Valkyria Chronicles (2008) 7/10
Valkyria Chronicles II (2010) 6/10
Valkyria Chronicles 4 (2018)
Valkyria Chronicles had been hailed as an original strategy game upon its release due to its refreshing "BLiTZ" (Battle of Live Tactical Zone) gameplay, which worked as a system to put the player in three different modes of gameplay per player-action: Command Mode (choosing units/player-characters), Action Mode (re-positioning said units/player-characters), and Target Mode (essentially 3rd-person shooter combat). It was hailed because the BLiTZ system enabled players to partake in the pleasure of mapping out a plot against the enemy (like a strategy game) and then actually let the player perform the plan they'd just premeditated (like an action game). And so the marketers advertised that Valkyria Chronicles offers the catharsis of seeing through the success of your own battle plan as well as capturing the thrill of a soldier in combat carrying out said plan; all through the fancy 3-D visual design of anime filtered into and appearance of pencil sketches and watercolor paint.
So much potential was in Valkyria Chronicles that could have made it go from a simple game to a true DIA experience centered around the glory of winning a truly difficult war by strategy (mind) and action(body), but alas, the makers threw away this potential to make room for showcasing a painful batch of anime clichés instead.
The list of clichés the player must endure includes: sickishly sweet speeches about why you should appreciate nature and people; terribly dull protagonists (made to be so boring and ridiculously good-natured to ensure no players would be alienated from them) coupled with terribly dull antagonists (made to be so boring and ridiculously bad-natured to ensure players would be alienated from them); cheesy and pointless scenes of mirth as story filler; repetitive gestures or sayings as you select the same characters in combat over and over again; a forced romance between the two main characters; an indulgence about the story's fictional history (including an extensive glossary of story-related terms and other in-depths texts available on Castlefront St); people of royalty flamboyantly dressed like the middle ages; and -- of course -- ridiculous weapons (a battleship that sails on land) and superpowers (the Valkyria) clashing on both sides.
One can at least appreciate the BLiTZ system, which potentially lets lovers of the strategy genre and lovers of the action genre to come together; but I really do wonder how many players have been turned off (or even scared away) by the sheer discomfort these cheesy anime clichés in the campaign of Valkyria Chronicles instead of some genuinely ambitious storytelling to properly fit the refreshing style of gameplay.