Valkyria Chronicles General

They weren't Rhum range, just enough to punish enemies that would normally sit outside your counter-attack range and pepper you with shots.

Speaking of which, I actually found out there's a hard limit to interception range. Even if you give them the anthem elite's range buff, there's a cap to how far you can attack, so enemies moving outside of the range cap (but within the range of your actual interception range) will be turned to face, but your unit won't fire at them.

VC4 slated to release this Fall for the West

Switch version here I come.

Please don't be a hack port.

So the Japanese release is tomorrow and a few streamers are already playing the game, spoilers ahoy!

I've been playing 4 since I got it a few days ago, and I'm really liking it so far. It plays almost exactly the same as 1 (haven't played 2 or 3 yet), with the exception of the new Mortar/Grenadier class, which I am... not a fan of.

You will be (dis)pleased to know that the exact same problems the first game had with its later half - that is, enemies that can dodge fire and explosions; the eternal hell that is status afflictions; stage gimmicks, bosses, and gimmick bosses that don't obey their own rules; and maps spawning enemies in places they shouldn't be - are back in full force.

The same holds storywise, too. The old problem of bosses who you can make eat shit then popping up in the next cutscene and going 'hahaha, that was fun, see you later, losers' while the protagonists shake their fists impotently is everywhere, and if you didn't like the smug deus-ex-machinaing of the Empire in the first game, you're probably gonna be annoyed here too.

That said, there are good points too. Everything good about VC1 is the same here, to the point that it's almost hard to believe this is four games later. It's still satisfying as hell to watch Scouts run gormlessly into overlapping cones of fire and flopping across the ground, and the Mortars are actually more fun to use now that I've figured out you CAN view from top-down when firing with them. You've got the same colorful assortment of oddballs and weirdos, now with personalized interludes for groups of three that give them new potentials, and really help you get to know the squad better.

Just so long as it doesn't tread on its own Aesopp as hard as the first game did, I'll be fine.

I actually forget what Aesop that is. That war doesn't solve anything, unless you do it with an awesome tank and your nuclear analogue is a baker instead of an orphan with attachment issues?

Anyway, I think I'm squarely in the part of the story that corresponds to the second-book slump, for VC4. There are plot points going on that I know about that the cast doesn't, which is starting to get tiresome because I just want them to figure it out already, and the villains remain as distinctly unlikeable and uncompelling as in VC1 - worse, since they don't have Jaeger, who was at least honorable.

Actually I need to know this too, is the story as awful as VCI?

I loved the gameplay but the plot totally goes to shit in the second half.

More "nukes Valkyria powers are baaaaaad" except, it's completely subverted by the fact that Alicia saves the day twice entirely due to her Valkyria powers and without Alicia and her Valkyria powers, the Empire would have conquered Gallia. Faldio was, in the end, completely right, and rather than doing something like using teamwork or The Power of Friendship to come up with a solution to the unstoppable Marmota, the only possible solution was due to Alicia's Valkyria powers. Faldio is presented as wrong, and yet his pursuit of power as a solution was the only thing that saved Gallia. Welkin is presented as right, and yet he has no solution that can actually save Gallia without leaning on such massive power. They could easily have written a solution that didn't call for Alicia's Valkyria powers to be the critical step that makes the Marmota beatable (eg. damage the Marmota in the canyon battle such that the ramp could have been made in the final battle or the Sevens work together to pinpoint a weak spot and concentrate massive Lancer and tank fire on one spot to create their boarding ramp or convert a spare Gallian light tank into an engineering vehicle to make the ramp), but to do the Cooldown Hug thing they wanted to do, they had to throw their own Aesopp under the bus. They even could have had their Cooldown Hug and have it be all dramatic and such if they just had Welkin catch wind earlier and do it before Alicia starts her suicide attack run. Denying us the knowledge that her Valkyrian lance could do critical damage to the Marmota would have dramatically improved the plot on its own. Hell, Alicia having hang-ups on her own - that she still had people to stay around for and couldn't actually muster enough rage and despair to do it, that her bonds of friendship were more important to her than her power as a weapon, would have been more thematically appropriate and even let them still use the lance toss as the thing that made the final battle winnable.

Basically, the entire plot shits the bed the moment the game hits Ghirlandaio because it has to start bending over backwards not only for the main case to be in the right, despite having no solution that can substitute for Faldio's and never coming up with one, right up to the very end, but also to suddenly start presenting Selvaria in a somewhat positive light despite both her mass slaughter of Gallians via perfidy, a war crime, and her defiance of her commanding officer's orders (if not in word, than in intent) by sparing Squad 7. Nothing about Selvaria's actions after Ghiralandaio should have been presented as tragic, save for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Gallians, and yet, this is the one part nobody dwells upon. Hell, going back to the beginning of the mission, General Damon is presented as an asshole trying to get Squad 7 killed for sending them in first, even though sending Squad 7 in as the vanguard is perfectly reasonable because Squad 7 has developed a reputation for getting shit done and doing the impossible. Damon is, at worst, Right for the Wrong Reasons to use the Sevens as the vanguard.

I love the game and the gameplay and the worldbuilding, but that last 1/3 or so of the plot is just so bad.

The villains don't need to be likeable. Hell, given what we know they do, they shouldn't be. Jaeger was a fool and Selvaria was a monster, not in that she was Valkyria, but in that her actions were literally atrocities. Like, the Protagonist-Centered Morality in the last third of VC1 was bad, but that it got to extend to Selvaria and Jaeger was worse.

edited 25th Mar '18 10:49:20 PM by Balmung

I mean, I never thought Selvaria was in the right; I felt bad for her because she was dumb enough and broken enough to be loyal to the man who engineered her torture to shape her into a useful tool, but my tolerance of that ends exactly where threatening the Sevens begins. I don't remember too many specifics aside from that.

As for the story for VC4... like I said, I'm squarely in the middle of the Act 2 Slump, where everything is awful for the protags and everything consistently goes amazingly for the bad guys, and as always the difficulty bump with elite units and more boss presence in maps is starting to make me salty about the story too, so take this with that in mind, but... yes, so far the story is pretty bad. I like Ez Company themselves, but everything involving the Empire and the machinations behind the war - including fantasy Josef Mengele, the guy who runs the Valkyria labs mentioned in 1 - are pretty awful. A big twist around the middle of the plot is interesting, but the characters involved instantly run it into dumbfuck stupid territory, and though I'm sure it'll all end in forgiveness, it's similar to the Selvaria situation in that it would be grounds for execution by firing squad. (Details here: One of the main characters' old friends, Kai, is working as an Empire agent/right hand to Fantasy Mengele, while "Kai" the sniper, his younger sister, feeds him information on supply routes and battle plans via radio. It's likely some kind of deep-cover thing, but he routinely offers information he has no need to, and ends up getting many, many people killed.) And of course, the standard 'Valkyria as map hazard' thing returns. Sure does work in getting the scale of their power across, but boy is it no fun to play against.

I don't want them to be likeable, I want them to not be smug assholes all the time. Their attitudes combined with their boss mechanics (especially for Kiara and Nikola) makes it teeth-grindingly annoying to see them, because not only will the story for the next while be unpleasant, I can't even hope for a fun map for a break.

So is there any squaddie that stands out to you so far? Someone on Game FAQ did translate the potentials of the demo characters and some seemed really interesting like that lush girl or the blonde nun (is she a nun? one of her potentials was called Priestess...)

edited 26th Mar '18 12:02:34 AM by Kiefen

In the right might be a little too far, but Selvaria's portrayal is definitely far too sympathetic, given that she died an unrepentant war criminal, and yet I seem to recall that the game treats her as more sympathetic than General Damon after the fall of Ghirlandaio. And yes, Damon is an ass, but so far as we are shown, his worst crime is being an elitist buffoon.

And speaking of generals and officers, how the hell is Varrot just a captain? She's clearly doing a colonel's work, including commanding a regiment and reporting directly to generals. Like, does the militia just have a really flat rank hierarchy? Also, "Squad 7" is clearly a platoon strength unit ^note depending on whether you count the full roster of units or the active roster as its true size, it's either an overstrength platoon (56 total members with all units available, possibly as many as 61 if you include unnamed spare tank crew (driver + loader + radio operator for Shamrock, assuming Zaka is acts as gunner in addition to commander and a radio operator (as a command vehicle, a specialist radio operator seems likely, and the (almost) full squad image shows an unidentified girl wearing a headset poking her head out of the tank next to Kreis, the driver) and gunner (the cutscene where Selvaria deflects the Edelweiss's shot implies that Welkin is not the only turret crew, as the tank fires while Welkin is standing in the hatch) for the Edelweiss) or even 64 if you also include the medics, and or a small-ish platoon of ~25 (depending on tank crew size)), which is actually more appropriate to Welkin's given rank (a squad would normally be lead by a sergeant like Alicia, Zaka, or Largo). And given that Varrot is directly commanding platoon leaders, does the militia just not use companies or battalions as organizational units?

Also, what manner of forces are at the disposal of the other militia squads? Squad 7 has organic armor support and later grows its armored compliment to two tanks (essentially a squad-strength (or rather, section, as the terminology goes) armored unit attached to a platoon-strength infantry unit), but do other squads have at least a light tank as part of their standard compliment? Is the only reason Squad 7 has armored support because Welkin brought his own?

Goddamn page ate my post. Here's the shorter version.

• Scout: Theresa. She's got red hair, glasses, the works. Joined the army to be a combat medic because... she likes dissecting things, apparently. Her interlude suggests that that's just an act, though. Solid potentials, including early Undodgeable Shot, but it's less useful now that we're up against elites who take no damage.

• Shocktrooper: Lily. She's a bit of a creepy yandere type (her base capture line is 'I won't let anyone else have you', for instance), but she's pretty and I like her voice. She also has some monster potentials, including an anti-infantry, anti-armor, accuracy buff when she takes a debuff. The Shocktrooper commander, Laz, is also a very solid unit. He's also voiced by Kamina, so.

• Lancer: None. Since they lowered the CP cost for tanks to 1, I just use the Hafen. Enemy tank placement in 4 seems to be designed to make it hard to use Lancers properly.

• Engineer: Rebekah or Rita. Rebekah is my current go-to Hafen mechanic, but she has a potential that makes her unable to use Ragnaid, which is a big hit to versatility. I'm considering swapping her for Rita, whose only negative potential is Chatty, and her liked teammates are a Lancer and Scout.

• Sniper: Kai◊. I take Kai for her command point, lack of general negative potentials (aside from one annoying one that can drain her HP below half AP), and because I like her design. Seems to work best with a Gallian Armory rifle, though.

• Mortar: Reily◊. Like Kai, I take her for the command point; Mortar intercept fire is nice when it hits, but the range is limited unless you have multiple Scouts on overwatch (since it triggers when others fire on the moving target). They can't fire while bunkered and are essentially standing in the open when in firing mode, so a single Scout can easily get in and pop them in the head, especially now that intercept fire isn't a guaranteed kill unless you get a great angle and coverage.

^You'll love the divisions in 4, then. E小隊 is a company, I believe, which is referred to as an Armored Ranger company, which is led by a Lieutenant (中尉) who is later promoted to Captain (大尉) when he is given command of an amalgamated company that consists of several decimated companies, and command of all land forces on a decent-sized warship. You also have at least three armored vehicles at your command.

edited 26th Mar '18 1:10:33 AM by RedSavant

Doublepost to say that the story is feeling more comfortable now, in part because things are actually being allowed to go right for once and it's not just changing up where on the protagonists' collective nads the Empire is allowed to stomp.

3 tanks at once? At one CP per use? Fuckin' awesome!

Not sure if you ever get the chance to field all three at once, but you get the Hafen, which is basically the Edelweiss but feels a bit meatier; the Glory, which is basically Zaka's tank with the same swappable loadout trick; and the Cactus, which is an APC.

Chapter 15 now, out of not sure how many. I have to say, I do like this series, but the amount of 'now this completely impossible thing has changed on Turn 7, we hope you foresaw this happening and placed your units in safe spots for it!' that crops up is really a negative point for it.

Storywise, things look to be at least a little less Broken Aesoppy than the first game, though of course we'll need to see how it plays out.

I was afraid of hearing about this. Sounds like they just completely ignored the lessons they learnt from the first game, and didn't have any Qo L from the second game.

Say what you want about the characters or story of that game, at least they were trying to make the gameplay better.

& : Yeah, I watched a guy play through the PC version of 1 over the course of two months on his stream (a couple hours per day for 8 weeks), and during the second month, he had much to say about the game, and a recurring complaint was basically "the only way to win these later missions is to know precisely what's going to happen from a previous attempt or playthrough and prepare for it ahead of time".

Loon's comment on finishing was pretty much "DLC missions? New Game Plus? Those don't exist, and if they did, I wouldn't subject myself to them. Next week, we'll play something else."

(Ironically, about halfway through these streams was when VC 4 was announced...)

I think I dealt with those okay (although I never gotten further than Chapter 15 before my save got deleted, unfortunately...), though I don't remember too many of them.

What chapters did those happen in?

edited 27th Mar '18 7:39:37 PM by KarkatTheDalek

One of the big ones for me in VC1 was during the "duel" with Maximilian in the desert, when you have to pitch grenades into the vents in his tank. You have to knock down wall segments to block his path, forcing him to fire his main cannon (and opening the vents). After the second grenade Selvaria shows up, cutting right through the center of the map where most of your units are probably hunkered, and she can't be stunned in this map, so you can't move them or she'll kill them.

That one's also kind of a puzzle map in that if you blow the first wall segment that you can knock down, there's at least two turns of movement before the next one allows you to finish him off, which is two turns of Selvaria running roughshod over your team. It's fine that it takes some figuring out, but there's no way to know it without trying and failing the first time.

So far in 4, Chapter 14 is pretty douchey. You get pincered between Voltz's tank, which has a turret that fires while he moves, and Climaria, who is invincible and has Valkyria mortars; the best/only way to win before they take your central camp is to spam Reily's anti-armor mortars at him, and you have only three turns before he and Climaria reach your central camp.

15 is also shaping up to be a pain in the ass. Similar setup where you're getting pincered, but when you get Voltz down to 5% HP or so Climaria teleports across the map and climbs on top of the tank, providing more moving intercept fire and reaction shots when you move. I haven't beaten that one yet, but I should be able to with more Mortar and Engineer spam.

I've actually seen people use lancers to take down Maximillian's vents. It's not the instakill that the grenades are.

And the first game at least had the generosity to let you save mid-battle, turning the whole game into a giant save scum.

You can also save during battle here, but sometimes it's hard to tell when you'd have to go back to to unfuck your troop situation. At least now I have enough command units that I don't need to worry about losing people, generally.

That said, Chapter 16 is looking to be A Production. We'll see how things go tonight.

Chapter 17, and we're approaching the end of the story. We'll have to see how things proceed from here before we see how everything wraps up, but if folks are interested in a general survey/review/look back when I'm done with the game, I'd be glad to write one up.

I'll also need to figure out how to get and play the DLC without having to replay the whole game. Does anyone have any experience with cross-region PS Store shenanigans or transferring saves between accounts on device?