One of the most beautiful games ever and unfortunately, also the one woefully ignored by the masses, VC is one the best JRPGs this gen and just maybe, one of the best ever.
Have to tried it yet?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-12-16-valkyria-chronicles-retrospective
I just beat it today. Blew me away.
The title JRPG does not do it justice, as, unlike a lot of games in that genre, Valkyria Chronicles actually has solid voice acting and a meaningful story. Not to mention likeable characters and, best of all, excellent tactical battles. But if you've played it, you already knew that.
One of the few contemporary RPGs I can really see myself playing through again some day.
I'm not sure that you can call it a JRPG at all. It's a mix of a tactical strategy game with third person shooter.
but yeah, game is fantastic. One of the best games in this generation. Sad thing that other two games Sega released on the platform that no one buys games at all.
+ It's actually successfull. I remember that VC sold for 1 million units.
+ It's Sony's fault that VC was missed by masses, by the time this game was announced and showed to everyone, Sony focused on shitty games like Resistance, Killzone which were not bread and butter of the PS2 era.
I think of this game series like an ex-wife that I used to love a lot but who cheated on me with the milkman or something. The first one is my absolute favorite game of this generation and then Sega fucked things up big time by putting the sequels on PSP, despite it being the most successful JRPG on the PS3 not called Final Fantasy XIII. I remember feeling actual rage about the PSP announcement.
Then I remember there was a serious call for a trophy patch for the game and hope given that it was incoming, only to then pull the rug out from under us and tell us to go buy the PSP ones.
This game series was the first time I actually felt betrayed since the end of the Saturn.
That said, I love it and recommend it to everyone else and would day one an HD collection of 2 and 3.
I'm actually glad that trophies never came to this game. For once I could play through a PS3 game without those annoying notifications popping up. Plus, it features medals for certain achievements already, so it practically has trophies built-in.
Its not that the games being on the PSP is what makes them bad. They could have created more of the same on the portable and I would have been happy to just have more VC.
However, they fucking ruined the story by making it the worst "high school" style anime bollocks imaginable. If they had just simply made more games in the same tone then I think we might have actually seen more games in the series. Full home console releases at that.
Poor old Skies of Arcadia team never seem to get a break.
@Digital Bamboo - which is even more reason for it to have trophies! All they would have had to do is program it so that when you unlock one of the medals, you get a trophy. Bam! Easy as pie. You may not like them, but just before the announcement of VC3, Sega of America were strongly hinting that if we showed enough support, that we'd get trophies for VC1 and there was a huge drive for it. I know I was saving my replay for whenever the patch hit.
@Absolutezero - no, being on the PSP is what kept it from the audience that liked the first one. Out of all the PS3 owners I know, I know two of them who also own PSP's, because none of us want to play games on a portable. You establish a series on a particular console, it should stay on that console, so as to build the fanbase. I may have loved VC1, but I was not going to buy a portable just to play VC2.
Whether the story took a downturn or not, 90% of the fanbase couldn't even judge because of the change in systems. Meanwhile, in Japan, it made sense, because VC2 outside VC1 by a wide margin, but in the states and Europe, it sold 1/10th of what VC1 did. That's why I still say an HD Collection is what they should do to revive the series.
I'm one of those people that follow games and not systems so the change in platform never bothered me. The quality of the game bothered me. So much so that I never bothered looking into the third at all. Of all the PS3 owners that I know all over them had a PSP at one time or another.
I guess its much the same situation as Bayo 2, VC never made enough money to warrant a second full console title but it did sell more than enough to have a follow-up. The PSP was perfect for that, cheaper to create and easier to make money on.
It did signal the death of the series in the West more or less.
Yeah, see, I know a ton of people with DS's, but only three who PSP owners. I actually know more people who own Vita's than PSP's (and that isn't a big number either). And out of those three, only two also had PS3's, and neither of them even bought VC2. One of them even questioned why they'd stick VC2 on PSP instead of PS3, as she was a big fan of the first one and would have rather played it on a home system than a portable.
Meanwhile, I know, personally, in real life, about a dozen and a half people with PS3's who all own VC1 (of course, five of them received it as a gift from me on either their birthdays/holidays). It was a series that really could have been big for Sega if they didn't switch systems.
And yeah, I do see something similar happening to Bayonetta 2. They've moved it away from its fanbase, in this case, two systems where people liked it. I don't see the Wii U sequel selling half as well as either the PS3 or 360 versions of the original did.
I'm not really a big fan of strategy games or JRPG's, yet somehow I gave this game a shot and got hooked. It's just a great game period and one I think everyone should try out.
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