I finally completed Valkyria Chronicles this week in between trips to the cottage and business related interuptions (!) and I must say - Welcome Back Sega!

Valkyria Chronicles reminds me of the Sega of old - the Sega of the Dreamcast era where creativity was rampant, new game ideas flourished (Jet Grind Radio, Skies of Arcadia, Seaman), the tech bubble was bringing in boatloads of cash and my huge CRT television was set at its highest component setting. Valkyrria Chronicles is a very Japanese "anime" style RPG that tells the story of a squad of characters thrust into the heart of a continental war on the Europan continent that bears a distinct similarity to World War II.This blog post is not intended to be a review or even a summary of the story -the former is available here on Gamespot and the latter on wikipedia - however the story does suck you into the game, the cast of characters quickly grows on you, and since squad losses on the battlefield are permanent (i.e. if a character dies, they are dead forever in the game) it evokes a sense of loss when a cherished character perishes during a battle.

Valkyria Chronicles is a strategy RPG - there's no dungeon diving or random battles, you basically play the game as if it were a book, with each chapter containing a number of story elements that you watch or read and one or sometimes two battles that take place on a field. During the battle you choose your resources and characters, place them on the field, and begin the battle which is played out in a bit of a "chess" style: each character class has certain moves and is able to travel a certain distance, so you choose your piece, what you want to do, and battle away.

I loved the game and gave it a 9/10. The full game took be over 60 hours, which is insane, but I was pretty meticulous in playing it and completed all of the skirmish battles as well. I'm considering downloading some of the additional content, but with the backlog of games already on the go, I think that I'm going to hold off on that for a while. In the meantime, if you have a PS3 I would strongly encourage you to give the game a try - if you can find it.