Valkyria Chronicles 4

It's been a long, bumpy road for the Valkyria Chronicles franchise. The first game came out a decade ago to glowing reviews, which should have helped turn it into Sega's next great series. Unfortunately, the next two games were shuttled off to the PSP, with the third installment never making its way outside of Japan. In the meantime we've seen a remaster of the first game bounce around to every console you can think of and a thoroughly disappointing spin-off that traded in the turn-based strategy for repetitive hacking and slashing. Needless to say, there have been a lot of ups and downs in the last ten years.

But lately Sega has been acting a little different. Perhaps it's because Yakuza has belatedly found success in the West, but it seems that the company is willing to give Valkyria Chronicles another lease on life. The result is the long-awaited fourth installment, which is not only an exceptional strategy game, but also the new high water mark for this series. It was worth the wait.

You don't need to have played the previous three games to jump into Valkyria Chronicles 4. This is a series where each installment tells its own story and features a new cast of characters. It's a recreation of the fictional war between the Atlantic Federation and the East Europan Imperial Alliance that is adapted from the journals of the soldiers that fought on the front lines. It's like one of those Ken Burns documentaries turned into a strange hybrid action/strategy game.

In this case, we're following Claude Wallace, a member of Squad E of the Atlantic Federation. The year is 1935 EC and things are not looking good for our heroes. The Empire has taken control of most of the land and has as a stark military advantage. It's a situation where the Squad E's backs are against the wall and they only have a few options left. Their plan? Push back with their depleted forces and try to take the capital city in the north. It's a suicide mission with almost no shot of working, but it's the only hope they have.

Much like the previous three games, Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a mix of action and strategy. The battles play out similar to something like Final Fantasy Tactics or XCOM, only now it's about third-person shooting instead of moving small pieces around a board. We get a certain amount of moves per turn, so the idea is to select the unit you want to play as and run around the map like it's any other modern action game, complete with proper aiming and cover mechanics. Once you've run out of action points or have taken a shot at the enemy, you'll get to move the rest of your troops in until you run out of turns, in which the opponent takes over and does their worst. It still functions like a standard strategy game and requires a lot of careful planning and know-how, but is faster-paced and more exciting because of the third-person elements.

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It's important to note that this is not one of those sequels that overhauls the formula. If you've played a previous Valkyria Chronicles game, then you're going to pick this up without missing a beat. You get the usual scouts, troopers, lancers and snipers, along with a grenadier class, which really opens up the battlefield in big new ways. Other tweaks to the combat include being able to call in offensive and defensive support from the nearby battleship, as well as an interesting new wrinkle that gives our heroes a "last stand" before he die. The battles are also bigger and more impressive this time around, especially as we inch closer to the capital city.

The fact that we're always on the move and working towards an important goal gives this game a real sense of urgency. This not only makes the story instantly engaging, but also does a great job of varying up types of battlefields we'll run into. One of the complaints I've always had about this series is that a lot of the locations tend to be a bit samey, but that's not the case here. We're constantly seeing new types of environments as we march north, including everything from major towns to the rain-soaked forests to a base camp up in flames. I especially loved the drastic change brought by winter, which sees us fighting through snowy mountains in order to survive. And you're just going to have to take my word that it gets even cooler from there.

One of the things I really like about this game is how it brings the personalities of each character forward. It's not just a series of battles where the soldiers are mere cannon fodder, but rather a small group of characters you get to know and care about. And it's not only that we get to know them, but their squadmates will actually improve and be able to perform new abilities as they grow closer to the people around them. This is one of the few war games that actually made me emotional when characters died.

That said, the game does have a tendency of being a bit silly at times. This is a problem I've had with all of the Valkyria games, but it's probably more prominent here because of the urgency of the mission. It can feel like whiplash at times, because we're constantly going from something that is deathly serious to an incredibly goofy moment that feels completely out of place. I liked the coming-of-age story more here than in past installments, but there's just something about the way this series structures its narrative that frustrates me.

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This is a long game, and not just because there's a whole lot of story to get through. The battles themselves are epic and typically run for at least twenty or thirty minutes. This can be invigorating, since there are so many moving parts and things you're need to take care of in order to ensure a victory. But I'm not going to lie; losing a half-hour battle is the very definition of deflating, especially when it's an unexpected loss. There are a handful of battles with weird failure conditions that aren't completely obvious from the start, which forces you into some less-than-fun trial and error moments.

On a brighter note, Valkyria Chronicles 4 looks fantastic. This is a series known for its style, and this sequel does not disappoint. It's made to look like a pencil-drawn comic book or graphic novel, which feels both grounded and completely fantastical at the same time. The whole thing is oozing with personality, especially when it comes to characters and how they react to the chaos on the battlefield. Granted, it's not a massive leap forward from what we saw from the remastered original, but this is the certainly best looking Valkyria game yet.

There's an argument to be made that Valkyria Chronicles 4 is just more of the same. In some ways that's true, but it's selling an incredibly fun and exciting strategy game short. This is a sleek and streamlined experience that is easy to learn and full of depth. It's also long and tells an emotionally gripping coming-of-age story that, while goofy at times, is the best I've seen from the series. This is a strategy game for those who think strategy games are too boring, or, if you prefer, a third-person shooter for people who think that third-person shooters are mindless. It's a perfect marriage of action and tactics that deserves to find success. It's about time for the Valkyria Chronicles franchise to finally catch on.