guessed that I was looking at ~20 hours of grinding for random loot/rewards to level up my guys to the classes I'd need to beat him, so I quit. I really wish it were better so that I could play it more. I probably caused it myself by trying to keep everyone upgraded and optimize classes/perks, but the randomness of rewards just killed any interest in grinding.