Valkyria Chronicles™

I imagine I wasn't the only one tempted to quit the game immediately when the opening story scene—introducing one of the main characters—showed a man casually chatting with fish in front of other people. Unfortunately, the fish don't respond to his conversational topics, likely finding the guy too annoying. Oh, right. Apparently, there’s an imminent threat of war poised to devastate this bucolic fantasy setting, but there’s no rush! The world is colorful and packed with clichés. Shortly after (literally minutes later), once a brief misunderstanding is cleared up, Imperial Army scouts clad in full plate armor appear out of nowhere, revealing their positions and gunning down the poor civilians who were leaving the frontier village where the story begins. Our heroes (including the fish-talker), organized into a sort of militia, take up arms and decide to confront the faceless villains. Naturally, they slaughter the enemies without mercy and with enviable competence. The peaceful, friendly villagers turn out to be cold-blooded killers capable of dissociating from the violence with unbelievable ease; moments later, they head back to the village happy and carefree, as if nothing had happened. One would expect that the horror of suddenly being dragged into a deadly confrontation against forces that announced their arrival by murdering an entire family right before your eyes—followed by the shock of surviving your first-ever combat experience, and then the looming threat of an all-out war likely to devastate your hometown and claim the lives of most people you know—would cause some degree of unease... But no. Just casual conversation and lighthearted jokes. THEY EVEN MAKE BREAD! And you can bet they don't waste a second before starting to romanticizing war, complete with all the melodrama and theatricality you’d expect. [i]"Do you think love can bloom, even on a battlefield?"[/i] That empire must be severely underfunded, considering a bunch of ragtag nobodies—armed with crude rifles and wearing no protective gear—can wipe them out without breaking a sweat... But oh, wait! Here they come again, shelling this village that holds absolutely no strategic or military importance, killing civilians for no reason—again. Because they’re just [i]evil[/i]. Get it? Maybe the protagonist will get involved in this because those guys killed all the fish. Also, for some reason, there were no troops garrisoning the border between the two countries, but whatever... Ultimately, it seems like a pretty stupid story that takes itself very seriously—yet the material itself makes it impossible to care. It’s a completely sanitized, romanticized war story, full of hollow idealism that’s instantly apparent, all wrapped in a very generic art style. Anime in general has this knack for taking serious subjects, stripping them of all meaning, and turning them into something incredibly dumb and boring. I think that’s the case here. There might be something worthwhile buried amidst the many over-written cutscenes—which share space with tactical JRPG gameplay that blends real-time and turn-based mechanics. However, I suspect the gameplay lacks depth beyond simply picking the right unit to eliminate specific threats—almost like a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Still, it’s a WWII-inspired tactical JRPG, which makes the concept interesting in theory—provided you can get past the cringe factor. The game looks well-made, at least, so I’ll dig a little deeper to see if the gameplay hooks me. Who knows? Maybe the story will turn things around and actually get interesting. (I'm not actually recommending it. I just wrote this for fun.)