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Valkyria Chronicles 4 announced for every console


The DanMan
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So they now have a DLC release schedule...

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Valkyria Chronicles 4 DLCs release schedule and prices have been revealed:

- October 9, 2018 : Squad E, to the Beach! ($6.99€)

- October 23, 2018 : A Captainless Squad ($4.99€) // included with all digital preorders

- November 6, 2018 : Expert Level Skirmishes ($4.99€)

- November 20, 2018 : The Two Valkyria ($4.99)€

- December 4, 2018 : Edy's Advance Ops ($3.99€) // included in the Memoirs of Battle edition

- December 18, 2018 : A United Front with Squad 7 ($5.99€) // included in the Memoirs of Battle edition

Details on the game website : http://valkyria.sega.com/dlc.php

NB: no mention of a season pass.

So the grand total comes to approximately $32 or €.  If there is to be a season pass, it'd probably be, like, $25 or something.

Also, apparently VC1 is coming to Nintendo Switch, but I couldn't get a source on that.

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34 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

Also, apparently VC1 is coming to Nintendo Switch, but I couldn't get a source on that.

I edited that into my last post, with a link to Siliconera. Apparently the Japanese announcement happened in June, but only now they have confirmed an NA/EU release.

 

If there is no season pass to the DLC, I'll have to see how substantial all of it is before choosing what if any to get.

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So before Valkyria Chronicles IV drops I decided to check out non-commentated runs of VC2 and VC3 since I don't have a console to play them on myself. I got into the Persona and Ace Attorney series by doing the same thing, so I believe that, while you might not get the exact same connection to what's happening in the plot, it's still good enough to form an opinion.

Valkyria Chronicles II

  • "How can we make the series more anime?" the game. Unlike VC3 and VC4, however, they didn't deal with the same damn conflict so I guess that's something.
  • I've rarely seen such shamelessly shallow characters before, which made it hard to enjoy the story. Cosette is "the girl" of the team and nothing more. Also, I don't think color blindness works that way...
  • The tone of the game felt so incredibly off. Teenagers with attitude are sent in with close to no supervision to deal with religious, racist zealots one day and then the next it's back to anime hijinks. If I were a smartass I'd say that's Fire Emblem in a nutshell as well, but I feel like it's for the most part done in a more tasteful manner and that there are a wide array of themes being discussed. Here I groaned and began skipping minor character arcs.
     

Valkyria Chronicles III

  • A more fitting tone to the game but I couldn't help but feel like they tried compensating a bit too much for the last game. Also, rather than showing the Gallian conflict in a new light, it not only relied far too heavily on cameos, but also made me wonder how on earth Gallia could stand the ghost of a chance considering their military leadership seems to be so thoroughly incompetent.
  • The protagonist is a twat, although that seems to be a series staple.
  • The villain seems to be Jaeger but with screentime. This was probably my favorite take on the Darcsen conflict thus far, as it wasn't just "racism is bad" being repeated over and over again. 

In general, this series seems to really dig its own worldbuilding and lore. However, seeing the same conflict over and over again is a bit stale to me. Valkyria keep popping up like a game of whack-a-mole as well, and the more ridiculous the plots get the more confused I am as to why they decided to make this Not!Europe rather than its own continent.

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6 hours ago, Thane said:

Here I groaned and began skipping minor character arcs.

This was back when they were doing one mission per each character instead of shared arcs like VC4 will feature.

As a result, in order to make two characters in particular have a love story, they made two classmate missions that are pretty much the same exact goddamn thing.

  • Character likes other character
  • Avan and the others want to help
  • Character loves some fuckin' flower
  • Go to dangerous battlefield with sandstorm to retrieve flower (it's the same exact damn battlefield for both of them, btw)
  • The pair fall in love, even though one was crushing on the other beforehand

There were a lot of things I didn't like about the story and characters in VC2, but this BS in particular just stood out to me as the epitome of the writers' laziness.  Even worse was that the missions were both piss easy.

Also, the three main characters in Class G remind me of significantly worse versions of the starting party in Tales of Symphonia.  Cosette in particular is almost exactly like Colette in personality, looks, and even name, it's actually kind of alarming.  It seems like this kind of trio (the brash boy, the aloof intellect, and the cheerful klutz) is a common thing so I dub them the "anime high school trio".

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, Tuvy said:

Does anyone want me to post pictures of the special edition of valk 4?

I don't see why not.  This is a place to post information about the game and discuss it, after all.

I don't even have the special edition since I got the PC version.

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Impressions so far:

>With the exception of Chapter 2, everything up until Chapter 5 is fairly easy and straightforward.

>Squadmate missions are painfully shallow after 2's and 3's, with characters awkwardly infodumping their entire personalities, relations, and backstories, with the bare minimum done to "develop" them. They feel really tacked on; I'd much rather they'd taken 3's set-up, axed permadeath, and in general let you see the cliques interact in and outside of individual character missions.

>The cutscenes are too split up, making them feel even more dragged out.

>The game seems to have 3's approach of "what's a difficulty curve isn't it an on/off switch?" Chapter 5 is a massive difficulty spike, throwing a bunch of bunkers and anti-tanks cannons on a massive map with several tanks and a bunch of proximity-triggered tank reinforcements. It's been walling me

>Some tales from Chapter 5: 
-Held back, tried to take things out with Grenadiers. Moved one of them forward a bit, had them crouched behind sandbags. Forgot that unlike 3 sandbags don't provide a gigantic defense boost, ends up getting killed by an enemy shocktrooper.
-"Okay, I'll just send my scout over there who has body armor equipped giving him as much defense as a shocktrooper. I'll just shoot the enemy, then tag the downed Grenadier."
-Gets half a dozen feet away from the downed ally, hits the crouch button but stupid medic evac scene plays, meaning I didn't crouch and since there's lag at the end my Scout was downed. Resets.

-Keeps Grenadiers firmly held back, tries picking things off, things going smoothly... light tank fucking snipes the Hafen's generator from halfway across the map.

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I'm recording my playthrough, and can't do much more than two hours for that, so I have yet to get passed the stuff that was in the demo.

Will probably voice my initial thoughts once I get to Chapter 5 or so, which won't be until probably the end of next week.  But so far I like it well enough.

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I'm fucking loving this game so far. I understand what you mean by chapter 5 being a difficulty spike but I found it really fun. 9/10 so far. Just because Herbert isn't in this game.

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A difficulty spike? Near the beginning? Not unusual if VC1 is anything to go by. Chapter... was it 3? The very grey battlefield with a more restricted than usual turn limit?

 

Won't get this game until the holidays. Hope it is good, I'll see what everyone has to say here.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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I can only assume at this point that Sega is unfamiliar with the concept of "challenging but fair" difficulty and thinks bullshit sells. 

Tagged due to length

4-1 took me a dozen attempts because you need to employ a very specific strategy and the first two turns have to go perfectly, 4-2's a bit of a breather level, 4-3 throws a boss tank at you, 5 is a fun breather chapter, only for 6 to be a mass of trial-and-error BS having an objective switch mid-chapter as soon as you capture all the camps (instead of, you know, having two different chapters-- as would've been reasonable) as well as said boss spawning and enemies that will actually move multiple times a turn, 7-1 is fairly inoffensive if a bit too long, and I'm currently getting walled by 7-2 and it's horrendous design choices (why yes, have armored trains that will shred anything including tank generators with machine gun fire spawn after you get into their range; why yes, only tell you how to divert them after they've spawned; why yes, make that still keep one of them around).

Also, a major complaint: all the maps have been very linear, either in design or railroading you towards a specific strategy. 2 and 3 were in general very non-linear with their designs, with there always being two different starting points and often multiple ways to get the main objective done. Other things like having someone obnoxiously comment every single time you upgrade an item (and also having to scroll down a bloated weapon tree instead of just seeing the newest options in a menu), orders taking longer to execute, having to wait a turn for reinforcements to spawn, CP tied to all the main characters forcing a large chunk of your deployment, and so on make the game feel like a step backwards and far clunkier.

In addition, Grenadiers are fundamentally unfair as enemies; multiple times I’ve had characters killed by them when I had no idea they were even there (the game decides to let them move after the first 5 chapters—because violating the basic gameplay rules you’ve drilled into the player is good design, right?). They should’ve had it where enemies have some radio chatter telling them to fire, putting them on the map screen before they have a chance to act—instead of way too late. Also, anti-vehicle mortars are kinda useless; despite having massively inflated anti-vehicle values they still only deal damage when they hit the radiator, and splash damage conveniently becomes non-existent when in use (you can hit inches behind the radiator and do nothing).

On top of that, the AI always goes for generator snipes whenever it can—multiple times they’ve gotten lucky and the Hafen has been blown up from halfway across the map. Great design choice, Sega!

This game is set to outdo 3 in the bullshit department and I'm only 1/3 of the way through.

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3 hours ago, The DanMan said:

I can only assume at this point that Sega is unfamiliar with the concept of "challenging but fair" difficulty and thinks bullshit sells. 

Tagged due to length

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4-1 took me a dozen attempts because you need to employ a very specific strategy and the first two turns have to go perfectly, 4-2's a bit of a breather level, 4-3 throws a boss tank at you, 5 is a fun breather chapter, only for 6 to be a mass of trial-and-error BS having an objective switch mid-chapter as soon as you capture all the camps (instead of, you know, having two different chapters-- as would've been reasonable) as well as said boss spawning and enemies that will actually move multiple times a turn, 7-1 is fairly inoffensive if a bit too long, and I'm currently getting walled by 7-2 and it's horrendous design choices (why yes, have armored trains that will shred anything including tank generators with machine gun fire spawn after you get into their range; why yes, only tell you how to divert them after they've spawned; why yes, make that still keep one of them around).

Also, a major complaint: all the maps have been very linear, either in design or railroading you towards a specific strategy. 2 and 3 were in general very non-linear with their designs, with there always being two different starting points and often multiple ways to get the main objective done. Other things like having someone obnoxiously comment every single time you upgrade an item (and also having to scroll down a bloated weapon tree instead of just seeing the newest options in a menu), orders taking longer to execute, having to wait a turn for reinforcements to spawn, CP tied to all the main characters forcing a large chunk of your deployment, and so on make the game feel like a step backwards and far clunkier.

In addition, Grenadiers are fundamentally unfair as enemies; multiple times I’ve had characters killed by them when I had no idea they were even there (the game decides to let them move after the first 5 chapters—because violating the basic gameplay rules you’ve drilled into the player is good design, right?). They should’ve had it where enemies have some radio chatter telling them to fire, putting them on the map screen before they have a chance to act—instead of way too late. Also, anti-vehicle mortars are kinda useless; despite having massively inflated anti-vehicle values they still only deal damage when they hit the radiator, and splash damage conveniently becomes non-existent when in use (you can hit inches behind the radiator and do nothing).

On top of that, the AI always goes for generator snipes whenever it can—multiple times they’ve gotten lucky and the Hafen has been blown up from halfway across the map. Great design choice, Sega!

This game is set to outdo 3 in the bullshit department and I'm only 1/3 of the way through.

 

Except it's been pointed out grenadiers can target enemies as long as they or ANY other of their allies has a LOS on your troops just like your own

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6 hours ago, kaidoi said:

Except it's been pointed out grenadiers can target enemies as long as they or ANY other of their allies has a LOS on your troops just like your own

That doesn't change that it's fundamentally poor design to be getting units killed by enemies you can't even see (which is why I suggested the solution of their being some radio chatter telling you their positions).

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I should be almost done with the game by now, and I've had a blast. There were one or two bullshit missions in the beginning, and there are a few too many anime moments and places where anime logic prevails, but beyond that both the gameplay and surprisingly enough the story have been solid. The cast just got better and better (besides one character who seems like they could've been used better), and there were two cutscenes in particular that really resonated with me.

Of course, I've still got the last bits left, and the ending is often the most important part, but I'm really happy with the game so far. Particularly the characters were more enjoyable than I had expected from the demo.

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So I've been enjoying the game so far, but I have a few things to say.

FIrst, if you want to unlock every character fragment, it's faster if you grind the main missions instead of skirmishes; you get troops to rank up at twice the normal rate, though it's all dependent on how many times you select them.  Corporal is the highest rank attainable.

Second, I actually recognize the archive format for VC4's files (playing the game on PC).  It's archived in .cpk's, which is the same archive format that Dragon Ball Xenoverse uses.  I haven't tried anything yet, but it might be possible to extract VC4's files with the same existing tools modders use to extract Xenoverse's files.

Third, I think I've assembled as much of Team Darcsen as I could without beating the game or obtaining DLC.  Got Godwin the creepy dude, Zaiga the wannabe, and Aoife the incidental hottie.  And of course Raz the Invincible.  Best team.

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Done with the game, full spoilers ahead.

Spoiler

The climax felt rather weak. The villains were horribly underdeveloped, with the guy receiving the most screen time retiring well before the final series of battles. We got a mad scientist and his team of murderous little girls, but uh, they were just random. I'm still not exactly sure what Belgar's motive was or where the girls came from. Guess he wanted to do some experiment and measure the explosion, but that'd be pretty hard seeing as he'd be dead at that point since he stuck around.

Forseti was a joke. I expected some kind of redemption or explanation for his actions, but instead it feels like we got two halves of a character with a missing conclusion. He thinks both the Federation and Empire are twisted, and he needs power to stop wars, but then he doesn't care about the people he kills and apparently just wanted to go into exile with Angie and Kai. Why...why does he need power, then? And why would he need to join the empire? If he had stayed in the Federation he would've had a better chance of getting her out of the engine room. Then he has the gall to get upset that Kai shoots him. I think they wanted him to show that war changes people, but he came across as a weird creep instead, and he deserved none of the sympathy he was given.

Speaking of Angelica, her arc was always incredibly obvious, which hampered the experience a bit. It was obvious that they wouldn't make a game where you use a little girl as a living bomb to wipe out millions of people. Then again, seeing how the conflict would resolve without resorting to that was interesting...though again, woefully underdeveloped. All of a sudden there's a ceasefire and the conflict is pretty much over, without us seeing the leaders of either of the superpowers agreeing to it. For all we know it could've been a trick, but I guess it wasn't? I mean, the ending was rather unclear, and while there seems to be some post game stuff to sort through, I think it just sort of ends there.

Still, I genuinely liked the main cast. Sure, some things were a bit too anime and they talked about Claude's past a bit too much, always repeating his supposed change and little else, but they had a nice chemistry and some really nice interactions. One of the highlights of the game's writing was the scene where they wandered in the mountains and tried talking about something to keep their minds off of the marching, and they talk about how great it would be if they could all work in Riley's factory when they got back. It felt genuine and nice. The demo kind of led me to believe it'd just be anime stereotypes and nothing more, but the quality of the dialogue was solid.

Speaking of, Raz' suicide mission was executed very well, with the cutscenes leading up to it being the game's highlight in terms of story. Sure, we knew there was more to Raz than him being testosterone's on legs, but he really shined here with his confidence, telling Claude to order him to take the mission. It got to me, it really did. 

As far as the main cast is concerned, I wish Minerva showed some more growth. I like it that she's not Claude's biggest fan, but she never apologized for blaming her squad's death on him, which kind of makes her come across as petty. 

I greatly appreciated the Darcsen conflict taking the back seat this game. It has been a major point in all three games and I never really found it to be the series' strongest point, exactly. Most certainly not something to warrant three games focusing on it. Raz is a Darcsen and he pretty much only mentions it once when jokingly says he's got no future ahead of him anyway because of it.

And finally, the gameplay is solid as always. I didn't like the final map, which seems to be a series staple, and the two first maps against Walz were brutal and seemed to require knowledge of how the map worked before starting. Other than that I had a blast, and partially because of how much I used Riley.

Finally...I really don't get this setting. I've said this before, but why are we in Not!Europe, in Not!Earth, fighting in Not!World War II? Why not just make up your own world if you're going to add magical beings and minerals into the mix? Why remove half of France and Scandinavia, move Edinburgh south, and fuse Russia and Germany together and still call it Europa? 

Anyway, damn solid game, gonna do some post game stuff now, and might get some DLC depending on how substantial it is. There were a few bumps in both gameplay and narrative, but hey, we're Fire Emblem fans; we're used to it.

 

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So now I've played a little over ten hours (barely scratching the surface, btw, only just reaching Chapter 4) and have some thoughts so far.

Firstly, I have been liking the game quite a bit.  Claude's definitely more of a flawed protagonist than Welkin, which I like.  I've been liking the other characters too, especially Raz.  Gameplay so far is a bit easy for my standards, but I'm just coming from having just played the Gallian Crossfire mod so things seem comparatively easy to that.

I've unlocked three squadmate missions and played two of them.  Specifically, I've played the one with Curtis, Laurent, and Eileen (I headshoted a scout Ace and a shocktrooper with Laurent, lmfao), as well as the one with Nico, Godwin, and Rosetta.  And I liked them quite a bit; they offered interesting little challenges, and were neat little stories to witness.  Maybe I'm biased towards certain types of characters, but I liked them more than the ones that appeared in VC2 (haven't played enough of VC3 to even get any squadmate missions, so I have no comment on that front).

Of the characters I've unlocked so far, these are who I've ranked up to Corporal:

Spoiler
  • Godwin: I just like this asshole a lot; he's such a prick, but that makes the sweet moments with him even sweeter.  Also, Team Darcsen.
  • Nico: She reminds me of a certain other "angelic" looking person in the series, except way more cheery and a lot less... self-harming.  Plus, she literally has the power of god and anime on her side.
  • Zaiga: Mostly for Team Darcsen, but also can't leave behind a G.  Raz's gang has to represent.
  • Eileen: I'm horrible and like to head canon that someone on the team is holding Curtis hostage to make her comply.  Also, she's the only engineer I have who doesn't have a seriously crippling potential (I'm still fucking livid at Rebecca for not healing Minerva).
  • Neige: Such a precious little flower who's always doing her best.  Scored some pretty impressive headshots as well, especially considering she apparently has the worst accuracy out of all the snipers I have.
  • Connor: As something of a writer myself, I so heavily relate to him and his problems and just feel a connection to him on a personal level.  Plus, he's, like, the only Grenadier I could use in Chapter 2, and I need those glorious bastards if I want to take down every Ace in the game.
  • Aoife: She.  Is.  Bae.  So far, either she or Raz are my favorite members of Team Darcsen.  Gorgeous gal, so much so that people literally think she's a slut.  Well fuck all those people, Aoife is great.  Not as effective at wanton carnage as our dear Lynn or Isara, but still is just as valuable in her own way.

 

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A small question about VC4:

Are B potentials random?

For example the Lancer Jimmy learns First Aid boost first in one save file, but in another save file Jimmy learns Safe Not Sorry first? While it would be the reverse with the Lancer Keigel.

Edited by Water Mage
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I have not played this game, and I had never heard of the series before I saw trailers for it for the Switch. I was wondering: is there anything I should know before I decide whether or not to get it? Do I need to know the story of the previous games to understand the story in this game? 

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