As always, if you like my review please go and recommend it here. Thank you! And now onto the review. The Good: A large cast of characters with distinct personalities and quirks. Similar gameplay to original Valkyria Chronicles that made the game so fun. Lots more customization options than previous game. New Game+ features. The Bad: Cast of characters nowhere near as good as the first game. Lots of repetition in map/level design. Poor story pacing. Tons of throwaway missions and filler content. Annoying emoting. Realism/believabilitiy issues. Abrupt enemy level jumps. When developing a sequel to a game as good as the original Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3 was, there is often a tendency to error towards two opposite extremes. Either a developer will play it too safe and not create a game that truly feels like an original offering, or they'll change up too many things and lose the spirit and personality that made the original game so popular to begin with. The second offering in the Valkyria Chronicles series falls squarely into the second category and comes close to ruining what could have ended up being one of the greatest games for the PSP available. Valkyria Chronciles 2 takes place two years after the Gallian War from the end of the first game. Following the revelation that the queen of Gallia is herself a member of the hated Darcsen race, widely believed to be responsible for devastating the continent of Europa many centuries ago, and having successfully repelled the outside forces of the neighboring Empire, Gallia has devolved into a bitter civil war. On one side are the loyalist faction that supports the monarchy that has ruled Gallia well and prosperously for centuries while they were pretending to be the heirs of the legendary Valkyrur thought responsible for saving Europa from the "Darcsen Calamnity" all those centuries ago. On the other side is the rebel army whose recruiting is largely based on not-so-thinly veiled racism, greed, ambition and lust for power. You play the protagonist Avan Hardins, who joins the Lanseal Military Academy that is supporting the Queen's rule after being told that your brother Leon died on a special, dangerous, and classified mission. Avan joins because he does not believe that his brother - whom he idolizes to the point of utter and creepy obsession - is anything short of invincible and therefore MUST be out there and live somewhere. If you join the academy, then maybe eventually you can get knowledge of the secret mission your brother was involved in. Avan typifies both the greatest strengths and the greatest weaknesses of the game itself. He is good intentioned, easy going, friendly and always cheerful. On the other hand, he's an utter moron, frequently annoying, and completely unbelievable as a military hero. This is a pretty good metaphor for the game itself. When the game is enjoyable, it is both charming and light hearted. When the game drags on for huge stretches of time, it is annoying, repetitive, cliche filled and aggravatingly stupid. From a technical standpoint, the game is a great success. Valkyria Chronicles 2 manages to stuff a LOT of content into a single UMD. The amount of character and vehicle customization, dialog, character scenes and missions is simply impressive. The visual presentation is solid - even if it is a large and very obvious step downwards from the beautiful art design of its predecessor - and a great deal of time and care was obviously taken in designing the various areas of Lanseal Academy. Unfortunately, all of this is marred by a host of flaws of a non-technical nature that combine to substantially reduce the enjoyment of an otherwise impressive game. One example is the grating little sound clips that play over and over again whenever a particular character is expressing a particular sentiment. After the 300th or so time you hear Avan declare "I'll do it!" while striking a idiotically dramatic pose you're going to want to proclaim "I'll do it" with a gun to your own head. Even worse is his laugh, that sounds suspiciously like the laugh that "mentally challenged" kids do. You will hear this laugh again. And Again. And Again.

And sadly, the same can be said of every, single, other character. Whether it is Zeri's 700th repetition of "Honestly" with the same emote pose or the latest irritating rendition of Cosette's ditzy cheeriness, this game's characters will drive many people nuts. Though the characters are all differentiated from one another, very few of them really stand out as interesting. Aside from a very small subset of the very annoying main characters, the other characters feel very much like two dimensional stereotypes. At times - such as with one very rare black character portrayed as, shall was say, "jungle" for lack of a better phrase - these stereotypes can feel just a bit uncomfortable. Furthermore, very few of the characters feel like they belong anywhere near a gun let alone fighting alongside (and against) tanks. They're high schoolers with automatic weapons. With the first game, a great deal of effort was put in to make at least the core cast of characters believable in the roles they occupied. Whether it was Welkin Gunther, the military genius, Largo the experienced veteran, or Isara Gunther the brilliant engineer, you seldom got the sense that it was just plain, flat out unrealistic that they could be accomplishing what they were accomplishing. Contrast that to Avan Hardins, who the game goes at great lengths to portray as a complete idiot (if a really nice and happy idiot) and you find yourself scratching your head and wondering, "Wait, I'm supposed to believe that this guy is decimating the rebel forces?" Unfortunately, you're going to be spending a LOT of time with these unrealistic characters suspending your disbelief as the main story trudges onwards at an unbelievably slow pace. You are required to do a set number of "key" missions every month you are at the academy before you gain access to the "story" mission, and the ratio of story to non-story missions has a tendency to be daunting and lead to a feel that the war itself is something of an afterthought. With the enemy having a face and personality so rarely, it's hard to really feel any sense of urgency or importance in what you're doing. This is a tremendous disappointment for anyone who played the first game and loved the fact that every mission you did felt like it mattered a great deal. The first game focused on a core cast of characters and developed them quite well. While it is technically possible to do only a bare minimum of key missions each month and quickly get to the story, the game discourages this by scaling the enemy levels in leaps and bounds at times. I was quite surprised the first time I saw my enemy levels jump from 18 during the story mission of one month all the way up to 30 for the first key mission of the next month. With this design decision, you have plenty of incentive to take each "Extra" mission or even repeat easy or quick missions to gain additional experience or class change items. The game partially compensates for the enemy level jumps by recycling maps very frequently, so once you learn the basic strategy for conquering one particular map, you can overcome huge disparity in levels or abilities by reusing the same strategy repeatedly, but this simply contributes to the other problem of each mission not feeling very distinct or important from any other.

Add it all together, and this game is far from being a worthy spiritual successor to its distinguished predecessor. You'll get a great many hours of play out of it if you can stick with it, - particularly if you take advantage of the New Game+ replay option - but how high quality those hours are will depend greatly on your own personal patience level.