Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

[bcruise]

I don't really have a whole lot to say on it yet because I just got it today (thanks Gamestop.... ) and played it for about 3 hours. But I'll post my impressions on it once I've had time to form a solid opinion.

For now, here's the IGN review: 9.0

It's also got a metacritic score of 84 right now.

I will say a little bit about it based on my limited time: If you liked the first one you'll feel right at home, and yet there are enough enhancements to the gameplay to keep it fresh. That to me is the most amazing thing about it - When I'm in battle I feel like almost nothing has been taken away from the PS3 experience - in fact, it's been expanded upon.

More later.

[MachoMyers]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

Have been following this some. Problem is I still have Persona 3 to get through and am looking at possibly getting Kingdom Hearts as well.

[Candyman5]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

I still dont get why in the heck they made it for PSP.....

[umd]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

I still dont get why in the heck they made it for PSP.....

Me too. Doesn't make any sense.

[Candyman5]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

Me too. Doesn't make any sense.

Yeah the first one was my favorite thing on PS3. Uncharted 2 behind it.

[bcruise]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

Have been following this some. Problem is I still have Persona 3 to get through and am looking at possibly getting Kingdom Hearts as well.

Yep, Kingdom Hearts will be mine on release day (it's street dated unlike VCII, and my Gamestop has confirmed that they already received their shipment. Haven't tried Persona, though I think I'd want to play the earlier games in that series first. I was hoping to get VC on its release because of KH:BBS releasing a week later - I know I won't be even close to done with VCII when it drops now!

Anyway...9 hours in and on what would be Chapter 3 (it goes more by months of the year), so I feel like I can give a decent opinion of the game so far. I've been doing all the missions presented to me so that's why I'm not that far in in that amount of time.

Likes:

- Familiarity: as I mentioned before, if you played the first one you'll pick it up in a flash. The controls are modified a bit to fit the PSP, but just about all of the functionality is still there. You can still upgrade your weapons and tanks with the credits you earn in battle. The order system is back, with a familiar face offering the more advanced ones (I won't spoil that one ). Potentials are back and work about the same as they did in the first game, and even if you don't read through the status screens you'll still pick up on most of them through the dialogue scenes.

- New Classes and tweaks to old ones: There are a bunch of new classes in the sequel, and there's a class changing system that allows you to access them. Here's how it works: There are five base classes, Scout, Shocktrooper, Lancer, Engineer, and a new one, Armor Tech. Each individual squad member earns special credits for making contributions in battle. When that member has certain credits you can have them advance to a higher tier of that class - and unlike the first game, you actually have a choice. For example, you can have a scout become a Scout Veteran (higher abilities across the board)....or a Sniper. Yep, you don't get them at the start of the game this time! Other tier 2 classes include Gunner, Mortarer, Anthem Corps (the description for that one sounds interesting...LOL), and Fencer.

I should probably discuss the armor tech a bit...They are basically a defensive class that can take a lot of frontal damage without going down. They also have the disarm ability that Engineers had in the first game. In exchange, Engies gained the ability to heal from distance, which is good because no other class carries Ragnite healing anymore.

There is almost certainly more to the new system than this as I'm only a short way into the game - that's only what I've picked up on so far.

Graphics: LOVE the transition that CANVAS has made to the PSP. Sure, there isn't as much detail in the battle areas, but the watercolor-looking art still looks great on the small screen, IMO. Storyline and dialogue scenes are mostly carried out through the cardboard-cutout anime style characters, but they're very nicely drawn as well. Finally, some scenes get the full-motion anime treatment, and those look fantastic.

Load Times: Never fear if you have the UMD - the load times for this one are pretty good even without the 450 MB - ish optional install. You'll still probably want to do the install if you have the space though.

Multiple Areas/Gateway Camps: This is a new addition that I touched on when I described the demo. Maps now have multiple areas in them which are connected by gateway camps. When these camps are captured, you can move units freely between these areas by sending them to "Standby" at no cost of CP, and then redeploying them in the new area. This allows for new depths to the strategy of the game, and to explain that I'll mention what I did on an early mission. I will spoiler tag it since it's a story mission.

Spoiler

An early 3-area mission has you attempting to destroy a tank with only your foot soldiers, and starts you on opposite areas giving you the choice of where to deploy. If the group coming from the rear manages to fight their way to the gateway camp, they will pop out in the middle area in a perfect position to take out the tank. By contrast the frontal assault team would have to face the tank head-on even after capturing their gateway camp

Make sure to pay attention to how the areas connect through the gateway camps, and you'll have a much easier time on tougher battles.

No opinion/Undecided:

- Plot/Storyline: I'm only 3 Chapters in, so I'm not really going to comment on the story itself even in spoiler tags. The experience will be much richer if you played the first game, because several familiar characters have already made an appearance.

- Multiplayer: I debated putting this one in the likes becasue it sounds so cool, but since I haven't tried it yet it goes here. Yes, VCII has online multiplayer - both versus and Co-Op. It's only Ad-Hoc multiplayer though, so unless you've got a nearby friend or Ad-Hoc Party on the PS3 you're out of luck.

-Smaller Army: This is almost a dislike, but it does have its merits. You are limited to 6 squad members including your tank spread out amongst areas in a mission - significantly less than the massive forces you could deploy in the PS3 game. This forces a lot more retreating/redeploying to fit the situation. They did expedite this a bit by allowing a unit to retreat from anywhere on the battlefield, costing a CP to do so.

Along the same lines, the total pool of squad members you have to choose from is smaller as well, but this is less of a concern due to the fact that permanent death does not exist in this game unlike VC1. Your incapacitated soldiers are instead "hospitalized" which causes them to miss the next three missions. The three main characters (you'll figure out who they are pretty quickly) only withdraw if they are incapacitated, removing them from that battle only. You can still rescue a downed squad member within 3 turns by moving another member over to him/her, and automatically calling for the medic. They will be available again 2 turns later.

- AI: Too early to make a call, but at least on the normal game I haven't had a whole lot of difficulty wiping the floor with my opponents. They seem limited to their PS3 way of never using one unit more than twice in a turn. That makes it very easy to predict what it's going to do at times. I'm playing normal difficulty (easy and normal options are available at new game creation, easy meaning you take less damage), so maybe there's still a hard mode upon completing the game to make it tougher. That said....the first game ratcheted its difficulty WAY up around the midpoint of the game, so I may hit that point in this game yet. They put in that Co-Op mode for a reason, after all...

No In-battle save/quit: So you're probably thinking "How is that not a dislike!?" Well, due to the way the PSP works, as long as you've got a battery charge you can leave the system in sleep mode and have it last a LONG time. So even though you can't save in-game, you can still come back to a game and complete it later.

This means something else too - NO MORE SAVE SCUMMING. You can't try for a lucky headshot (or lancer>radiator) anymore and retry from that point if you miss. It's definitely going to add to the challenge (and frustration), but think it will ultimately result in a better experience.

Dislikes:

- One-liners: On the whole I think the voice acting is just fine, but most of the scenes are not fully voiced. That wouldn't bother me, except that when you have scenes that aren't voiced, the characters will usually speak one line vaguely related to what they're saying while the rest of their dialogue is displayed in a text box. When the main character Avan replies to someone with a laugh or joke, the most annoying laugh in the world plays. Equally annoying is his "I'll do it!" because it comes up so often. I would have preferred they just left those out and let the characters' voices come through in the fully voiced scenes.

- Lack of Precision: This is my only real battle gameplay gripe so far - unless I'm missing a fine tune control so, it's difficult to make precise movements with the analog nub. It only allows you to run in the 3rd person areas, and it's also difficult to line up headshots with scouts. The running is a potential problem because of the presence of landmines - although you can have an armor tech actually step on them and still disarm them, it might be hard to freeze a squad member on a landmine you didn't see (there's a big "click" displayed when you step on one, if you never played the first game. I haven't read the instructions so maybe there is a way to fine tune your movements, but so far it hasn't been a big problem.

- Map diversity: So far through the 3 chapters I've played the same two maps almost the whole time. This kinda makes sense in the storyline context since it is a military academy, but it does get old. It does at least change up the areas a little by adding various barricades and moving the camps around. The different areas of the maps also provide some variety.

*Looks up*
...Did I really just type all that about a PSP game? Holy crap. That should give you some idea about how deep this game is.

[King10Sooted]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

I still dont get why in the heck they made it for PSP.....

Yea I dont know why they didnt release it for the PS3 too. I just started playing the first one again. I have never liked the PSP though.

[bcruise]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

Sure enough, I just looked at the controls in the manual and there is a fine-tuning button for BOTH moving and aiming - it's the D-pad. I hadn't even used it up to this point...LOL!

Knock one dislike off that above list.

[bcruise]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

So in my last post I kind of pigeonholed the new Armor Tech class into being a defensive class. While its main use is indeed to deflect frontal fire and push the front forward, they can be pretty effective at melee combat. It's the only way they can attack, and one swing of that big weapon they carry can do a ton of damage to most other classes. Scouts will almost always die in one hit, and shocktroopers can last 2 hits. The Armor Tech attack also clears sandbags, and cannot be countered on a successful hit. They also wear similar armor to Lancers, which means they take explosions very well - You can't hope to kill them with grenades or mortar fire.

Their weaknesses are that they are VERY SLOW (though they have decent AP and can move a pretty good distance) cannot counterattack, they die really fast to incoming fire from the rear, susceptible to sniper fire and, like Lancers - they won't stand up to Tank shells for very long, even from the front.

It also helps that the 2nd most bad-*** character I've seen in the game thus far uses the class (bad-*** #1 hasn't been in a gameplay scenario yet). That's how I found out just how devastating this class can be - when you watch something just charge right through your front line's interception fire and start hacking your guys up!

Here's what they look like - except they don't all wear that goofy-looking hat of course, that's Joachim's special look.

[MachoMyers]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

Just ordered my copy. Looking forward to try it out along with Birth By Sleep this week!

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

Rumors are circulating that VCIII has been trademarked and SEGA is waiting on how sales do for this version if they make the third one. People are loving the PSP version.

[beastwork]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

[quote]bcruise 09:35 PM 09-04-2010
Sure enough, I just looked at the controls in the manual and there is a fine-tuning button for BOTH moving and aiming - it's the D-pad. I hadn't even used it up to this point...LOL!

Knock one dislike off that above list.[\quote]

lol which means you didn't know about this in the first game.

I don't own a PSP so i'll have to miss out on this one. Maybe its just me but I'm just a little skeptical about VCII or VCIII delivering a story on par with the first game. The combat in the game is fun but tedious at times. the story is really what gave me the energy to plow through hour long battles.

speaking of the story, has anyone watched the anime? It's a really good adaptation, which isn't saying a whole lot because the source material was pretty strong to begin with.

[bcruise]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

Just an update on this game (I've been working my way through it with a whole bunch of other games on the backlog as well).

I wasn't expecting a short game, but this game is turning out to be every bit as long as the original that I completed in 50 hours (this is of course including all the story cutscenes). That's quite impressive considering it's a PSP game - I've already put in over 40 hours and I suspect I've got at least 3 more story missions + several key missions that must be completed in-between.

Also, the story takes on a much more serious tone after about the halfway point. If you can get past the academy life feel in the first half, there's a pretty good story in there.

A few additional things that I've seen in the game since my last post - most of this stuff doesn't start appearing until later

-ability to change leaders (the ones who grant you CP - basically anyone can be a leader, but you'll probably want to choose your tank first)

-area effects: The condition of the battlefield greatly affects combat. The only one that really existed in the first game was Night, which reduced vision for everybody. Now you've got:

-Snow - slows the HP recovery of all units between turns
-Lightning - it occasionally strikes towers placed in the area between turns, doing massive (usually lethal) damage to anyone near it
-Sandstorm (GREATLY reduced visibility and accuracy - snipers are absolutely useless)

And several others. They all affect the enemy as well as you, and most can be mitigated by equipping your tank with a specific part

- Artillery strikes....for YOUR TANK! Aaaaww Yeah... Drawback: the thing takes up a ton of weight on your tank and you really can't hope to do much else with it. Does damage like you'd expect though

-Construction arm - this is a neat one. At certain places in the missions, if you have this tank part, you can build bridges or ladders to areas that would otherwise be inaccessible or much more difficult to get to. They're usually shortcuts, and great for sneaking behind the enemy.

This game is much more than I ever expected it to be when I heard it was going to be on the PSP.

[bcruise]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

Massive DLC update coming today!

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/09/28/valkyria-chronicles-ii-community-blitz-finale-dlc-and-free-codes/

22 missions for $5. Considering these were priced at $1 apiece in Japan, That. Is. A. Steal.

Also, if you look at the Sega Blog, they've been releasing passwords to add extra characters and (less importantly) tank decals for awhile now. I think the characters released include Maximillian, Selvaria, Faldio, and Isara. All of those are free - they're simply posted on the blog and you enter the password in-game to unlock them.

[Candyman5]

Re: Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

Massive DLC update coming today!

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/09/28/valkyria-chronicles-ii-community-blitz-finale-dlc-and-free-codes/

22 missions for $5. Considering these were priced at $1 apiece in Japan, That. Is. A. Steal.

Also, if you look at the Sega Blog, they've been releasing passwords to add extra characters and (less importantly) tank decals for awhile now. I think the characters released include Maximillian, Selvaria, Faldio, and Isara. All of those are free - they're simply posted on the blog and you enter the password in-game to unlock them.

How I wish this was for PS3....