[Widge]

Time to add this awesome game to this forum!

[Widge]

I don't like the fact that 10/10 is designated as perfect. I mean if you go to a game site/magazine, they go to great lengths to stress how 10/10 does not mean perfection (as it is not obtainable).

I remember a 10 used to be designated as Genre Defining, something I would never give to any game as very rarely will something come across as a leading exponent in that genre whatsoever.

This is the game that would have bucked that trend for me.

I've had a fairly limited sRPG exposure in my past, I've gone through Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Jeanne D'Arc and am pretty well versed in sending my little squad out to hop around a grid based map to embark on a fantastic tactical battle. One thing I found sRPGs excel in is presenting you with epic hour long fights with to-ing and fro-ing between defeat and victory.

I do feel like I've seen it all when it comes to sRPGs. Nippon Ichi pumped out a great variety of grid based battlers on the PS2 (including the Disgaea series) and the arrival on the PS3 of Disgaea 3 continued that trend. I just couldn't find the love to seek out and take a hold of it on import whatsoever.

A good long while ago Valkyria Chronicles popped up on the radar, giving a unique spin on the genre by having it play out in a proper 3D 3rd person arena. In essence, gone is the grid! From the screenies, I had concerns about the environments being bland while the cut scenes looked gorgeous with their "hand drawn" style.

Over time, the game started to creep up and up and up on the old radar. Then the demo appeared. Now my doubts about bland environments were blown away, truly this is one of the best looking games I've had the joy of encountering this generation and not because of textures and physics being thrown around at you. The character models are sublime and go great guns to helping you warm to the likes of main protagonists Welkin and Alicia. It looked hot.

Ok, I managed to blast through the demo with no problems, as I'm assuming everyone who has PSN'd it has too, but I felt the game worthy of a punt and expected more of a challenge to hit me as I played it proper.

So I got the game and finally got the chance to get drawn into the story. The game plays out in a hybrid of 2nd World War mashed with Knights and Lancers fantasy. A unique little storyset in the jRPG world, probably only rivalled by Eternal Sonata's bizarre death dreams of Chopin in stakes of originality (this is coming from someone who is having concerns with the rather generic looking RPGs that are coming out recently, including White Knight Story in that little grouping). Now where Eternal Sonata is good, Valkyria Chronicles is excellent. The characters are involving, the story elements draw you in, balancing jRPG twee-ness with a proper sense of death and loss. The opening of the game sees Welkin arrested by mistake, laughs ensue, only for the Imperials to turn up and mercilessly mow down an escaping family from his little country village.

There is no "world map" to roam around as is standard in sRPGs, but for once the game does not feel the poorer for it. As you turn the pages of the history book that acts as the main navigation engine for the game, you get drawn into the delightful animation and storyline of the game. Something a touch lacking in sRPGs. The game doesn't overwhelm you at first and you find yourself stepping through the opening chapters with ease, passing by the demo tutorial, and a fight in the village of Bruhl (which gives you the first statement of intent, this is not just green meadows and the odd tree when it comes to fighting arenas). As you move on to the capital city of Gallia and are enlisted in the Militia, the game suddenly opens up to you. First is the ability to draft in a series of troops across areas of specialty, each with a detailed personality and background that helps endear themselves to you with Cannon Fodder levels of attachment. Also is the rather unique approach to levelling and weapons R&D. All upgrades and levels are spread across your entire squad at once, there is enough depth there to keep the RPGers happy, but nothing that means you spend most of your time micro managing and unwieldy bunch of recruits to level and equip. The benefit here is you can just get on and play plus you can swap members in and out of your squad without having to be concerned with them being underlevelled. Plug and play baby.

Your various troops have special abilities. Scouts and engineers have large amounts of AP (the driving force behind how far your unit can move in the 3d realm), they have a large range of vision for spotting enemies, also for awareness when the enemy is roaming around in its turn. Yes, things aren't static while you walk around, if a scout, engineer or shocktrooper spots you, prepare to take fire... worth remembering as you establish a front line, or as you move around a map. Scouts and Engineers have a 210degree field of vision and will happily offload 5 rounds from their gun at anything that crosses its path, Engineers while weaker have the bonus of being able to repair tanks and remove mines. Shocktroopers, can't move as far, but pack an awesome 20 round machine gun. Their field of awareness is much narrower, but anything that wanders into its path will get 20 rounds of fury in their direction. Lancers are essentially rocket launcher troops, they have not retaliation so have to be protected, they can't move far in one turn but can happily take a good bit of mortar from a tank and can even wipe one out if it gets round to its unprotected rear. Snipers are a good laugh, weak, but able to take people down with one hit if they get a headshot in. Very effective from high ground. Rounding things off is Welkins Edelweiss, the tank. Each round you get a certain amount of command points, your troops take one point to move and take an action with. The tank takes a hefty 2 command points, but the thing is worth it. It can auto defend with a machine gun, nail troops with the machine gun or a splash damage mortar round, and then there is the anti-tank round. You have to make sure you keep the rear of the machine guarded. One hit and thats game over. As Welkin levels up, he gets commands he can issue, which take a variety of command points, such as sniper strikes, all unit defence up etc.

Furthering the personality of the troops are their Potentials. These are quirks that activate in battle. A rather young cute Scout of mine has the rather tasty Assassin Potential, boosting her stats if she nails someone without being seen... balancing that out is the Potential of Klutz, meaning she can drop her ammo. Bloody Hector, the engineer, has the potential Moody and TWICE now has refused to act in the middle of my round. I've got a sniper who is a Lone Wolf and thrives on her own, only to be brought down in grassy and flowery areas by her Pollen potential ("Ack! Pollen!"). Ted, my bisexual Scout, gets perks when around men and women, plus his Show Off perk gives him further boosts if he is in full sight of friends and enemies. The Potentials aren't random and actually tie into the back story of your squad. Old Largo has a history in farming vegetables and often chimes in with VEGGIE POWER when in contact with mother earth, lead Welkin was studying Biology at university and just loves being around the countryside. Also looking forward to deploying my Man Hater lesbian mechanic at some point. Sometimes you just find yourself laughing at the perks your various people have.

Those are your tools, and making sure you send out the right balance is the key to winning maps. Don't worry if you're not happy with what you send out... at allied bases around the map you can retreat and replace (at a cost) a unit with something in your reserves. You can also replace downed soldiers as long as you rescue them within 3 rounds or before an enemy tags them, after that, they're gone for good. If you've come from the demo thinking "well I breezed through that", I just lost a lancer and an engineer on Chapter 7 and I was particularly gutted at the loss of my jet black haired engineer.

As you can see, don't summise the game based on the demo, as the game unravels in front of you, each chapter brings more OMG moments, challenges and satisfaction. Technical people will be glad to know that there is an optional 3.5GB installation, but I chose to install after a while and this gave drastic improvements navigating the book menus.

Outside of this, I shall say no more, the game is there for you to enjoy. I feel like this is one to shout about as it is one of the best games on the platform and it would be cruel to see a piece of art like this overlooked as Ico originally was. Try the demo by all means, but don't use that as the benchmark of the challenge the game will bring you or the delightful story it will tell.

[Robothamster]

Widge, Sega need to offer you a marketing job mate!

Going to have to pick this up soon, might try to trade Farcry2 in for it at the weekend but even then I don't know when I'll get to play it!

Until then I obviously won't vote but I'm sure it'll be a high mark from what I've seen & read so far.

[madmonk3y]

Fellow Eg'er here. This game is so amazing. It's like a final fantasy tactics/ advance wars but in 3D and with the added bonus of playing FPS when shooting at an enemy unit.

I played it last night for an hour and the Mrs asked me how I'm getting on and I said I've only been watching cut-scenes (episodes) at the moment. I don't normally like over-the-top stories but in this case it's acceptable as the game is superb.

I find the battles quite hard - some can last for ages, but luckily you can save any time in battle. My only gripe, if it is a gripe - could be I haven't worked it out yet, would be that when choosing units to deploy it would be nice to have a description of some of their attributes like what "Country bred" or "Darcsen bond" means etc. slowly you get to grips with it, but I've had to write out each units name and write down what they like and don't like - instead of the attribute name. That's it really.

Other than that I think it's 10/10 for me on this one.

Also I paid £32for this last week and I saw it in Tesco's t'other day for under £20.

C'mon people it would be sad to let this game pass you by.

[silent ninja]

I give it 8/10 (8.5 if allowed).

The game could have been very special but let down by the AI. Strategy doesn't play a huge part in this game, even though an aspect of the game is 'turn based strategy'-- you get away with a lot and can even go in all guns blazing with the correct Orders.

Another criticism is that you get maximum points for speeding through a mission-- most of the time without actually killing everything-- rather than carefully destroying all enemies and not suffering any casualties yourself. This encouragement of hastily completing missions can also mean you lose out on weapons by not killing certain enemy leaders. It's also not as satisfying.

I found the anime a little annoying; it was cliche and quite cheesy. I'm not a fan of anime but it was tolerable, so if you don't like anime don't let it put you off. The story was typical on the whole and quite simplistic about war. It should just concentrate on being a game rather than trying to get across a political point (who cares!). The cutscenes can be a bit frustrating too.

Anyway, the game is very addictive and there is nothing else like it on the PS3. The first person shooting aspect is fun, the variety of weaponry and troops is good. Graphics are excellent. Most of all, the battles are fun and, if you dont mind missing out on points (which can easily made up by the unlimited bonus 'skirmish' battles available to you), there are a variety of ways of completing a mission: if you prefer snipers, you could use several of them or if you prefer lancers to tanks, you can leave the tanks behind, and so on.

Overall, the AI lets this game down. It can waste several turns simply moving a tank back and forth. Lancers dont often try to go to the rear of your tanks and destroy them even when within distance. The enemy won't run up to you and shoot you in the head, choosing often to shoot you from mid-distance, yet you can do this to them. The game peaks in difficulty around Chapter 7 (of 18) and after that it remains at a steady level rather than getting more interesting. All of this means winning battles are not quite as satisfying as they should be.
I've probably concentrated a bit more on the negative points, only because I think it could have been a high 9 or even a 10. I still highly recommend it: everyone who owns a PS3 should at least give it try. It's a bit of a gem and I hope it gets a sequel.

[FourthLion]

This game is absolutely fantastic and really makes me angry about the statement the shining force team made about the SRPG format being out of date. I'm hoping for a sequel! I'm also hoping for a good shining force game (maybe shining force feather? hell I'd pay £100 for a PSN repackaging of the 3 volumes of shining force 3) .

Anyone seen the anime? I'd quite like to see that when it's all out (I like marathoning series).

Only problem I have with this game is that it's really not a game I can play for extended periods. This is made more apparent when I start failing missions! I guess that's why it is split up into tiny chapters like it is, means I can switch it on, do half an hour/an hour and still have progressed a few chapters I love the format and don't know why people are annoyed with the book/chapters/many cutscenes thing. Okay it isn't everyones thing and neither is this game but to me everythign about this game is beautiful (except maybe one or two of the english voice overs).

[TeggDon]

The game is outstanding. It innovates and breathes new life into the very stale SRPG genre. Gone away are the grids and boring combat. In come realtime combat and open world gameplay.


On top of that it plays really well. Graphics/pencil shading are very nice and the game feels fun. Sad to see so many people miss out on this gem of a game.


For people complaining about the AI they added a hard mode via DLC with new weapons etc.

[Decadence]

Great game...I never really noticed the music in a game before either, but it is outstanding!