Valkyria Chronicles™

[h1]Anime Poses Meet Trench Warfare[/h1] Valkyria Chronicles is the kind of game that lures you in with this whole “serious war story” vibe—trenches, tanks, dieselpunk grit—and then sucker‑punches you with three consecutive cutscenes where everyone’s striking anime poses like they’re auditioning for Dragon Ball: The Musical. I mean, what are we doing here? Am I supposed to feel the weight of war or clap politely while some dude salutes the camera like he’s in a boy band? It’s like watching Band of Brothers suddenly cut to a Sailor Moon transformation sequence. But that's anime in a nutshell, so you get used to it pretty fast. Now, credit where it’s due: the gameplay loop is tighter than a miser’s wallet. Train your troops, throw cash at R&D, bada‑bing, bada‑boom—you’re stronger. It’s simple, it’s clean, it’s addictive. But then the game whispers, “Hey champ, wanna replay this skirmish for the 47th time to chase that Rank A?” And like an idiot, you do it. Over and over. Until you’re sitting there at 3 a.m., grinding exp, wondering if this is fun or if you’ve just developed Stockholm syndrome for anime generals. It’s rewarding, sure, but it’s also the kind of grind that gets old real fast. And thank god I had an old save file from back when buying a Steam game meant choosing between digital dieselpunk warfare or, you know, eating actual food in my socialist‑economy reality—so yeah, I played it pirated first, because survival > anime cutscenes. Otherwise, my gameplay would show around 80 hours—70 of those just grinding A ranks on everything. F‑you. And yet—dammit—it’s good. It’s dieselpunk, which I didn’t even know was a genre until this game slapped me across the face with it, and it nails that vibe like a drunk carpenter. It’s half visual novel, half tactical puzzle shooter jrpg thing, and somehow the Frankenstein monster works. You’ll roll your eyes, you’ll curse at the cutscenes, you’ll laugh at the absurdity, and then you’ll keep playing because deep down you know this ridiculous, contradictory mess is worth your time.

While I do like VC, I admit it's mostly out of nostalgia. The game has not aged well (this port in particular is not great either, has a lot of driver-related crashes), and its myopic emphasis on speed over strategy really gimping the gameplay experience, as it actively discourages you from playing as it a strategy game, and more so as a turn-based character action, with the best course of action always being picking one busted scout (Alicia), buffing them with Orders, and just running straight to the objective and finishing every map in 1 turn. That's not fun, and I'm disappointed to only have realized it now. I still like the game mind you, but it's rough. Doesn't help that the entire series is like this either, VC4 has the same exact issues. TL;DR I like it, but I would never recommend it, go play something else.

A fantastic, novel idea for an anime-style turn-based/realtime strategy hybrid that is unfortunately hamstrung by some of the most egregious design blunders imaginable. Level design might be the worst offender, with every single chapter not only being extremely linear with little variation in how combat plays out, even with differing team compositions, but also having poorly-conceived and poorly-designed gimmicks accompanying every chapter after the sixth. These gimmicks are unfun, do not have their mechanics explained clearly, and sometimes not at all (forcing trial-and-error-style progress, which can extend gameplay by several hours due to the length of time it takes to complete each chapter with no autosave feature), and constantly feel as if they were tacked-on almost haphazardly in a game that the developers felt, for whatever reason, could not stand on its own merit without it. Trial-and-error becomes most prevalent when the game gives you nowhere near the amount of information you need before a mission to make informed decisions about team composition or deployment starting positions, often leading you to place units somewhere that was not designed for that corresponding class, rendering them obsolete in the mission parameters. The game also does not respect your time. If you read this [b]BEFORE[/b] buying the game, remember to [u][b]SAVE OFTEN[/b][/u]. The game has no autosave feature, and one chapter after the first quarter of the game can easily take 45 minutes to an hour, more if it's a particularly complex chapter or otherwise contains a large enemy force, as there is no way to speed-up or skip enemy turns, which get [i]very[/i] lengthy [i]very[/i] often. You can also expect these values to nearly double when you fail due to poorly-communicated mechanics or other circumstances beyond your control, which also happen [b]very [i][u]often.[/u][/i] [/b] Mission mechanics are not the only ones that remains opaque throughout, as the class system also suffers from this problem. While both player units and enemy units are subject to a class system, with the same classes being accessible by both sides, their mechanics differ greatly, and this is never communicated to the player. For instance, enemy snipers get access to far greater range and damage than the ones players get access to, despite the weapons that the player can procure from the enemy as the game progresses not having stat blocks anything like the way they perform in the hands of the enemy soldiers. This is a game with great potential that suffers from a development team hindered by incompetence and disconfidence in their own work. I do not recommend unless you can trust yourself to have multiple save slots in which you save often (both to save yourself some time if you make a single mistake which could not have been corrected with the information you had available, and the because the game [i]has[/i] crashed before) and have the patience for a game that disrespects your time at every turn [b]UPDATE AFTER FINISHING THE GAME:[/b] My thoughts largely haven't changed, as the gimmicks and mechanics get invariably worse the further into the game you get. However, I still can't help but like the game (except when I'm playing it and am always reminded why it's so frustrating when I do), especially for its nice story and characters; they're nothing special, but they help flavor the game very well. Even though I saw the game through and finished it, I like it but would not recommend it.

Valkyria Chronicles has an entire aesthetic going around that I love. It's trial and error, bosses are hard and to that I say SKILL ISSUE: the presentation alone is reason enough to play VC, but thanks to the tactical and third person sections the immersion is imminent. Getting an A rank after playing a stage for hours feels very rewarding, even though it rewards scout rushing. My recommendation is YES, play Valkyria Chronicles! It's an incredibly novel and fresh experience, even by today's standards. Selvaria is very cool and I love her.

Again, not for me. The tone and presentation are a bit too “anime” for my taste, and the pacing felt slow — I lost interest after about fifteen minutes. I’m an older player, and this style just doesn’t click with me anymore. It’s clearly not a bad game; it just didn’t work for me. Not the game’s fault.

游戏是好游戏 可惜自带的中文腾讯独占（南极恶禽赶紧死） 这个系列还能有后续么？（顺带2&3什么时候移植steam啊）

威尔金：加利亚曾经凭借第7小队的钢铁意志，英勇奋战抵御住了帝国的女武神；如今加利亚有了自己的女武神，希望帝国也有钢铁般的意志和骁勇善战的部队。('◇')ゞ P.S.麦克西米利安上门提亲的方式过于硬核……(;´Д｀)而像加利亚宰相这种吃里爬外的角色放到哪儿都不会有好下场…… P.P.S.如果觉得游戏比较老没汉化玩不动，那么找下番剧看下也挺不错的，战场女武神1也出过季番动画，虽然也挺老的了……(*´ω｀*) P.P.P.S.如果终章陆地战舰侧面斜坡上不去，可以尝试把游戏设定在30帧运行，高于30FPS会很难登上那个斜坡，非常难……(;´･ω･)应该是游戏移植的BUG