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

Valkyria Chronicles II (known in Japan as Valkyria of the Battlefield 2: Gallian Royal Military Academy) is the sequel to Valkyria Chronicles, made by Sega for the Playstation Portable and released in 2010.

Its story takes place in EC 1937, two years after Valkyria Chronicles. The Principality of Gallia was able to repel a massive invasion by the Imperial Alliance, but at great cost to its infrastructure and military. While the Second Europan War rages on beyond its borders, Gallia struggles to rebuild itself.

The revelation that the ruling house of Gallia was actually a Darcsen bloodline has sent shockwaves throughout the nation. A civil war has erupted as several anti-Darscen nobles unite under the banner of Count Gilbert Gassenarl and form the Gallian Revolutionary Army (colloquially known as "the Rebels") to purge Darcsen influence from Gallia. As the law of Universal Conscription forbids deployment of the Militia against internal strife, the government of Gallia is forced to deploy cadets from the prestigious Lanseal Royal Military Academy to help quell the Rebel threat.

One of these students is seventeen-year-old Avan Hardins, a Hot-Blooded but Book Dumb cadet who enrolled to discover the truth of what happened to his elder brother Leon, an ace student who supposedly died on a top-secret mission. Placed into "Class G", the dumping ground for Lanseal's underachievers and eccentrics, Avan is swept up into what will become known as the Gallian Civil War and must fight not only for the sake of his team-mates, but for the country as a whole.

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), as well as adding a new class, the Armored Tech, a heavily armored Close-Range Combatant that deals massive damage and automatically blocks bullets coming from the front, and also has the ability to disable mines. 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 was released for the game, which included extra missions, characters, and customization options for the vehicles. Followed in production order by Valkyria Chronicles III: Unrecorded Chronicles.

There are some manga adaptations based on the game as well that are available only in Japan.

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


Valkyria Chronicles II provides examples of:

  • Academy of Adventure: Lanseal, for sure. There's always something going on.
  • All There in the Manual: The World Artworks art book reveals not only a lot of character information, but also art and specs for all the weapons, armor, vehicles, and medals, signatures of some characters, an elaboration on the tank labeling system, items found around the game, the layout of Lanseal and closeup shots of each featured location, and concept art for all the characters.
  • Always in Class One: Inverted. Class G is the last class of the academy.
  • Amazon Brigade: While the number of cadets is rather evenly balanced (excluding Bonus characters, Class G is made of 17 males and 18 females, including Tank Commander Lavinia Lane), it is certainly easy enough to deploy one of these.
  • Applied Phlebotinum: The do-anything Ragnite is further weaponized in this game in several ways.
  • Arbitrary Gun Power: Every weapon has two separate damage stats, one for infantry and the other for armor (vehicles, fixed weapons and Armored Tech shields). This can mean a giant hammer can rip apart a tank with just one hit, but will only give infantry a mild bruise.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only deploy up to 6 units total on the entire battlefield (tank included), with a max of 5 on any specific zone. In addition, a maximum of 18 to 20 units (depending on story progression) can be brought to the battle.
  • 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, Marion, Nahum and Noel.
  • Artificial Stupidity:
    • Enemy infantry will happily charge into suicidal amounts of interception fire, often dying without getting a shot off.
    • Enemy units rarely ever use their grenades, even on crouching/crawling and/or bunched up targets.
    • 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.
    • Enemy tanks will sometimes not fire after they move.
    • The AI will rarely have a unit make multiple moves in a single turn, even if it has ample CP available.
    • The AI fails to effectively utilize Ragna-crates, or even fail to avoid them. AI has been known to draw counterfire, and then try to use a Ragna-crate as cover. Given the fact they are Made of Explodium, this doesn't end well for them.
  • Artistic License – Biology: One cannot become colorblind because of a mentally traumatic event. One also cannot simply overcome colorblindness. Its something you are either born with or gain through brain damage, and is permanent.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • The V2s. While powered they are almost immune to anything weaker than a tank's main gun (and their shields can often deflect those too), can shred any of your units except armor techs with interception fire and can do massive damage with their guns. However, they require such huge amounts of power to function that they require the aid of rather fragile supply vehicles. If those get knocked out, they become sitting ducks and utterly helpless against armor or the aforementioned armor techs. In fact, they burn ragnite so fast that Class G completely cripples the rebel war effort by cutting their supply lines. Dirk, the first prototype, is much more powerful and even when unpowered can rip apart anything that stands in his line of fire, but he was so impractically expensive to make that the rebellion could only afford one of his kind.
    • Heavy tanks in general. Sure, they have a lot of health and armor and have enough cap to mount the heaviest turrets and still have room left to add some extras or even MORE armor and health, but they cost an unreasonable 3CP to activate. Very rarely will you be able to kill something with your heavy tank that you couldn't have taken out by activating your infantry or a light tank three times, it is not often that the AI hits you so hard that the extra armor and health will matter that much and, since you can only move when you activate, you will never be able to afford to move very far with it.
  • Awesome Personnel Carrier/Tank Goodness: Class G gets a customizable vehicle commanded by Lavinia Lane in February, which can either be a tank or APC. Both types can pack all sorts of special equipment that lets you negate environmental effects, build bridges and ladders for a Dungeon Bypass, and more.
    • Tanks are very tough (both in armor and HP), are completely invulnerable to bullets unless they strike the radiator, and can equip heavier turrets and armor. They're also slow, can't carry any soldiers and most models take more than 1 CP to activate.
    • APCs are fast, only use 1 CP to activate and can all carry at least 2 soldiers with them. They can't equip most of the heavier turrets, are vulnerable to bullets from the sides and rear, and have rather wimpy armor and HP.
      • The Escort APC, however, is decidedly not awesome in any fashion. It can't be customized in any way, only packs a wimpy 7-shot MG, has paper for armor, can't carry any soldiers and takes 2 CP to activate instead of the 1 CP for every other APC. Its only saving grace is that it has as much HP as early medium tanks.
    • Audrey Gassenarl's personal tank, the Geirolul, comes with reinforced armor and enough rockets to barrage an entire zone at once. The turret-mounted rocket tubes are also deliberately arranged to resemble a pipe organ, due to Audrey's religious fervor.
  • The Atoner: Sigrid, post Heel–Face Turn.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Enemy Leaders and Bosses tend to have higher stats and better equipment than the rank-and-file.
  • Balance Buff: The new map design and battle system of VCII serves as an effective buff for almost every single unit other than scouts. Instead of having to wait a turn to summon reinforcements, we can immediately send them at midway bases, mooting their low mobility compared to scouts and allowing players to easily use them when they're most needed.
  • Battle Butler: Heinz, who even brings tea into the classroom.
  • The Battle Didn't Count: The Gassenarl siblings can be beaten when they're first encountered, but all this does is force them to retreat from the battle. You at least get extra EXP for doing this.
    • This trope applies to every single instance in which they are encountered, including the missions in which you explicitly need to take them out to win, the following cinematic showing them completely unharmed so they can have a "proper" death in a cutscene. Dirk even says "damage minimal" in the after-battle cutscene just to rub in how pointless the preceding battle was.
  • 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. They are also all incredibly badass.
  • BFS: The Greatswords, weapons of choice for the Fencer Elite class. The smaller Swords used by regular Fencers aren't exactly tiny, either.
  • 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: Randy Hamsun is not as kind-hearted as he'd like everyone to believe.
  • Blood from the Mouth: Used to represent Juliana's fatal exposure to the powers of the Artificial Valkyria.
  • 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.
    • Best exemplified in one skit where he receives his grades. He earned straight As for all his combat subjects, but for everything else? Straight Cs.
  • Boring, but Practical: The Light Tank B. It's small, lightly armored, not particularly fast and the small cap means it cannot be extensively customized. However it's the only tank hull that doesn't get bogged down in hard terrain and, most importantly, it only costs 1CP to activate, which means it can move and fire twice as often and, unlike APCs, is still impervious to small arms fire and can equip the more powerful turrets. Couple it with the light but extremely powerful Ace turrets and you can clear entire levels using only the tank.
  • 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! Getting second place and win a Pocket Protector statue? Whine that it is a shame that he only got this! Saved from a bullet by said statue? That was his favorite statue! His life is over!)
  • Brother–Sister Incest: One-sided on Nichol Martin's part, along with the justification that he and Franca are not blood siblings.
  • Cel Shading: Averted, unlike the game before it. The PSP doesn't have the processing power to make it happen, or the resolution to make it look good.
  • 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: Headmaster Laurence Kluivert at the end of the August mission.
  • Child Soldier: Some cadets should be too young to head into combat. Justified, since the minimum age for universal conscription in Gallia is 15. 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. There's also 13-year-old Aliasse, recruited by September. However, it's justified, as she's a Valkyria.
  • Church Militant/Religion of Evil: Yggdism, which teaches the extermination of Darcsens and of which Audrey Gassenarl is a devout member.
  • Color Blind Confusion: The game combines this with Artistic License – Biology by having one character, The Medic Cosette becoming colorblind after witnessing their parent's death, making them unable to see the color red. They, naturally, get faced with a Wire Dilemma and not only overcome it but are cured of their color blindness in the process. Needless to say while color blindness can sometimes be caused by factors other than genetics (usually physical trauma to the brain or retina) witnessing a traumatic incident isn't one of them, and Epiphany Therapy isn't known to cure it.
  • Color-Coded Armies: Your squad is always clad in light blue, while enemies (including other Lanseal cadets) wear light red; enemy Aces (Rebel or Lanseal) are always clad in dark red, Leaders wear helmets in the same shade of red, and certain special units that provide extra crafting materials when killed wear yellow helmets. In addition, each unit class for Lanseal has differently colored stripes - Scouts are red, Shocktroopers are black, Lancers are yellow, Engineers are green, and Armor Techs are blue.
  • Combat Medic: Engineers, despite the somewhat 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 squad's tank with their wrench. Their pistol packs a punch at close range, too.
  • Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: Appears as an Enemy Chatter line.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Averted, shockingly enough, for the most part. Enemies no longer have supernatural accuracy at long ranges, cannot dodge attacks made from behind (with the exception of certain bosses), and no longer single out crit areas (heads on infantry and radiators of vehicles).
  • 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).
    • Other characters from the first game show up or are mentioned; for example, Calvaro Rodriguez returns from the first game to handle the Lanseal cadets. He even mentions that someone he once handled - Jane Turner - replaced him at his old post and is even nastier than he was.
    • The World Artworks artbook reveals that Potter Farms supplies Lanseal with all of its produce.
  • Cool Airship: The massive airship the Rebels used to attack Lanseal in August has a giant metal ram and the ability to deploy large amounts of V2s and Supply Vehicles. It's never named in-game, but the World Artworks artbook reveals that it's named the "Perkunas" and is the first airship ever in Europa.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Some captured Rebel weapons overly focus on a damage against a certain unit type, rendering them near-useless against units of the other type.
  • Curbstomp Battle: The two cutscenes in which Aliasse unleashes her full powers on the V2s show that most Artificial Valkyrur can't hold a candle to a real one.
  • Decapitated Army: Battles that require the death of the enemy commander will have the enemy forces immediately retreat once you kill them, even if they were winning.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen:
    • Juliana 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. The Potential she gets is even 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: Class G performs this on Aliasse.
  • 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.
  • Disc-One Nuke: Captured tank turrets. They are easy to obtain with a little persistence (they have a chance of dropping off of enemy tank Aces after the first time you beat them), they deal damage 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). 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.
  • 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.
  • Enemy Chatter: During actual field combat alongside chatter from your own troops, though battles against other Lanseal classes lack both.
  • 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 classes, so some truly dangerous combinations can be made with a little dedication. For example, Avan can be made extremely deadly as a Fencer Elite with the possibility of moving and 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 story mission.
  • Expy:
    • Alexis Hilden is one of Lady Oscar, her background is exactly the same. She can even become 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.
    • The Gassenarl family are basically Zabis:
      • They're led by their father, a noble who is behind more than it seems at first, who is killed by his eldest son when it appears that he's going to stop part of the war effort.
      • In addition to being similar physically to Gihren Zabi and being the eldest (but untrusted) son, Baldren also killed his father for not being vile enough.
      • The next child in each family is a daughter who utilizes experimental armor and is unphased by her father's murder, though Audrey is certainly a lot nicer.
      • And finally, the youngest being The Big Guy and also the most sympathetic of the siblings, though Dirk isn’t actually related.
  • Eyes Always Shut:
    • Brixham, though he opens them during a few scenes. Justified, as he has an eye infection which forced him into retiring from active combat.
    • Inghild is another example.
  • F--: One minor event shows Avan receiving a -10 on an exam for having no correct answers and losing points for penmanship.
  • Fantastic Racism: One of the goals of the Rebels is 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.
  • Fire-Breathing Weapon: Commandos have a flamethrower instead of grenades, which are very useful against fixed weapons as they get a massive damage bonus, often enough to One-Hit Kill them. They're also pretty effective against infantry and light vehicles.
    • You can also outfit your tank with a flamethrower turret, which hits harder, has better range and a much wider fire arc than the infantry counterparts, which can ruin the day of any cluster of enemies regardless of cover.
  • Foregone Conclusion: Welkin and Alicia having their daughter Isara, as depicted in the epilogue of Valkyria Chronicles.
  • Fragile Speedster: Scouts and Engineers have the most AP 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 Veterans and Elites, which also increases their AP. They eventually evolve into Lightning Bruisers, especially if you go for headshots and get them weapons with more shots.
  • Friendly Fireproof: Averted, shots fired, explosives and swung melee weapons will damage allies as readily as they will enemies. Fortunately, this applies to enemies as well, and it's possible to kill enemies with intercept fire from their allies. The only time it's played straight is with the Geirolul's rockets, which won't harm Rebel troops.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: A minor one. Character portraits 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.
  • Giant Space Flea Out Of Nowhere: The Ghost Tank. Nobody knows who is running it, or whose side it is on. It just roams Gallia and attacks people.
  • 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 Rebel rifle and describes all its attributes very... enthusiastically.
  • Haunted Technology: Invoked with the "Ghost Tank."
  • Hero Must Survive: Despite their name, Escort Missions in this game give the player full control over the Escort APC, but it still has to make it to the target point intact. A number of missions have the death of a specific character as a failure condition, ( such as Cosette in the June story missions).
  • Hero of Another Story: The regular Army and other Lanseal classes are also deployed against the Rebels, but it's not really mentioned aside from a few skits and mission briefings.
  • Hold the Line: The point of the camp defense missions is to hold out for a certain number of turns until reinforcements arrive or some other objective is completed off-screen.
  • Hot-Blooded: Is actually one of Avan's Potentials, word for word.
  • Hub Under Attack: The hub level, Lanseal Royal Academy, gets attacked by the Rebels during a school festival as the August story mission. After the attack, the school is a lot more emptier than usual with many students either killed or leaving, with only Class G left to continue the fight.
  • Hufflepuff House: Class G is this in-universe, at least at first, being comprised solely of the students no one else wants to teach.
  • 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 the most flexible character around, as he has equal aptitude with any class. 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.
  • Instant-Win Condition: You will immediately win as soon as you accomplish the victory condition(s), no matter how bad the situation is for you. Also inverted, if any of the defeat conditions are met, you'll lose no matter how well you're doing elsewhere.
  • Intrepid Reporter: Lotte Netzel. Miss Ellet would be so proud, dude!
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Count Gassenarl's desire to ally with the Federation actually makes a fair bit of sense, especially in light of how close Gallia came to losing the last war with the Empire.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: The very premise of this game 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 many, many times 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: Compared to VC1, it's 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 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 "No": Avan upon finding out Dirk is his brother Leon.
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Armored Techs and Fencers are nigh-invulnerable to most conventional arms as long as their shield is pointed at incoming fire. The only things that can punch through their shields are explosives, other melee classes or guns with high enough Vs. Armor strength.
  • Made of Iron: Anyone who's an Armored Tech or one of its sub-classes can take quite a lot of fire to bring down even if their shield isn't pointing the right way.
  • Magic Music: Anthem Corps, Anthem Elites and Melodists can buff allies (the former two) and debuff enemies (the latter).
  • The Man Behind the Man: Dr. 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.
  • Marathon Level: The "Ultimate Challenge" Downloadable Content mission. Protecting three bases for maximum turns (20) may not seem like much, until you see that your troops are under threat of barrage fire and rapidly respawning swarms of highly aggressive V2 units and Commandos.
  • Mexican Standoff: The end of the September story mission.
  • Mighty Glacier:
    • Armored Techs have bulletproof shields and big nasty wrenches for closing with the enemy and smacking them, but they have rather low AP. One of their sub-classes, Fencers, have even stronger melee attacks but move even slower. Fencers can further change into Maulers, who are even slower, but can one-shot any armored vehicle that isn't a Heavy Tank.
    • Speaking of Heavy Tanks, they too can take large amounts of damage and dish it out. They cost 3 CP to move, though, so you won't be spamming them very often.
  • Military Academy: Lanseal, which is also Gallia's only military academy.
  • 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 surprise 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 Chair Juliana fatally wounded (just when she's starting to mellow out) battling 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. Foerster's possession were also stolen.
  • Morale Event Horizon: If your Morale level drops low enough, you lose the battle.
  • Morale Mechanic: Affects the chances of triggering Potentials. Positive ones trigger more often and negative ones trigger less often when morale is high, and vice versa. It's increased by killing enemies and capturing camps, and decreased by losing allies and camps.
  • More Dakka:
    • Shocktroopers in general, but especially their Gunner sub-classes, who start with 50 high-powered shots per attack. They have so much dakka they don't even try aiming on an attack/counter attack, instead firing a horizontal sweep of bullets. During interception and support fire, on the other hand, they do aim, with deadly results for anyone on the receiving end.
    • More advanced vehicle machineguns can put out a lot of lead.
  • Mirroring Factions: 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.
  • New Skill as Reward: There are missions for minor characters that reward them with either a new potential or one of their negative potential removed or replaced with a positive potential.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Vario Kraatz is one of Elvis Presley.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: 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.
  • 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. Homer Peron, Largo Potter, Jane Turner and Oscar and Emile Bielert also get mentioned. It should be noted that, with the exception of the last three, you can get them all as bonus (non-canonical) playable characters via a New Game Plus or password (including supposedly-dead characters like Isara and Selvaria).
  • A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Gallian Civil War is kicked off by the rebels because they can't deal with a Darcsen being in control of their country, and during the war they enact purges of Darcsen communities and even have an officer who follows a Religion of Evil that also is heavily prejudiced against Darcsens
  • No Range Like Point-Blank Range: Can be very effective for soldiers with poor accuracy, though it can be painfully subverted if the target evades the shot, which has a chance of happening even if they're close enough to breath on each other.
  • Old Save Bonus: Moving Valkyria Chronicles save data to the PSP's memory stick unlocks the late Isara Gunther as a playable character.
  • Playing a Tree: The academy has a little play where they re-enact Welkin's personal achievement 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).
  • Pool Scene: Summer pool party time! We get fanservice for both the ladies and the gentlemen through several events in July, including a rare animated scene with plenty of bouncing.
  • 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: the Darcsen cadets (Zeri, Jugin, Magari and Mischlitt, to be exact) are actually quite skilled and level-headed, but were dumped in Class G just because they're Darcsens.
    • Another subversion: it turns out that the real reason they're assigned to Class G is because they all have unclear aptitude results, 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. Special weapons also drop after killing an Ace past the first time.
  • 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 damnedest 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.
  • Regenerating Health: All infantry regenerate some of their health every turn, unless they're in a zone with the Snow environmental condition. In addition, a friendly camp heals all friendly units in it, even vehicles.
  • 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.
  • Rock Beats Laser: V2s are huge, heavily armored soldiers carrying the latest in ragnite-tech, with energy shields, actual shields that can stop a tank shell and huge laser cannons. What is a hard counter against such monsters? A soldier in full medieval platemail lugging a massive greatsword and a shield of their own. The lasers the V2s carry aren't strong enough to punch through a Fencer's shield in interception fire and, though it may take a few more whacks, the Fencers can in turn chop V2s to pieces even when their energy shields are up.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Archduchess Cordelia is insistent on being this, rather than hiding in the safety of her castle. She visits a lot of war-torn villages and dispenses humanitarian aid. She goes out of her way to leave her APC and congratulate Class G 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 with girls really should have tipped you off.
  • Say My Name:
  • Scratch Damage: All attacks that can deal damage will always deal at least 1 point, no matter how high the target's defense is.
  • Sexy Surfacing Shot: The Pool Scene has an animated cutscene with Juliana climbing out of the pool in a black bikini while some of the students are Eating the Eye Candy.
  • Shout-Out:
    • A weird one to Death Note's Light the Swimming Instructor, giving us Zeri the Swimming Instructor. Cosette also comments that Zeri's swimsuit was designed as such because he thinks "water resistance is huge".
    Zeri: "Aliasse! You call that swimming? Don't make me laugh. Make sure you extend your arm all the way. Legs straight. Now kick!"
  • Ship Tease: Avan with just about every member of Class G. Particularly noticeable with Cosette, Sofia and Anisette.
  • 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.
    • Amusingly, Sofia is one too, towards Avan of all people, after completing 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".
  • Straight for the Commander: A valid tactic in battles where killing the enemy commander is the victory condition, and it can help to take out Leaders and Bosses first even if it isn't, if only to remove the advantages they give the enemy.
  • Super-Soldier: Project Valhalla was intended to create artificial Valkyria to defend Gallia against both the Empire and the Federation. The research data for this project gets stolen... twice.
  • Take Your Time: Feel free to keep taking Free missions for as long as you want, the story won't progress until you complete the Story missions, even if said Story mission involves defending Lanseal from a full-scale Rebel assault.
  • Team Pet: Jarde, Avan's pet bird.
  • 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.
  • Timed Mission: Every mission, to different degrees. Camp defense missions tend to have shorter time limits, while others can go the full 20 turns.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: Rene and Magari, respectively, with Rene being a short haired ginger self proclaimed sports-nut and Magari being an introverted, shy bookworm. Some of the interactions between them (and other characters) may suggest a romantic relationship , 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 your friend parents' death has made your friend afraid of blood and colorblind. Shooting 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 Rebels, as are the Supply Vehicles and C vehicle variants. They also use their own set of weapons, which have different stats from those that can be captured by the player.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Early in the game, Class G encounters Aliasse, a mysterious girl who possesses powers and abilities akin to the Valkyrur, 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.
  • Verbing Nouny: The 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).
  • Walking the Earth: Avan decides to do this after graduation, to help with reconstruction.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: The game's not too hard until it hits you in the face with a couple of these. Fortunately, your objective in both missions they're in isn't to directly face the boss, but you're in trouble either way.
    • The boss for March, Dirk Gassenarl, is a nearly-invulnerable Super Prototype with an energy shield and a powerful laser cannon that chews away HP at an alarming rate, supported by a number of somewhat-weaker copies of himself. He returns in August, and he is far worse there.
    • The boss for April, Baldren Gassenarl, is even worse, as he's got a big bulletproof shield like a Fencer and a kill-anything maul like an Armored Tech, but runs much faster and farther than even a Scout and also has a machine gun to blow you away with interception fire if you try to run past him. He can destroy your tank in one hit. He can teleport between zones and can use a special Order to instantly respawn any troops on the map that you've destroyed if you haven't removed their bodies.
  • 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 Juliana), then committed suicide when he finds the research papers are stolen by the Rebels.
    • Earlier is the Yuell mission, in which we that Cosette'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.
  • The Worf Effect: On your first Escort Mission, you are told that, since the VIP is so important, a tank from the regular Army will help you out. Cue the mission itself and the tank gets blown up in a single shot from the front by Dirk during a cutscene. This early in the game, even the weakest tanks require either a lot of lance shots to the front or smart tactics to flank them in order to take out, so having your escorting tank blown up so easily drives home that standing in front of the just introduced V2s is a very bad idea.
  • Wrench Wench: Tank Commander and mechanic Lavinia Lane is cheerful, if a bit gruff, and not too hard on the eyes.
  • Wrench Whack: Armored Techs carry enormous wrenches as a melee weapon and multipurpose tool. Well, they're called wrenches, but look rather more like hammers with a wrench head welded on.
  • 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, and the females don't have much more variety either.
    • In combat, each gender has a grand total of one body type, which is used by every single person of that gender. This means that 12-year-old Aliasse (150cm tall) will have the same height and chest size as Juliana, with her height of 168 cm and enormous breasts.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Dr. Foerster eventually does this to Aliasse.
    • This is actually her core mentality and it was passed down to Selvaria Bles which is why she performed her sacrificial Final Azure when she was abandoned by Maximillian.

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