Valkyria Chronicles General

No sandstorm, lightning, heatwave and poison gas like in VC 3?

So I'm looking through the list of orders and am kinda confused as to how some of them work, namely:

1. What's the difference between "caution" and "defense boost"/"all units defend"? Does Caution only grant resist to interception fire, in which case, why does it cost more CP versus defense boost?

2. What's the difference between "attack weak point" and "penetration"? Specifically, if I'm wanting to kill tanks with infantry while I don't have a good shot at the radiator, which is the one that I want?

3. What's the increase in anti-tank damage between "damage boost" and "demolition boost"?

I'm guessing that "Resist Crossfire" makes up for being costlier and more specialised by being a very powerful defence buff compared with the defend order.

I believe Penetration removes defence and the armour bonus (so hitting a tank somewhere other than the radiator would still deal damage). I use this on the Rhum wielder so they can get in interception fire for long range lancer attacks. I think Attack Weak Point will treat any hit like a critical hit, which is good for lancers, but not good for most guns, since tanks still have a massive defence bonus to comprehend.

So it depends. If the weapon would deal great damage if it could hit the radiator, use Attack Weak Point. If the weapon can't deal good damage in the first place, use Penetration.

I think the difference between demolition boost and damage boost is simply the damage dealt is increased for the more expensive one.

Note that I haven't experimented with this, VC 2 is my forte. So I may be wrong.

playing through vc3 right now, here's my take on it:

1. Caution reduces damage from interception fire a lot more that defense boost, especially for units that don't have high defenses in the first place like scouts (but in higher difficulties they still die). It doesn't reduce damage from counters and enemy turns, so it's a tradeoff.

2. I think damage calculation is something like dmg x multiplier - defense. Penetration works best for classes with weapons that deal damage from many hits, in particular gunners who can late game oneshot heavy tanks from the front (they can deal 3000 HP damage in one go with late game guns). If you have a weapon that deals a lot of damage in a single hit, the attack weakpoint probably works better although i'm not sure if it applies to fencers. Keep in mind that the orders stay until the "turn" ends, and they apply even if instead of attacking you have them assist someone else's attack. And that if they guard/evade penetration or attack weak point doesn't work.

3. no idea. I thought damage boost only applied to attacks in infantry, but maybe I'm confusing it with something else.

edited 6th Apr '18 8:29:17 AM by lgcruz

So I should understand it as Penetration will allow a unit to always deal damage that ignores natural defense, while Attack Weak Point checks for whether it does damage normally first and if it does treats it as a crit?

Thus, Penetration is for if I want to shoot tanks in the face with rifles, Attack Weak Point is for if I want lancers to shoot tanks from the front and kill them?

Did the sniper challenge and Rosie's story mission yesterday. Took all my Darcsen squaddies and Darcsen Hater squaddies. Purposely got Theold and Rosina killed, and then I got Cezary killed in a skirmish later on to get the Splintered Horn.

If you are unsure, just go next to a tank or something and compare the number of hits necessary to kill it with one order or the other, but that's the general principle yes. The critical hit order has also the advantage against infantry in that you don't need to aim for the head to deal damage, so you can kill from farther away/with less accuracy.

Man, I completely forgot that you could kill tanks with shocktroopers if you really had to. Somehow it never came up.

Sincere question, how did you get past the chapter where you have to rescue Cordelia, then?

Ah, no, that is how I did it when I played VC1. But it never really comes up in 4.

Really, I feel like there's less tactical/objective variety in 4. A lot more maps focus on getting one character to a specific spot - both in literal win conditions like 'take Claude to the marked point', and in spam tactics that involve getting a Mortar or so on to a specific place and then spamming all your CP on them until the target dies that turn.

No hold the line missions? Those are always a nerve-wracker for me. Even if I've yet to lose one (Tempting Fate, I know), it's always the question of "is my interception fire going to be enough, or is this the one time that they miss too many times in a row?"

At least they don't have VC 2's APC escort missions.

edited 6th Apr '18 7:51:57 PM by Ekimmak

Hm, none that come to mind. There are a few fleeing missions, but one is against a boss tank with a machine gun that gets intercept fire while IT moves, and others tend to have gimmicks like infantry bosses who don't give a shit about intercept fire, or other things you need to focus on.

We finished Naggiar and the Edy Detachment detachments with a mentality of "you cheat, I cheat".

The anti-materiel rifle from the tank trial as well as just spamming the hell out of Rosie and Alicia's plot invulnerability and Jane's Ruhm got us through the lancer trial. Both versions of that map suck. The plot one has the added element of being a sudden gameplay change that's more of a malicious "gotcha", but in both cases the AI also is purposely dumb to allow you to win. If, perhaps, they actually advanced their tanks, and spent their command points on calling additional reinforcements other than just a couple at a time (although now that I think about it, does the computer also have a limit on how many troops they can deploy?), and actually spent their effort trying to kill your dudes instead of beelining for the base...

Also, waifu is in agreement that Faldio did nothing wrong.

It would have helped if Faldio's actions weren't a brutal necessity to actually win the danged war.

I love VC but god the story is bad.

Yeah, I found Welkin just refusing to use her powers at all to be rather stupid, since Selvaria certainly could have.

Would he like to go to all the families of people she slaughtered and tell them how he didn't want to see Alicia treated like a weapon, which is why he didn't let her step in to stop Selvaria's rampage?

On a related note, first-time Valkyria mode Alicia just flooring experienced Valkyria Selvaria feels like kind of an ass pull and doesn't do the "you aren't a weapon and teamwork makes the dream work" angle any favors. If it's all supposed to be about teamwork and shit, Selvaria should have had Alicia on the ropes until one of the Sevens helps out (eg. Welkin takes a shot at Selvaria with the Edelweiss something) and that turns the tide of the fight (eg. Selvaria swats the tank shell, which lets Alicia get a hit in). Alicia not having overwhelming power and Faldio's plan not working on its own would have helped support the Aesopp.

At literally every point the game has to reinforce Welkin's point that teamwork and friendship are needed to protect Gallia, the game instead reinforces Faldio's position that Gallia needs power above all else to not get trampled.

The war story up until the Battle for Naggiar was pretty decent, but the writers just could not handle the whole Valkyria bit.

edited 9th Apr '18 7:41:16 PM by Balmung

I don't think they've gotten any better at it.

... but then, I haven't played 4, and couldn't get far enough to even see that in 3. So all I have to compare Alicia with is Aliasse.

It is handled better in 4, though in a different way; Claude and Reily accept that using Valkyrias to power the Cygnus ships a la nuclear submarines is in fact the only way to succeed, though neither of them likes it, and both agree to stay within the blast radius when they decide to activate the Valkyria Bomb, though they don't go through with it. There are also no instances of the Gallian troops using Valkyria power intentionally during Operation Cygnus, except for scuttling one ship when it would have fallen into Fantasy Mengele's hands.

You know, it's kind of hilarious how you can blow up Audrey's tank in every encounter against her (and indeed, it's required for her second encounter), and yet when it happens in a cutscene, we're somehow expected to believe it'll stick this time?

I don't think she died from her tank exploding. I think she drowned, and that's what killed her, because everybody in this game is some sort of explosionproof.

Standard operating procedure for VC games, and one that's really kind of annoying. You can style on a boss, blow them up in one turn, or even destroy them after a long and pitched battle, and the end result will almost always be 'hoho, that was fun. Now, let me accomplish my objective with Cutscene Invulnerability while I mock you, because You Can't Thwart Stage One.'

Which is normally what I do for any boss that I can, because it makes life so much easier to deal with the optional boss units early.

Some of these random drop weapons have ridiculous stats on them... the scout version has a range of THREE HUNDRED! That's the same as the Captured Utility Turrets (although I sincerely doubt they have the same damage dealt as those severely broken upgrades).

edited 11th Apr '18 3:51:21 AM by Ekimmak

Alicia's Valkyria angst makes no sense

Alicia's whole Valkyria arc is too Shonen really

IE Alicia in a Daze goes out and manhandles Selvaria... and then doesn't remember it.

If properly written... Alicia should have be a case of Walking Deathzone, She has no control, using sheer brute force to obliterate enemy and ally alike

and to tie it into something someone else said that Selvaria gets too much sympathy from the Protagonists.

It be a case of where Selvaria basically loses less cause She can't beat Alicia 'which is BS shonen writing' and She gets busted up protecting basically both sides from an Alicia who would have annihilated EVERYBODY.

then you have Alicia snap too in the middle of the carnage... not I had a weird dream 'again Alicia gets super powers and sleepwalks their problem away' so She actual has a oh god what did I do moment.

That way Alicia's, I'm a Monster angst makes sense... Cause she's an actual threat to everybody around her

The Protagonists now have some reason to view Selvaria as something other then the Enemies Ace in the Hole

and of course, Faldio's crazy plan actually has negative consequences so Welkin has a point in calling him out instead of Welkin bitches cause Faldio saved the day!

I'd do it slightly differently. Alicia can get the first win vs selvaria sure, but with the excuse that selvaria was tired from blowing through the gallian enemy lines, and she manages to recover.

The gallian officers are still extactic and try to to use alicia to repay the favour selvaria did onto them, but eventually the rematch happens and selvaria wins, capturing alicia who was left unsupported on the battlefield.

Having both trump cards in his hand, Maximilian requests talks to discuss the gallian's surrender, and is allowed to bring over the marmota into the gallians capital. Meanwhile, now that Faldio's plan effectively amounted to winning a few months worth of time, he and Welkin resolve their differences and mount a desperate rescue operation.

I'd go further, but you have to rewrite maximillians story into something that isn't completely disappointing, which somehow happened despite him being practically a combination of Logh reinhard and code geass lelouch.

edited 14th Apr '18 4:20:45 PM by lgcruz

I don't really mind Alicia being able to defeat Selvaria the first time (as long as you accept that somehow she's just that much more strongly connected to the Valkyria blood), but everything else about that wrap-up is pretty poorly handled. As people have noted, the Empire gets far too many lucky breaks and the Marmota is just way too powerful, so they end up having to use Alicia's power to win in a plausible way.

VC4's Switch release delayed to Fall in Japan

On that note, VC1's going to be released on the Switch in Fall for Japan

We liberated Ghirlandaio, completed Selvaria's DLC, and diverted the Marmota.

That DLC really exists to waifu Selvaria, doesn't it?

Waifu's OTP is Alicia/Noce. We just don't use the tank enough for Welkin to earn much favor in her eyes, and Welkin's cooldown hug moment also won him no favors, being that Faldio Did Nothing Wrong. Also Selvaria/Johann, albeit her sympathy for them is considerably lessened due to them being the invaders here.

She refers to Damon as Yuan Shikai due to their similar facial hair.

Was it explicitly stated or strongly implied anywhere in 1 that Selvaria was an artificial Valkyria? Waifu can accept Alicia steamrolling Selvaria in their Valkyria forms due to having a more "pure" bloodline. For my part, I'd prefer the tweak being that while Selvaria knows how to command large units in battle, her actual combat abilities are based on using her Valkyria powers to steamroll everything, while Alicia actually knows how to fight for real and that paired with her Valkyria powers turns her into an Empowered Badass Normal which gives her the edge. Really, anything other than "our Valkyria can beat up their Valkyria" would have been good.