Valkyria Chronicles
2009-12-15 19:31 - Gaming
I've just finished a very interesting game called Valkyria Chronicles. It has a bit of role playing, a bit of strategy, with a mix of real time and turn based strategy. Some of the gameplay was actually quite annoying — to "win" each battle with a good rating, the only goal was speed. Conquering some enemies brought an extra bonus, but one that completely paled next to the level completion bonus. As a result, sometimes the only "right" thing to do was to run your character straight into an incoming tank's fire: it's the only way to get to the end fast enough. And it had plenty of points where the only good strategy involved a lot of saving and reloading.
That said, it was a really beautiful game in general, and especially in the (numerous) cutscenes, which looked a bit like a water-colored cartoon strip. The shot above is from one of those cutscenes. The cartoon theme continued through the live action bits, with big batman-style "Bakoom" text flowing over explosions, and "Vroom"s over moving tanks. The story, also, was head-and-shoulders the best I've ever seen in a video game (competing only perhaps with Metal Gear Solid 4 for that spot). I'm quite sure I actually saw a DVD movie of the game on eBay.
