Valkyria Chronicles

To begin, the art direction in this game is amazing. Units and environments look great, and movement and visual effects are interesting and appealing. A character running will shake their armor plates, grenades, and ammo packs - the attention to detail is great. The designs of the classes are also creative. I have a soft spot for knights charging with exploding lances against tanks. The characters were fine. The squad had acceptable camaraderie and I could see the main characters slowly becoming friendlier to each other. The dialogue is stilted though, and character motivations are weak. The main message of the story is also weak, beyond a general anti war stance. Unfortunately, the rest of the game is not as spectacular. The way combat is structured heavily disincentivizes any defence. Ambushes and defensive positioning are worse than useless, and intercepting fire is hopeless except for poorly acting AI. The only way to succeed is to attack, and attack alone. I expected a combat style similar to xcom or other tactical games, and that soured my experience with the game, though that is not actually the fault of the game. The Command Point system is fundamentally flawed from my point of view. Allowing units to move multiple times per turn with a minor AP debuff for multiple moves allows for the AI and the player to spam units like scouts and snipers for unfair wins or losses. If each unit was only able to act once per turn, there would be better balance. Also, a reliance on multiple camps means that having all your units you plan to use at the start of the mission is wasteful, and I find that having a full roster on mission begin is never adviseable. That being said, it does allow for flexible responses to the condition of the map at any round for resupply or reinforcement. The map design is either fun and engaging, or simply terrible. Some missions are immersive and challenging, and others are a slog to play at all. I find that missions which stick to fundamentals and open ended strategy were more interesting, while setpiece missions are either mediocre or downright awful to play. Most boss battles are either boring or frustrating, with one exception being a certain enemy tank commander in the late game. What frustrates me the most is that I feel like this game is agonizingly close to being great, but so much holds it back. I finished the game, but it did not bring me pleasure to do so. I would not recommend this title. Perhaps other games in the series would be better.