Valkyria Chronicles General

I still haven’t finished the game, but that seems like an overreaction.

That's absolutely an overreaction, since I don't remember her doing anything particularly terrible at all. There are plenty of other characters to dislike in 4! Pace yourself, or you'll be tired out by the end.

She just got away with outright assaulting her CO in a situation that was more or less entirely her own fault. And they played it for comedy.

Oh I'm fine, and I'm overall enjoying the game so far. The Squad Stories are great (despite the grinding to get at them) the balance and improvements (especially the smoother tank controls) are a huge leap over the first game. I'm sure I'll find plenty of (barely) diet Nazis to hate later, but I get to shoot them by the hundreds.

No one else in Squad E really stands out as that awful (aside from Raz, but his writing is actually good most of the time), and any mechanically bad Potentials (I see Pacifist and Stage Fright, and stuff like that, and bunch them until the Squad Story hopefully removes them).

Edited by Rationalinsanity on Jun 12th 2019 at 9:28:46 AM

Yeah, that did feel out of place - but I don't see it as her fault, but the writers'. It's one of those weird hoary anime tropes VC in particular likes to throw in for some reason, and when that trope comes into play you just kind of have to sigh, roll your eyes, and wait for the characters to go back to normal.

Oddly, the character I disliked the most from the allied side was probably Angie. Not because of her as a person, but from how obvious her appearance makes the whole Powered by a Forsaken Child thing if you're familiar with anime storylines at all.

I will also say that VC4 in particular feels very bad about the whole "oh hey, sure you destroyed the enemy boss in two turns in the actual gameplay, but now we're back in cutscene land, where he suplexed every one of your soldiers individually, without breaking a sweat".

Wait until you meet Vancey, who has the worst potential in the game until her squad story that requires the obligatory "grind a million money" character and replaces it with one of the best in the game. Her other personal potentials are still all bad, but they're pretty much meaningless drawbacks. Even before then, though, she has one of the best stat blocks of any shocktrooper in the game.

I'm just happy nobody in Squad E was as grating as Welkin, Alicia, and Avan.

Edited by Balmung on Jun 12th 2019 at 9:12:19 AM

Found my old review post from right after I finished the game, if anyone's interested.

I'm probably just sticking with Simon as my main non-Raz Shocktrooper, because he's a goddamn Borderlands bandit in the wrong game.

Hey Welkin's just a dork... who the Narrative constantly wants to prove wrong every time he tries to make a point

Alicia is not that bad till the whole I'm not a woman anymore thing then She's kinda grating cause it really wants you to feel for her... but She hasn't done anything to actually merit this type of dehumanization... so it really just comes off like she's Wangsting and throwing a suicidal temper tantrum

Avan...Avan... okay Even I can't defend Avan

VC 2 got alot of problems, but the writing is probably the most typical' anime Tropes U can call everybody's character arc from a mile away

VC 2 would just need an outright overhaul/remake if you wanted to release it for pc... then again a updated VC 1 with New content would be more likely then VC 2 getting the time of day

Honestly, I can defend Avan more than Welkin and Alicia for one simple reason: Avan is actually supposed to be an idiot. The only thing that really goes above and beyond the call of him being a run of the mill complete numbskull is the shooting himself to force Cosette to get over herself thing. Welkin's supposed to be a genius, but he acts like an idiot most of the time anyway and Alicia's entire angst arc is badly handled to the point that she seems to be the only one responsible for dehumanizing her and pushing her towards the whole plan-that-definitely-would-have-ended-the-war-but-undermines-the-aesopp, and it makes Welkin look like a dumbass again for not noticing it until she was about to become a living atom bomb.

Welkin does for the most part come up with several plans that do payoff, Granted you don't have to like the eccentric nature of how he comes up with them thats fair Welkin's presented as Idealistically naive and optimistic which yeah can rub people the wrong way when your trying to go for War Is Hell

But I never found him presented as an idiot IE making dumb decisions for the sake of dumb decisions 'unlike Avan' well atleast till the Alicia stuff at the end happens and it just comes off like he doesn't want to admit the hard truth of the matter

'Then again seeing how anti- nuke Japan is and how modern people are suppose to see Nukes as an unnecessary evil that is unconditionally bad no matter what... Welkin just refusing to admit that yeah he needed the nuclear powered maiden to win the war might be intentional... then VC 4 turns around and does the no nuke thing anyway.

Its just mostly the narrative turns against him the moment he tries to make a moral point once we reach Naggiar the writers realized they wrote themselves into a corner when it comes to Selvaria

So we agree that Alicia is fine up till post chapter 15

Avan's not really a character so much he's a checklist of Shonen Hero tropes

Yeah, I'm still not sure what VC1's stance on nukes is - it seems like it wants to say Nukes Are Bad, but most of the advances in the war are due to Valkyrias, and there are several places where they're needed to stand against either another Valkyria or a similar superweapon (which just kind of puts me in mind of the Nazi superweapon programs, if they had actually ever been developed). In that sense, VC4 has a much clearer message and handles the question of the nuke analogue much better.