@pyromagnestir: When the reporter says something about interviewing the up and coming star of Squad 7 that's when the personel tab will update. The last bit of info for each personel page (and last potential) unlocks if you use them enough and finish the game with them alive then talk to the reporter in NG+. That bit me in the ass when the last guy I needed to learn about to get the medal died on a difficult mission that I A ranked. I had to play the entire game again just to get his info.

The Expert mission DLC is pretty good but Chalenge of the Edy Detachement is excellent because the missions are so well designed for each class. The Engineer mission is in the warehouse map at night. The tank needs to reach a location but the treads are broken at the start and the roads are covered in mines. The ground troops and the tank start at opposite ends so the rest of the squad need to work together to make safe passage for the fragile engineers so that they can get the tank mobile. The Lancer mission required both Mortarers and Lancers if I remember correctly. The Sniper mission put you in an isolated area of the map and tasked you with preventing the enemy from reaching a certain location, and so on. They were all really good. The Selvaria DLC was ok but since you get her machine gun for use in the main game it's worth it. All the aces from the main game are the members of your squad. The Enter The Edy Detachment DLC isn't any good at all. It's one mission with lots of fail/restart gameplay with no rewards. It's the only one not worth getting.

I would hold Valkira Chronicles in higher regard if I could pry out the story and aesthetics surrounding the game. It's hard for me to take a story that tries to relay the horrors of war seriously when every time I gun down some faceless mother's son a teenage girl with pigtails give them a server-you-right "humph!"

Hope they give it for free on PS+. It's one of those games for me that I want to play but don't really care enough to buy.

I bought VC recently at Wal-Mart for $20. Still haven't given it a try, but I will once I clear out a few more games. Probably will be close to next year before I start it.

Everybody should play Valkyria Chronicles. It's that good !

@twigger89 said:

@JZ said:

I've been thinking lately and valkyria chronicles might be my favorite game of all time. Playing Enemy Unknown this year only reinforced my fanatical love for valkyria chronicles. X-com is a fantastic game I loved it, but it was missing the story and characters of a VC game. If you like x-com you really should play this. it's got all the same stuff, R&D;, unit types, leveling up your soldiers, pera-death which is insane because these guys aren't expendable and have full on social links. Also in VC you get two tanks and you go into overwatch automatically every turn. VC2 on the psp is also fantastic but on the psp, so pfffhh. I'd play 100 dollars for a vita port of VC3, but that's never going to happen.

Does it have the stereotypical Jrpg art style, characters, and/or story?

Actually, the surprising thing about Valkyria Chronicles is how it is different than other Japanese stories in general. This game outright deals with racism where they don't call it something else or hide it. It also deals with death and war a bit more maturely than most games east or west: For instance, someone dies after hours after getting a stomach wound without spouting revenge or bravado. And when "the turn" happens in the story where one character is basically shown to have walked out of a legend, they show how it effects her and others. Instead of basking in the spotlight or revelry, she feels isolated and even more out of control while others treat her like a god which freaks her out further.

The "core cast" centers around the usual set of characters although I feel the Welkin is a bit too naive and too effective a commander to be believable. Otherwise the other characters are fairly interesting in their setting (officers and nc officers of the squad). An interesting thing they did with the secondary/squad characters is that they are "randomly" assigned to you and as you develop them you get their individual story which gives a nice "Band of Brothers" feel. They even include a fun little nugget if you take Vyse and Aika that includes Fina (yes, those guys from Skies of Arcadia) which made me wish you could use Fina as a support/non-combat role of some sort.

Of course they threw all of that away on Valkyria Chronicles 2 and the Anime. And it isn't to say there isn't some Japanese memes in it either. One bad guy basically says "You've defeated me" and walks off the battlefield. And one of the big reveals about the truth of their history is one of those "I have seen stuff like this so I could see her secret from a kilometer away" literally and figuratively.

As for the game mechanics themselves there is a compelling strategy from the combination of foot soldiers and the armor is interesting but it needs refinement where everyone expected VC2 to build on it but that didn't happen. And I didn't like the way it grades performance by turns. In the end I consider Valkyria Chronicles an example of the woes of modern Sega where they couldn't quite handle a game like this twice.

It's a good game and all but I wish the gameplay was seperate from the dumb anime story and characters. I'd love a VC game like that.

A game not a VC game. Dumb mobile site.

Oh crap I still need to finish this.

But yeah, it's totally awesome and I feel like everyone should play Valkyria Chronicles regardless of whether or not they've played X-COM. Playing and liking X-COM is especially motivates playing Valkyria Chronicles, though, so those people should definitely play it.

If anyone does play it, you should ignore the mission ranks. The way they are scored is kind of stupid, and you can replay stuff for higher scores later.

I came into VC with this mindset after playing XCOM and I have to say i'm a little disappointed. Not to say I think the game is bad, but after all this hype it really just feels sort of clunkily designed, with a pretty boring story so far. I'm up to just after the part in the desert and i'm just kind of getting frustrated. Not in an XCOM "Oh god i'm so unlucky" way, more in a "well I guess my Tank is just stuck in the geometry now" "oh so even though i'm a Sniper aiming for the back of that guy's head when his cover is in front of him, it's impossible for me to headshot him" "Oh so this doesn't count as cover even though it's the exact same size and shape as cover" way.

Maybe if the story really felt as exceptional as i'm hearing, but so far the beats just seem so chereographed (Gee, I wonder if Alicia and Welkin will end up together, after it being alluded to in about every single scene they're in. Gee, I wonder if something bad is going to happen to Welkin's innocent, optimistic sister, after she has done nothing but spout dialogue about how "we can all come together and live in a better world".) It certainly doesn't help that none of the characters seen particularly interesting in the first place, often reiterating the same 2 or 3 personality points over and over rather than suggesting something deeper (DID YOU KNOW ROSIE HATES DARCSENS AND ALSO SHE WAS A SINGER AND ALSO SHE HATES DARCSENS?).

I hate being this pessimistic about a game, but it's just bumming me out. Hopefully it picks up soon because i'm not digging it.

I was at the store looking at a copy of it for 29$ at that price I might as well play x-com first. I had a thread where I was asking for an x-com like game and this was one of them. I definitely see this as that kind of game, but it will have to wait until i finish ff tactics a2, and x-com....and mortal kombat...johnny cage is pretty hilarious.