Valkyria Chronicles

Here's one of the oldest games in my backlog, a purchase made at GameStop on a whim some three years ago on B-Town's recommendation. (Thanks, B-Town!) I finally started it about a week and a half ago and I've poured close to forty hours into it since then. Wow! I've got a lot of gushing to do, so let's break this one down into some categorical focal points.

Setting:

The game is set on the fictional continent of Europa at the outbreak of the second Europan War in 1935. Sound familiar? Allow this map to drive the point home even further:

(Click to enlarge, I think.) Anyway, this is so clearly based on World War II in Europe, with one major difference; the real World War II had the Germans fighting a two-front war against the allies in the West and Soviet Union in the East. Here, there is no central power; instead, an empire (in red, above) and a federation (white, in the West) are at war, and poor little Gallia (blue) is stuck in the middle. Virtually all of the game's action takes place in Gallia, and you command a squadron of the Gallian militia. The squadron includes a bunch of foot soldiers and a couple of tanks, but no airplanes. It's that lack of planes, I think, that really differentiates this world's setting from the Europe of World War II. That and about half a dozen fantasy, science fiction, and Anime elements that we'll get into.

Story:

The game kicks off when the Empire invades neutral Gallia as part of a much larger effort against the Federation. This really isn't all that unlike what Germany did to neutral Belgium in World War II. The Empire also begins capturing, enslaving, and mass-murdering a race of people called the Darcsens, which isn't really all that unlike what Germany did to, well, you know. Anti-Darcsen sentiment also runs rampant in your own troops; this is because the Darcsens have been accused of all kinds of dark magic and curses and the like. Oh, and there's this super rare elite breed of people known as the Valkyria, who are more or less invincible in combat. I'd draw parallels between them and the concept of the Aryan master race, but that one seems too forced; consider it a sci-fi trope, and nothing more.

Anyway, the Empire rolls in, and it's up to you and your ragtag group of militia members to hinder their progress in various parts of the country. Deep in the woods, among cities, across deserts, you name it. Twenty-three mandatory missions and five optional side quests later, you've forced them back out of Gallia and saved the day. Of course, you haven't done so without your share of casualties.

Gameplay:

Here's where Valkyria Chronicles really shined. The story and characters were interesting enough to have made for a solid RPG on their own, but the combat was what roped me in. At a literal zoomed out level, it's a pure turn-based strategy game in which you have a certain number of moves per round, and you can spend those moves giving your units orders. But as soon as you select a unit, you zoom in, so to speak, and take control of that unit like you would in a third person shooter. The zoomed out view, then, gives you time to collect your thoughts and plan out your turn, but once you zoom in on a unit, that unit is in danger if it's under enemy fire.

There are five classes of units in Valkyria Chronicles, aside from tanks. You've got lancers, who fire heavy explosives meant for taking down tanks. You've got shocktroopers, the best pure "soldiers" in the game capable of both dealing and absorbing a lot of damage. You've got scouts, who can move farther and faster than anyone else in the game, but take more damage and deal less of it than shocktroopers do. You've got snipers, who have extremely poor movement and die pretty easily, but who are also capable of cross-level one shot kills. And you've got engineers, the maintenance workers meant for an array of tasks like fixing damaged tanks and clearing landmines. And that's it. I like the job tree systems in games like Final Fantasy Tactics, but there's elegance in simplicity here. For most missions you can deploy around eight units or so, and figuring out the right balance of units in most levels was half the challenge. Also, you can swap out your units for fresh ones (or for different classes altogether) at little camps throughout the levels. In fact, capturing these camps from your enemies is a major part of the gameplay in most missions.

Between missions, you can level up your units and develop new weapons and armor for them. But, unlike in many other games, units level up and get equipped as an entire class; for instance, I used a shocktrooper named Alex in all of my missions and hardly ever used a shocktrooper named Edy, but Alex didn't become stronger or better than Edy at any point in the game.

Lastly, the game features perma-death; if your units fall in battle and you can't reach them to revive them in time, you'll lose them forever. A lot of strategy RPGs have this feature, but what's unique about Valkyria Chronicles is that from a pure gameplay perspective there's no real reason to restart a mission just because somebody dies. Since you get plenty of units throughout the game, and since replacement units are just as capable in battle as experienced ones, the death of any militia member isn't really a detriment to your progress in the game. Still, I wouldn't blame anyone for restarting a mission after losing an ally; you really grow attached to these characters, especially as you get deeper and deeper into the game with them. More on that below.

Emotional Response:

I've been calling the militia members "units" throughout this post, but they truly are detailed and well-defined characters. There are fifty-three of them in total, and I probably only used thirty of them at all, and maybe only twelve or so regularly. Still, each one of them was fleshed out pretty fully with character art, a small bio section, and a collection of unique strengths, weaknesses, skills, and vices. One of my favorites was Cezary, a cocky but cowardly sniper who made it clear in no uncertain terms that he was happiest far away from the front lines. Another favorite of mine was Wavy, a bespectacled and battle-hardened Darcsen scout who had no qualms racing stoically into the fray. And of course there's fan favorite Jann, a super-gay lancer voiced by John DiMaggio (Bender from Futurama) who wore makeup, raved about his squadmates' muscles, and always sassed the bad guys something fierce after killing them. I had my shit list, too, when it came to people like Homer the super-depressing engineer, Theold the mopey lancer, and Nancy the dorky and clumsy scout.

I lost four characters in total over the course of my playthrough; three died in the same mission storming an enemy's camp in an early mission before I had learned how to play cautiously and wisely; up until that point, they had been regulars in battle for me, but since this was early enough in the game, I hardly cared. No, the loss that stung the most was Alex, the aforementioned shocktrooper, who died somewhere in front of the enemy's castle toward the end of the game. Alex was a brash and carefree seventeen-year-old kid who dreamt of flying through the skies after the war. His dying words, alone in the cold night, were, "The sky looks... so close... I can... almost touch it..." Fuckin' A, Alex. You were missed.

Of course, the game also features a few main characters who can't be killed in combat because of their importance to the story. (When other characters would die, these special units simply "retreat" and are ready to go again in the next battle.) The relationships and camaraderie between these five or six characters is built up and developed significantly in cutscenes between missions, and there's some great emotional payoff, both painful and pleasant, along the way. The Rosie-Isara relationship was just touching as all hell. And the Welkin-Alicia romance felt genuine and earned when it could have just felt like fanservice for shippers.

Conclusion:

All in all, this was a fantastic game. I don't know why I put if off for so long, but I'm very happy I finally played it. The good news is that the story doesn't even necessarily end here, as two other games and an anime series and manga series all exist. The bad news is that the anime, the manga, and the third game are all in Japanese only, and the second game is for the PSP, a system I don't currently own. Gah! Realistically, I'm sure I'll move on quickly from here; it only takes a compelling game or book or TV show to get your mind off of another one. All the same, it's such a rarity for me to be left wanting more from a video game or TV show, especially five years into the Back-Blogged project when my mindset so regularly alternates between "finish it quickly" and "move on to the next one."

Yes, Valkyria Chronicles was something special indeed, and I've enjoyed my brief obsession with it immensely.