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Video Game: Valkyria Chronicles II

"Lanseal's bell has tolled! Squad G, move out!"

Valkyria Chronicles II is the sequel to Valkyria Chronicles, made by Sega for the Playstation Portable and released in 2010.

EC 1937 - Two years after it barely managed to repel the East Europan Imperial Alliance, the Principality of Gallia is in disarray. As the Second Europan War rages beyond its borders between the Empire and the Atlantic Federation, its people struggle to repair the damage done by the invasion, and its military is undermanned. In addition, the revelation of the Darcsen bloodline of Princess — now Archduchess — Cordelia gi Randgriz and the entire House of Randgriz brings further confusion and turmoil. Several anti-Darcsen nobles unite under the banner of Count Gilbert Gassenarl, forming the Gallian Revolutionary Army, more commonly known as the Rebels. Intent to cleanse Gallia of Darcsens and restore order, they begin attacking Darscen settlements and soon successfully gain control of the south. Due to laws forbidding it from forming a militia to deal with internal conflict, the government is instead forced to send out cadets from the prestigious Royal Lanseal Military Academy to deal with them; here, 17-year-old Avan Hardins, who enrolled to discover what became of his supposedly-dead older brother Leon — and landed in Class G, dumping ground of Lanseal's underachievers — becomes swept up in what would be known as the Gallian Civil War...

Gameplay-wise, the meat of the improvements are in the pre-battle arrangements. Individual characters can now be changed into a variety of sub-classes using a class tree tailored to their primary class (except for Avan, who can be changed into any class). In addition, the squad's vehicle can now be customized visually and performance-wise using a wide variety of add-ons. The innovative BLiTZ battle system remains intact, the primary change being dividing the battlefield into smaller zones where the squad must capture specific bases to open up paths to the other zones. There are also far more missions and skirmishes to take compared to the original, as well as ad-hoc co-op and versus modes.

Downloadable content is scheduled to be released for the game in the near future, which may include extra missions, characters, and customization options for the vehicles. A third game in the series, Valkyria Chronicles III: Unrecorded Chronicles has been released in Japan, also for the PSP.

Has a tragically undernourished Characters Sheet. Contributions are most welcome.

List of examples:

Academy of Adventure: Lanseal, for sure. There's always something going on.
- Until you run out of events, that is.
Amazon Brigade: The number of male and female students seems to be about even, but there are a lot of girls in this game (excluding Bonus characters, Class G is made of 17 males and 18 females, including Tank Commander Lavinia Lane), so odds are good you're going to be fielding mostly-female teams with a few token males here and there.
Applied Phlebotinum: The do-anything Ragnite is further weaponized in this game in several ways.
Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only deploy up to 6 units (tank included), with a max of 5 on any given map.
Arc Number: The number 7 makes a reappearance, "G" being the 7th letter of the alphabet.
Aristocrats Are Evil: Played straight with the House of Gassenarl. Averted with Cordelia.
Artificial Stupidity: Enemy units will happily charge into suicidal amounts of interception fire, often dying without getting a shot off. They'll also rarely use grenades on crouching/crawling targets, even when multiple allies are bunched together. Enemy snipers will sometimes close in for a shot, opening themselves up to deadly counterattacks, despite having such a tremendous range advantage that they can hit from well out of their target's maximum range.
- Fairly Jusitfied, its stated that the bulk of the Rebel's are untrained. Only the Gasenarl forces are a real pros.
Awesome Personnel Carrier: Hate how tanks use 2 CP a turn? You can make it this trope instead. It's also highly practical, as it can carry two units inside for long distances and offer support fire to anyone near it. The downside: enemy Lancers are likely to one-shot you, so you may need at least an Engineer at hand.
- Also, enemy Tanks can also drop the APC in one go as well, especially on a direct hit to the back (i.e. the Radiator)... something to think about when picking out a frame (a favorite of some players is the Utility APC frame: with a maximum capacity of 12, expect to carry a lot of equipment to battle)
The Atoner: Sigrid, post Heel Face Turn.
Bag of Spilling: The justification for why most characters from the first game don't show up in the sequel as combatants: they're militia members rather than standing military forces, and Gallian law forbids the formation of a militia to deal with domestic conflict.
- There are codes to unlock characters from the first game, the Anime, and from another Sega Game, Phantasy Star Portable 2. Highlights include the Edy Detachment, Selvaria, Maximillian, Faldio, and Isara. Welkin and Alicia can also be unlocked in New Game Plus (although they're already seen beforehand as academy residents), and additional unlock codes for the western version are still being released as of late September.
Battle Butler: Heinz, who even brings tea into the classroom.
The Battle Didn't Count: One can defeat the Gassenarl siblings in earlier battles; it likely requires DLC weaponry, Level Grinding, and the "Penetrate" Order. Otherwise it's a Hopeless Boss Fight, and you're supposed to fulfil a different objective while surviving the barrage. Yes, the plot ignores you driving their HP to zero (but at least you get experience for it).
Beware the Nice Ones: Class G, with a few notable exceptions, is made up of very nice people. They include an Idiot Hero, a sweet-tempered ditz, a Battle Butler, a gambler, a Gun Nut and a Valkyria.
BFS: The weapon of choice for the Fencer class.
Bifauxnen: Alexis Hilden - She wears pants, has a Gender Blender Name, a rather flat chest and is even listed as a male under her Profile but there's still a number of giveaways about her real gender (her voice is the biggest giveaway, it's low but still definitely within a girl's octave range).
- More subtly, she will activate certain Potentials for other characters that are triggered by the presence of women. This is perhaps the biggest giveaway for the attentive player.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: You find out that Randy Hamsun is actually not as kind-hearted as he'd like you to believe.
Blood from the Mouth: Used to represent Julianna's fatal exposure to the powers of the Artificial Valkyria.
Boobs of Steel: Julianna Everhart is a physical powerhouse (she's an armored Fencer who hits like a truck) and her enormous attributes contribute to her overall imperious nature.
Boom, Headshot: Headshots are usually only a one-hit kill when performed by a sniper, but aiming for the head anyway will result in a dramatic increase of damage to the target, even if it also increases the chance of missing (depending on how unfocused the accuracy ring is).
Book Dumb: Avan, but he proves capable of surprising insight.
Born Lucky: Despite what he says, Joachim Osen. He's definitely a "glass-half-empty" type guy because no matter how fortune smiles upon him, he manages to find something to complain about. (Girls like him? He wants to be left alone! Saved from a bullet by a Pocket Protector statue? That was his favorite statue! His life is over!)
Brother-Sister Incest: One-sided on Nichol Martin's part, along with justification that he and Franca are not blood siblings.
Captain Ersatz: Vario Kraatz is one of Elvis Presley.
Capture the Flag: The only way to progress through the game is to steal enemy camps.
Cel Shading: Averted, unlike the game before it.
Character Development: A new major gameplay element involves revealing deeper aspects of your classmates' personalities by using them for extended periods of time, unlocking "Memories" skits, culminating in a Classmate Mission which, once completed, adds new Potentials or replaces negative Potentials with positive ones.
Chewing the Scenery: Of all people, Headmaster Laurence Kluivert at the end of the August mission.
Child Soldier: Some cadets are too young to be headed off into combat. Justified, since Gallian law forbids the formation of an internal-affairs militia, and the minimum age for universal conscription is fifteen. But then again, VC1's Aisha Neumann started out at age 12 and by this time she's 14 - still a year short of the conscription minimum.
- And then, there's 13-year-old Aliasse, recruited by September. Once more, justified, as she's a Valkyria.
Church Militant: Yggdism, of which Audrey Gassenarl is a devout member, and teaches the extermination of Darcsens.
Color-Coded Armies/Good Colors, Evil Colors: Your squad is always clad in light blue, and enemies (including other Lanseal cadets) wear light red; enemy Aces (Rebel or Lanseal are always clad in red). Also, a unit's class is determined by his/her stripe - Scouts are red, Shocktroopers are black, Lancers are yellow, Engineers are green, and Armor Techs are blue.
Combat Medic: Engineers, despite the misleading name, are primarily useful because they can target healing ragnaid on any friendlies they can see at a distance, as well as repair the tank. Their pistol packs a punch at close range, too.
- Vicki Baytear, a weird Wild Child with an obsession for proving how tough she is, happens to be an Engineer, despite that they're the least beefy of all classes.
Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: Appears as an Enemy Chatter line.
Continuity Nod: Loads. Welkin and Alicia, already retired, Happily Married and expecting a baby girl, are residents in the academy as a teacher for a nearby town and the school baker, respectively (from whom Avan can buy Orders), and other characters from the first game show up or are mentioned; for example, Drill Sergeant Nasty Calvaro Rodriguez returns from the first game to handle Lanseal cadets. He even mentions that someone he once handled - Jane Turner - replaced him at his old post, and was even worse than he was.
Cool Tank: Now highly customizable! You can even equip it with a constructor arm to build temporary bridges and ladders in some areas to create a handy Dungeon Bypass. Similarly, some tank parts let it cross through ice or smash boulders. You can also equip it with a variety of shoulder parts that negate some negative area effects, like a lantern to aid nighttime accuracy, a defogger to negate the range-impairing effects of fog, a heater to warm your troops up in snowy areas, and so on. Even better, enemies don't benefit from the tank's effect.
Defrosting Ice Queen: Julianna eventually eases up for Zeri. She'd rather die than admit it, though. So naturally, she doesn't admit her feelings for Zeri until she actually is dying.
- Mischlitt as well, once you complete her Classmate Mission, you even get a potential named "Thaw".
- Sofia starts out hating all men, but through her classmate mission turns into this trope. Plus she develops a crush on Avan after her Classmate Mission.
Defusing the Tyke Bomb: Avan and company almost immediately does this on Aliasse upon her full debut come April.
Department of Redundancy Department: One of the first things you hear about Lanseal Academy is that it is the finest and most prestigious military institution in Gallia. Not ten minuets later, you hear from another character that it is, in fact, the only military institution in Gallia. Whether this was an intentional joke by the developers or a glaring case of comical inattention is unknown.
Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Ragnite is used as the fuel for many weapons and explosives and it burns blue, hence why grenades, mortar fire and many other weapons in this series are blue rather than the standard yellow.
Disk One Nuke: Captured tank turrets. They are easy to obtain with a little persistence (they drop off of enemy tank aces the second or third time you beat them), they do damaged unrivaled by anything you can possibly make until a New Game Plus, and are light enough to put on the Light Tank B frame (which takes only 1 CP to move). And you can get one as early as March.
Does This Remind You of Anything?: More heavily then in the original. Listen to the sounds the ladies make when they take a hit/ get K.O'd....yeah.
Downloadable Content: Extra missions can be purchased and downloaded.
Dub Name Change: In the English release, Licorice's name was changed to Anisette because her original name was considered too punny. However, it's worth noting that anise, her new namesake, tastes like licorice.
Dummied Out: Seemingly, Anime and Manga characters Ramal Valt and Mintz are unobtainable in the Western version.
Enemy Chatter
Epiphany Therapy: Played dead straight. In October, Cosette gets cured of her color-blindness after getting it right on a Wire Dilemma, as she held her promise to Avan about not running away from her demons.
Elite Tweak: Each character has a learnable Potential for each of their advanced classes, so some truly dangerous combinations can be made with a little dedication. Avan, who can be changed to any class, can be made extremely deadly as a double-movement Fencer Elite with the possibility of attacking twice per round.
The Empire: Less prevalent than last game. They're readying themselves for another attack on Gallia.
Event Flag: The red !! marks are mandatory for getting the next mission.
Expy: A few of them, actually. Alexis Hilden is one of Lady Oscar, her background is exactly the same. And showing their work, the programmers made it possible for you to turn her into a fencer.
- Randy Hamsun is an expy of Light Yagami, of all people. He even has the evil grin and the "Exactly as planned!" phrase.
- Not to mention the obvious similarities between Vario and a certain rocker
- Nahum Dryer is probably a parody of Akio Ohtori from Revolutionary Girl Utena. They definitely got the creepiness part right and plays it for laughs.
Eyes Always Shut: Brixham, though he opens them during a few scenes. He was a sniper forced into retirement due to an eye infection.
- Inghild is another example.
Fantastic Racism: One of the goals of the Rebels is to not only overthrow Cordelia but to wage an ethnic cleansing campaign against Darcsens all because they believe they're responsible for the bad things happening to Gallia. Or at least that was Count Gilbert's convenient excuse to usurp Cordelia's place. Too bad Baldren thinks otherwise...
The Federation: Has more of an influence in the story than the last game. Townshend, the Federation ambassador, is supporting the rebels with Federation supplies.
Fragile Speedster: Scouts and Engineers have the longest running distance per turn but also tend to be the least beefy of units. Scouts toughen up dramatically as you level them up and upgrade them to "Veteran Scouts" or "Elite Scouts," as well as increasing their run distance, so they eventually evolve into Lightning Bruisers, especially if you go for headshots.
Game Breaker: Avan can learn a potential from every class he changes into, including upgraded forms. This comes out to a lot of potentials, and can lead to hilariously broken builds.
- The 1 CP tank might be an even better example, if you have the patience to grind up the upgraded enemy tank cannons.
Gameplay and Story Segregation: Averted in some respects. Character portraits for most cutscenes change to reflect the different classes you can upgrade your characters into: this is particularly easy to see on Avan since he changes classes the most.
Gentle Giant: Raymond Moen.
Good Scars, Evil Scars: Sigrid Eissel has a large faded scar up the left side of his face, going over his eye. His Profile states that he earned this from saving a friend from a fire. However, Sigrid starts out as a Rebel in Reiner's subquest, then joins the party at the end.
Gun Porn: Almost literally. Marion gets flush-faced upon discovering a new modified rifle and describing all its attributes.
Hot Springs Episode: Summer pool party time! We get fanservice for both the ladies and the gentlemen.
Hot Blooded: Is actually one of Avan's Potentials, word for word.
Hufflepuff House: Class G seems to be an in-game version, being comprised solely of the students no one else wants to teach. The rest of the classes, aside from Class A, seem to be a more straight use of this trope.
- Ironically, all students who were put in Class G were because their reception to Ragnite was unmeasurable. Their unmeasurable strengt is why they're able to survive after every other class is annihilated by Baldren's forces.
Idiot Hero: Avan manages to score a -10 on a test. He got no questions right, and was further marked off for bad penmanship.
- He is, however, intuitive, charismatic, and an excellent delegator, even coming up with some brilliant tactics at the right place and time for them. He is also flexible enough to swap classes. While Avan is certainly rather poor with books and studying, he isn't a complete idiot.
Informed Ability: Juliana regularly claims to be a tactical genius. When the player finally gets to fight her and Class A come the Laevatein Cup Finals, her idea of strategy is to rush solo towards your camps, allowing your entire squad to gang up on her on the next turn. She is a Fencer, a class that excels at frontal assault, but can't survive forever by rushing around. She spells it out later: she figured victory for her team was inevitable as long as she herself was perfect.
Internet Backlash: Moving the sequel to PSP did not sit well in the west.
Intrepid Reporter: Lotte Netzel. Miss Ellet would be so proud, dude!
Jerkass Façade: Erik Kampmann. He's got a thing for feeding birds.
Late Arrival Spoiler: The very premise of this game alone revolves around the fallout following the revelation of Cordelia's (and by extension the entire House of Randgriz's) Darcsen heritage from two years prior.
Let's Play: Someone has started a satirical chronicle of the game's story, a la Xenogears: A Rope of Robots, over at [1].
Level Grinding: Given the random nature of Credit awards, be prepared to redo the same levels over and over and over and over again if you want to unlock most advanced classes. Fortunately, the base-level upgrading using EXP applies evenly to all soldiers, so even underused characters can reap some of the benefits of your efforts.
Lighter and Softer: In comparison to VC1, the sequel is a lot more lighthearted in tone, despite the Rebels' stated mission of ethnic cleansing.
- Subverted for awhile come August, when the Rebels invade Landseal, and the massive V2 onslaught Class G loses a bit of their newly gained confidence earned by winning the Laevatein Cup last month. Juliana dies fighting Dirk, who is then revealed to be what looks like a super-powered zombie Leon, Laurence Kluivert isn't the kind old man he seems to be and kills himself upon learning that his papers on the creation of Artificial Valkyria were stolen, and Baldren Gassenarl kills his father early the next month for selling out to the Federation.
Little Miss Badass: Aliasse.
Little No: Avan upon finding out Dirk is his brother Leon.
Loads and Loads of Characters: And more fleshed out than their VC1 counterparts, too! The more you use characters, the more you find out about them, and you'll eventually unlock a specific mission for them that either adds new Potentials, replaces negative ones, or both.
Luckily My Shield Will Protect Me: Armored Techs and Fencers are nigh-invulnerable to conventional arms as long as they point their shield at the enemy. The only thing that can put a serious dent in them are high explosives or other melee classes.
Made of Iron: Members of your Tech Corps and its upgraded forms all have this in battle.
Magic Music: Anthem Corps, Anthem Elites and Melodists can buff allies (the former two) and debuff enemies (the latter).
Mexican Standoff: September.
Mighty Glacier: Armored Techs have bulletproof shields and big nasty wrenches for closing with the enemy and smacking them, but they sadly have a rather low walking range. One of their sub-classes, Fencers, have even stronger melee attacks but move even slower. Snipers similarly have a low walking range, but can blow away most soldiers from afar in one well-aimed shot.
- Snipers and Fencers can change into AT Snipers and Maulers respectivly, who are even slower, but can one-shot any armored vehicle that isn't a Heavy Tank!
- Speaking of Heavy Tanks, they themselves can take a large amount of damage AND dish it out. They cost at least 3 CP to move, though, so you won't be spamming them very often.
Mood Whiplash: August started as a summer pool party, with Class G rehearsing for a School Play for the School Festival, even as they bask in the glory of their shocking victory over Class A during last month's Laevatein Cup finals. It ended in tragedy for the entire school, with many students killed during the Rebels' surprise V2 attack, Class A Representative Julianna fatally shot (just when she's starting to mellow out to Class G) by Dirk Gassenarl, who is revealed to be a "zombified" Leon Hardins, and Headmaster Kluivert committing suicide upon learning that research papers on the creation of Artificial Valkyria - of which Leon and Julianna were test subjects - under his and Dr. Clementia Foerster's possession were also stolen.
More Dakka: The Gunner sub-class for Shocktroopers doesn't even try to aim. Instead, they unleash a random torrent of bullets in a horizontal sweep. Of course, said bullets are pretty punishing on a hit anyway. There is nothing worse to face on interception fire than a Gunner (hence why it's a good idea to use them on defense - they can cut down just about anything).
Not so Different: Gilbert and Baldren may frequently clash concerning their ideologies, methods and relations with the Federation, but both are, as noted by Audrey, hard-headed in their own way. And even if Baldren ultimately killed his own father for what he perceived to be him selling out to the Federation, he has no qualms retreating into Federation territory once the war turned against him.
- One skit involving Avan studying under Zeri's tutelage reveals that the Empire and the Federation are both equally bent on claiming territories, though in different ways — the Empire prefers hostile takeovers, while the Federation uses table negotiations. Avan invokes this trope concerning them. Even Zeri is surprised that such an Idiot Hero like him could have his rare moments of intellectual epiphany.
Oh My Gods!: One of Avan's expressions is "To Hel with it!"
Previous Player Character Cameo: Most obviously Welkin and Alicia. Edy Nelson cameos at the end of her younger sister Anisette's Memories skits and during an Everyday Matters skit at the Store. Jane Turner, Homer Peron and Largo Potter also get mentioned. It should be noted that, with the exception of Jane, you can get them all as bonus (non-canonical) playable characters via a New Game Plus or password (including supposedly-dead characters like Isara, Faldio, Maximilian and Selvaria).
No Range Like Point Blank Range: Painfully, painfully subverted. Even if you are literally breathing on each other, there's stil a chance that your target'll hit the deck and avoid all, or at least most, of the damage you just threw at their face. Particularly painful during certain missions that turn a normal Wakeup Call Boss into That One Boss. (Admittedly, this can be negated by achieving surprise, which requires positioning and/or special scenarios, but good luck doing that with a sniper, for example.)
Old Save Bonus: Moving Valkyria Chronicles save data to the PSP's memory stick gets you the late Isara Gunther as a playable character. Somehow.
Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Class G serves as the dumping ground for the lowest rung of Lanseal's cadets and is thus composed of a bunch of really eccentric and dysfunctional cadets.
- Subverted to a degree: all Darcsen cadets (Zeri, Jugin, Magari and Mischlitt, to be exact) are actually gifted in the arts of war, but are dumped in Class G just because they're Darcsens. However, Class G basically accepts them without prejudice, and even those who can't stand them eventually warm up to them. This is even reflected in their Potentials, which upgrade from "Darcsen Hater" to "Reconciliation."
- Another subversion: turns out that Class G's students have unclear aptitude results, which may explain why they can change classes, especially Avan, making it harder to pigeonhole each student to an Artificial Valkyria-amplified role.
Randomly Drops: The various Credits needed for your characters to promote to another class. Some of the materials you get from battles to craft custom weapons are also randomly determined.
Redemption Equals Death: Non-villain example—resident rich Alpha Bitch Juliana is killed just as she's actually starting to warm up to Class G and Zeri in particular.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: Avan and Zeri. The former is a Hot Blooded redhead who doesn't seem to be capable of thinking about more than what food he's hungry for; the latter is a reserved, cold and bitter guy with glasses and blue hair doing his damndest to work past the anti-Darcsen prejudices leveled at him. Between them is Cosette, an extremely girly blonde who just wants everyone to get along.
Religion of Evil: Yggdism, of which Audrey Gassenarl is a devout member.
The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The Rebels are mostly led by reactionary nobles who take umbrage at the leader of the country revealing her Darcsen ancestry, all of which are in turn manipulated by a nobleman who only desires to usurp Cordelia's place and is willing to turn to the Federation for security against the Empire.
Royals Who Actually Do Something: Archduchess Cordelia is insistent on being this, rather than hide in the safety of her castle. She visits a lot of war-torn villages and dispenses humanitarian aid. She even goes out of her way to leave her APC and congratulate Avan for safely escorting her. She even personally leads the Navy in blocking the Dandarius with Baldren onboard from entering Federation territory during December.
Samus Is a Girl: Alexis. Though the voice and the unisex name that tends to be more popular in girls really should have tipped you off.
Say My Name:
- Cosette screams out Avan's name after he shoots himself and passes out from blood loss during his gambit to force hematophobic Cosette into tending to the wounded.
- Zeri yells out Julianna's at the end of the August mission. Similarly, because of her racism, Juliana has trouble saying Zeri's name until her deathbed.
Shout Out: A weird one to Death Note's Light the Swimming Instructor, giving us Zeri the Swimming Instructor. Note that this doesn't count as an Ascended Meme since it appears in a different series than which spawned the meme.
Zeri: "Aliasse! You call that swimming? Don't make me laugh. Make sure you extend your arm all the way. Legs straight. Now kick!"
- Cosette also comments that Zeri's swimsuit was designed as such because he thinks "water resistance is huge".
Stalker with a Crush: Melissa has it bad for Zeri and clandestinely follows him everywhere. She is terrifyingly knowledgeable about everything that happens around him; he doesn't even seem to know she exists.
- To great amusement, Sofia is one too, towards Avan of all people, after her character mission.
Stealth Hi/Bye: Melissa, to the point where her default portrait is her sneaking around the side of the screen half out of view, just to scare the crap out of you.
Stealth Pun: Anisette's English name references her Japanese one, "Licorice."
Super Soldier: Project Valhalla was intended to create artificial Valkyria to defend Gallia against both the Empire and the Alliance. The research data for this project gets stolen... twice.
Took a Level in Badass: Class G slowly levels itself up in this throughout the game from its regarded place as the dumping ground of the academy's unwanted.
Team Pet: Jarde, Avan's pet bird.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Averted, shockingly enough, for most of the game. Enemies no longer have supernatural accuracy at long ranges, cannot dodge attacks made from behind, and no longer single out crit areas (heads on infantry and radiators of vehicles). However, they will know if your camp is unoccupied and will run in to capture it even if its at night and there's no way in Hel they should be able to know that.
- Actually, the computer will charge your camp sometimes during night missions even if it's heavily defended. Their AI apparently says "Charge their camp and make sure", not "hey, they're gone, let's take it".
The Man Behind the Man: Dr. Clementia Foerster was responsible for upbringing another Valkyria who fell for an Imperial prince. In other words, she had Selvaria Bles as a test subject. Subverted in that you never actually face her, however.
Theme Naming: The player-controlled militia squad in the first game was Squad 7. This game's player squad is Class G, "G" being the seventh letter of the alphabet.
Tomboy and Girly Girl: Rene and Magari, respectively, with Rene being a short haired gingerself proclaimed sports-nut and Magari being an introverted, shy bookworm. Some of the interactions between them (and other characters) may suggest a romantic relationship (Rene physically attacking a guy who approached Magari, thinking he was trying to hit on her. Followed by Magari saying she doesn't like guys. Followed by Rene saying how cute Magari is, while blushing. Followed by Magari saying she loves Rene...), but it's very clear that they are at the very least very good friends.
Too Dumb to Live: Oh, Avan. Find out that mental trauma from parents death has made friend afraid of blood and colorblind. Shoot yourself to force her to get over her fear of blood by operating on you. He survives and his plan worked, but a single mistake could have changed that.
Underestimating Badassery: Avan time and time again proves that he and Class G are more than capable of beating the odds, but for awhile no one is willing to take this fact seriously. Though being led by an Idiot Hero further reinforces the appearance that they're destined to fail, if nothing else Avan is an excellent motivator, and he knows how to delegate the right job to the right people and let events take their course.
Unusable Enemy Equipment: V2s are a special class exclusive to the Revolutionary Army.
Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Early in the game, Squad G encounters Aliasse, a mysterious girl who possesses powers and abilities akin to the Valkyria, mythical godlike beings. When they realize that she lives in Lanseal, rather than trying to find out more about her power, or why she's here, they focus on the far more pressing concern of teaching her how to play soccer.
- She's got a strong case of What Is This Thing You Call Love?, too, betraying that she's probably a Tyke Bomb of some sort.
Verbing Nouny: Classmate missions "Rescuing Pete", "Rescuing Nichol" and "Protecting Sofia".
Video Game Caring Potential: Just like the first game, you can't help but grow attached to your Ragtag Bunch of Misfits. The fact that they all get unique scenes and missions that further expand their personalities and backstories definitely helps.
Video Game Cruelty Potential: On the inverse, the fact that permanent deaths have been removed has definitely opened the door for Damon-esque—or even borderline Stalin- or Lenin-esque—tactics without suffering any major repercussions beyond the fallen soldier being hospitalized (i.e. becoming unavailable for three missions).
- Furthermore, you can only unlock potentials by fulfilling the normal requirement to activate them. Potentials such as Dud Mine and Clear Thought require you to purposely endanger your characters by making them trip mines or sending them into the middle of enemy fire.
Walk the Earth: [[spoiler Avan decides to do this after graduation, to help with reconstruction.]]
Wake Up Call Boss: Hooo-boy. The game's not too hard until it hits you in the face with a couple of these. The boss for March is a nearly-invulnerable Super Prototype with an energy shield and powerful energy rays that he can blast you with, and he's supported by a number of somewhat-weaker copies of himself. The boss for April is even worse. He's got a bulletproof shield and a kill-anything sword like a Fencer, but runs faster and farther, and has a machine gun to blow you away with interception fire if you run past him. He can destroy your tank in one hit. He can teleport between maps and can use a special Order to instantly respawn any troops on the map that you've destroyed. Fortunately your objective in both missions isn't to directly face the boss, but you're in trouble either way.
- August. Dirk. *sob*
Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World: They're all military cadets, and they're also expected to go out into battle with the rebels in real combat from time to time. This effectively merges the "go to school" with "save the ~~world~~ country" parts into one.
Wham Episode: August. The Rebels directly attack Lanseal, hundreds of students are slaughtered, Dirk brutally murders Julianna shortly after its revealed she was part of an Artificial Valkyria project, Dirk turns out to be an apparently zombified Leon Hardins, and to top it all off, Headmaster Kluivert is revealed to have sponsored a project to create Artificial Valkyria (such as Leon and Julianna), then committed suicide when he finds the research papers stolen by the Rebels.
- Earlier is the Yuell mission, in which we that Cossette's sunny demeanor is all a mask and that she's really a horrifically traumatized (both mentally and emotionally) wreck due to the deaths of her family.
Why Did It Have To Be Blood?: Cosette, ironically enough an Engineer, developed hematophobia (fear of blood) and psychosomatically loses the ability to see the color red. Not a good thing for someone in that profession.
Wild Child: Vicky.
Wire Dilemma: Played dead straight, right down to cutting the red wire and the cutter in question being the colorblind Cosette.
Woman Scorned: Sofia.
Wrench Wench: Tank Commander and mechanic Lavinia Lane is cheerful, if a bit gruff, and not too hard on the eyes.
Yandere: Melissa is willing to skirmish with the Zeri Fan Club for some pictures of him.
You All Look Familiar: Except for class A and G, almost all of the male Lanseal students seen in the game have the same two looks.
You Are A Tree, Charlie Brown: The academy has a little play where they re-enact Welkin's personal Crowning Moment of Awesome early in the first game, namely driving his tank under a river. Their prop department must be nonexistent because they have to have two guys play the tank (with Avan-as-Welkin sitting on top of poor Zeri and Raymond).
You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Dark-blue hair (and, less obviously, a pink-and-white patterned piece of cloth somewhere on their body) is the mark of a Darcsen, instantly singling them out for prejudice.
- Juliana has pink hair and Aliasse has light blue hair as well...