Valkyria Chronicles is a unique gem, hidden amongst a horde of overhyped, underachieving games.
[i]The game is set in a fictional version of Europe in 1930, in the country of Gallia. Because of its abundance of ragnite ore-which can be refined into a powerful fuel-it has come under attack from the East Europan Imperial Alliance, which itself is engaged in war with the Atlantic Federation.[5] Players take control of an uprising of Gallian nationals, dedicated to repelling the invasion. The game's visuals, which feature SEGA's CANVAS graphics engine, have received a lot of attention - with CANVAS, the game's entire graphical style is built to resemble a watercolor painting in motion.[/i]
First, I'll cover the graphical presentation. As depicted from the Wikipedia page, Valkyria Chronicles debuts on a new graphics engine referred to as 'CANVAS'. You'll immediately recognize the distinction from the more typical graphics engines used in modern games, such as Unreal III. The intent is to create a watercolor presentation, giving a more artistic feel to the environment. The presentation is very unique and refreshing, and helps you overlook the technical shortcomings.
The game presents a myriad of different terrains to fight against the Imperial forcesm everything from lush woods, to open deserts. All connected by the unique presentation governed by the engine. However, this new graphics tends to look as though it were making very conservative use of the PS3. During cutsenes, low poly-counts and low resolution textures become painfully obvious as they zoom into characters. Character animations tend to appear sterile and slow. Although they're minor issues overall, they tend to become an annoyance throughout the game.
The game is supported by a strong orchestral score, providing mood and depth to scenes. However the English voice acting isn't anything to brag about, and the shallow script certainly doesn't help. Thankfully Sega had enough space on the Blu-Ray disc to fit the Japanese voice acting, unfortunately that doesn't do anything to fix the unfortunate character dialogue, but makes it seem less awkward.
The main character is unfortunately just as 2 dimensional in personality as the myriad of squad members, despite his large amount of screen time, which becomes an annoyance, especially when his quirky behavior becomes borderline autistic in serious situations. However, despite their obvious lack of depth, the story progression and character situations can still grip you. Unfortunately this aspect is often hampered by the panel style cutscenes, which are numerous and often tedious. Overall, the story isn't ambitious enough to warrant the almost endless amount of cutscenes, but they're nonetheless captivating at times, and add to the overall experience.
Aside from cutscenes, the large and varied environments and great art-direction certainly improve the gameplay presentation, although there are some qualms I have with it. The game lacks an accurate depiction of intensity from a viewing standpoint. The characters act nonchalant amidst the battlefield. The bright setting and seemingly untouched environments and disappearing corpses contradict the situation. There are no decals left from explosions or bullets, the weapon sounds are soft, and the orchestra often drounds out the situation. Although this is a more personal qualm, it's something that nonetheless bothered me.
As a result of the less than enticing war presentation, it lacks the 'edge of your seat' feeling that you'd expect from a story about war and friends. Although I'm just speaking from a critical standpoint, and I'm obviously asking a lot from a video game in terms of story, although it's certainly an accomplishment to be able to rate this as though it were a film.
I'll continue this review in a little while.