Two years after its initial launch, the Playstation 3 still lacks an rpg presence with barely any rpg games being available for the system. This is huge difference for fans from the past generation who are used to seeing so many rpg games being release for the Playstation 2 that they couldn't keep up with all the upcoming rpg releases. On the bright side of things, with so few rpgs for the Playstation 3, this allow lesser known rpgs to get a decent spotlight from fans of the genre as they no longer need to struggle against other rpgs for attention. Sometimes when you have so many rpgs, some good ones considered to be hidden gems can be overlooked by the buying public. Valkyria Chronicles is one of those hidden gems that can easily be missed by the rpg fans. In fact not only is Valkyria Chronicles considered to be a hidden gem, it can also be considered 2008 rpg game of the year. That's just how good Valkyria Chronicles. Truly one of the most underrated and under appreciated rpg game in the last few years. Not since the early days of the first Suikoden rpg game has there been an rpg game that has the same quality and same circumstances where it will be overlooked by the buying public. For all the rpg fans out there on the Playstation 3, if you looking for an rpg game that gives you the most overall experience of what rpg gaming is about, it's highly recommended that you try to find Valkyria Chronicles at your local video game store before it's too late. As clearly Valkyria Chronicles is this generation answer to Suikoden.
STORY
Only war shall set us free!
Even here you can find love.
In 1935, the second Europa War began when all out war broke out between the two superpower nations of the Empire and the Federation. Unfortunately like with most wars, nations that tend to remain neutral always end up being drag into other countries wars regardless of whether they wish it or not. The independent country of Gallia would soon find themselves being drag into the Europa War when the Empire began its invasion of Gallia as part of their foot hold on the world under the rule of the Empire.
In the small town of Bruhl in Gallia, a nature lover name Welkin Gunther returns home to help his sister, Isara, evacuate her home before Imperial troops arrive at Bruhl. However his arrival was a bit too late as Imperial troops began showing up at Bruhl in order to occupy it for the Empire. With the help of Alicia Melchiott, one of the Town Watch members, a group formed to protect Bruhl from Imperial troops, Welkin and Alicia manage to slowly evacuate everyone to safety. Bruhl however was lost to the Empire as with most of Gallia territories. Whether or not Gallia wanted to be a part of the Europa War is moot as the Europa War is now on their doorsteps and they are drawn into the conflict. The Gallian government soon decree that all citizens of able body will be drafted into the military as part of Gallia defense to drive out the Empire from their homeland. Welkin like with Isara and Alicia were drafted to join the Gallia Militia under the command of 3rd Regiment Captain Eleanor Varrot. Varrot assigned Welkin as Tank Commander of Squad 7 with Isara and Alicia joining him under his command as officers. Other Squad 7 officers include Largo, a Lancer, and Rosie, a Shocktrooper. Although Squad 7 is made up of people from different background and religion, they have a common goal in liberating Gallia from the Empire occupation. This is the story of the rise of Welkin as the hero of the Gallia War and his famous Squad 7 in helping Gallia defeat the Empire.
In terms of the story, Valkyria Chronicles is one of the best heartwarming and emotional storyline that have been introduced in a long time. Not to say that heartwarming rpg stories haven't been done before, just that recently in the past couple of years, there really haven't been an rpg game that has a story that pushes gamers emotional button like the way Valkyria Chronicles has. While the story is focus on the Europa War and Gallia efforts to drive off the invading Empire from their homeland, it's the human side of the story is where the main interest and heart of the story is really about. The story does a near perfect job in portraying the effects of racisms and hatred toward a race just because they are different due to misinformation and bigotry. Sure the story pretty much copies the flight of the Jews in World War 2 during the Nazi rule and applying it to the game story of the Darcsen race but it does it in a way that new generation of people can relate to and better understand. The story also does an excellent job in showing that even people from different backgrounds and race can have common goals and friendship when group together for a single purpose. It really helps that the characters are portrayed and played excellently by the voice actors. You really can sense the friendship that Squad 7 has for one another and the bonds that slowly developed as they overcome hardship and trouble times together. In a way that reflects real life, you can understand why those serving in the military have a special bond with their fellow service men/women much in a way of a second family outside of their real families at home. This is what the story does so well is that it takes real life circumstances including historic events and adopts them into a fantasy video game storyline and makes it very interesting for gamers. There are many moments in the story where there are scenes that push your emotions from uplifting moments where hope is just a short step away if a victory is achieved in battle to emotional scene of losing a love one to war. It does an excellent job in showing the human side of war and the effect war has on people from both side of the battlefield. That even your enemies are human too and they have family and friends who care about them. The story in a small way is a good tribute to the men and women who had serve their country in times of war protecting their country and families. As moving and heartwarming the story is, the minor flaw it has is that the story forgot the purpose of its original plotline. It started out introducing us to the Europa War that began with the Empire and the Federation fighting each other for dominance with the war slowly spreading to independent country like Gallia. Then the story shifts its focus on Gallia fight with the Empire in trying to stave off the Empire from its border. This isn't really a problem since the main story is about the chronicle rise of a Gallian hero in the Gallia war with the Empire. The problem is that outside of the first introduction, the story just pretty left out the main principle of the Europa War and don't really mention anything at all in terms of how the war is going between the Empire and the Federation. The whole Europa War was about these 2 countries going at each other. The Gallia War is just a small inner conflict that grew out of the big Europa War. By the end of the story we don't really know what the result of the Europa War was. Did the Federation defeat the Empire or did the Empire defeat the Federation? Nothing is really said about the Europa War at all. Just the chronicles on how Gallia was able to fend off the Empire invasion from their homeland which again is just a minor side event of a bigger historic event known as the Europa War. Minor details that seem to have been left unanswered outside of a great heartwarming human storyline about friendships, love, and bonds during times of war.
Still overall this is a great story that will move you in a way that is very similar to the first Suikoden storyline where you just don't want the story to end. You want to know where these characters go from here and their next big adventure. Small character summaries detailing what became of them after the war ended wasn't enough in Suikoden so it sure wasn't enough here. It's been a long time since I cared about a story and the characters in the story. Let's really hope there is a sequel to this story because it's a real shame if there isn't one. It's too good to end.
Score 9/10
CHARACTERS
The Platoon of Squad 7
In terms of characters presentation, there's a lot of similarity between Valkyria Chronicles and Suikoden. The Suikoden series have their 108 Stars of Destiny as the overall cast of characters but the story itself really focuses more on about 5 or 6 storyline characters. The same can be said of Valkyria Chronicles. You have about 50 recruits for Squad 7 but the story itself pretty much just focuses on the leaders or officers of Squad 7. The main characters are Welkins, Alicia, Rosie, Largo, and Isara. The supporting characters are Zaka, who joins the main cast midway into the game, Faldio, Welkin best friend, and Eleanor, the militia captain. The villains consist of only 4 characters from the Empire Prince Maximilian and his 3 generals, Selvaria, Berthold, and Radi. We'll discuss the bad part first which isn't too bad in this game. The first complaint which is really a minor one is that the game doesn't really do good job in developing the villains in this game. Both General Radi and Berthold play off very close to being just nameless villains in the game. This is kind of disappointing especially in the case of General Radi who at times during the story scenes comes off as a very interesting character in the long term, especially if Valkyria Chronicles goes off into a series. Selvaria is easily the most interesting character out of the cast of villains and probably deserve a better background story development than what the story provided for her. She needs more spotlight in the story to be honest. Prince Maximilian is the main villain but the story fail to connect gamers to him and he comes off kind of dull for a main villain. You aren't really able to connect to what his purpose in the whole war is other than just to beat the crap out of him because he's the main villain. Selvaria greatly outshined him in this story and it would probably have been better to focus on her as the main villain than Maximilian. On the other side of the cast of characters toward the good guys, the only complaint is that individually none of these main characters really stick out on their own in the long term. You won't remember too much about them 2 years from now when you aren't playing this game anymore. But that's the way it is for most rpg games unless lightening strikes and you happen to have a really stand out character like a Cloud from Final Fantasy VII.
On the good side of things, as a group, Squad 7, has that special feeling that is very similar to Suikoden 108 Stars of Destiny. Each of the main cast of characters are developed and portrayed exceptionally well in this game. This is a great credit to the actual storyline. The story does an excellent job in slowly involving each of the main characters into the storyline and developing them for gamers to care about. You just sense the love and friendship between these characters as the story progresses. The longer you play this game, the more you sense something special about these main characters that you start to care for them. It's not a far stretch to say you start to fall in love with these characters. You know the characters are good when during a plot twist you didn't even see a death coming and really feel for the characters as if it was an actual death in the family. This is so much like when Ted died in Suikoden during the war where you didn't like it at all and just like with Suikoden, by the end of the game, you don't want it to end. Reading a summary of what became of these characters after the story ended wasn't enough. You can only hope that this isn't really the end and that there will be a sequel with these characters returning. That's how good the characters are in this game. Anytime where a game can make you care so much about these characters that it's a sign that the game has done its job in making great meaningful characters.
Score: 9/10
GRAPHICS
Was that a bomb?
It's hard not to be impressed with the graphics of this game. While the graphical engine doesn't really push what the Playstation 3 can do, it's just a beautiful looking game due to its presentation. It just shows you that sometimes even little things can be impressive if done right. The game uses an anime cel-shaded artwork style to visually please us. No major 3D rendered models or pure CG movie scene at all. Story scenes for most of the time are done in a presentation like a story artbook with anime characters. Each story scenes are beautifully drawn and colored with a bit of a watercolor motion painting effect to enhance the story art scenes even more. Just a very nice unique artistic style to the graphics that you don't commonly see in games at all. Watching the scenes is like watching a very good anime show on TV. That's how good the graphics are presented to us. Whoever did the anime art designs of these characters and backgrounds did a very good job. It also helps that the coloring of the graphics really helps make this game stand out even more. Rich and beautiful colors complimented this anime story artbook design extremely. Gameplay visuals are done in a 3D environment but they adopted the anime cel-shaded with the watercolor motion effect look from the story scenes into the gameplay visual that both the gameplay and story scenes blend well together that you can't tell much difference between the story graphics and the gameplay graphics at all. Usually with most rpg games you can clearly see the difference in story scenes and gameplay scenes as they switch back and forth. From top to bottom, from inside and out, the game graphic is like an excellent anime show. Major thumbs up for this unique looking anime rpg graphics even if it looks like this game graphics could have been done on the Playstation 2. It just looks beautiful even if it is just simple anime artwork drawings. Presentation is everything here.
Score: 9/10
MUSIC
Over 50+ musical tracks in game.
The game musical soundtrack consists of over 50+ musical scores. The nice thing about this is that not only is there an abundance of quantity, there's also an abundance of quality as well. Each musical track is composed excellently for the game. While individually the tracks may not have that lasting appeal outside of the game long term, but put together for this game, they are wonderful and do an exceptional job in setting the tone and mood for each of the story scenes and gameplay elements. The story is base on a war theme so the overall musical scores reflect that with battle scores and marching scores that put you in the right mood and moment getting set for a skirmish with the Empire. But the story also have different varieties of scenes from those uplifting spiritual scenes of hope out of despair or sadness for those fallen in combat and even love in a time of war. The game soundtrack also has tracks that are rendered and composed just for those special scenes. A good musical soundtrack can enhance the element of the story greatly giving those story scenes emotion and defining those moments as important moments in the story. This game music does that job excellently. There are many moments in the story where you can just sense it and feel that this is it, this is the big moment that will make a turning point in the war that you are actually moved by the story scenes and get excited for it. And the big reason for this is because of the musical tracks that are playing behind those moments that get you into the mood and heavily involved into the game. I find it hard to believe that anyone who played this game won't be emotionally involved in this game. That's just how good the musical scores are in this game.
In addition to the excellent musical scores, the game is pretty much nearly 100% full of voice acting. What's great about all this is that the voice acting is super top notch in this game. With the graphics and story scenes to go with the voice acting, listening to these characters talk is like watching an anime movie. The game has an option to turn on or off sub titles but in this game I found myself turning off sub titles as I wanted to hear these actors act out the scenes more than just reading what the lines are.
The reason why the music and sound work are so great in this game is because the overall package of the story is great. Without a great story the music wouldn't have been so great and without great music, the story wouldn't have been so great. They both compliment each other.
Score: 9/10
GAMEPLAY
Got you dead in my sight.
Tank to tank battles.
Game Information
Genre: Strategy RPG
Publisher: SEGA
Disc: 1 Blu-ray Disc
Memory: 5 MB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Rating: Teen
Release: November 2008
HD Output: 480p, 720p
The one thing you'll notice about the gameplay is that its nothing like the normal rpgs you previously seen. In fact at a glance of any screenshot of the gameplay, you probably wouldn't even recognize Valkyria Chronicles as an rpg game. But the truth is, Valkyria Chronicles is an rpg but an rpg game base on modern times as oppose to the normal setting of sword and magic in a fantasy world that most rpgers are accustom to. The gameplay is base on a strategy rpg and an action rpg merge into one. You can say you're getting a 2 for 1 deal here. Now the entire gameplay is base on a story book mode, from story scenes to gameplay mode. Each chapter is base on pages with story scenes and a mission map. Each story scene and mission map is done in a picture caption sort of like what you see in a comic book. You click on the picture caption to enter the story scenes and when the story scene is done you click onto the next picture caption until it leads you to the mission map. There are a total of 18 chapters in this story book mode. You can take a break from the story book mode and enter your headquarters to level up your units, upgrade arsenals, recruit new soldiers, and learn new orders. Once that's all done you just go back to the story book and find a new story scene that has been unlock. Let's review the gameplay mode for a bit. Once you click onto a mission map, the game takes you to the strategy rpg mode that most are familiar with. You have your orders which tell you what your objectives are. For most of the missions you need to take the enemy base and occupy it for a mission completion. You can deploy up to 10 units or recruits but for some missions, the number of deployments will vary. Once deployment is done, the mission will start and the game takes you to battle mode which is done in a real time action turn base system. Like with any normal strategy rpg game, on your turn you get to move all your units and take an action for each of them. Once each unit has taken a turn or action, your turn is up and it's the AI turn to move their troops and take an action. The difference here is that instead of having each unit take an action like with most strategy rpg game, you have a certain number of actions available per turn. You can than distribute these actions to any of the units instead of having each unit take an action.
So what this mean is that one unit or one fighter can take as many actions as it can per turn as long as you assign those actions to it. It just means that the other units won't be able to take any action during that turn because you are basically giving your available actions per turn to the unit that you want to use the most on the turn to give you an advantage in battle. A fighter or unit can move around as long as they have the AP for it. Once AP is out they can no longer move around on the battle map until the next turn. They can still take an action like shoot an enemy even if they can't move anymore due to no AP available. However even actions are limited to the amount of ammo. You can give an action to a unit but that unit may not be able to do anything with the action if they don't have the ammo for it. Of course Engineer units can help refill ammos of units. One thing to be aware about is that this game is definitely real time. This means that when you move around, enemies will be taking shot at you in a return fire and when you shoot at an enemy unit, they will constantly shoot back and may even kill you in return fire if you don't end the unit action quickly to get out of action mode to stop real time. The gameplay is really easy to get into. It's just like with most strategy rpg game just base on modern warfare and in a third person action view when it comes to moving your unit around and taking an action. You can shoot at the enemy, throw grenades at them, or just fire a mortar from your tank at bunkers and sandbag covers, very fun stuff. The one thing to note is that like with any war battles, if one of your soldier falls in battle, you need to rush out there and get them a medic to remove them from the battle field within 3 turns or else they will permanently die in the game. Like with any warfare, using terrain on the battle map is very important. You want to be able to have your soldiers hide behind sandbags, take covers in buildings, and hide within tall grass to get them out of enemy sniper range. Nothing worst than having enemy snipers take out your soldiers from half way across the battle map, although it is pretty fun when you do it to the enemy. The best way to win missions is by using stealth attack, ducking and sneaking up on enemy units and taking them out instead of a head on charge. Another thing to note is that the experience system for this gameplay is different from any other rpg system. Instead of having each fighter gain experience individually, Valkyria Chronicles uses a class distribution experience system where everyone in the entire class level up and gain experience at the same time. At the end of the mission completion you will be rank base on how quickly you completed the mission. The higher the rank, the more experience and money you will get. Back at headquarters you can distribute the experience points to any of the job classes to raise the level of all your soldiers in that job class. Hence the term everyone level up together. So have no fear, the game may look different and is different from what the normal rpgs are but it is very easy to get into and won't take you long before you fully understand the learning curve of this game. Now let's review all the unique key elements of this gameplay.
Squad Barracks: This is the place where you can view the stats and Potentials of all the current 20 roster units you have as active soldiers in the line of duty. You can also change their equipment at the Barracks too. Command Room: The Command Room is where you want to go to recruits new soldiers for your cause. There are up to 50 soldiers for you to recruit however you can only have 20 active soldiers in your roster. You can switch soldiers in and out of your active roster at the Command Room too. Soldiers that aren't active will be waiting at the Command Room if you decide you want to substitute new soldiers in. Training Field: You can level up your Job Classes here at the Training
Field. All the experience points you earn at the end of each completed Missions
are pooled together here. You can then distribute the experience points to each
of the Job Classes any way you like. Level 20 is the maximum level of each Job
Class. R&D Facility: The Facility is where you want to go to upgrade weapons and to unlock new weapons. You can also upgrade your tanks and equip your tanks with different parts to boost the stats of your tanks. New uniform can also be upgrade here as well to boost better defense. Castlefront St: Intrepid reporter Ellet hangs out here. She will provide
you with reports or summaries of Squad 7 adventure in each chapter. It's a good
way for you to get a review of what just happen in each chapter. She will also
provide individual Reports of the main characters. These individual Reports act
as a character mini side quest where the main characters can learn their final
Personal Potential. War Cemetery: The Aged Gentleman hangs out at the Cemetery. During each chapter he will randomly teach Welkin new Orders to be used in battle. Outside of learning new Orders, there's not much to the War Cemetery. Audience Hall: Once you reach Chapter 10 in the game you can then unlock the Audience Hall at Headquarters and visit the Queen. The point of doing this is that you can earn Decoration Medals base on your accomplishments. The Decoration Medals themselves don't do anything but the more Medals you earn, you will be rewarded will some cool weapons for your soldiers to use. Job Classes: There are five Job Classes in the game. Each Job Class is unique and serve a certain function in the game and of course have their strength and weakness. The Job Classes work sort of like Rock, Paper, and Scissors where one is stronger than the other. The Job Classes are Scouts, Shocktroopers, Lancers, Snipers, and Engineers. You can add in Tank units as a sixth I guess. Scouts are the basic of all the Job Classes and most balance. They have high mobility to scout ahead and they can take down enemy troops from a decent distance as well as launching grenades from far away. You can say they are your Stealth units that you want to get behind enemy lines to take a look around or to capture enemy base without being seen. Shocktroopers are your heavy duty fighters for a front line charge. They can pretty much take down anything except for a tank. They lack the movement and mobility of the Scouts though. Engineers are very much like Scouts. They have high mobility and movement with the ability to resupply units with ammo, repair tanks and barricades, and disarm mines. They just not as strong as Scouts in term of firepower but they are a good unit to have if you are lacking Scouts. Lancers are strong defense but very slow with low mobility. Their main purpose is to take down tanks. Outside of taking down tanks you pretty much want to leave them back at base since they can't move very far or fast that they end up being left behind when your troops are on the move. Snipers are the worst when it comes to movement so you just want them to hang back at base. Their low movement can be offset by the fact they can pick enemy troops from far away at leisure if they are out in the open. But you don't want to be calling Snipers out in the battlefield if your troops are on the move. Command Points: At the start of each turn you will get a certain number of command points. Each time you want a soldier unit to take an action you will need to spend at least 1 CP. Using a tank will take 2 CP. The number of CP require to issue Orders depends on the Order. Any unused CP at the end of the turn will be carried over to the next turn. Its very important when planning your strategy for completing a mission to make sure you have enough CP to be able to do what you need which means in most cases saving CP on certain turns so you can stock pile them on the next turn. Action Points: Taking an action and moving a soldier unit from one place to the other will consume some AP. While a unit can only do one action per CP, they can continue to move around even after the action is done so you can place the unit in the proper position for the next CP usage as long as you have enough AP. So watching the consumption of your AP gauge is very important. You don't want a soldier to get stuck out in the open because he/she ran out of AP and can't be move to a place to take cover away from sniper fire. Orders: Welkins can issue Orders during combats. Orders have a single-shot effect that may boost an ally's stats, heal a wounded soldier, or help damage the enemy. The downside of issuing Orders is that each Order will consume a certain number of CP that your units may need to take actions themselves. So you need to balance issuing Orders out to make sure you have enough CP to spend on the units themselves. You can gain new Orders from the Old Man in the War Cemetery and just by leveling up your job classes. Potentials: Potentials are abilities that automatically give characters bonuses or penalties in certain situation. There are two types of Potentials, Personal and Job Class. Class Potentials are unlock as you level each Job Class up. A character Personal Potential get unlock base on using the character in battles and taking a certain amount of actions. Ranks: The game has a Ranking system for each mission that you complete. The highest Rank is A while the lowest Rank is D. The amount of experience and money you gain after a mission is determined by the Rank you get. What Rank you get is base on the number of turns you need to use in order to complete the mission. So in this case getting a Rank A would be base on completing the mission in the least amount of turn as possible. The more turns you need to complete a mission, the worst your Rank becomes.
When you are looking at the gameplay of a game the three most important things to factor in are innovation, addictiveness, and fun. A game having all three of these factors tends to usually leave gamers with a satisfying satisfaction that their purchase of the game was justify. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that most if not all of the gamers that brought this game will be very happy with the gameplay. The gameplay is definitely an innovation in terms of new things presented that haven't been done or seen before. There's not real one word that can describe this gameplay. It's not a pure strategy rpg game and it's not a pure action rpg game. It's an rpg game that uses elements of strategy, action, and traditional turn base rpg system into this one rpg game. Hence you can't really put this gameplay into one rpg category because it uses all the elementals of the common rpg games. Call me a war mongol all you want to but I had a lot of fun being able to gun down enemies' troops with my machine guns, blow up their tanks, and zoom in from a distance and take a snipe shot at an enemy trooper's head. Sure war isn't something to be glorified but it sure is a lot of fun playing this game in a war setting. And when you are having a lot of fun, it becomes very addicting. The realistic movements and actions of your troops and the enemy troops is what make the game addicting. Crouching down behind sand bags for cover and diving behind tall grasses so you can sneak behind enemy lines and taking their bases is very fun. And playing video game is all about having fun and being addictive to it. You will get that from this gameplay. Now despite having said all that, the gameplay still has some minor flaws so it's not a perfect gameplay. Mission Battles are fun to play but for the most part especially during the story mission, they are pretty easy to complete. Even achieving Rank A requires mostly stealth to sneak past enemy lines to capture their base. And you only need to use a couple of troops mostly such as your scouts to achieve Rank A on Missions. This tends to take away the fun out of deploying all your troops to engage the enemy troops in crossfire when you can complete a mission with just 2 or 3 troops alone and leave the rest of the troops back at base camp. This minor flaw also leads us to the unbalance job classes. On the surface each job class has its uses but for the most part you really just end up using the Scouts or Engineers to do everything. Especially if you are trying to achieve Rank A. Getting a high Rank such as Rank A requires completing the mission in the least amount of turns. And the only 2 jobs that can move from point A to point B in the most distance and in less turns or actions are Scouts and Engineer. Tanks, Lancers, Snipers, and Shocktroopers movements are just too short that they tend to fall behind in the action when you start moving your Scouts and Engineers out. Especially with the fact that the basic Scouts can pretty much kill just as good as Snipers and Shocktroopers. The low movements of Shocktroopers, Lancers, Snipers, and Tanks take the fun out of using them in battles. For example as much fun as I had in driving a tank and blowing stuff up, their low movement and high CP costs just ended up being a waste when I could have other job classes do the job just as good and probably faster than a tank. Throughout the game I rarely use Tanks, Engineers, Lancers, and Scouts as I ended up just leaving them at base as I needed to send the Scouts out more quickly to try and get Rank A for the missions. Of course if you don't care about getting Rank A on missions and just want to have pure fun of killing and blowing things up than just go all out and forget about speed and stealth and kill as many enemies as you can. Nothing is preventing you from having all out fun, just if you want to have a perfect game with a perfect Ranking than you won't be able to use all of your recruits that this game provides. Just stick to 2 or 4 recruits and use them over and over while piling up the Actions and Turns to complete each mission with Rank A. The gameplay isn't perfect but it is still innovative, addictive, and fun to play.
Score: 9/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
Nine extra skirmish battles.
On the surface you probably don't think too much of the extras in this game but thankfully extras and replay incentives are judge by the overall package in the end. On your first play through, in-game extras are limited to Skirmish Battles and a few extra hidden recruits. There are a total of 9 Skirmish Battles but you can only unlock 8 Skirmish Battles on your first play through. The Skirmish Battles can be done in Easy or Normal mode so they don't really offer much of a challenge for you to do which comes off very weak in terms of finding some extra gameplay time to prolong the game a bit more outside of the regular story mode. You can unlock 3 out of the 5 hidden extra recruits in your first play through. But the problem is that these hidden recruits aren't anything special compare to the already 40+ recruits you have at your disposable so they aren't too valuable other than for gamers out there trying to get a 100% game completion. If you going to have extra hidden characters than you should make them special in a way and not just another bunch of average characters on your already huge lists of recruits. So you be a bit disappointed with in-game extras on your first play through. Thankfully the game's replay incentive help pick up some of the slack that the first in-game extras fail to delivery. In fact most of the good extra stuff can only be unlock on a second play through. If you're looking for a 100% game completion then you definitely need to play this game a second time on a new game+ file. Once you start on a second replay, you will be able to unlock the final Skirmish Battle. Not only that but all Skirmish Battles will now have a Hard mode in addition to the already Easy and Normal mode available. And let me tell you something, Hard mode is really hard. Doing Skirmish Battle in Hard mode is like playing against another human player. That's how much of an improvement the AI is in Hard mode. It actually brings a new challenge into the game. It's too bad the story mode doesn't offer a Hard mode too. You also will be able to unlock the last 2 hidden recruits. Story battle maps are now replayable on the second play through. You weren't able to replay any story battle maps on your first play through at all which was a bit disappointing as you had to rely heavily on Skirmish Battles to gain extra exp and money. Two new Tabs called Statistics and Music becomes available in the game Story Book. The Statistics Tab list all the Ranks you have achieved in each mission as well as number of kills you done. But the best one is the Music Tab that is 3 pages long where you can listen to the entire soundtrack of the game. That's over 40+ musical scores in this game, a nice treat indeed.
Sure Replay value is considered to be an incentive but for Valkyria Chronicles it's almost a must do as you can't fully appreciate this game fully and all the stuff it offers unless you replay the game again on a New Game+.
Score: 8/10
At a glance from any demos and previews most rpg gamers will probably overlook Valkyria Chronicles as an rpg game due to it's setting base on a modern timeline as oppose to the usual fantasy of sword and magic seen in normal rpg games. However having completed this game, most gamers will agree this is probably one of the best created rpg games from beginning to end in a long time. Not since the early introduction of Suikoden have there been a game that would give you this kind of special heart warming rpg experience. In fact Valkyria Chronicles is very similar to Suikoden in terms of the special feeling it leave fans with after a game completion. Its presentation base on a war with an empire, recruitment of characters, heartwarming characters, a strong story, and of course the overall feeling that you just don't want the game to end just as the way Suikoden was done with its 108 stars of destiny. While the Suikoden series seem to have lost its way during the late Playstation 2 era, I can easily say if rpg fans out there are looking for a game similar to the first Suikoden game than please pick up Valkyria Chronicles as soon as possible. Valkyria Chronicles is the Playstation 3 answer to Suikoden. And just like history repeating itself with rpg fans missing out on Suikoden when it was first release, rpg fans will missed out on Valkyria Chronicles before all is said and done. This is one of those games where you just don't want it to end and just hoping there is a sequel with the cast of characters making a repeat appearance. Valkyria Chronicles is a prime example of how an rpg should be made from a great story with good music and gameplay. This is a total overall satisfying experience for gamers. I can clearly say with a good conscious that Valkyria Chronicles is 2008 rpg game of the year. A must buy for all Playstation 3 rpg gamers.
