Valkyria Chronicles

So in my endless search to find decent RPG's I grabbed Valkyria Chronicles from a local Gamestop.  It is a strategy RPG, and in the end I have to say I rather enjoyed it.  I do have a few issues, but overall if you enjoy strategy RPG's, this game is worth a look.

Long story short, you have stuff that another country wants.  They are invading to take it.  War begins, and you are a commander that commands people to go pew pew stuff.  The story is told in a somewhat awkward style.  I don't mind the anime style graphics, but they tell the story in sort of a "story book" style.  The game has a constant cloudy white boarder, and instead of getting full motion story scenes, you get an animated close up on the speaker's face.  This lets you see expression, but I feel having a full view of all the characters talking in their environment just allows for a lot more expression, and it feels a lot more natural.  Some people will probably have a big issue with this style, while others will enjoy the break from the norm.  It wasn't a deal breaker for me, but I would have preferred a more regular style (I don't mind the anime style graphics, but the story book style).  Aside from this, the story is adequate.  It wasn't anything really special, and was fairly readable at times, but it gets the job done.  The characters are passable but not remarkable, but you don't really get to know many of your troops outside of a select handful that involved with the story.

The real heart of this game is the combat, and it was fairly innovative and fun.  Combat is a turnbased-realtime hybrid, and it is pulled off quite well.  When combat starts you place your units, and then you see a tactical overview of the battle field and any enemies your troops can see.  You select a troop to control, which places you in real time.  You move around the battle field in a third-person view, and the enemy troops can "interception fire" if you walk in their range, but can't move during your turn.  You can fire once per realtime segment (you can do multiple realtime phases one overall turn).  Once your troop runs out of movement points, you can end your realtime movement and go back into the tactical view.  You get a limited amount of these realtime movements per turn, then the enemey moves, and you repeat. This sounds really complicated, but it really flows well and it is easy to get the hang of quickly, it is just difficult to explain in a couple sentences.  You get 5 troops types (and a tank) and you can research upgrades etc.  You get XP at the end of the mission which goes into a bank of XP.  You can distribute this bank of XP between any of the missions, and you can distribute it to any class, regardless if they were involved in the battles or not.  Classes level together completely, individual characters level with the class, and no certain character will have any more XP than another character of the same class.  I LOVE THIS.  In other strategy RPG's like Bahamut Lagoon or Final Fantasy Tactics, every character got XP individually.  Almost without fail, this led to a small group (or one character) getting way ahead, and everyone else being useless.  I liked Valkyria Chronicles combat quite a bit. 

I do have a few complaints about the missions though.  I would have liked a couple more troop classes, or at least enemy types, because the computer only gets the same classes you do. This means you don't have much diversity of enemy types.  Also, too many of the missions (not all, thankfully) only require you to capture a certain enemy base, then you win.  I would like to have seen a larger variety of objectives.  Second, the XP and money you gain is based one your rank/score for the missions, which is based EXCLUSIVELY on how many turns it takes you to finish a map.  To get the highest ranks, you need to win VERY fast, often meaning you need to throw tactics out the window and just blitz a few troops in, or ninja the objective base, to get the most XP possible.  I wanted the most XP possible, so I often just sent 3-4 troops out to grab the objective, and left the rest of my army idle.  I would have had more fun actually using good tactics, but I wasn't willing to sacrifice the XP.  A score based on things like damage taken, soldiers lost, enemies killed, and such things that demonstrate good tactics would have felt more rewarding.

I don't really like to score games on any kind of numerical scale in my reviews.  I feel the words speak for themselves, and beyond that the only important factor is if a game is fun, not a numerical score.  Despite the horrible ranking system for battle scores, and the mediocre story and characters, I had fun with the battle system.  If you like strategy RPG's, give Valkyria Chronicles a try.  If you aren't a fan of the genre, this game isn't going to be good enough to change you mind.  This is by no means a game of the year or anything, but I had fun overall, so check it out.