Valkyria Revolution

Valkryia Revolution is the successor game to SEGA’s Valkyria Chronicles. Much like Chronicles, Revolution is a combination of turn-based tactics and real-time action. Chronicles was able to find a weird middle-ground between these types of games, and built a trilogy of cult hit RPGs. Valkryia Revolution takes its own spin on the genre its predecessor built by focusing more on the action side of things. Revolution does retain a lot of tropes and themes established in previous Valkryria games though, if only to remind you where it comes from.

Valkyria Revolution takes place in Europa, an alternate WW2-era Europe, where the magical properties of Ragnite have fueled a technological revolution in all scientific fields. Countries all across Europa have begun to flourish thanks to the quality of life changes Ragnite provides, but it has also spurned plenty of military conquests. One such campaign was that of the Ruzhien Empire, which led to its rise as a super power.

These events all set up the main plot for Revolution, which is about 5 individuals with personal vendettas against the Ruzhien Empire and its military leaders. In order to reach their goals, the secretive group manipulate the Kingdom of Jutland to fight back, and instigate a war of Liberation against the Ruzi super power. The main protagonist is Amleth, the leader of these five and an accomplished military captain. By using his Anti-Valkyrian Squad, Amleth forcefully makes sure that the plans of the five conspirators do not go awry, and also uses it as an opportunity to take out the lead generals of the Empire.

Turning heroes into villains has become the trend with JRPGs, but I’ll be damned if Revolution didn’t find a way to make feel interesting and stick out. The five conspirators are all very interesting characters with their own ways to push their personal war. For example, one of the five is a weapons manufacturer who keeps Amleth’s troops well stocked. Another is a tactical espionage expert, who digs deep into the Ruzhien Empire to figure out where they will be the weakest. Many of these characters have moralistic clashes with other individuals. One of them is a politician, and has to constantly find ways to push for the war to keep going when the rest of parliament wants to quit for the good of the people. It’s an interesting plot, but it’s not without its hang ups.

For starters, a lot of other characters feel exceptionally flat. You spend way more time with Amleth’s troops than you do the conspirators, but they receive nowhere near as interesting a story. It would be one thing if the characterswere only flat, but they often detract from the plot. It’s hard to go from a dramatic scene of Amleth brutally interrogating a Ruzhien general to a scantly-clad party member happily and bubbly talking about anything else. It’s tonal whiplash, and happens way more often than it should. The villains also feel very plain and boring. The Ruzhien Grand Generals all feel evil for the sake of being evil. It’s odd that the game paints the conspirators in a negative light, but doesn’t make anyone on the opposing side sympathetic. It’s hard to see the wrong-doing in the groups’s choice actions when what they’re trying to destroy lacks any redeeming factors. Revolution’s story is a great example of having an interesting idea, but having poor execution.

The gameplay is just as much of a mixed bag as the story. As mentioned before, Combat mixes elements of turn-based strategy and action, but focuses heavily on the action side. Each mission has you taking 4 squad members to capture a base or take down an enemy commander. In reality, you’re just clearing swarms of grunt units until some big bad shows up, and then you take them down too. Missions are very boring, but it’s more about how they’re designed rather than the lack of unique objectives. The battlefields you’re on feel very homogenized, and despite maps looking different, they don’t feel different. There’s no real vantage points or strategic areas to capture since you have to always advance towards your target.

Revolution plays at a much faster pace than any of the Chronicles games. You move all four units together, rather than 1 at a time. Past games used a resource bar to dictate how much one unit could do in a turn, but now you have a stamina meter that restricts when you get to do an attack or move. A lot of mechanics were brought over from Chronicles, such as guns and using cover, but these often feel like pointless inclusions. The game is so gung-ho that cover doesn’t matter. You lose more by not actively running into full enemy squads and mashing whatever skill or attack you have that will clear the most of them out. You end up taking more damage trying to play it safe from a distance. But, not all of the tactical elements feel bad.

Ragnite is the game’s core mechanic. In Valkyria games past it was a fuel resource, but in Revolution its kind of like a do-all magical McGuffin. For your squad, Ragnite is how you cast elemental spells, and is the option you will go to the most when trying to eliminate enemies. Ragnite comes in various forms and elements, and can be used to heal and buff your squad as well do damage to an enemy. Some ragnite is class specific, and learning how to properly balance your team can sometimes come down to what Ragnite you have rather than simply throwing in one character of each class. Building squads is interesting and fun, because you can find so many different ways to work different strategies. I like the variety that Ragnite adds to combat, but I do hate the grindy mechanics behind it.

Every Ragnite piece has a level, and your squad mates can’t equip Ragnite higher than their proficiency. How do you increase proficiency? You destroy Ragnite pieces over a skill grid and gain experience until you reach a grid piece that ups your level. How do you get Ragnite? You have to go play free missions, which are just repurposed story maps you’ve already cleared. The objectives on free maps are almost always the same, will almost always have the same level and enemy layouts, and there’s such a small amount of maps that it gets boring very quickly. I don’t recommend skipping free missions though, as the enemy army will quickly outpace in you in damage output if you’re not constantly upgrading your team. Grind elements really aren’t my thing, and in this game they detracted way more from the story than they should have. Of the 50 or so hours I clocked in the game, I would say a good 25 of those were just the free missions, and another 5 was spent grinding all the various forms of equipment you need, Ragnite or otherwise, to try and stay even with the game.

This isn’t even going into the frustrations that are the boss battles in the game. Ragnite drains from its own resource outside your stamina called RP, and you will need all of your RP to fight bosses. Bigger enemies are bloated with HP and exceptionally high amounts of damage. Bosses can also rarely be put into hit stun off of something, so it feels like you’re swinging at a wall with no feedback. The game tries to push a system of hitting weaknesses to cause bosses to drop moves, but I rarely ever saw it happen even when I was using the highest level Ragnite I could. It also doesn’t help that you have very limited amounts of recovery items. Often times I’d find myself 2/3rds of a way into a boss fight and see that I have no more RP items. The only other way to get RP back is to use basic attacks, but that puts you in danger of dying. It doesn’t help that the ally AI will gladly waste their resources away. Amleth’s squad mates are so incredibly stupid that I think I would rather have fought bosses alone if they didn’t actually add to damage output. I’ve had all my computer controlled squad mates killed in a single blow when they wouldn’t back away from a boss that telegraphs a very slow but strong attack. Overall, combat is fun to set up but frustrating to play. The grind elements that the game heavily leans on also make everything feel like a chore rather than like a meaningful gain.

I’ll give SEGA some credit though, when I first saw advertisements for Revolution popping up they always focused on pushing the art and music. The Valkyria games have really good soundtracks, and Revolution is no exception. The music is bombastic, and it feels fitting for the regal and royal looking characters that permeate the story. There’s lots of brass and percussion in combat, and things are a little more hushed when you’re walking around town or planning missions out. Some tracks get a little repetitive, but that comes from a lack of variety in free missions.

Character designs are really hit or miss. I love the military-style outfits a lot of the Ruzhien officers wear, as well as some of the combat gear on Amleth and his squad, but there’s a handful of characters who just do not fit in with everything. The titular Valkyria character this time around has to have one of the worst designs in the series history. I can admit to having a higher tolerance for awkward anime-inspired character designs, some of the things in this game really got me. Animations are also stiff and lazy. There’s very little movement in cutscenes, and often time Amleth and his squad will be talking in their idle poses when they could be doing anything else. The game lacks the dynamism needed for the cinematic shots tries to pull off at times, but at least the visual style looks somewhat nice.

Overall, I find it really hard to recommend Valkryia Revolution to anyone for its full price. This game just isn’t polished, and you can tell. The characters don’t mesh well with the story, the pacing is horrible, and the game drags even more thanks to hard grind elements. Boss battles are slogs that can last anywhere from 15-30 minutes. I can appreciate SEGA trying something new in a franchise, but there’s so much going in here that nothing feels well planned. Instead of an interesting action RPG you’re left with a painfully slow tactics title.