Valkyria Chronicles

[Apelsin]

My post was a joke born from looking at Syndicate too much today.

 

Here's a Wiki entry about potentials in VC1: http://valkyria.wikia.com/wiki/Potentials_(VC1)

 

It appears that all potentials are at least partially pre-determined (wording is not 100% clear imo), with a specific character being called out as having a "character ruining" potential.

Once all named characters have died though, plain recruits will appear who have no potentials at all.

[Smart Jason]

I thought it might be a joke, but there's also that blank space in the R&D menu and why shouldn't it be a biotech lab?

[Valorian Endymion]

I am really digging this game on PC, but there are a few things that stop me from absolutely loving it:

 

- The way the story is told, why give me three 1 minute vignettes in a row? I would prefer a longer cut scene than having to load up the next 30 second scene. I just think it is a flawed delivery method, I think the story is fine though. 

- I wish the personality traits were available to you during the deploy screen where it would be most handy. I am not going to remember the traits for 20 different soldiers.

- I am experiencing some slow down during the actual battles which is a little annoying

You can check the traits during deploy, just press Q or E switch between showing different status of that units.

 

Also talking about personalities, after chapter 4 you can check the Personal tab (just press F and choose the Personal tab) there you can check a lot about each soldier history (mostly are short, but still) and the background of the setting,.

[Sno]

Hmm, looks like the PS3 version of this is fairly cheap on Amazon. Are there any particular reasons why I might want to pick up the PC version instead of PS3, stuff like better frame rate or resolution? How's the controller support in the PC version?

 

Edit: Answered my own question. Load times seem to be the main benefit. http://www.pcgamer.com/valkyria-chronicles-pc-port-analysis-durantes-verdict/

 

The PC version also has something like four DLC packs from the PS3 game just built-in.

 

 

I am really digging this game on PC, but there are a few things that stop me from absolutely loving it:

 

- The way the story is told, why give me three 1 minute vignettes in a row? I would prefer a longer cut scene than having to load up the next 30 second scene. I just think it is a flawed delivery method, I think the story is fine though. 

- I wish the personality traits were available to you during the deploy screen where it would be most handy. I am not going to remember the traits for 20 different soldiers.

- I am experiencing some slow down during the actual battles which is a little annoying

 

- This is really bothering me too, if the game is going to make me watch a ton of cutscenes, it should at least let me just sit back comfortably instead of having to fiddle with the event selection screen every thirty seconds.

 

- Unless we're talking about different things, you can. When you're placing down troops in the deploy screen, you can cycle through multiple pages of info on each of them with Q and E on the keyboard and the bumpers on the gamepad. (It's weird seeing Xbox 360 gamepad prompts all over a formerly PS3 exclusive game.)

 

- I'm having a different kind of issue. Any positional audio during the battles, like gunshots or explosions or random battle chatter, is incredibly quiet relative to the music, cutscene dialogue, and menu pings.

Edit: So interception fire, the overwatch-like mechanic that has both your own and opposing units fire on any visible enemies in a movement phase, the rate of fire is apparently determined by the framerate. So yeah... If you're playing with an unlocked framerate as opposed to that intended 30fps cap... Yeah...

[YoThatLimp]

Ah, you guys are totally right about the bumpers/Q+E. I was totally missing the prompts while playing on my TV.

 

Thanks! Also i figured out that the slowdown only happens in battles after a cut scene, but if I Alt+Tab out of the came and alt+tab back in it fixes it!

[Henroid]

Okay wow, so I tried this a bit over the last couple days and I'm impressed, it really is a good port. I forgot to buy a replacement controller so I've been mouse + keyboarding it, which kinda gets goofy when it comes to menu navigating. And the audio mix seems super weird (menu sounds and music are loud and clear, but in-game sounds like speech and gunfire are muted as hell). But other than that it's still good.

[YoThatLimp]

I did notice aiming with a mouse is 100% better than aiming with a controller, which is nice. 

[Sno]

And the audio mix seems super weird (menu sounds and music are loud and clear, but in-game sounds like speech and gunfire are muted as hell). But other than that it's still good.

Okay, so i'm not the only one noticing this then.

Also, for those of you playing on keyboard and mouse, keep in mind that while the game maps wasd for running, it maps the arrow keys separately for walking. It's useful for finessing your position to make sure you're properly behind cover, since the level geometry actually does matter in this game. (It's not like Firaxis' X-com.) Crouching or crawling in "cover" only makes you immune to critical damage from headshots, it doesn't confer any other defensive bonuses. Well, crawling in tall grass also seems to make your unit harder to detect.

 

Anyways, the arrow keys are also a good way to fine-tune your facing at the end of your unit's turn. Facing does matter, your units get an evasion chance if they're attacked by a unit they can see, and they can't overwatch against enemies that sneak up behind them. Valid sight over a target is also a requirement for participation in coordinated attacks allowed by a unit's relationship bonuses. (It should be noted that the "vision" range for all of these effects is quite short.)

 

And since it's a new page, i'll reiterate an important thing: The rate of fire units have in overwatch is allegedly derived from the game's framerate, so if you're playing with that 30fps lock off, you're having an unintended experience. Movement physics for the tanks also apparently break down in a big way at higher framerates, among other framerate-related oddities.

[kaputt]

And since it's a new page, i'll reiterate an important thing: The rate of fire units have in overwatch is allegedly derived from the game's framerate, so if you're playing with that 30fps lock off, you're having an unintended experience. Movement physics for the tanks also apparently break down in a big way at higher framerates, among other framerate-related oddities.

Really? Does this mean that my units will get more damage from overwatch if I'm playing the game at 60 fps?

But the game is so much better at that frame rate

[Sno]

Really? Does this mean that my units will get more damage from overwatch if I'm playing the game at 60 fps?

 

That is my understanding of the issue, yes.

[Bjorn]

Hey guys, this games really good.  Like, holy shit really good.  I feel dumb for not having played it years ago when a bajillion people recommended it to me. 

[Griddlelol]

Yup. It's one of my favourite games of all time. Made my PS3 worth it.

[Henroid]

I still endorse this game strongly for anyone who hasn't played it. The audio mix problem I mentioned in my last post here was actually fixed not long after, good on Sega.

[Dewar]

Hmm, maybe this will be the next game I play on my Steam backlog.

[Bjorn]

Chapter 14 damn near got me to ragequit this game (the second half of the massive army showdown at Naggiar).  Fucking games and suddenly deciding to change the rules the enemy has to play by (endlessly respawning foot troops, tanks with weak spots that aren't weak spots anymore).  I ended up just cheesing it by putting my tanks in position before the enemy reinforcements came because I was so frustrated with trying to play it straight and getting fucked. 

[Henroid]

Chapter 14 damn near got me to ragequit this game (the second half of the massive army showdown at Naggiar).  Fucking games and suddenly deciding to change the rules the enemy has to play by (endlessly respawning foot troops, tanks with weak spots that aren't weak spots anymore).  I ended up just cheesing it by putting my tanks in position before the enemy reinforcements came because I was so frustrated with trying to play it straight and getting fucked. 

I haven't played that chapter since the PS3 version so I totally forgot which one that is. But I do remember the game suddenly diving into, "Alright you've played this enough; time to take the gloves off and play it as a VIDEO GAME ROLE-PLAYERS GTFO."

 

I mean on the upside this is definitely one of those games that benefits from you taking what you've learned and reapplying it to earlier levels. You find out how hilariously easy some of them are.

[Bjorn]

Hilariously, shortly thereafter, I realized that my scouts aren't just the best units in the game, but that they've been Mary Jane'd and now serve as replacements to every other class. The next several missions I fought were all a cakewalk.  Need to kill a tank?  Scout.  Need to kill a sniper halfway across the map?  Scout.  Need to blow up a group of bunched up enemies?  Scout.  Need to reach an objective?  Scout.  With their crazy movement range (and sometimes double movement with their 4th potential) and judicious use of a couple of  defensive orders to make up for their squishiness, there's nothing they can't do better and faster than every other class.  Alicia might as well be Batman and Cherry is her chipper ninja sidekick.  The pair just run around battlefields slaughtering whole battalions.  One map, I could see how it could be really interesting and challenging, if scouts didn't exist. 

[itsamoose]

Have you made it to the missions where you can only shoot the lady in the back yet? That was the rage quit point for me. I don't know if this is common in other genres, but strategy games in general seem to love throw in a puzzle level every now and again, which is almost always the point at which I stop playing. Anyway, if you want to make the game a little more tactically interesting, try replacing your scouts with shock troopers and snipers.

[Henroid]

Have you made it to the missions where you can only shoot the lady in the back yet? That was the rage quit point for me. I don't know if this is common in other genres, but strategy games in general seem to love throw in a puzzle level every now and again, which is almost always the point at which I stop playing. Anyway, if you want to make the game a little more tactically interesting, try replacing your scouts with shock troopers and snipers.

Okay that one was absolutely bullshit. I think it was the one that tainted my playing of the game forever, where I started to do shit like trigger targeting moments temporarily to prevent things from happening, then moving a bit, repeat. All that sorta stuff. I mean I love the game to death but yeah, they kiiiiiiiinda dropped the ball with that.

[Bjorn]

Have you made it to the missions where you can only shoot the lady in the back yet? That was the rage quit point for me. I don't know if this is common in other genres, but strategy games in general seem to love throw in a puzzle level every now and again, which is almost always the point at which I stop playing. Anyway, if you want to make the game a little more tactically interesting, try replacing your scouts with shock troopers and snipers.

 

Haha, I got to that mission tonight and accidentally broke/cheesed it.  I was messing around with running Alicia and Cherry around finding safe spots, and reloading when I'd get them killed, and at the end of one turn I had a couple of Command Points left, so I decided to try shooting the god lady with my tank (after having already seen how easily she dodged my sniper).  Turns out she can't dodge tank shells.  Next round she healed to full, so I dropped all my damage and aim boosting orders on Welkin and 2-shot her.  Mission complete, no permanent causalities.  I could see how rage inducing that mission was going to be though, so I don't feel bad. 

 

I did a bunch of the skirmishes and Class Challenge maps over the weekend though, trying to level up some of my characters to get some more Potentials and Orders.  I really dug some of the Class Challenge maps, especially the Lancers (16 enemy tanks!!!) and the Shocktroopers.  They did a good job of showing how kickass those classes can be in the right situations. 

 

The story of this game took a hard left turn to Dumb Town though.  A doomsday war machine is barreling down on the capital, where massive civilian casualties are likely if we can't stop it.  Women and children, dogs and cats, old and young will all have their bones crushed to dust beneath it.  The bulk of the army has been annihilated.  If the war can't be brought to a stop within days, if not hours, the country has no chance of winning.  If it isn't stopped here, the empire will gain access to untold quantities of ragnite, likely fueling their domination of the rest of the continent.  The Darcsens will continue to be hunted, enslaved and massacred.  And god child Alicia has the ability to halt the entire war all by herself, out in the middle of no where, saving untold lives.  But she doesn't, because REASONS.  Because there's no god in team, and teamwork is more important than preventing more war atrocities.  And all the power in the world isn't worth more than a country boy's kiss.  Because apparently you can't save the world AND have a boyfriend.  Choke me with a chainsaw.

[Dewar]

I started this game last night. I got frustrated in the first mission with the tank, so I imagine this is going to be fun. It got easier once I realized that enemy movements are scripted, so I just need to be out of the way and save CP until the tank gets there.

[Gormongous]

The story of this game took a hard left turn to Dumb Town though.  A doomsday war machine is barreling down on the capital, where massive civilian casualties are likely if we can't stop it.  Women and children, dogs and cats, old and young will all have their bones crushed to dust beneath it.  The bulk of the army has been annihilated.  If the war can't be brought to a stop within days, if not hours, the country has no chance of winning.  If it isn't stopped here, the empire will gain access to untold quantities of ragnite, likely fueling their domination of the rest of the continent.  The Darcsens will continue to be hunted, enslaved and massacred.  And god child Alicia has the ability to halt the entire war all by herself, out in the middle of no where, saving untold lives.  But she doesn't, because REASONS.  Because there's no god in team, and teamwork is more important than preventing more war atrocities.  And all the power in the world isn't worth more than a country boy's kiss.  Because apparently you can't save the world AND have a boyfriend.  Choke me with a chainsaw.

 

I watched the anime on recommendation from people who apparently must have loved the game, because there was so very little in the anime itself to like. It was an anime about war with nothing to say about war, which was especially egregious at the time because I'd just watched Girls und Panzer and that supposed trifle had infinitely more to say about the shock and stress of combat, and it also was saddled with possibly the worst tsundere archetype of all time. Alicia didn't seem irritable and loving by turns, she was just irritable all the time, and that irritability made her a bad friend and a terrible soldier, which became truly untenable (instead of just inexplicable and sad) when her divine heritage was revealed and she was still too much of an scaredy-cat shrew to set her own feelings aside and save some fuckin' lives.

 

I understand that the game and anime follow each other very closely, which means that I'm warning you, it doesn't get better. Honestly, I'll probably never play this game because of how much of a slog the anime was to watch, which is disappointing, because it looks really fun at certain points.

[Bjorn]

I watched the anime on recommendation from people who apparently must have loved the game, because there was so very little in the anime itself to like. It was an anime about war with nothing to say about war, which was especially egregious at the time because I'd just watched Girls und Panzer and that supposed trifle had infinitely more to say about the shock and stress of combat, and it also was saddled with possibly the worst tsundere archetype of all time. Alicia didn't seem irritable and loving by turns, she was just irritable all the time, and that irritability made her a bad friend and a terrible soldier, which became truly untenable (instead of just inexplicable and sad) when her divine heritage was revealed and she was still too much of an scaredy-cat shrew to set her own feelings aside and save some fuckin' lives.

 

I understand that the game and anime follow each other very closely, which means that I'm warning you, it doesn't get better. Honestly, I'll probably never play this game because of how much of a slog the anime was to watch.

 

Thankfully I've only got 2 chapters left, so even if it gets worse, it's a short drop to the hard stop. 

 

It sounds like the anime does Alicia a disservice, through the first two-thirds of the game, she's a generally good, if a bit bland, character.  Welkin is the character who deserves to be drug out into a field and crucified.  Alicia was in the process of destroying the war machine (had just thrown her lance through it, the first time anyone had done any damage to it at all), when he ran out and stopped her.  With, literally, the rationale being that if she destroys it by herself, the victory will be meaningless and none of them will have learned anything.  Because apparently when your country gets invaded by one of the world's superpowers, it's meant to be a character building opportunity.  He's got a massive boner for her, and she was almost certainly going to die in finishing the war machine off, but his big old nerd boner couldn't allow that.  It's Welkin who can't set aside his feelings and operate as the squad commander he's supposed to be. 

 

It honestly feels like there were two different writers for the game.  It swings wildly back and forth between being a solid war story to just the worst anime-tropy indulgences.  There's an entire chapter of cut scenes that take place during a beach party that were just cringeworthy throughout.  And then there's a Darcsen slave you rescue, who gives a moving anti-war speech about pacificism, forgiveness and love....and then in the next chapter he signs up for the army, they give him a tank and he starts blowing shit up.  His tank even has a custom flamethrower so he can roast the enemy alive in their armor.  He's like Ghandi, with a tank.  And six pack abs. 

 

Edited to add: Another part of the weird dissonance with stopping Alicia is that somehow she's undeserving to use her power, like she didn't earn it.  Nevermind that Welkin has a supertank he inherited from his father.  That every character has two sets of potentials/powers, one set of which are innate to them and the other set they earn through experience.  It could be read as an indictment of using super weapons (like nukes) in war, but it doesn't really feel that way.  It's just that she's more powerful than anyone else, and that's not okay.  Which is a potentially interesting dynamic to explore (because yes, people should be afraid of her), but it's handled so hamfistedly. 

[Gormongous]

Thankfully I've only got 2 chapters left, so even if it gets worse, it's a short drop to the hard stop. 

 

It sounds like the anime does Alicia a disservice, through the first two-thirds of the game, she's a generally good, if a bit bland, character.  Welkin is the character who deserves to be drug out into a field and crucified.  Alicia was in the process of destroying the war machine (had just thrown her lance through it, the first time anyone had done any damage to it at all), when he ran out and stopped her.  With, literally, the rationale being that if she destroys it by herself, the victory will be meaningless and none of them will have learned anything.  Because apparently when your country gets invaded by one of the world's superpowers, it's meant to be a character building opportunity.  He's got a massive boner for her, and she was almost certainly going to die in finishing the war machine off, but his big old nerd boner couldn't allow that.  It's Welkin who can't set aside his feelings and operate as the squad commander he's supposed to be.

 

Well, in the anime, Welkin is the source of almost all the winning stratagems, so even though he's got this nerdy, half-baked peacenik vibe to him, he at least gets shit done. I imagine that they don't push his genius too hard in the game, because that disempowers the player, but it makes him bearable in the anime, whereas Alicia's tsundere feelings for Welkin just involve her yelling at him that his plans aren't going to work, despite episodes and episodes to the contrary. It's still a gross dynamic between them and it overwhelms what seems like it wants to be an ensemble script about teamwork, because we have tank-owning military prodigy on the one hand and innocent demigod battle-maiden on the other. How can characters like Rosie and Largo possibly get a fair shake in that?

 

Edited to add: Another part of the weird dissonance with stopping Alicia is that somehow she's undeserving to use her power, like she didn't earn it.  Nevermind that Welkin has a supertank he inherited from his father.  That every character has two sets of potentials/powers, one set of which are innate to them and the other set they earn through experience.  It could be read as an indictment of using super weapons (like nukes) in war, but it doesn't really feel that way.  It's just that she's more powerful than anyone else, and that's not okay.  Which is a potentially interesting dynamic to explore (because yes, people should be afraid of her), but it's handled so hamfistedly. 

 

In the anime, it's a mix between very light body horror and identity shock, dislike of the other "evil" supergirl, and fear of disappointing pacifist Welkin with too much killing. These aren't rendered very vividly, with one or another coming to the fore to be the excuse for a given situation, but it's interesting that the anime made roughly a year later rewrote a lot of the character motivations and dynamics, only to make a work that was deeply flawed in different ways.

[Bjorn]

Finished this up this evening, ended up really rushing through the final two battles (managed to beat the final battle in a single turn by spamming my two beefiest Shocktroopers).  Ultimately it is a really good game, that falls just short of being amazing for me, mostly because of the repercussions of the introduction of the supernatural stuff towards the end.  That just tainted both the story and the gameplay for me in a lot of ways.  But the rest of the game getting there is really damn good.