Valkyrie of the Battlefield: Gallian Chronicles (Valkyria Chronicles) Sony Playstation 3
The first truly beautiful Tacti-CEL RPG
Valkyrie of the Battlefield: Gallian Chronicles or just Valkyria Chronicles as it is going to be called in the western hemisphere is a Strategy RPG by SEGA for the Sony Playstation 3. The plot is based in the country of Gallia located somewhere in a fictional Europe. The outline so far tells us that due to the richness of ragnite ore (some element that can be turned into power such as fuel), Gallia is under attack by the East Europe Empire. The East Europe Empire itself is currently at war with the Atlantic Ocean Federal Organization. The player takes control of the Gallians, there has been no word so far though if AOFO will be an ally of the player or if it will be a 3-way war.
The main thing that stands out so far are the graphics, never before have Cel-Shaded graphics looked as gorgeous as they come along in Valkyria Chronicles. I am hardly exaggerating here the visuals of this game could even give Studio Ghibli a run for their money. Beautifully drawn characters, with very rough light shadings and a sort of oldie filter look on top of it makes it feel like you are watching an anime, one that looks better than say Naruto or Bleach. I am not too sure why, but the visuals feel a bit like Radiata Stories' visuals, obviously of higher quality though. This also applies to the actual character design, namely the characters shown so far all have a very distinct anime style to them, but in a different way than No More Heroes which has more of a punk style to it. People have always been moaning about Cel-Shaded graphics as they never looked as crisp as they were meant to look, or even what the creators had in mind but with the new generation of 256bit consoles this should be an issue of the past!
For a game like this, one that has a war theme to it you would expect a soundtrack that goes along with it, and from what we could hear in the trailers so far it is very much fitting. Final Fantasy Tactics would be a good comparison here, the battle themes of tactics do resemble the tracks that have been used so far a lot. Of course I only heard the tracks through web trailers through my laptop which does tone the actual greatness of the sounds down, so there is something to look forward to. The voiceovers up to this point sound straight up amazing, well that is in Japanese though which also means that everything is still lip-synched, in essence like most people who are into these games it is rather uninteresting how abysmal the English voiceovers turn out to be, but rather if they will include the Japanese tracks as a setting within the options. There haven not been many games or anime that converted well over from Japanese to English. Hellsing and Final Fantasy XII are the only ones that I truly deserved the credits they got, and if the English voice cast for this game will be able to pull this off, then I will gladly play the game with English voiceovers as well. Although everything sounds great so far, I don not want to go too specific into the sound since as mentioned before, I only have listened to it through my laptop and the sound I get out of it might not really be the real deal.
BLiTZ is the short for what the battle system is called in Valkyria Chronicles; it stands for Battle of Live Tactical Zone system. It is a cool name but it looks a bit clumsy once you have read the full version. It looks like a mix between your average turnbased Strategy RPG and Command and Conquer to be honest. You are looking at an overview of the map and you zoom in to control each unit manually, but in real time then again. Of course if you could just roam around free we would just be playing C&C. You are restricted by an AP gauge (probably meaning Action or Ability Point) which has a separate figure for each playable unit. The twist comes in as soon as you start moving, so you see your AP gauge decreasing BUT once you handle another unit the same bar for the unit you moved earlier might be recharging already which adds a lot of depth into strategic maneuvers. You are also completely in charge of what your units do, you are aiming manually for example as you would with any shooter out there - so headshots are the way to go here (well depending on the weapon). The environment also plays a big role with your strategies; city environments could be well effective for you if you can position your snipers up on roofs to shoot down on the marching enemies that would otherwise crush you with heave artillery such as rocket launchers and tanks.
As mentioned in the beginning, the game looks fantastic and the system sounds great too, the only question left is how it will actually play. The game is due to be released in Japan April the 28th 2008, while the rest of us have to wait until fall later this year.
