The Valkyria series, owned and developed by Sega, is one of those game franchises that fail to garner a large player base, even though all titles in the series have received positive and praising reviews. The most famous title is Valkyria Chronicles, the first game of the series which originally came out on the PS3 and later got ported to Windows and PS4. Sega now tries once again to attract new players to the franchise with its newest title, Valkyria Revolution.
Valkyria Revolution takes place in the fictional world of Europa. Jutland, a small country and home of our heroes, is economically blocked by the Ruzhien empire. This empire achieved rapid industrial development after discovering a magical mineral that’s filled with energy, called Ragnite. The Ruzhien Empire uses this mineral to expand their territories with a vast military force and the aid of a Valkyria, a supernatural being called Brunhilde. You follow the story of the Circle of Five, five lifelong friends that have a personal vendetta against the Ruzhien empire. They stand up against the imperialist oppressors, resulting in an entire continent plunging into a terrible war. Will the Circle of Five be remembered as a heroic resistance or as traitorous conspirators who sacrificed innocent people to carry out their revenge plot?
Well-written but badly presented story
Most fans of the Valkyria series play the games for their stories since they are filled with intriguing characters and interesting plots. This is no different in Valkyria Revolution. The game introduces you to a lot of memorable characters and hooks you in with its story that isn’t afraid to tackle issues like the consequences of war and what it truly means to sacrifice one’s self for the greater good. The story is also told at a consistent pace that makes it easy to follow. If you’re a fan of the stories in the earlier Valkyria titles, then you’ll probably enjoy the one that Revolution offers you. However, unlike earlier titles, Revolution suffers from a lot of problems that make it difficult to enjoy.
While the story itself is well-written, the cutscenes that tell them are awkwardly under-developed. Characters don’t have a lot of animations to visually tell what’s happening, which ruins any dramatic moment in the story. To give you an example, in the prologue, one of the heroes has made her first kill and is disturbed by this. She looks at her bloody hands and you expect her to look horrified. But the look on her face is blank, not a single emotion is expressed by her. This problem occurs throughout the entire game. Something happens, the characters don’t react visually in any way and then awkwardly walk away from the scene. The game tries its best to keep your attention with the dialogue, but dialogue alone is not enough to make someone care about the characters and story. Besides, the voice acting for the dialogue is not that well performed either.
Easy combat
Unlike previous Valkyria titles, Revolution implemented a hybrid combat system that plays more like a Dynasty Warriors game instead of a classic turn-based JRPG. Attacking an enemy can be done at any time and you can hit multiple targets at once, but you can’t spam the attack button like a mad man to chain up combos. Instead, you can perform a set amount of attacks after each other until your action bar is depleted. You then have to wait until the bar is refilled in order to attack again. While waiting, you can still block or evade attacks and use magic abilities. There are also certain objects that you can use as cover to avoid enemy fire or to flank them. Lastly, Revolution also introduces the ‘Emotion’ system, which can spread fear among your enemies, making them easier to deal with. You can do this by quickly and effectively defeating large groups of enemies, or by killing the commanding officer before taking on the lower-rank soldiers.
While the combat in Revolution plays more fluidly than previous Valkyria games, it also makes the game laughably easy. The enemy AI is so badly programmed that you can simply walk right into a group of soldiers and utterly destroy them in a couple of seconds, without having to use any form of strategy. You don’t even need your party members to support you, which is not a bad thing in this particular case since their AI also isn’t that well-developed. The only time they actually do something useful is when you take control of them. Speaking of being useful, the ‘Emotion’ system is not that great either. The actual system itself works fine, you do spread fear among your enemies by performing specific actions during combat. The problem with the system, however, is that it doesn’t actually give you an advantage. Soldiers who are afraid act almost completely the same as soldiers who aren’t. This makes the system useless and a waste of time if you bother messing around with it.
Unfinished visuals
Valkyria Chronicles is often praised for its visual design. The game looked like a pencil-drawn comic book with its cell-shaded-like visuals and use of onomatopoeia for the sound effects. Revolution also tries to differentiate itself from other JRPG’s with a unique visual style, which is supposed to make the game look like a painting. The sad truth, however, is that the game looks generic, unfinished and sometimes downright ugly. Most of the textures are muddy and the lighting effects are almost non-existent. There are a few exceptions where the game does look pretty, but those can be counted on one hand. To make things worse, the character designs tend to be inconsistent throughout the game. Some characters look like they fit in the world, while others look like they are taken straight from a B-grade anime. The fact that all heroes use ridiculously over-sized weapons while enemy soldiers use regular guns also clashes with the art design since everything else looks proportional and realistic.
Almost no technical problems
Surprisingly, Revolution does not seem to suffer from a lot of technical issues. It does have a problem with maintaining a consistent frame rate during combat from time to time, but that’s the only technical problem I’ve come across throughout my gameplay sessions. I have only played the PS4 version, so I don’t know if the same counts for the PS Vita version, but so far, I haven’t heard anything bad about it.
Conclusion
While writing this review, I’ve come to the realization that Valkyria Revolution is not a ‘bad game’. Well, not bad in the sense that it’s perfectly playable, doesn’t suffer from game breaking bugs and has a well-written story. However, it is a bad game in the sense that it’s incredibly boring. There’s no challenge to be found in the combat, the visuals look unfinished and the cutscenes are so badly animated that you simply don’t care about what’s happening. Playing Valkyria Revolution is a chore, which is a sad thing to say since the previous games were so much better and well-made. If you’re a fan of the series, ignore this entry. If you’re a newcomer, then you certainly have to ignore Revolution, since it doesn’t do the series any justice.
