Valkyria Chronicles
- CANVAS Graphics Engine, made exclusively for the Playstation 3, brings a never-before-seen stylishness to life. Breathe life into strikingly unique visuals similar to hand-drawn illustrations, and immerse yourself in real-time battles in environments resembling a watercolor painting in motion
- BLiTZ (Battle of Live Tactical Zone) System – Combining turn-based RPG gameplay with 3rd person action sports meeting, the BLiTZ battle system lets you battle with direct control in action sequences just as in action sports meeting, while also direction owing to the vast world with strategic moves typical of tactical RPGs. The battle is turn-based between the Player Phase and the Enemy Phase
- Epic storyline – the struggle for freedom, as the fate of the world lies in the hands of Welkin and members of the 7th group
- Customization – Over 100 customizable characters let you make a variety of platoons to suit each battle’s needs
- Perfectly rendered battlefields – explore 30 different environments, using each terrain to gain advantage in battle
Product Description
Valkyria Chronicles is set in a fictitious continent reminiscent of 1930s, Europe divided in two and ruled by the Empire and the Federation. The Empire has set its sights on invading a small neutral country called Gallia, which is situated in the middle of the two splendid empires. The game follows a hero named Welkin and his fellow soldiers of the Federation¿s 7th Group that are fighting against the Empire, who is intent on unifying the continent under its potential. The Federation discovers that the Empire possesses a secret weapon, known as the ¿Valkyria¿- an ancient race with special powers thought to exist only in legends. With this new discovery, the fate of the Federation¿s ability to win the war and a hope for a better future hangs in the balance.
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I in person reflect this game is pretty fun if your into shooters and rpg’s it is a excellent mix, but at the same time very repetitive and after a while starts to get very dull. I would give this game a 3 out of 5 stars, but as of right now it has a 5 out 5 and that is incorrect only exact incredible sports meeting deserve that rating and this is not one of them.
Rating: 1 / 5
Wow. I was really looking forward to this game but I was greatly disappoint with the outdated and basic gameplay.
The only excellent things about this game is the art management and the tale. The graphics and tale are basically “anime/manga-ish”, both of which, while not awesome, give this game alot of character and exclusivity.
But, if I wanted an anime I would have bought an anime. I buy sports meeting for gameplay and this game is an resolution failure in the gameplay department. Here is a few of the points that irritated me with this game and why after 1 day and only 7 levels I place it on eBay.
- Shoots that “hit” targets (it is obvious when you miss a target) and grenades that land 1ft from targets did no hurt.
- No approach required. Most maps are narrow and small which basically limits you to one approach. You are basically limited to the approach designed by the developers and that is it.
- A secrecy mission where you are supposed to slip by the enemy to get back together with your group. But, the ONE path owing to the level brings you in front of every trooper in the level. Even those that you sneak behind turn around and fire on you.
- The always fun “invinsible enemy” level who can run all over the map in one turn and shoot her ultimate weapon that instantly kills your team. How do you survive said level? That’s right, you have to use the one approach designed by the developers.
- Rudimentary battlefield. The only battle cover is tall grass, sandbags, and trenches. But, these do not hide you from the enemy nor lower your chances from getting hit by fire. All it provides is that it negates the auto-kill headshoot. No protection from trees, no popping out from the sides of buildings to fire. Basically go, shoot, go shoot.
- Weak weapon/armor/troop leveling flow chart and no weapon customization.
- No multiplayer
There is a reason why this game has poor sales, it is a poor game. Do yourself a favor and avoid this game.
Rating: 1 / 5
Just bought this game this weekend because of all the splendid reviews. Wish I would have bought Fallout 3 instead. When I reflect of 5 star sports meeting I reflect of Super Mario Brothers, Twilight Princess, Golden Eye, Gears of War…but this just isn’t it. Right, the game is different than any game I’ve played. Reminds me a lot of a video game version of Risk. The main character is 22, but of course looks and communicates like he’s 16. The graphics are decent (blues look really pronounced in anime), but the game plays at only 720p. Reflect this game would have been better suited for the Wii, in person. It’s cool to be able to deploy troops in battle, but what really sucks are the actual battles. No blood, gore, it’s really just reminiscent of a paintball competition where the objective is to capture the flag. More suited for small kids, for sure. What really sucks is moving the characters in battles…depending on whether they are quick engineers with small potential or slow snipers with brilliant range, it’s tough to get all the right people in the right places. Countless times I’ve been just a few inches away from blasting an enemy, only to lose my ability to go and have to wait a few turns, or worse, if at the end of my round, the enemy blasts my character I may have spent a few rounds getting into the “nearly” right place. And the training is week, you just trade points accumulated in battle to level up your troops. No actual training occurs. Perhaps it’s just me, but compared to Twilight Princess or even Metroid, this game feels a few levels small. I’m only a couple of battles in but already feeling like I dropped way too much for this game [...]). Not to be completely unenthusiastic, as it’s a fun and decent game, but maybe suited for a much younger gamer. [...].
Rating: 3 / 5
Why do people like Valkyria Chronicles? I really don’t know it. There’s not anything innovative about the game, and the non-innovative things aren’t very well-executed either. Quite frankly, I don’t reflect there’s anything excellent about this game.
GRAPHICS AND ART STYLE
The graphics are very technically well done. As someone who has dabbled in computer graphics, I know how hard real-time non-photorealistic rendering.
And yet, all this fine technology is wasted on the bland, unimaginative art stylishness of Valkyria Chronicles. The character designs? Repetitive and monotonous. The tanks? Plain and dull. The landscapes? What landscapes? (Seriously.)
MUSIC AND VOICE ACTIING
The music sucks. None of the tunes are particularly catchy. None of the battle music gets my blood going. None of the cinematic music gets to me. The only memorable song in the game is the Title theme. And that’s only because I hear it every time I turn on the game. Also, whoever thought it was a excellent thought to do the your turn your music, my turn my music thing should be fired and blacklisted from effective in any job in any creative industry.
And the English voice acting is horrible. Now, I generally have a pretty high tolerance for terrible voice acting. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of dubbed anime, and I didn’t mind the English voices. To insist on the original Japanese voices is a rarity for me. But the English voice acting in this game was so terrible that I went and changed the voice-overs to Japanese. That’s how terrible it was.
STORYLINE
Utterly dull. Now, in general, I have not anything against long cutscenes. But only as long as those cutscenes are fascinating and relevant. Valkyria Chronicle’s cutscenes were so dull, I’m pretty sure you could cut 45 minutes for every hour of cutscenes, and not only would the tale be more entertaining, but you’d still have a coherent tale with a beginning, middle, end, and fully developed plot (if it could be called that). At least the writers had excellent sense to make some of the cutscenes optional. With one notable exception (which had NOTHING to do with the plot), they were the most dull cutscenes of all.
Now some of you might cite character development as a reason why the cutscenes are so long and uneventful. Well, I’m sorry, but having one character constantly talk about his like of nature for a few hours while another talks about how she likes baking bread hardly counts as character development. (No, more like space filler.)
Others of you might claim that the long and uneventful cutscenes were an attempts to show what kind of emotional trials the characters are going owing to. Except they failed to realize that emotional scenes (which, to be honest, weren’t very emotional) about characters that the consultation doesn’t give a flying fish about will merely bore the consultation to death. The writers assumed that we cared about the characters. It doesn’t work like that. You need to give us a reason to care about these characters, THEN show us the emotional trials of those characters.
And the plot twists. The plot twists were all so predictable. With one notable exception (which also had not anything to do with the plot), every plot twist in the game was heavily foreshadowed. As a result, when the shocking plot tiwst happened, they had small (if any) impact. That and, shocking plot twists generally aren’t a very excellent form of storytelling. (Consider M Night Shyamalan.)
GAMEPLAY
Now, the meat of the review. The hype mill has been telling people how innovative Valkyria Chronicles is and how well designed the game mechanics are. What game mechanics? Everything Valkyria Chronicles offers either has already been done to death by other Approach RPGs or adds not anything to the game or is just poorly executed.
The battles aren’t strategic at all. When building your squad, there’s no customization and no variety. Instead of using approach to fight your battles, either it’s a unadorned case of shoot anything that moves or it’s a case of trying to figure out which jewelry the game wants you to jump owing to in order to clear the mission. Not only that, but the gameplay is grossly unbalanced. The only reason why some of these battles are even winnable is because the player goes first and because the opponent AI is an idiot. Seriously, I’ve been in multiple situations where the computer opponent has the game in the bag, but instead of winning, they either retreat for no reason or they charge straight at my tank and/or shocktroopers and get themselves killed.
And to make up for this horrible horrible AI, the game designers chose to let the computer opponent cheat. Basically, they get access to much better stuff than the player, they get to start with much more material on the penetrate and better penetrate position, and they get an unremitting supply of reinforcements.
Not only that, but how could they claim to be a approach game when something as unadorned as looking at the penetrate is so obfuscated. The overhead map is all but useless. If you really want to navigate the battlefield, you’ll have to use the mini-map in 3rd person mode instead (which often, but not always, contains better information than the overhead map). So you inevitably end up wasting the first few actions trying to figure out what exactly is going on on the battlefield. (Which doesn’t matter anyway, since on the “hard” missions, you’ll end up restarting a few times while figuring out what jewelry the game wants you to jump owing to.) Some people will say that this is to give the game a bit of realism, since you rarely have complete battlefield information. Well, there’s already a tried-and-right gameplay mechanic that simulates this. (And it’s even named after the actual military term for imperfect battlefield information.) It’s called Fog of War. If you’re gonna re-invent the wheel, at least make sure it rolls.
Other people will claim that these crappy maps help immerse the player in the role of the commanding officer, where they make decisions based on sketchy maps. And then the game goes ahead and breaks the immersion by allowing you to zoom into 3rd-person views of any particular soldier anywhere on the map. (And I’m not even gonna mention the whole “Book Mode” fiasco.)
And every now and then, the game will insta-kill you for no real reason, which makes the game frustratingly pitiless. Sometimes, it’s because you made just the slightest mistake. (Like you positioned your tank slightly off center so that an enemy lancer could make a lucky shot from halfway across the map and blow up your tank, causing you to instantly fail the mission. And by Murphy’s Law, if it can happen, it will.) Others, it’s not because of any mistake you make, but rather because the game never told you that the enemy can do that. (Like when the enemy’s armored train that is equipped with a powerful machine gun that can shoot you from halfway across the map is ALSO equipped with a heavy anti-tank cannon, which insta-kills your tank, causing you to instantly fail the mission.) And sometimes, it’s because the game is just plain unbalanced. (Like when the enemy has an anti-tank cannon that can kill your tank in 3 hits, and in this mission, the developers chose to code the enemy to shoot your tank with it 3 times in a row even though normally the AI is dumb enough to NOT do that, causing you to instantly fail the mission.) Fortunately, being able to save during battle mitigates this conundrum, but that also opens up a completely different set of exploits.
The game also puts excessive weight on clearing missions quickly, so much so that even fans of the game will tell you that alacrity is more vital than tactics. A STRATEGY game where SPEED is more vital than TACTICS. Yeah, sure no matter what. And sure, the game will also reward you for blowing up enemy tanks and killing enemy leaders, but the reward for alacrity-clearing is instructions of magnitude higher, and it drops off so quickly that even being a couple of turns too slow will make that reward disappear.
Valkyria Chronicles is so NOT a Approach RPG that even the game describes itself as an “active simulation RPG” instead of a Approach RPG. And by that, they mean it’s a turn-based 3rd-person shooter with minor RPG elements.
Beyond the lack of approach, the game also has honest pacing issues. During battle, it takes a long time for anything to happen. (Punctuated by the fact that the game will often interrupt these slow battles with INSTANT GAME OVERS.) Outside of battle, even though the game takes about 40 hours to complete, the game is so boringly slow that it seems like a small game. (And yet, this gamer was glad it was finally over, because it was just SO AWFULLY BAD.) For some reason, the designers thought it was a excellent thought to have only 1 battle per stage, even though some battles are obviously related in the tale. (Example: The “Preface”, and the first two chapters, which really should have been part of the preface.) This results in most chapters being completely undeveloped, despite hours and hours of (uneventful) cutscenes, as well as way too few battles in the game for you to have a real game. And then, for no obvious reason, the designers break the 1 battle per stage rule several times over the course of the game.
Basically, everything the back of the box promised was a lie. “Elaborate strategic drills”? More like SCOUT RUSH!!! “Action-packed real-time combat”? More like slow, uneventful combat where the player and the computer opponent take turns moving soldiers one at a time. “Epic storyline filled with dramatic warfare”? More like long and drawn out storyline filled with repetitive pea-shooters. “Customize your group with 50 characters”? Really, each and every one of these characters is a near exact clone of one of five different archetypes.
CONCLUSION
Why do people like Valkyria Chronicles? The strikingly gorgeous graphics engine is wasted on the unimaginative art stylishness. The music is horrible. The storyline bores me to tears. And the gameplay is frustrating, unbalanced, poorly executed, and just plain not fun.
You know what I reflect happened? The developers had a nice non-photorealistic rendering engine, and they wanted to build a game around it. They heard people liked RPGs, but they also heard that RPGs had already been done to death. So they sat in a room for a few hours and quickly came up with a few concepts, then whipped up a game as quick as they could, and didn’t bother polishing it at all. Then, in order to get the game to sell like hotcakes, they paid game reviewers to rave about this game and hype it up to get people to buy it.
And the PS3 owners, frustrated that all the excellent RPGs went over to the Xbox 360, chose to buy Valkyria Chronicles and convinced themselves that it was in fact excellent. And half of these people don’t know what a “Approach RPG” is, so they reflect Valkyria Chronicles is in fact innovative. And a lot of these people are secretly Shooter fans, and since Valkyria Chronicles has guns, hurray for them!
And THAT is why people like Valkyria Chronicles.
But that still doesn’t make Valkyria Chronicles a excellent game.
Rating: 1 / 5
I gave this game a try after I found it on sale and heard all the clear pointer from it. I was pretty disappointed with what I experienced. There is more dull storytelling than actual gameplay. You have to sit owing to five tale chapters for every one gameplay stage. It’s nearly as though the actual game is just an afterthought. Once you get to the gameplay you’ll find a sub par approach RPG. Don’t be sucked into the hype.
Rating: 2 / 5