PS3: Valkyria Chronicles Review

Valkyria Chronicles is a tactical strategy RPG set in a conflict setting which resembles Europe. It was released on 24 April 2008 in Japan. Europe and US versions follow after it on 31 October 2008 and 4 November 2008 respectively.

You play as Lieutenant Welkin Gunther, son of a previous war hero. As Welkin you are in command of squad 7 of the militia through varies mission setting from thick jungles to the harsh desert wasteland.

The game looks gorgous with SEGA shader technique that makes CG movies look like it was a water painted scene with ingame graphics using Cell-shading.

Valkyria Chronicles manages to combine turn-based strategy elements with real-time gameplay into the combat system. Missions move in rounds and player and enemy takes turns to control their units. Apart from that you have to control the units yourself, for instance as a sniper you would have to aim for a head shot to ensure maximum effectiveness.

The strong points of this game is gameplay and the character involvement. Many of the dialogues are voice over, and you can choose to have japanese voice over with english subtitles.

The weak points of this game has to be that the story moves very slowly, and it may sometimes feel like a drag. However, the story is amazing storyline with some twist.

I am not a big fan of turn-based strategy RPG as they are usually slow, but Valkyria Chronicles kept me hooked till the end. It is probably one of the best strategy RPG I have ever played.

Final score: 9/10

~ by rezwan20 on 30 June 2009, Tuesday.