Valkyria Chronicles™

[h2]Story[/h2] I would summarize the story as Anime WWII in alternate Europe. It's rather fun/entertaining, although it's only somewhat good. Only few members of Squad 7 are shown in the story, which prevents you from getting overwhelmed and helps character growth. On the other hand, it has some common tropes found in JRPG/Anime which makes it predictable. On the technical side, it uses a combination of 3D pre-rendered cutscenes and pseudo VN as the storytelling approach. You can choose between English and Japanese VA. The Japanese ones have good casting, although I notice there are few discrepancies between Japanese VA and English subtitles which may annoy you. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] [b]TLDR:[/b] Fun gameplay with unique mechanics, but held back by some issues. I really like the gameplay, it combines turn-based and pseudo real-time mechanics. There are various ways to finish the operation, although the game encourages you to finish it quickly by giving lots of EXP (to upgrade unit squad/classes) and DCT (to upgrade weapon, armor and tank). Overall I would say the gameplay is decent. However, few mechanics don't feel intuitive while few operations simply have terrible design. For example, [spoiler] Diverting the Marmota [/spoiler] has very confusing mechanics where I believe you need several retries while [spoiler] Final Showdown has an HP sponge boss who can "respawn" 3 towers on each turn which makes him  invulnerable [/spoiler]. Some unit squads/classes also feel unbalanced. Just like other players, I also heavily rely on Scout to kill majority of enemies and fulfill some of operation's goals. Lancers also feels very tanky, especially against explosive-type damage. I almost never use Engineer either. The difficulty of combat operations in the main story is heavily varied. My result varied from getting A-rank in one try to having to use a guide after failed a few times. I didn't perform any grinding though, which means you don't have to do it either if you're good at strategy games or use a guide. This game also lacks some quality-of-life features. There's no auto-save feature or at least reminders to make a manual save. More importantly, there's no 2x/4x/8x fast-forward during enemy turn on the combat operation. That means you'll be forced to see many enemy moves and transition animations which could take few minutes on each enemy turn. It's even more annoying since the game will pause if you Alt-Tab or have had to restart the combat. [h2]Side story[/h2] There are 2 side stories, which can be accessed by choosing "Extra" on the main menu. Both of them are very short, where you should see them after finishing the main story. Each of them also has exactly one combat operation. I find both of them are harder than combat operations in the main story, where I had to use guides. [h2]Other[/h2] This game runs well on my Linux device, without any manual tweaking or configuration. Other reviewers mentioned crash issue, although it never happened to me. [hr][/hr] If you're a fan of tactical RPG games, you probably will like this game if you don't mind some flaws. However if you happen to own PS4 or PS5, you should know there's a remastered version exclusive for PS4. You may want to do some research to see which version is better for you.

Strong first entry into the series, but the later levels can get annoyingly difficult if you don't know the strat.

Good game but save is hidden, found out I had to start over which yeah sucks pretty hard by now, probably gonna try to find a save game or leave it here

good，but no chinese

only play if one is a masochist

A masterpiece in its own genre, the turn JRPG genre. The story is solid, the mechanics are good, the units were interesting with some counter play involved, and so was the soundtrack.

One of the best games I played while in college. At the time I was studying to be a biologist and I had just gotten out of the army. It has some of the most engaging story for a tactical game that I have ever played. I absolutely love it!

this is the best turn based strategy war game of its kind, the whole series is great.