Valkyria Chronicles 4 [2018 -- Sega, Media.Vision]

[Starfox]

Originally published on August 26, 2019

A few years back, I reviewed a game titled Valkyria Chronicles that was a PC port from a Sega game for the Playstation. A semi-turned based, mission based, character and story driven game, the whole experience with its particular manga aesthetic had left me agreeably surprised. Now to see if that can be repeated with Valkyria Chronicles 4.

But wait a minute... where are number 2 and 3? Well, they exist but both of them  were developed for the Playstation Portable and they are not -- and I assume will never be -- available on PC nor on other consoles. As a matter of fact, Valkyria Chronicles 3 was not even released outside of Japan. It doesn't really matter though as both games were rather separated from the main plot of the first one.

But back to Valkyria Chronicles 4 (VC 4).

The story of this new opus takes place during the Europan War II -- the same conflict as in the first game -- but while the player's avatar was a militia officer of the little country called Gallia, the player's avatar here, Claude Wallace, is the commanding officer of a rangers squad from the almighty Federation. However, Wallace and a number of his squadmates are from Gallian origin. They enlisted in the Federation army to fight against the Empire while Gallia was still neutral.

Obviously, VC 4 (in line with the first game), doesn't make any effort to conceal that the original inspiration for its story is firmly rooted in WW II (European side) with weapon names like the "Lenfield" (Lee Enfield), the "Brown" (suspiciously resembling a BAR)  and a Federation main tank that resembles the Sherman M4. Not to mention that the force to which belong our heroes comes from a part of the Federation called the United Kingdom of Edinburgh and that a lot of weapons are provided by the United States of Vinland. Even the maps leave little doubt as to where the roots of the game are.

As any good Japanese story, Valkyria Chronicles 4 features  the main basics of rivalry, friendship, honor, dishonor, treason, redemption, revenge... and of course romance(s). Unlike the first game, you also get to know more about most of the secondary active members of your squad (and not just the five or six main characters) with short stories that triggers when the soldiers within a particular short story have been enough on the ground during one or more of the game main missions. These short stories contain a lot of "scenes" and generally one combat mission. This a very good step to give you the background of the guys actually fighting with you (their past, their motives, their hopes...etc.) so you don't have the impression to just have a bunch of people ready for the grinder.

From a gameplay point of view, the game shares a lot with its predecessor most famously the semi turned based system called BliTZ (Battle in Live Tactical Zones) by its creators. "Semi" because as I pointed in my review of the first game, as soon as you take control of one of the playable character during a combat phase the opponents are free to fire on you if you are in their range/line of sight only stopping when you take aim.

Changes to the system are mostly adjustments like some of your officers augmenting the number of your command points (how many things you can do during a turn) if you take them on the mission, this augmentation remaining valid until they are down -- which make of officers priority targets both for you and the enemy which uses the same system -- and the creation of a new class of soldier, the "grenadier" (think of it as a portable artillery, or very huge mortar). The grenadier is very slow to move but it allows you to hit things from significantly farther than other classes while remaining concealed, behind a hill for example -- the grenadier just requires at least one of your other units to have sighted the target. Unfortunately the enemy can also deploy their own grenadiers which are a real nuisance (getting hit by a mortar, if it doesn't kill you outright, will disorient and slow you down). As any other classes, grenadiers come with different types of mortars (once you acquired enough XP to allow you to develop them) the basic mortar that is mildly efficient against both armored and soft targets, the armor-piercing mortar that is massively effective against armor but not really against soft targets and the anti-personnel mortar that is the other way around.

Another rather big change introduced is to decrease the number of command points (command points or CP representing roughly the amount of units one can move during one's turn) needed to move a tank from 3 to 1 which in turn allows the player to make use of tanks more aggressively than before during a same turn (for example you may choose to move the tank once then fire twice in a row, which you definitely couldn't in the first game unless you wanted to have your other troopers staying completely idle for the turn (the amount of CP spent in the previous game for such a series of actions would have been 9 against just 3 now).

For the rest of the game, the basics of the first Valkyria Chronicles are pretty much the same. Your soldiers gain levels through training that they can perform with XP accumulated during missions, training that can only be performed at camp. You can develop weapons and tank parts with DCP, the amount of which is strictly linked to your missions performances. And like in the first game, you won't be able to develop everything or even push your soldiers to their max just in one playthrough. Weapon development and levels beyond a certain threshold are locked until after the end of the game. You may feel free to load the automatic savegame done at the end of the game and replay missions to unlock the rest plus some more surprise with a surprising "reward" system which works based on renown accumulated during mission. This particular tidbit being inaccessible on the first playthrough.

All in all from a gameplay point of view, Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a rather small increment from the last game but that's not necessarily a bad thing considering how many franchises in the past (the very recent one even) were ruined by developers wanting to go go too far. It's also a game that left me with the impression that it is significantly longer or at least more convoluted than it's predecessor, a solid story with enough turns of events and more varied combat situations and environment -- although the basics remain the same for almost all missions: seize the main enemy camp(s).

Those who played and liked the first Valkyria Chronicles will certainly like this one as it's  basically a more refined version with a bit more complexity added but not so much that you cannot get behind it. All in all a lot of fun.