At PAX, Sega had 2 games of interest that they were showing off. One was for the PS2… yes they still make games for that system, and the other for the PS3.
For the PS3 Sega i got to play Valkyria Chronicles. While at a glance, its another Tactics Based RPG, there are a few nice new features and elements to this game. For start, they made the decision to let characters react in a more realistic way, which they are calling the “blitz battle system”. One of my biggest complaints of tactics games has always been “if the bad guy runs across my characters pov, why doesn’t my characters shoot them in the face.” Well now they do. If you leave someone standing in the open, then people will take shots at them. If your characters are covering an area, they will always take shots of opportunity. So simple and wonderful, but something that so many games like this leave out. This gives the game a much more fluid feel with people constantly in action despite the distinct turn based game play that is really being used.
Besides that, the single player game is pretty much what it looks to be. Game play is easy enough to get into and the first level tutorial that i got was sufficient for me to move on to a more difficult stage. There aren’t a lot of issues with the camera getting caught in a building and while not something that needs to be praised, it simply makes the game easier to get into.
The part of the game that interested me was that all the cut scenes are using the in game graphics engine. There are NO pre-rendered cut scenes in this game. The beautiful oil canvas scenes that you’ve seen is actual in game footage, and even the cut scenes are using the same engine that you get when you are playing the game. They intentionally went with a water color look to the game and even gave the menu’s an artistic touch that is visually just nice to look at.
My complaint is the lack of multi-player and on a system that is dying for a game to get its online community active, this game just feels like it should have an online mode. Either Co-op, or a player vs player feature for you to take your team online and battle other players in a tactics based fight would have made this game so much more appealing.
None the less Valkyria Chronicles, with its linear story, 50+ customizeable characters, and beautiful visuals, does look to be a solid game for those into the Tactics genera. It is currently out in Japan, with an American release set for Nov 11th.
There is a Limited Edition release for the Japanese version with an art book and a special figure of one of the main characters and a little tank figure. While there are no plans for an LE release in America, there is talk that the art book might be available state side with pre-orders.
Chris Hori
Tags: sega, Valkyria Chronicles
