Valkyria Chronicles Impressions
I’ve been playing Valkyria Chronicles on PS3 for the past couple weeks and I have to say at this point I’m deeply engaged. I’m even following along with the anime.
As far as the story goes I won’t say it is epic in any way. However, it is interesting how the game tries to recreate WWII in many ways. The only difference being an ancient race of Valkyria with divine powers. Let’s just say the story won’t appeal to everyone. This is a real weakness considering JRPGs should have captivating story lines that anyone can enjoy as it’s backbone. Even though the global story is a little weak the character development is decent. It’s a JRPG so expect some obvious charaters.
The gameplay of Valkyria Chronicles is simply a Tactical Role-Playing Game. However, from the battle-map you’ll choose a unit and be able to take control of your unit in third person. While it’s your turn enemy units can still defend themselves to some extent so you can’t just run up to them for an open shot. You’ll have to keep your distance and use cover to win the battle. My only complaint is that you can’t hide behind every object on the battlefield. For some reason you can only take cover behind certain objects like sandbags but not wooden crates.
The AI diffuculty combined with the overwhelming number of enemy units increases as you go along but your units will also level up along way. After each mission you can go to your headquarters and train different unit classes and purchase new weapons. Since training happens on a class basis swapping out characters from your squad is easy.
Lastly, the graphics. I can’t begin to explain how artistically beautiful the graphics look. The game’s stylized graphics are a mix of a sketch book and water colors. To bring it all together the game is told through a story book of chapters. I only wish some of this could have translated to the anime.
Overall Valkyria Chronicles is probably one of the few must play RPGs on PS3 at the moment and I recommend it for any RPG fanatic.
Check out the anime at http://watchanimenow.com
Great write up man, I think I’ll check this game out soon. The videos I’ve seen of the gameplay look awesome. I’m trying to play through Final Fantasy 7 again… we’ll see how that goes, hahah.
I gotta hurry up and get this game. I’d been eye-ing this for the past year or so.