Finished
Valkyria Chronicles (main campaign).
The good:
- Introduces a new gameplay formula to the japtactical genre, mixing TB and RT. With questionable results (see below).
- Everything clicks together: aesthetics, gameplay, theme, mood -> good atmosphere / has its charm.
- It's fun to play, with varied missions, requiring different tactics (or to be specific - variations of basic tactic - see below).
- Many various elements, which have to be taken into consideration during play: using cover / destroying enemy cover, avoiding reaction fire / positioning your units properly, so they can RF at enemies, taking enemy tanks from behind by radiator-rape / covering radiators of your tanks, utilizing your engineers to clear mines and re-supply your units with ammo / grenades. Etc., etc. = fun, fun, fun.
- Music is nice.
- Bonus missions unlocked via story parts (journalist) are a good idea.
- No gamebreaking super units (see Cid in FFT) - only your regular fags.
- Light-hearted and clever approach to homosexuality (potentials).
- Rosie (also Jane, Marina and some other waifus).
The bad:
- Story is too weeboo for its own good (DAT finale!).
- You spend too much time watching animu cutscenes. I know it's just the slides from FFT / Front Mission taken to the next gen, but still...
- Restarting a mission requires you to re-watch the introduction. GTFO / make it skippable.
- Reaction fire feels weird. Your units will RF only for a short amount of time and when enemies are really close to them. On the other hand, during your move phase, enemies will RT through the whole phase (reloading constantly), with much better accuracy / efficiency than your fags. So, you have to end your movement phase ASAP after shooting, or move from cover to cover while enemy reloads. Adding such purely RT element to TB system didn't work well, IMO. Pure TB systems (FM, FFT, etc.) handle this problem (what should our fags do during enemy phase) in better way (counters, passive skills).
- Customization is present (+) but is way too simplistic and linear (-). In Front Mission you can spend hours just tuning-up your wanzers for different tactics. JA has gun porn, FFT/Tactics Ogre has random battles / special locations. In VC it's mostly just mission-cutscene-buy upgrades-spend XP-mission over and over.
- Orders aren't that useful. It's much better idea to spend your CP on 2-3 actions of your units (1-2 kills), than wasting these CP on some order (0 kills).
- Unit "potentials" aren't that great most of the time and some of them can be really irritating (you have to watch a short animation over and over).
- Status-changing attacks are mostly useless.
- Higher difficulty settings for skirmishes are unlocked only after completing the game.
- Some villains are interesting (Big Tits, Jaeger), while others are just mwahaha (Gregor, Fagsimilian).
The ugly:
- Rating system is shit - takes into consideration only the number of turns taken to complete the mission. Something more complex (FM3-like) would be much better.
- Tank controls are fucking pain in the ass. There are camera-related, instead of - much better in case of vehicles - camera-independent a.k.a. "tank controls"
(forward/backward + left/right). Makes moving tanks a chore, and can lead to fuckups / reloads (limited AP),
- Physics engine is still broken at refresh rates higher than 30 Hz - to complete the 2nd mission against Selvaria (trench warfare) you have to switch to 30 Hz or Edelweiss won't be able to leave the pits, used to hide from Selvaria's attacks.
- There's no "deadzone" option for gamepads, which leads to weird control behavior - sometimes cursor / menus will spin around until you re-calibrate the gamepad.
- No info about movement range of your units in TB (?) game. Enjoy wasting another CP to hide from enemies.
- Units are unable to let another unit pass in tight spaces. If you block a passage with unit #1, you have to waste a CP to move it away if you want to proceed with unit #2.
- Some missions (DAT final one!) are much worse than the others (regular "you vs. 3-4 enemy camps" ones).
- The system feels fucking weird. There's something wrong with a TB (?) game, where you can deploy up to 10 units (2 tanks and 8 fags), yet most of the time the wisest choice is to deploy less units (2 scouts, 1 trooper, 1 lancer, 1 engineer, 1 sniper) and kill 75% of enemies using these 2 scouts. Also moving via camps is sometimes (troopers, lancers) much faster than by foot.
- "Death" mechanic is way too forgiving - downed fag can be evacuated simply by moving other fag close to him/her or using an order. And he/she is ready to be deployed in next turn. Enemies can execute a downed unit, killing it permanently, but they did this only twice during my entire campaign (and I had to reload, because it was Jane the Sadist).
- Scout-rush (or engineer-rush) is still too powerful, even with reaction fire being more dangerous in PC version than it was in PS3 version (AFAIK). Why should you waste CP on snipers / troopers (risking that enemy will duck, avoiding damage), when you can simply move behind the enemy and execute him at close range?
- AI is p. dumb:
a) Crouch 2 troopers behind 2 different sandbags, and enemies will keep zerg-rushing them, getting their asses killed. Crouch these 2 units behind a single sandbag, and suddenly enemies start using brains (they will blow up the sandbag with a grenade and rape your exposed units – which is your basic tactic in the same situation).
b) Enemy tanks / lancers will rather attack your tanks from a distance, than circle around them and rape them by destroying the radiator (again - your basic tactic against AI).
c) AI will use a single unit only up to 2 times, NEVER more.
- The actual tactics are p. limited, esp. if you want good rating.
a) Enemy not crouched? Use sniper or scout-rush him (execute from behind, at close range).
b) Enemy crouched? Destroy cover with a grenade / lance, then proceed with a).
c) Enemy tank far from enemy camp? Outmaneuver it with Shamrock / lancers and destroy its radiator.
d) Enemy tank close to enemy camp? Apply smoke, scout-rush enemy soldiers, take over the camp, deploy lancer, rape the tank in next turn.
Plus maybe 3-5 more.
Of course, purely TB japtactical games have their own problems - mostly the universal "gang up on one unit at a time" tactic, but these can be fixed/twisted by adding active / passive skills, counters, additional gizmos (damage influenced by type of armor or ground tile – see Front Mission, FFT).
tl;dr
Good game, but not the "second cumming of tactical god, inferior only to Jagged Alliance 2", as some resident weeboos claimed.
Front Mission 2&3 are still the best japtactical games, IMO.
Valkyria Chronicles - RT mechanics hurt the game, which can lead to save-scumming / extreme irritation / unsatisfactory level of control.
Final Fantasy Tactics: overpowered special units, grinding for better skills / jobs, level scaling.
Tactics Ogre: grinding, broken system, level scaling.
Vandal Hearts: simplistic, only linear campaign.
VH2: weird system which reduces gameplay / tactics to exploiting AI quirks.
