Valkyria Chronicles Review

Today I will be reviewing the tactical role-playing game Valkyria Chronicles. Set in an
alternate version of Europe the game centers around tank commander Welkin
Gunther and his squad as they seek to protect their homeland from the invasion of
the East Europan Imperial Alliance. All in all the story is quite good and the
characters are well developed and enjoyable.

As for the game mechanics when I first played this game I was expecting something
like Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaia but while it is in the same family as them it adds
a more modern styling to this classic genre. The first thing I noticed was the lack of a
battle grid, instead it uses a system of Command Points or "CP". Each unit uses a
set amount of "CP" to perform actions during the player turn, the selected unit can
move to the full extent of its movement gauge and fire its weapon once. However
unlike other games of this type a single character can be selected more than once
so long as you have the "CP" to do so.

Next I will discuss the unit types. There are 6 unit types to choose from, Tank
Commander, Scout, Shocktrooper, Lancer, Sniper, and Engineers. Your Tank
Commander is your primary unit and must survive every battle, aside from that they
are capable of decent anti-armour damage, as well as damaging groups of enemy
infantry. Scouts are lightly armoured and armed with a bolt action rifle, scouts have
the largest movement gauge out of any of the unit that you can choose.
Shocktroopers are medium armoured and armed with machineguns, they are best
used for dealing with scouts, snipers and other shocktroopers. Lancers are heavily
armoured and armed with anti-tank rocket lances, they can be used quite effectivly
against tanks but can also take out infantry well enough. As for Snipers, I think they
are rather self explanitory, light armour and long range. Engineers are also lightly
armoured and armed but have a number of uses from setting up sand bags to
repairing your tank. I have foudn it is always best to have an engineer following your
tank to keep it fully repaired.

The game also includes a decent upgrade and training system to improve your troops along with skirmish missions where the sole purpose to to gain the in game currency along with experience. All in all this is a very enjoyable game, the animation style is cute yet not to cute and the gameplay is quite good.