[A-Z Games] V: Valkyria Chronicles

Sometimes a striking aesthetic is enough, sometimes it is just distracting. 

Valkyria Chronicles first caught my eye in the preview stage purely through the visuals. A generation after Jet Set Radio scattered hip-hop graffiti themed cel-shading into the world of gaming, Sega created the CANVAS engine which made the world look like it had been drawn with colouring pencils. In between those two games, the most lush vision of the world had already been created, by Clover, with the beautiful, inky imagery of Okami. That was based on Japanese ink illustrations but, at the time in 2006^[1], there was a more and more obvious hard edge to gaming visuals with greys, browns and earthy colours which had become more and more prevalent by 2008 as Japanese developers fell from the ascendancy to be replaced by gaming's version of “mature”. Valkyria Chronicles managed to bridge this with a more serious feel to the look and it was stunning - just the type of aesthetic that appeals. It didn't hurt that it also reminded me of one of my favourite TV programmes ever, FullMetal Alchemist. I watched the trailer many, many times.

Now the better games bring a coherent world into play and the visuals of Valkyria Chronicles, striking as they were, matched perfectly with the world which was based on a slightly old fashioned “steampunk” vision of the past. The lightness of the pencil strokes and the colouring gave it a perfect, aged look that allowed the story to take hold. In a scenario based pretty heavily on WW2, you were playing as Welkin, a slightly soft looking army cadet, returning to a home town about to be attacked. Would he, with his merry band of soldiers, be able to turn the tide of the Gallian War? 

If you were good enough, yes, yes he would. But what did you have to be good at, the initial draw of he graphical style gives no idea of the game itself. Valkyria Chronicles sees you take charge of a team of soldiers in a turn based strategy game. 

Turn based games can be a bit of an acquired taste as they seem counter to much of the excitement of what gaming can give and the immediacy of the medium. Action, or “real time” games are a lot more common where your input timing is also of great importance - the timing of when you jump on a goomba affects what will happen. Turn based games, such as chess, wait for you to make your move before continuing but they are usually board games. The most familiar turn based games are RPGs which are effectively computerised versions of card or board based role playing games. It can be quite tricky to sell the idea of turn based videogames and even RPGs are now rarely purely turn based with timing elements introduced to battle engines decades previously. 

In Valkyria Chronicles, the action element happens when you start a turn and the camera swoops from a hand drawn battlefield map into the action behind the person you have chosen to act. As you now move, the enemy is “live” and can see and shoot you, rooted to their positions so you can avoid their sight by approaching from appropriate angles. Once you stop moving and choose to act, the game effectively pushes you into a first person view and lets you attack (which will be met with a counter attack if possible). It is an interesting mixture which lets you think about what to do but also expects a little twitch skill. Each level, or mission, starts with the placement of your troops and ends depending on the objective - usually capture of an enemy base.

One thing that marks out Valkyria Chronicles as different from other games within the genre is character. My personal view on the Japanese school of game design and the Western one is that characters are generally more important in Eastern games. This has changed over time but I feel that Western games usually have you as the star (and this may be because the character is not so clearly defined and is a bit of an everyman) but Japanese games often see you controlling a distinctive person, with often less customisation. In Valkyria, each member of your squad was unique. They all had their own backgrounds and motivations and that affected their talents, abilities and affinities. And, again being that type of Japanese game, some of them had magical abilities (sort of). 

As the game progresses, more is learnt about the characters in your squad and added to your book. 

Welkin, as the slightly soppy and earnest main character, has an affinity with nature and those that are discriminated against^[2]. As a result, he gains stat boosts in combat when he is near his friends and also when near “nature” such as forest. As the characters progress and gain experience, you can choose how they develop and what weaponry they get training for. Two, apparently, similarly skilled troopers may act very differently depending on the rest of the team or environment they are placed in. This extra layer of complexity make a balanced squad much more useful and effectively makes you use and learn about your squad and their development. It might be more useful for friends to work in groups together and developing lone wolves into sniper wolves. And trying to avoid the problems of racism... The story develops to deal with the racism and the motivations people have for war and the motivations of being a soldier - although the majority of the enemy are not developed as characters. 

The other thing is, common to Cannon Fodder, death means death rather than videogame death. They are not coming back. 

The basics of the game are classic wargame strategies with reading the terrain and the enemy being of paramount importance but the world created is fantastic and allows a few slight variations. Magic is the deus ex machina to end them all, and one that gives a further layer of strategy on top of the game. 

The characters were seen as strong enough to base a fairly successful TV series off which retells the story of the game (but without the CANVAS engine - meaning the animation actually did not look as good as the game, in my opinion). There were also two sequels which had similar themes although the third was released in Japan only. Times have changed and it seems that the gaming public have moved on such that the budgets for these games, games which are now considered niche, cannot be risked on Japanese turn based games. It is a real shame and both sequels, as a result, were found on the Playstation Portable and the striking aesthetic did of course suffer a little at the lower resolution.

Memorable for the graphics at the time, the game itself more than held its own. I'd highly recommend checking it out. 

3 other V titles that might be interesting: 
Virtual On - The slightly niche Mecha genre made into a 1 on 1 battle arena. Hugely popular in Japan, here, not so much.
Vib Ribbon - The pseudo sequel to Parappa with more mental graphics. Yes, more mental.
Virtue's Last Reward - Visual novels with a time skipping mechanic. A strange take on the puzzles and novel combination.

^{1. 2006 was very close to the end of the generation of the PS2 and Xbox which meant that the astonishing graphics of Okami were a little overshadowed by the new machines, and their capabilities. It eventually came out on the Wii, with some effects removed but the HD version on the PS3 is spectacular.↩}

^{2. The world, being based on old world Europe, has rampant discrimination against those of a certain extraction - with nonsensical backstory and justification. I was never sure that it was satirical, but probably.↩}