Valkyria Revolution Review

Turn Based Strategy at its- nowhere to be found!

Have you by chance played a gem called Valkyria Chronicles? Because if you haven’t, and you enjoy turn based strategy games, you owe it to yourself to play it. I rank it right up there with Final Fantasy Tactics. From the hand drawn cell shaded characters, to the wonderful soundtrack that fills your ears while driving a course to oversee your army to victory, it blended turn based strategy(tbs) with a bit of real time while you controlled each individual character. The combat was super fun, and very engaging. It even had two sequels that released on the Playstation Portable. So when a spinoff was being talked about, and getting an overhaul for the Playstation 4 and Xbox One, I preordered Valkyria Revolution without a second thought.

So let’s start with this- The game opens up to a wonderfully scored scene, and right away you see that similar art style. And if you are like me, you nod to yourself and get ready to dig in. Like I said, this game is a spinoff of Valkyria Chronicles, so it is set in the fictional world of Europa, but at a completely different timeline than Chronicles. So you don’t have to worry about playing Chronicles to enjoy the game at all.

Stop me if you have heard this one before. A powerful empire by the name of Ruzi, has spread across most of Europa and have been economically strangling the smaller countries. One of those smaller countries happens to be Jutland. And from this great country of Jutland, we have our hero Amleth Gronkjaer, who had some very bad things happen to him and his friends, so he plots revenge to overthrow the Ruzhien empire. So a cookie cutter opening story, no big deal, right? You will learn more as the game progresses. The time is set long after the game, with a young boy asking an older woman about the story of Jutland, and the five traitors that helped see Jutland to victory, only to be branded as traitors and executed. This woman is named Richelle, and she just so happens to have the true history of these events in her books and memories that were passed down through each generation.

I will say the story does progress. Once again, I don’t do spoilers unless I have to, so the base story I will discuss about here will not go into detail to ruin anything. Amleth and his friends are all doing their part in the fight for Jutland to oust Ruzi from power. But it turns out that Amleth and his friends weren’t doing it for Jutland at all. They were all orphans, that lived on the outskirts of town, enjoying life with Miss Maria. Maria was a younger woman who cared for all the children, and you could tell as you learn about her, that she loved the kids with every fiber of her being, and the kids returned that love in kind. That is, until the Ruzhien emperor himself, Klaudiusz, visits the orphanage, kidnaps Maria, and burns the orphanage down with the kids in it. Except for Amleth, Basil, Violette, Solomon, and Fritte who were off playing not far from the orphanage. They return just in time to see everything burning, and Maria being taken away. It also turns out that Jutland turned a blind eye to this, and did nothing. The five swore right there they would have revenge, and worked to have great influence all throughout Jutland. And they start a war for their personal vendetta.

So we have a little something to go on now. If you want to see how this plays out, then grab yourself a copy and play these events throughout history that Richelle has right there available to you. Each chapter has tons of side quests, and even fairly lengthy cutscenes that you can watch, that honestly I enjoyed watching. Anything from adding character depth or just seeing them interact and joke around was usually pleasant to view. So now it is time to get into that sweet, sweet turn based strategy of commanding your army. By not commanding your army at all, but by running around hacking and slashing.

Yep, you read that right, this game is your run of the mill hack and slash game. I played the first few missions thinking the devs were just getting you used to movement and placement, and then throw you into the full blown tbs side of things. Sadly that is not the case here. You can bring up to a party of four, and switch back and forth while you run around and hack away. You have grenades and rocket launchers and other long range weaponry, and when you want to use them, it pauses the game so you can line up your shot or throw. I guess that is a little more depth than I am giving it credit for. This is the meat of the game, and what you will be doing to progress, so I wish I could say I enjoyed the combat here, but I just didn’t. It felt very aged, like something that released around the early 2000s. Your character not responding to things like take cover, or jump over cover. The lock on system is just terrible, and making the camera go haywire at times. Stale enemy types lead you to press attack and not even pay attention to what you are fighting, because you would hit or magically face the other direction whether you wanted to or not. So you play mission after mission, with a sort of run down Dynasty Warriors type feel but without tons of enemies, just some soldiers and mech like tanks to take down. Rinse and repeat. Enter the Valkyria….

A Valkyria is a being who has immense(umm) powers(yeah, that), and she can turn the tide of an entire war single handedly. Amleth first meets the Valkyria while trying to assassinate emperor Klaudiusz. Amleth, barely escaping with is life, realizes there is no chance of defeating the Valkyria, who seems to be attached to Klaudiusz. So with the help of Jutland, the Anti-Valkyria unit was established, with Amleth as the leader, and the Jutish princess Ophelia joining to understand what her people are going through. Is she just a figurehead, or will she play a bigger role? I’ll let you guess. Ding ding! You are correct, she has a bigger role to play. There are missions where you’ll have to face off against the Valkyria, and here the difficulty spikes. Even certain side missions can have her show up, if you have taken too long.

My characters were always over leveled, so I never had any problems with missions, but the Valkyria forces you to switch characters, use different Ragnite(magic) abilities to get through her magical attacks and possibly stun her. I died two or three times while fighting her the first time, just to have to play the entire string of the mission to get to her again. I got pretty good at skipping already viewed cutscenes. I shouldn’t be complaining, it is finally a challenge, right? If she is supposed to wipe out entire battlefields, then it shouldn’t be easy. So I respect this, and press forward. And forward. And forward. Mission after boring mission, just to see bits of the story unfolding. This generally shouldn’t be the case here folks. Slogging your way through a stale combat system just to get to the story is just as bad as a game that has great mechanics with no story. I know finding that happy medium can be tough, but this game could have been so much more if it followed the Chronicles tbs style instead of what we got. And I get that I am reviewing this game based on its own merits or shortcomings, and shouldn’t be bringing in different mechanics that aren’t there, but why mess with something that is established and near perfect? Branching out is fine, we wouldn’t have games like Super Mario RPG or Zelda II that changed the game completely, but at some point the devs should have caught on that mission after mission of an outdated hack and slash play style can just bring people to a grinding halt and put it down for good. The grind is real here people, the grind is real.