VC4 retains what I liked about the other entries I played when I was younger: the joy of commanding soldiers to move directly from the third person rarely gets old. The tactical gameplay relies much more on movement and positioning rather than number crunching or unit customization. One thing that was a staple of the series is the emphasis on “rush” tactics aka finish the objective as fast as possible. While this gave way for cheese strategies with high movement units to dominate the meta in the older games, I am pleased to say they made an obvious effort to avoid this game to fall into the same flaw. This is not to say that you can take it slow and turtle to the objective, rushing is still the goal but they make achieving it a lot more interesting. Interception fire can absolute shred your units is one thing, but another is the multitude of extra effects like grenadiers that stop your vehicles dead in its track, troopers that can steal all your grenades. Maps are generally more built towards anti-cheese with their gimmicks so that even if you decide to do a cheese rush you have to put your back into it. Not the best thing in the world that can make me analyze all the intricacies behind level design and all that, but made for enjoyable gameplay that kept me entertained until the end. I guess the AI is very noticeably stupid but since this is a very player phase-heavy game it doesn’t really affect the experience much.

Something I wasn’t into at first but eventually grew to like about this game is its “show first, tell later” approach where you get a full squad at the beginning of the game and you only get to know specifically about each character as you progress. It is quite a breath of fresh air compared to all the other tactical RPGs that have you know the fundamentals of characters first before adding them to your constantly growing army. VC4 also has, in my opinion, the best “support” story system out of all tactical RPGs, where you would get support conversations that are presented as “Squad Stories”, entire interludes with their own missions to flesh out 3 characters from your squad at once. This not only saves time and effort for the player when unlocking but also makes for a much more entertaining way to get to know your units. Not exactly a big fan of how you have to move with the unit over 20 times to unlock their story but it is definitely miles better than how other games do it still.

As for the customization and management mechanics VC4, like its predecessors, are barebones and rather just there for the sake of it. Upgrade trees pretty much present no decision-making whatsoever you just steadily make it up the progression naturally. The only real customization that I would occasionally ponder over is whether to use gears that are effective against human or armored and that’s pretty much it. This, along with many other aspects of this game, are not obnoxious in any way but not really anything to write home about.


Now when I said “I could have been a thousand times better if it was not what it was” this applies really hard to the story. This game is very narrative-driven, and the narrative they have, just like the other games, is basically an anime version of World War II with some fantasy elements. What I have to say is that VC4 had a VERY GOOD story on their hands, full of tension and twists, but ultimately mangled by its shounen-type storytelling where it is plagued with Deus Ex Machina asspulls, overly not-so-subtle expositional reveals, “people only get wounded when the story decides it” moments, one-dimensional tropy dialogue writing and many, many more JRPG sins that really has no place in a story that sets out to deliver a much more mature perspective on war compared to its JRPG peers.

This insane tonal whiplash is so detrimental to this game that it frustrates me. There is decent focus on war elements like running out of food and water, sacrificing civilians for the sake of the greater good, human experiment etc but all these themes are explored in such a PG-13 way that the impact is heavily dampened. I do not, for a fact, need the story to be constantly depressing and filled with urgency, but a lot of times, the stake at hand did not really match with what was being shown. There was also a point in the story where the realization that both sides did ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up things comes up but it is heavily contrary to how black and white the game decided to move forward, with many of the main villains looking comically evil, save for the “traitor” who I think is actually a really really great antagonist that shines among all.

The only time when this was sort of beneficial was a moment near the end of the game where you have to send some units on a suicide mission to escape and it actually shocked me that the game went with it all the way and killed off the character that you chose. It was a brilliant moment that will definitely stick with me, one whose impact was actually enhanced by how the game had been handling its theme prior to it.


Valkyria Chronicles is a fun and memorable anime tactical RPG with tons of things to appreciate that are not present in the genre. You will have to deal with its shounen-like nature but will enjoy it regardless if you are looking for a JRPG with actually engaging story and fun gameplay.

i had this game on xbox and my god is it fantastic

Valkyria Chronicles 2 was the last game I played in the series and it this game brought back so many good memories.