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Why I'm just not feeling Valkyria Chronicles 2
14 years ago
The big orca towers over you...
Firstly, yes, I'm back from vacation. :P WHOO NIAGARA FALLS.
And upon coming back from vacation I came to a startling conclusion. I suddenly have some time to play video games! *LE GASP* And I figured it was time for me to finally start a game I got last Christmas, Valkyria Chronicles 2 for the PSP. I was a very big fan of the first game, and was very eager to re immerse myself in the world of Gallia and a land on the brink of war.
Needless to say, I'm not exactly enjoying the trip the second time around.
My younger brother was an even bigger fan of the first game than I was, and he started the sequel right after we got the game for Christmas. He lasted about two days before he tossed the game aside, and never looked back. He had a list of complaints a mile long for the game, most of which I thought he was just hating on it for no real reason. He had a tendency to not give games a fair chance, and if he finds one thing that he doesn't like, it tends to wreck his whole experience.
The game has been collecting dust for quite some time now, and only now have I finally gotten around to starting it. And, while the game certainly made some good improvements over its predecessor, a number of smaller changes have been for the worse. And, like with everything, the devil is in the details. And those details have effectively wrecked my experience with Valkyria Chronicles 2.
Hold on tight Ladies and Gentlemen, a huge rant is a-coming!
The first game told the tale of Welkin Gunther, a man who had just graduated from college and was all set to begin his career studying plants and bugs and that kind of thing. Until the second Europan War forces him to go into combat. The son of a great general, Welkin knew his way around a tank and war, and is assigned to lead a small squad called "Squad 7." As the game progresses, the story goes deeper and while it's not entirely predictable, it's not exactly full of surprising twists and turns. Yet, where it shines is the subtlety in which it is handled, which is rare for anything coming out of Japan, and its character development. The gameplay too was incredibly deep, combining turn based strategy with a third person shooter. This huge tale was riddled with a lot of complicated themes, including revenge and racism, and even had a very poignant love story thrown in for good measure. AND IT WORKED.
The sequel lacks...almost all of that. Instead you meet Generic Hero Avan Hardins (who I swear is the hero from every generic anime). Avan has enthusiasm (A la Naruto) but isn't very good at what he does (A la Naruto). He gets word that his brother has been killed in the continuing conflict (The first game didn't end with the war over, mostly just slowed) and no one will tell Avan why. Thus, Avan enrolls in the Lanseal Military Academy (complete with stupid uniforms) to both help fight in the battle and find out what happened to his brother. There he meets Dingbat (real name: Cosette) and Brainiac (Zeri, known to be smart because he wears glasses). Together they...go to school and fight in mock battles, and thus your game begins.
These three are perhaps the most bland characters I've ever seen. Cosette is supposed to be the cheerful, goofy character. Goofy might be too nice a word. Unrealistically stupid might be more accurate. For example, someone tells her to be quiet. So, she stops breathing and nearly passes out. And they let her into Military School.
The first game's cast had a lot more personality, and wasn't just super generic team of three. Welkin had flaws, and was more interested in plants and animals than actually fighting the war. And he didn't make up for his faults with Enthusiasm. He was actually decent at what he did! Alicia, the leading lady from the first game, was also a more enjoyable heroine. She was strong, able and careful, but at her core was still a scared child.
In the sequel, it's just....bland.
However, storytelling has some improvements too. Firstly, there are now scenes between the other members of your squad. In the first game, it was just the main cast while the rest of the squad got a description and bio and a few one-liners. I like giving the other team members time to shine, but unfortunately once again it's very bland and uninteresting. No one feels really human here. They all have one trait that the game brings up constantly whenever the characters appear. Franca hates her brother and yells at him constantly. Helmutt is a captured soldier from the other side of the war. Edy's sister (I forget her name) likes acting. It's not realistic, and the characters actually suffer because of it.
That, and they feel way too much like anime characters and not at all like real people.
The art style too takes a hit, though I am more forgiving of this one. The PS3 game looked great, but you just can't get that kind of graphics on the PSP. For what it is, the game does look good. Everything has a clean look to it, and the character artwork is very nice looking. However, it looks more anime than the first game, and less like a watercolor painting. I always kind of thought the first game resembled a very pretty anime, but the sequel looks more like saturday morning cartoon fodder. However, if you don't mind the art style, it's very clean and clear, and the animated scenes look very nice. And they can be surprisingly frequent.
Gameplay itself is the same, and changed in a number of ways, most of which are for the better. Now all the classes can be upgraded and changed, giving more options for the player to customize. For example, a scout can now become a sniper, or a scout Elite. They do play differently, and it adds a lot to character individuality. Suddenly, you can have four different scouts, each meant to handle a situation differently. It works well.
What doesn't work is the lack of scale. Let me explain. Instead of large areas where you have a lot of men running around, in Valkyria Chronicles 2 you are regulated to small areas that are connected by camps. This part I actually do not mind. I understand that due to hardware and software limitations of the PSP the game had to be scaled back. That's fine, and I think the multiple small areas is a good compromise.
What isn't fine is how small and uninteresting the battles feel. And how repetitive they can get. In the first game, there was generally one or maybe two battles per chapter. And they were all big, sprawling affairs with many units on both sides. Areas never repeated, and every battle presented a new challenge with multiple ways to tackle it. The second game gives you more battles, yes, but it repeats the areas a lot. A lot, lot. That, and most battles have no story to precede them, instead just telling you to capture this base or kill this character. There's no feeling of weight to the proceedings. Instead, it just feels like you are grinding. And battles are short. This is a love it or hate it thing, but the first game's battles often went on for a half-hour to more than an hour. Now? 20 minutes is a long battle. It just feels off. And not very interesting. And incredibly repetitive.
That is the biggest crime in my opinion. Had every mission had serious weight to it, or at least, more weight than just "Kill this guy. You need to do this mission to get to the next one" then I might've been able to forgive the story flaws. Because the game itself is actually a pretty well done version of the Valkyria Chronicles gameplay. But I just can't get into it, and with no story or compelling reason to keep me going through the more tedious elements, I just wonder why I'm wasting my time.
So, there you go. If you've read this far, congratulations! And if you haven't, go play the first Valkyria Chronicles. You'll be happy you did.
And upon coming back from vacation I came to a startling conclusion. I suddenly have some time to play video games! *LE GASP* And I figured it was time for me to finally start a game I got last Christmas, Valkyria Chronicles 2 for the PSP. I was a very big fan of the first game, and was very eager to re immerse myself in the world of Gallia and a land on the brink of war.
Needless to say, I'm not exactly enjoying the trip the second time around.
My younger brother was an even bigger fan of the first game than I was, and he started the sequel right after we got the game for Christmas. He lasted about two days before he tossed the game aside, and never looked back. He had a list of complaints a mile long for the game, most of which I thought he was just hating on it for no real reason. He had a tendency to not give games a fair chance, and if he finds one thing that he doesn't like, it tends to wreck his whole experience.
The game has been collecting dust for quite some time now, and only now have I finally gotten around to starting it. And, while the game certainly made some good improvements over its predecessor, a number of smaller changes have been for the worse. And, like with everything, the devil is in the details. And those details have effectively wrecked my experience with Valkyria Chronicles 2.
Hold on tight Ladies and Gentlemen, a huge rant is a-coming!
The first game told the tale of Welkin Gunther, a man who had just graduated from college and was all set to begin his career studying plants and bugs and that kind of thing. Until the second Europan War forces him to go into combat. The son of a great general, Welkin knew his way around a tank and war, and is assigned to lead a small squad called "Squad 7." As the game progresses, the story goes deeper and while it's not entirely predictable, it's not exactly full of surprising twists and turns. Yet, where it shines is the subtlety in which it is handled, which is rare for anything coming out of Japan, and its character development. The gameplay too was incredibly deep, combining turn based strategy with a third person shooter. This huge tale was riddled with a lot of complicated themes, including revenge and racism, and even had a very poignant love story thrown in for good measure. AND IT WORKED.
The sequel lacks...almost all of that. Instead you meet Generic Hero Avan Hardins (who I swear is the hero from every generic anime). Avan has enthusiasm (A la Naruto) but isn't very good at what he does (A la Naruto). He gets word that his brother has been killed in the continuing conflict (The first game didn't end with the war over, mostly just slowed) and no one will tell Avan why. Thus, Avan enrolls in the Lanseal Military Academy (complete with stupid uniforms) to both help fight in the battle and find out what happened to his brother. There he meets Dingbat (real name: Cosette) and Brainiac (Zeri, known to be smart because he wears glasses). Together they...go to school and fight in mock battles, and thus your game begins.
These three are perhaps the most bland characters I've ever seen. Cosette is supposed to be the cheerful, goofy character. Goofy might be too nice a word. Unrealistically stupid might be more accurate. For example, someone tells her to be quiet. So, she stops breathing and nearly passes out. And they let her into Military School.
The first game's cast had a lot more personality, and wasn't just super generic team of three. Welkin had flaws, and was more interested in plants and animals than actually fighting the war. And he didn't make up for his faults with Enthusiasm. He was actually decent at what he did! Alicia, the leading lady from the first game, was also a more enjoyable heroine. She was strong, able and careful, but at her core was still a scared child.
In the sequel, it's just....bland.
However, storytelling has some improvements too. Firstly, there are now scenes between the other members of your squad. In the first game, it was just the main cast while the rest of the squad got a description and bio and a few one-liners. I like giving the other team members time to shine, but unfortunately once again it's very bland and uninteresting. No one feels really human here. They all have one trait that the game brings up constantly whenever the characters appear. Franca hates her brother and yells at him constantly. Helmutt is a captured soldier from the other side of the war. Edy's sister (I forget her name) likes acting. It's not realistic, and the characters actually suffer because of it.
That, and they feel way too much like anime characters and not at all like real people.
The art style too takes a hit, though I am more forgiving of this one. The PS3 game looked great, but you just can't get that kind of graphics on the PSP. For what it is, the game does look good. Everything has a clean look to it, and the character artwork is very nice looking. However, it looks more anime than the first game, and less like a watercolor painting. I always kind of thought the first game resembled a very pretty anime, but the sequel looks more like saturday morning cartoon fodder. However, if you don't mind the art style, it's very clean and clear, and the animated scenes look very nice. And they can be surprisingly frequent.
Gameplay itself is the same, and changed in a number of ways, most of which are for the better. Now all the classes can be upgraded and changed, giving more options for the player to customize. For example, a scout can now become a sniper, or a scout Elite. They do play differently, and it adds a lot to character individuality. Suddenly, you can have four different scouts, each meant to handle a situation differently. It works well.
What doesn't work is the lack of scale. Let me explain. Instead of large areas where you have a lot of men running around, in Valkyria Chronicles 2 you are regulated to small areas that are connected by camps. This part I actually do not mind. I understand that due to hardware and software limitations of the PSP the game had to be scaled back. That's fine, and I think the multiple small areas is a good compromise.
What isn't fine is how small and uninteresting the battles feel. And how repetitive they can get. In the first game, there was generally one or maybe two battles per chapter. And they were all big, sprawling affairs with many units on both sides. Areas never repeated, and every battle presented a new challenge with multiple ways to tackle it. The second game gives you more battles, yes, but it repeats the areas a lot. A lot, lot. That, and most battles have no story to precede them, instead just telling you to capture this base or kill this character. There's no feeling of weight to the proceedings. Instead, it just feels like you are grinding. And battles are short. This is a love it or hate it thing, but the first game's battles often went on for a half-hour to more than an hour. Now? 20 minutes is a long battle. It just feels off. And not very interesting. And incredibly repetitive.
That is the biggest crime in my opinion. Had every mission had serious weight to it, or at least, more weight than just "Kill this guy. You need to do this mission to get to the next one" then I might've been able to forgive the story flaws. Because the game itself is actually a pretty well done version of the Valkyria Chronicles gameplay. But I just can't get into it, and with no story or compelling reason to keep me going through the more tedious elements, I just wonder why I'm wasting my time.
So, there you go. If you've read this far, congratulations! And if you haven't, go play the first Valkyria Chronicles. You'll be happy you did.
I won't lie though, there -is- the rare occasion a new game comes out that I really enjoy, but... Its become quite the infrequent event. Like at most 2-3 times a year. >w> <w< Happened so much more often back in the day. Ah wells, hopefully these new systems turn that around somewhat but I won't hold my breath. *chuckles*
Regardless though, I really hope you enjoyed your vacation to Niagara buddy, glad to see ya back. =3
Yeah, I loved the first Valkyria. But I just can't get into this one. The first day I tried it, I thought I was having a very good time. Then the nostalgia of playing battles like the first game wore off and I just got rather bored with the whole affair. :/ Hopefully they bring number 3 over here, and that will be better.
*hugs* We'll talk soon dood. Been a while.