I am rarely a fan of RPGs; I enjoyed Oblivion and Fallout 3 (almost the same game) and Guild Wars for a time but they tend not to hold my interest. Even less likely is my endorsement of a Japanese RPG, given my examples are all western. Unlikelier still is the chance that I will like one so anime flavoured. I don't want to say these games are bad, but there are many things about them that wear on me quickly.



After having it mentioned several times by other dtoiders, I decided there was no harm in giving the demo a try. I wasn't interested in the slightest, but everyone else seemed to love it so why the hell not? Valkyria Chronicles is amazing. Let that sink in for a moment, because it would seem to satisfy all three of the requirements for me to totally ignore the thing and get on with playing games that are actually fun. Valkyria Chronicles is one of those games, just in disguise.

If you already know how Valkyria Chronicles skip down to the next red text and don't bore yourself with the details. If, like me, you really weren't paying attention to Valkyria Chronicles before now, I'll go over things so the following praise makes sense. You have Command Points, which you use to command units and essentially turns within a phase (more on that later), and Action Points, of which each unit has a set amount and you use to move them around the field. You position your units and the Player Phase starts. You can now use your command points to move units around. Tanks cost 2 command points while soldier units cost 1. You select the unit you want to move and then the camera flies down to a third person view and, here's where it becomes awesome, you can move them around the field directly. Units can also take cover behind specific parts of the scenery, making them immune to critical hits and reducing the chance that they're hit at all. Simply standing behind stuff also works, but has no bonuses other than blocking enemy fire.



Next up, comes attacking. Once in attack mode, your view adjusts again and time stops; I'd say it's kind of like VATS, if an example is needed, only you do the aiming yourself. Your cross hair has a “chance circle” (I forget if it has an actual name) around it and the shots fired by your unit will go anywhere within that circle. Aiming at the head will take fewer shots to kill but fills up less of the circle so you also have a greater chance to miss, and the game lets you know how many shots to kill are required wherever you are presently aiming.



While recovering some action points and HP between turns, characters become tired running around the field; while it's possible to use all your command points on a single unit during your phase, they will begin each turn with fewer action points. After you have used up all your command points, the player phase ends and it's the enemy's turn. Any command points you do not use carry over to your next phase.

The units themselves have different stats and attributes. There's the standard armor and HP stats, and individuals can have better aim than others, granting them a smaller chance circle. There's more eclectic traits, such as “nature lover” and “born leader” that give them different bonuses. In the demo available on the PSN right now(!), you are given two characters in the “Lancer” class; they'd be rocket or RPG troopers in another game. One has the trait “born leader” and the other “loyal teammate”, keeping them together gets them each a bonus.



If you hadn't guessed by the preview images of a dude in uniform sticking out of the top of a tank, eventually Welkin (your central character and effectively your avatar), idealistic, nice guy and son of the builder of a unique, still fieldable despite being out of date tank with a capitalized name, joins the military. Now that the only thing separating you from 60% of of male protagonists is the tank not having legs, you can shuffle your squad members, upgrade classes with accumulated XP and research new weapons, armor and tank parts with accumulated money.

Everyone back? Great. In more conventional RPGs or SRPGs to attack, I would hit X and hope for the best because I have no direct control over the situation; when that little “miss” pops up, I know that douche with the funny haircut has let me and everyone on the team down despite being the chosen one of legendary destiny with an fetish for zippered clothing. I feel like I'm on the sidelines watching the game lose itself because I didn't grind enough. The stories and characterizations don't win any points from me either. It's all in the little things; the same story about a callow youth with amazing hidden potential and forbidden knowledge might be handled differently were it not packed into the anime mold.



The gameplay in Valkyria Chronicles has me so hooked because, unlike many other games, it retains the feeling that I am actively in control of the characters' actions. Not being tied to a grid lets me move freely; if I want to try inching out around cover or hiding in tall grass just up the crest of a hill so I'm still difficult to hit from below, I can. I'm not locked into completely behind an object or totally exposed. Freedom of movement also puts more emphasis on intelligent movement. If you're good in your unit positioning, you can get more than one character in that chance circle and hit them both with a single attack or you can arrange units and wipe out enemies as they try to advance through overlapping fields of fire. I've already admitted to not playing a lot of these games, so I'm unaware if this is common, but I really like that my troops, and vicariously I, am not completely helpless when it isn't my turn. I also like that my command points don't vanish into the aether as soon as my turn ends. There's a noticeable benefit to playing conservatively (or at least not an incentive to waste extra points) in the form of eventually being able to initiate an enemy-crushing, late game blitzkrieg with all those saved up points.



The leveling and research system ensures that no units fall behind. When you upgrade your scouts, all the scouts are upgraded. Every last one, even the recruits you didn't select. This doesn't mean you can throw them away, because their special abilities still make them individually unique and can make them function better as a group, but losing a soldier doesn't mean starting from your last save file because their replacement is gimpy, level 1 shit. In addition, all the experience you earn is pooled and then you decide where it's distributed. I enjoy not being required to make piddly attacks with an engineer class character in hopes of leveling them up and getting better abilities. Instead I get to play the game like an intelligent person, spend XP earned by others to improve the units that I see requiring it and skip the busywork.



The graphics are great; despite my normal aversion to the style, they're rendered well and little touches like the onomatopoeia of tank engines hovering around them works well with the cell shading and filter for a more drawn than animated effect. The story doesn't yet catch my interest outside of an arc for the game to follow, but I'm not going to say anything bad about it. Its two factions are clear expies for the Allies and Axis, but since it isn't just plain World War 2 I don't know what it has in store for me, and that's really all I ask.

I consider the fact that I love Valkyria Chronicles, considering it one of the best released in the maelstrom of games that was the end of last year, to be indicative of its quality. Not just that I enjoy it, but enjoy it in spite of qualities that would have pushed me away from lesser games. It isn't the first time I've tried a game I was so skeptical of, just the most recent, and for once I actually got something good out of the experience.