An excellent niche.
I am not a big fan of strategy RPGs, mostly because I am not very good at them. There is an element of patience and willingness to grind for levels that I simply do not have. As soon as the story stops advancing, I get bored. This is true for almost any game, but doubly so for genres that aren’t all that exciting to begin with. Valkryia Chronicles, in spite of its gorgeous storybook style, falls into the same traps, though traps really isn’t the right term. It is not appreciably different from most any other strategy RPG, which could be either good or bad, depending on how much you like playing the equivalent of video game chess with ladies wielding big guns and water-tight blue tanks for pieces, whose rules and winning conditions change often and without warning.
What initially drew me into Valkyria Chronicles, and what kept me playing for as long as I did, was simply how the game looked. Seeing the storybook scenes in motion is a must, as still pictures do them no justice. I would love to watch someone with more ability than myself play through the game just to see what is next. Characters are expressive in spite of not being overly detailed; equipped weapons actually change when swapped out. The protagonist’s tank, featured prominently in every mission I got to, changes with new equipment as well, becoming just as important and likeable as any other character. Everything is polished and consistent, from the layout of the menus to the literal book that the story unfolds in. Valkyria Chronicles looked more than good enough to distract me from how frustrated I was getting from the repeated ass kickings I was getting - at least for a while.
Combat in Valkyria Chronicles is something of a real time-turn based hybrid. The action stops while the player chooses which character to move, then swoops down to a third person shooter perspective. From there the player takes position and shoots in pseudo real time, the action only stopping when it comes time to take aim and hope in vain that the bullets go where the gun is pointed. Here is where things began to fall apart for me; as soon as the ‘action’ dropped into third person I assumed that my crosshairs meant something. They are more of an approximation of where the shot might go than anything else. Nothing for me is more frustrating than taking the time to line up a sniper shot after boosting his accuracy, only to have him miss the same shot he made seconds before. This randomness felt oddly out of place and is really what turned me off of the game in the end. I don’t think it is any more difficult than other games of its kind, but I do think that straying further from its progeny would have been a change for the better.
It really is a shame; I want to see more of the game, but after missing several shots with my tank only to have three Empire tanks make the same shot all in a row, the final one being a critical hit that blew the top clean off my vehicle (with no warning) an hour into a mission, I just don’t want to go back. The real time part of the combat feels like a tease; in the end it is no different than Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics or anything else in the genre. If you happened to like those and don’t mind that a significant part of winning relies on virtual dice rolls, you can do worse than Valkyria Chronicles. It is the most visually striking game that I have played in a long time. While it may not have converted me, if Sega ever releases a game that looks like this but allows me to control what is going on, instead of pushing pieces around, I’ll be the first in line. As it stands, it is an excellent addition to a relatively niche area; it’s just not for me.
