Valkyria Chronicles (PS3): You pricks probably missed this one.

Since I have fuck all to review at the moment and those that I could review I'll probably do in an omniderp video,  I wanted to take a moment to talk about what I feel is one of the most underrated gems on the PS3. When I first saw this games title I was crossing my fingers for Norse mythology. No such luck, it ended up being what looked like 3rd person WWII shooter, so needless to say I wasn't too interested. But when it came out I still gave it the benefit of a try and ended up finding one of the most interesting hybrids of a genre I've played to date.

VALKYRIA CHRONICLES: (PS3)

I usually take a paragraph to break down the story here, but it seems kinda pointless in this case. The game is an unabashed parody of world war 2. It takes place on the continent of Europa (whoa-ho, clever) where the Eastern Imperial Alliance (Read: Nazi alliance) and the Western Atlantic Federation (Read: Allied forces) are currently engaged in a struggle for a multipurpose mineral called ragnite (Read: petroleum) which is the resource that both are highly dependent on. The Empire being one for massive military strength easily pushes the Federation on the defensive and while it continues to sweep, it lays its sights on the neutral country of Gallia to gain control of their rich deposits of ragnite.

At this time Welkin Gunther, son of established war hero Belgen Gunther and our games protagonist, is returning home from a university stay with the intention of helping his sister move and dreams of becoming a teacher. But on his way home he is stopped and interrogated by Alicia Melchiott and the town watch because of the Empire invaders have put the city on edge. Upon finding from Welkin's adopted Darcsen (Read: jewish) sister Isara he is released. The town is quickly invaded by the empire and Welkin, Alicia, and Isara are able to defend their town thanks to some smart tactics from Welkin and the use of his fathers tank.

The Trio goes to the Gallian capital and join up with the militia. Welkin is promoted to lieutenant and Alicia  as his sergeant (because apparently if you bring your own tank you just mark off what rank you want when you sign up), to lead squad 7. Tensions start high as his squad doesn't trust Welkin because of  his lack of experience nor do they trust each other because of the tension between the Darcsen and Gallians. From here we begin the campaign against the empire.

Alicia and Welkin start off rough, but they quickly get very close.

So right out the gate, lets get my one major complaint out of the way. In between each mission it brings you to a book style menu that operates as your main base of operations. From here you can level up your characters, see past cut scenes, develop new gear for your tank and soldiers, you can play previous missions, adjusts the options and of course, proceed with the game. It has a cool visual look to it but the main problem is it is incredibly clunky. Transitioning from one menu to another is not smooth, it takes too many buttons, and  it takes too long to get from menu to game.

Even more annoyingly is that you have to come through here after every single cut scene. So every time you finish a little exchange of dialog you have to go back to this screen, move to the next cut scene and be asked if you want to proceed. Of course I want to proceed, I have to in order to keep playing! Here is what should have happened: It goes through all the necessary talk and cut scene between missions, and before the mission starts bring me to this book so I can level up my team and items and then save, then play the mission. If I want to see the old stuff I will go back for it.

Too much shit. Why do I have to bother with this so much! Let me play the stupid game!

Now then. As I mentioned in my intro, this game is basically an interesting hybrid of a couple of different styles of games. At the beginning of each mission the captain will brief you on the objectives and some of the risks or assets of the terrain. From there you organize your team of your one tank, fast moving and long firing scouts and damage soaking/dealing shock troopers. There are also lancers which are your anti-tank rocket launching attackers, snipers, and engineers to fix the tank. but with the exception of one or two missions, these three classes are garbage because of their low movement and low accuracy. Most of the missions can be done with 2 scouts or a shock trooper.

After you select the team you have a overhead map with little icons representing each of the various job classes and you each select them one by one as if you are playing at tactics game. But after you select a unit, the game zooms in close and it becomes somewhat of a 3rd person shooter. You can move along the battlefield to your objectives or vantage points as long as your energy at the bottom is available. Enemies will remain still but they will shoot at you so you have to know where you want to move and when. You can't piddle around to think about it because if you are a scout or a sniper, you can bet your ass you will probably be shot down before long.

This mission is the games biggest headache.

You'll want to know exactly where you want to move, or your lifebar is gonna drop fast.

When you are done with your move you then can go into target mode. This zooms to a combo of the over the shoulder shooter or FPS where you can line up your reticule for a body or head shot. After you fire you can quickly end your turn or use any remaining movement you need. But whats cool is you can use that character again with a reduced movement as long as their ammo allows. This is what makes the scouts so useful, their long movement you can easily get like 3 or 4 moves out of them and if you get right up on your enemies you can head shot them at will or make a quick charge for the enemy camp.

After you take all your available moves you end your turn and the enemies make their moves. Remember the same rules apply so if you place your characters right, you can gun them down on their turn as they try to get into position. If anyone dies you have to touch their body before the enemy does. If you do they are evacuated, if they do they die and are gone for good.

Skirmish 4 is one of the best places to level. This isn't my video but it basically shows you how its done.
If you use the order "Caution" you take less damage from fire while moving. You can usually do it in like 4 moves.

This game has a beautiful art style about it. Yes its your basic anime character archetype but the animation is well done. But most notably about the art style is that is uses a particularly interesting style of coloring and shading. I hesitate to refer to it as "Cel-shading" because it doesn't have that same, overly saturated color kind of feeling that you see in games like Zelda: Wind Waker. Instead it looks like more like animation done with watercolors. The colors are vibrant without being overpowering, and all of the sound effects are represented with flashes of onomatopoeia for explosions, tank movement, and gunfire that produces this wonderful comic book effect that compliments the game perfectly.

The story isn't exactly revolutionary (ba-dum tiss), but it is interesting enough and characters are strong and likable to carry you through it. It does get a little ridiculous at points when the Valkyria are actually introduced but it wouldn't be an anime game if there wasn't somebody going over 9000 with blue energy and firing off energy blasts. My only real complaint is when you add in something supernatural to a fairly gritty realistic war story, it cheapens the effect a little. But all and all though the story is satisfying to play through and it will make you laugh or tug at a few heart strings and it does manage to provide and interesting twist or two.

The main characters, while they do find themselves in the pretty standard anime archetypes, is a generally fun and likable cast. The voice acting is done well enough to properly convey emotions and delivers proper pacing and reaction for scenes to keep the player engrossed. You get to watch the primary cast actually grow as a team and come together a bit, and for the most part all of the characters show a good amount of development as the story progresses.

But perhaps the most fun about the characters though, are all of the filler soldiers you use to update your squad. Pretty much from the start of the game you can organize a team of 20 troops to pick from in missions. Each of these characters have their own individual looks, cool little back story blurbs that give each of them a little bit of depth to their character. All of them are voice acted by different individuals so they each have their own nuances and charm about them (something Skyrim could fucking learn from, instead of having like 800 npcs and 5 voices between them).

They all have their own interesting quirks that affects their abilities in the field (Dallas is a lesbian and loves one of the protagonists so she swoons and gets accuracy boosts around her, Jann is gay for another protagonist and his dialog is hilarious.) some characters like to be in nature, some hate it. Some like to fight in a group, some would rather charge off on their own.

You could easily spend and hour or two just reading their all their back stories. Edy, one of more popular characters, is featured in two DLC expansions that give you additional missions to play featuring only side characters in the game, (which came out months AFTER the game had been released, not before it. That's how DLC is supposed to work, assholes.) Also a pair of characters from Skies of Arcadia make an appearance in the game, as well.

Squad 7: Quite the ragtag band of heroes.

The soundtrack has a few memorable tunes about it, its done in a fairly conventional classical style. It plays a good compliment to the game and is used properly. In bigger battles there will be a epic sounding theme on your turns which raise the tensions, while on some of the stealth missions there is virtually no music and you can only hear the chirping of crickets or the sound of grass underfoot. It does exactly what it needs to compliment the mission at hand.

You would be advised to save your game before each mission. Some of them can drag out for quite a while and if you don't have the right team, you are fucked from the start. There is a boss battle midway that pretty much forces you to fit as many lancers as you can fit on the team. But up until that point, if you play like I do, you didn't even need one. So it can be annoying to play for 35 minutes to realize "Well shit, there is literally NOTHING I can do to win this mission." It can sometimes be trial and error, but it doesn't happen often enough to want to stop playing.

Selvaria Bles. If she's on the battle field, you run.

Here is my big tip, level your scouts first and your shock troopers second, maybe a few for your lancers. Everything else virtually doesn't matter. Almost every single mission can be completed inside of a turn or two depending on how well you move and shoot key soldiers. As you beat levels you will re-unlock old missions in skirmish mode to play to grind classes. Once the scouts get their grenade launcher, you can pretty much take out everything in a hit or two.

The rewards for finishing the mission with an A class are better than a worse ranking and killing everything. Some of the best scouts for the job are Alicia, Juno, and Aika because all of them aside from being scouts at higher level can get the double movement ability. If that happens to trigger you can walk nearly the whole length of a stage if you can avoid fire.

I really don't know what else I can say about this game. It will kill 20-50 hours depending on if you want to grind your classes to maximum potential but you don't really need to to complete the game, and there are a handful of DLC stories to get you a little extra play out of it and lets you learn more about all the filler characters.

There is a sequel for it on the PSP (boo) and it has a 26 episode anime series so if you are torrent savvy you can get a fan sub of that. The story is twisted a little differently so its not a retread of what you played and some of the characters are played differently, so that keeps it fresh and new. The game is just good all around and has a very original style about it. Its pretty inexpensive now too, so if you manage to find a copy I highly recommend it.

Or you can just ignore me like everyone else did when this was released, but that'd make you an asshole.

Don't be an asshole.