Valkyria Chronicles II (Video game, PSP) - Publisher: Sega. Developer: Sega.
I was as surprised as anyone to find that the best game of 2008 - a year marked by era-defining titles like Grand Theft Auto 4, Metal Gear Solid 4, and LittleBigPlanet - was an obscure strategy RPG from Sega buried in the avalanche of holiday releases.
Valkyria Chronicles never exactly sold well, but it was enough to bring us Valkyria Chronicles II today: a less risky sequel on the lower-budget PSP platform that is nevertheless unmistakably the offspring of the PS3 original.
The summary: in an alternate history version of WWI-era Europe, players command a squad of troops through skirmishes over the course of a small country's civil war.
VC resembles a highly evolved version of a strategy board game such as Risk. Combat is turn-based, and begins in an overhead "command mode" where units - vehicles, submachine gun-toting shocktroopers, lightly armed but mobile scouts, anti-tank lancers, and others - are represented by symbols that look like game pieces. Once a unit is selected, the view zooms down into a fully 3D battlefield where the soldier or vehicle is controlled directly.
That direct control over squad members is one of the things that makes VC unique, but this is no twitchy action game. Enemy units are rooted to the ground and can only provide limited interception fire during the player's phase (the same interception fire happens automatically on the player's behalf during the enemy's phase). When it comes time to take an action, the world freezes, giving you all the time you need to line up your shot.
The brilliance of VC comes from being more hands-on than typical strategy titles while still being a game of tactics and cunning rather than reflexes. This gameplay has made the transition flawlessly to the more limited handheld platform. Two major features were lost in the move to PSP: the original graphics engine, which made Valkyria Chronicles look like a watercolor painting in motion; and the massive battlefields that were only possible on a high-end console. Both are disappointing to lose, but not critical to the experience.
The latter restriction is something the developers attempted to turn into a strength rather than a weakness, and they came close to succeeding. Rather than one large map, battles now take place over several smaller maps simultaneously. "Gateway camps" must be captured in order to transition between areas, adding new importance to holding territory and managing limited resources.
A large number of tweaks and additions in the sequel are clear improvements, as well. Many of them are aimed at creating a more dynamic and mobile battlefield - for instance, armored personnel carriers can now be used in place of tanks to ferry slow-moving units around the map. And transferring units between camps, which used to waste several precious action points, can now be done easily.
Multiplayer, which was conspicuously missing from the first game, has also been added. Both co-op and versus matches can be played over ad-hoc wireless mode, and both are cleverly designed.
Unexpectedly, versus mode, which most players of the first game guessed would be unbalanced, is probably the better-constructed option.
There is a catch to all of this. Playing VC2 requires a high level of tolerance for some of the most unbearable anime nonsense on this side of Saturday morning TV. The cast of characters this time around is mostly teenaged academy recruits, with all the wretch-inducing drama that goes with them. But like in the first game, eventually some surprisingly mature commentary on war rises out of the noise. The scary part is when you start to like the ridiculous characters.
Other complaints are the low difficulty of the first few chapters, which will bore veteran players, and the enemy AI, which is roughly as intelligent as a salmon that has been hit on the head.
Still probably one of the top five games on the PSP.
Rated T for bubbly teenaged girls with assault rifles.4.5 out of 5
