its worth noting that honestly this game treats a character like rosetta way better than i thought it would initially
the mission pn the big battlefield is like telling me i’m playing the gsme wrong but after running through the map 8 times i still have no idea how
Is that the big open one where you use all your tanks, and I think first go up against the anti-tank guns?
Use your artillery! And don’t be shy about driving your tank aaaaaaaaaaall the fucking way up and blowing up another tank or whatever with it.
i have a steady and growing list of favorite characters but tbh i’m surprised about this thread being negative about the core cast
i feel in parts they have a much better dynamic than alicia and welkin did in vc1 even though they were good, and the story has kinda kept up with side characters
As far as the core cast goes, I like Minerva and Riley a lot. Claude is solid. Kai is okay. I like that Raz is a darcsen, but he can get pretty one-note. I don’t remember anything about that tank kid or the other tank guy.
Secondary characters have some real shining moments. I’m glad they put the focus on developing those out in side stories, because that can be a lot of fun. Obviously Vancy the lush and Ferrier the helmeted bastress are my favs.
Don’t forget to use orders.
Also the APC is totally broken.
finally cleared out Point of No Return last night with a C rank, man what a tiugh mission that probably overwhelms you when the enemy captain has orders specifically made for ruining you
Oh, THAT one. Yeah, that took me four tries. Only reason I passed was because I Mega Man-style memorized every threat and positioned a counter to it.
im enjoying the story so far but man did i run into some alt righters saying that the game is like finally some positive depiction of nazi germany in fiction and like whoahhh motherfucker.
because of course these dumbasses think that russia were the only ones to use scorched earth tactics in wwii when the story up to this point is about the western countries pushing germany out of norway jesus i hate nerds
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Okay I’m in the final few missions. I’ll say that the mid-game drags in a way I don’t love. I also have not enjoyed fighting most of the “boss” characters in this game.
That said, I still adore this cast of characters. It constantly reminds me why I like this series, and fairly often the actual missions will validate my love for this series by letting me create three or so teams of two and execute multiple objectives at once. Can’t get enough of these characters working together to accomplish objectives on the battlefield. The way the characters color the gameplay parts is wonderful, and I only wish there was more interweaving/boosting/co-operative powers available.
Anyways, IMPORTANT NOTE ON VANCEY THE DRUNK: Turns out the only way to get her Squad Story is to first unlock “Gertrude”, a hidden hoity-toity nobility character that will only join once you have 1,000,000 gp in the bank. So yeah, you have to fucking grind skirmish missions or whatever till you get her, which blows. I ended up just repeating the final skirmish 5 times, since that one can be won in a single turn.
Once you get Gertrude, the Squad Story with her, Vancey, and that random darcsen kid who idolizes Raz is unlocked, and you finally get to change Vancey’s turn-ending “Hammered” trigger into a “Former Elite”, which buffs fucking everything and turns her into the battlefield goddess she deserves to be.
I also love Gertrude, so, I’m ready to complete the final mission now.
Spoiler for the endgame, so I’m going to collapse out this whole part:
Endgame spoilers and thoughts - Part 1
There is an absolutely wild story element they introduce where your secret superweapon boat actual contains a ragnite atomic bomb, called the A2 bomb, which you’re determined to detonate in the Imperial capital, killing “millions.” This is framed as this wholly just act that is the “only way,” which is mind-blowing to see in a Japanese game about anime WW2.
Endgame spoilers and thoughts - Part 3
Almost positive they’re not actually going to detonate it, because it’s also revealed that the A2 bomb is an Akira-like little girl, but like, just the entire idea seems buck wild.
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Just finished the story and it got kind of silly, yes. [spoiler]At first the main character is crying about his love interest talking him out of detonating a little girl and kill them all including an entire city full of people. Then he gets really mad when the mad scientist wants to explode the girl screaming that they’ll protect her no matter what.
I hated that main character from the first time I saw him, and was really excited when it seemed he’d die on a sinking ship at the end, because of his inability to leave behind his tank. But then some kind of metal broke off the ship and allowed him to drive the tank onto the pier right next to it and I inhaled air sharply. Then they stand around and give a salute to the sinking ship like it’s a real person dying. I haven’t seen them give a single salute to the dozens of people they killed during their invasion. They did crack a lot of jokes in after-battle cutscenes though.
Anyway, this was still a lot more interesting than the first games’ simple bad guys good guys story.[/spoiler]
Also what the hell why is tactical corgi just an NPC?
Also how the fuck do spoiler tags work.
I think this has to do with the line breaks. I always spoiler tag each paragraph separately. There’s probably a better way though
Yeah, Valkyria Chronicles as a whole has never actually had a good protagonist character. I kinda liked VC1’s main guy being a botanist who was clearly conscripted into the war, but that’s as far as the character depth went for him.
VC2’s protag is perhaps the single most annoying motherfucker in video gaming history. I played it right after a major surgery, hopped up on a top of painkillers, so I didn’t mind at the time, but every time I look back on it, good god.
VC4’s Claude has a decent enough backstory, he’s just utterly an unexciting herb.
Ha! I gotta see that. Now I want to play it
the best characters are like, vancey, rosetta and i dunno! this game has a good side cast.
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What I didn’t like about VC1 was that many missions were so linear and scripted they felt like solving a puzzle by trial and error. The few big battlefields did make up for it though, and I especially enjoyed the use of smoke rounds. (They are still there in the new game, but I never really felt compelled to use them.) VC4 has less of those linear missions and the new grenadier class is really useful and fun to explode people with. Though they make the rest of the infantry even more useless if you don’t take out the enemy grenadiers first. Or just use tanks.
Because tanks just costing 1 command point instead of 2 (like in the first game) makes them so god damn overpowered that there’s no reason not to just use them all the time, except for the couple times you can’t when they are blocked off or unavailable. Like, why even deploy lancers? The APC is even worse in some respect, because you can just drive by everything (except tanks which you shoot with your tank) to plop some peeps right next to the goal post and win some of the mission first round.
Granted, in true Valkyria Chronicles fashion they introduce some annoying invincible boss characters, but even then the AI never uses a unit more than a couple times. Which almost makes me feel like a cheater. I remember that I got my whole party wiped in a single turn in one of the PSP games because the AI actually used all their command points on a single (boss) unit (but maybe that was just a dream I had?). It was a fog of war map too, and one of the few times Valkyria Chronicles combat managed to resemble X-Com for me in terms of dread and biting my nails during the enemy turn. I mean, this game basically has X-Com combat, but it’s bogged down by weird balancing and weak AI to the point that it seldom comes close to that intensity. In VC4 I had maybe one unit die in combat during the whole game (except for the scripted casualties), and that was in the additional hard skirmishes when I was too lazy to use an evac order (another unwelcome feature that undermines more than it adds). Those additional missions do get a bit more tricky though, and I am considering getting the extreme skirmish DLC pack just to see how hard it gets. What a shame that they bury that challenge in “post story” content though.
But yeah I don’t wanna sound all negative, I still had a lot of fun with this. There’s some good missions and characters in here. I just hope they make it a bit more exciting next time. And give me my god damn tactical corgi as a controllable team member. If you skip cutscenes you wouldn’t even know that the bugger’s in the game (if it weren’t for them being prominently featured on the cover and a free sticker inside the box). I mean fucking hell I can’t get over it. It’s like they advertised part of the game they didn’t finish and then forgot to recall all the promotional material. VC4: some really good unrealized opportunities.
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I’m constantly left to wonder what this game would be like with competent AI and a great deal more threat from oncoming fire. You’re trained to rush in with a tank and APC, destroy their artillery, then stand there while they run into your tank’s machine gun fire. It’s so weird how you’re made to fight a battle.
I like the turn-based system quite a bit, but a lot of the combat mechanics need a rework. I should not feel bold enough to run into a nest of enemies, take a flag, hide behind a sandbag, and expect it to work.
Yeah I still dream about playing this game in hotseat multiplayer. Would be amazing with fog of war and the rule to not peek on your friend’s turn. I guess online would work too lol.
omg I didn’t know that the 2nd game had this!
or does it? can’t find a video of the versus mode…
but oh boy it does have co-op where two units move at the same time ???
Yeah I never found another blessed soul to try it with, but the inclusion of multiplayer in VC is something I never dreamed hope for until it actually happened.