Valkyria Chronicles - DLC on 4/16

Merged with existing valkyria thread, hope you dont mind, trusonic.

Picked up the game, kiddo went to bed early last night.

Wife: "so I assume youre gonna play your game?"
Me: "Maybe I'll play just the first two missions"

Wife: (from other side of the house) "That's her, isn't it?"
Me: "Who?"
Wife: "I can't see the screen, but if I didn't know better I'd assume you were watching ghost in the shell"

Yep, major kusanagi's voice actress plays your commanding officer in valkyria. Props to sega for dual voice tracks ( the english dub's also not bad from what I heard ).

Of course, "first two missions" quickly turned into "5 hours later and the only reason I stopped playing is cause the kiddo woke up"

The game is WAY beyond any other jp strategy rpg i've ever played in terms of innovation & flexibility. Free movement, turn-based attack system that gives you as much time as you need to e.g. decide on a headshot, real-time covering fire, actual line-of-sight as opposed to "fog of war", destructible environments, terrain that's actually strategically complex rather than adding some abstract stat increase . . .

For example, one of the earlier missions splits my units into two groups, one to attack an enemy base, the other to defend my base from incoming tanks. There's a couple of buildings in between my base and the first tank, so I send a lancer (anti-tank unit) down the alleyway between the buildings, and end his turn before he's out in the open & visible to enemies. The enemy tank drives THROUGH one of the buildings towards my base and starts attacking it, but my troops survive due to being crouched behind sandbags. At this point, my lancer is on the other side of the building, so I just run him around the corner, through the hole left by the tank, run up behind the tank and put a rocket in its radiator for a 1-shot kill.

Because of this flexibility, there's definitely more than one way to beat missions. After beating that particular mission, I realized a faster way to win probably have been to put a sniper in the offensive team, get him down an alleyway and up onto one of the rooftops, then safely take out the 2 guards for the enemy base without even fighting tanks.

Mission ranking is based on how quickly you complete objectives. Higher ranking translates into more experience to build up units and more money to research tank improvements etc, so there's a nice feedback loop. I can see this having lots of replay value; I've finished missions with everything from A to D rankings, and I'd really like to re-try the D missions in order to figure them out.

Graphics are just oozing style, soundtrack is great, characters are very likeable and amusing . . . Obviously time will tell, but right now this seems like hands-down the best single-player game of this console generation.

 

Haha, KoD. I end up doing that to the woman all the time... "one more mission and i'll come off i swear" /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

Is this game out in europe yet? Been interested in getting this for a while & this month's Games TM gave it a really good review, I gotta buy it.

Edit: Damn come out last friday /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif

 

Any chance this game will ever get a 360 release?

 

^ This one was actually said to be exclusive, surprisingly.

Yeah, too much on my plate for this but was looking forward to it from the day1 concept reveal lol. Gona make this my winter break RPG.

Glad you're enjoying it KoD, I know you were super hyped for it.

 

Great to here your liking it KOD. This game has received generally high reviews from the "pro reviewers" scoring nothing lower than a 80% ya know? If I had to get a PS3 for a game this would be the one.

 

So far, I've gotta say I'm extremely impressed. The only other thing that I would add to KoD's breakdown is the story presentation through book format. All major events are laid out in chapter format, with different cutscenes and battles embedded in the fictious book "On the Gallian Front." It was something that was left out of the PSN demo, but brings its own charm to the game. Fantastic stuff.

Right now Circuit City has it for $44.99. Most stores probably won't have stock until later in the week, but a price match at Best Buy worked for me.

 

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-11-12/valkyria-chronicles-game-to-get-tv-anime-next-spring

Hopefully this won't suck.

Also, sega announced a while back that the JP DLC missions are getting a western release.

 

Played the demo and liked it very much. Bought the game yesterday but don't know when I'll get to sit down with it.

 

Just got the game. Enjoying it right now...i took a sick day /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

 

If you're on the fence about getting this, or were planning on waiting until prices drop, better go get it now. Looks like a small print run, and people are already having trouble finding a copy. This generation's panzer dragoon saga?

 

Don't say such things man, I supposed to get the game for X-Mas.

 

lulz KoD, Panzer Dragoon Saga was only on the shelfs for a week here and then it was impossible to find. Same with quite a few Saturn games at the time, you'd see them the day they got released and you'd never see them again /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif

Valkyria Chronicles does seem like it had a limited print though, I know they still have copies in stock at my local stores but I never see it on the shelfs anywhere.

 

PDS sold about 30k copies in the US afaik. Valkyria has only sold 33k or so . . . most games do most of their sales up front, and it doesn't look like sega is in a hurry to provide more supply. Which is not surprising, when they can just push more licensed crap like iron man / sonic olympics and sell literally hundreds of times more copies.

 

I had to wait to get funds proper before getting the game. I picked it up on Sunday, and man, I'm loving it. Has a lot of the charm that was in Skies of Arcadia, and its own charm. Just when I think the strategy is pretty shallow, the game keeps throwing new stuff at me to implement.

 

^Travesty.

 

I don't think anybody would think it was going to sell big numbers. Strat RPG on the PS3. You only need to look at the sales charts to see what sells these days..

If you haven't picked it up and are thinking about it you should. I've seen it in some places already going out of stock. Probably won't see it get restocked...

 

Finished my first playthrough before the holidays, and I have to say, this is the best RPG since Phantasy Star II. Valkyria is to Shining Force what VF4 was to VF2. If there's a shred of Sega fan left in you, and you don't own this game (borrow a ps3 if necessary) . . . not sure there's anything else that can be said.

If you got the impression from the demo or online chatter that the strategy is all about "get a scout and run to capture the enemy camp", prepare to be pleasantly (or rudely, depending on how well you planned) surprised. There's plenty of mission variety and events that keep you on your toes. The level designs are excellent, and keep getting better throughout the game.

The relatively limited weapon options and unit classes lead to a "less is more" kind of deceptively simply but tactically deep gameplay; there aren't too many choices, and all of the choices have a dramatic difference in how they affect play. Difficulty for the main storyline isn't too bad, but the hard mode skirmishes that are unlocked once you have a game clear save are definitely challenging, and the hard EX mode that's coming as DLC should extend the replayability even more.

Beyond the visuals, it's got a lot in common with Nausicaa thematically as well. The story is good anime movie quality (simple but heartfelt), which puts it above most games.

I was sick as a dog over the break, so I used all that time lying in bed to start up a strategy wiki for the game, at http://www.ValkyriaChronicles.org Still some server issues being worked out (if you see a compression error, reload the page) but feel free to take a look or contribute.

 

So true.

Just after I picked up the game I was amazed at how demanding the missions really were. I went to a site to read some info on the game and some posters were like, 'all you need for good ranks is to run a scout to the end.' I got all bummed thinking strategy and teamwork was gona go out the window. Which it really hasn't.

There ARE a handful of missions/maps where running a scout to the end is a good idea, but I've noticed that only really worked after I leveled up and went back to replay a skirmish. As far as the story related missions, it's even more rare that running one character alone is a good idea.

The character and feel of this game totally reminds me of Skies of Arcadia (Which is great imo), and it's not just because of the guest characters haha.

I also agree with your less is more when it comes to the unit class level up system and weapon upgrades. I'm totally a stat whore and item junky in RPGs, but this hasn't bothered me at all in VC. I think part of it is realizing how well the leveling system works since your team can always been changing.

Anyway, I've yet to beat it. I took a break recently to catch up on other stuff but plan to pick it back up this weekend and hopefully finish my first playthrough soon.

Personally, I think the only risk in recommending this to people who enjoy srpgs, is that this game does require a lot of patience for missions. And that's it, haha.

 

I'm afraid I have to confirm the post at the top of the page. I got this game at EU launch (week before the US one, fancy that), told an rpg crazed friend of mine about it and he can't find it in the local stores anymore. According to the employees every copy that comes in goes straight out the door.


An anime based off this? Bad idea, really bad idea, if you ask me Japanese animation has been in a serious decline in quality since the turn of the century (constantly less and less quirky and edgy, with nary an original idea to be found). Well, I liked Devil May Cry's anime quite a bit, so there's hope I guess.