Valkyria Chronicles 4 Complete Edition

SEGA ill suck you off for a valkyria 5 i swear im good for it

this game rocked btw can you also make pc and console remakes for 2 and 3
this is honestly one of the best and unique ip's you have just go for itttttttttttttt mannnnnnnnnnnnnn

The game is all right. But the cutscenes are hell—boring, cringe, infinite.

Valyria Chronicles 4.

I've had the game for awhile, but I haven't played more than a few minutes. At the time, I liked it, then I got a new computer and this game fell by the wayside.

Stay tuned for an in-depth, proper review.

If you want more VC - pick this.
If you want to try this series this is a good starting point, arguably better than the original.
If you don't know what VC is - go find out.

I enjoyed the combat A LOT, but overarching objectives convert this strategy game into a puzzle game.
It's not for me.

Summary

Core things that contributed to my rating

• Tactical Turn based combat (10/10 by the way. REALLY enjoyable).
  
• Scripted combat scenarios. First time you don't know what to expect. 2nd time onward you do.
  
• You aim, but RNG decides where the shot lands (even sniper rifles shots stray).
  
[*] Rating (going up to S) for stage completion.

Completion is the first easy goal. Mission rating becomes the main goal of this game, and I think this is a mistake. Rating system turns this amazing combat into a puzzle where most strategies (while viable) are incorrect solutions. To solve the puzzle you effectively have to learn the battle (it's impossible to get on first try without knowing what you'll face or where it comes from), prepare a suitable squad to counter the battle, and replay until RNG doesn't cause you to miss too many shots.

Combat

There's a fair amount of depth to this combat system.
It takes a tactical turn-based combat (like Wasteland or X-Com) and turns it into a 3rd person shooter.
You are only aware of your enemy's movement if your unit witnesses it (line of sight becomes important).
If you are too close and in line of sight many units will shoot as you take any action (and vice versa).

There's a bunch of unit types that are designed to tackle specific scenarios, and while there's overlap in what different units are good at each unit type feels unique.

I got annoyed at RNG aspect of accuracy, however I think it fits the combat. It was only annoying because rating system makes it feel like I'm losing rating for a stupid reason.

This is a fantastic game, made even better if you have played the others in the series.

If you aren't familiar, Valkyria Chronicles is a tactical RPG series that takes place in a fictionalized version of World War II. Each game in the series has their own ups and downs (I've played them all, and they all range from good to great), but VC4 is my favorite by far. It's taken all of the best aspects of each of the previous entries and tied them together beautifully, while adding on its own unique spice that deepens and broadens the gameplay both at the same time.

The story is fantastic, the battles are brilliant and just the right level of tricky, and the pacing of this game is so well-done I never stopped feeling the oppressive and tense atmosphere of wartime. This game is chock-full of tons of side content, some of which gives exciting new options to use in the main game. It also looks beautiful, with the series' trademark anime-inspired visual style never failing to impress.

This is a fantastic game, that I think everyone should play. And if you can, play the others too!

+

amazing game

Great game. Knowledge of previous games is not required

Mission Restart Simulator

The characters talk WAYYYY too much and when they talk it pisses me off.

Pros and cons are down below) If you want to see a (spoiler free) video review, this game is the 3d (out of 3) that I discuss:
https://youtu.be/zMQY_676fFM

Pros:
1. One of the best games ever, on god. A literal gem. I played through the 1st part when I was much younger and that game still lives rent free in my mind to this day. Story is absolutely brilliant, you can't even imagine how many times it made me feel the feels, cry and celebrate with the characters. My fav part is that every unit that you have and can use in a fight is a person with their own personality traits and friends who they feel more comfortable to fight alongside with. Moreover, if you use a character enough, they reach rank "corporal" which unlocks their respective squad story that makes them grow and develop new character traits or change their previous flaws into something positive. So, every single unit goes through their own little adventure (if you use them often enough to promote to corporal). Absolutely amazing. It's ultimately a game about war but for me it's a game about friendship, love, sacrifices, bravery and what people mean to each other. It also has magic just so you know). Story length is about my playthrough time ~ 60h long but there are also reasons to replay fights and there's plenty of post game content as well.
2. Style. I loved the anime vintag-y style, I think it works perfectly for such game. It doesn't take away from the heavy topics but overall keeps the experience light-hearted, wonderful stylistic choice inmho. Every single character looks great, some models are absolutely amazing. It's just a joy to play as them and to look at the cutscenes and story fragments. Complete edition also has an obligatory anime beach episode if you wanted to know XD
3. Combat. SO MUCH FUN! It's a turn based game. Each unit can move and attack during their action and you have limited amount of actions during your turn. The less actions it takes you to beat the level, the higher the grade and rewards that you get. IF you wanna see more, I showcase stuff a little in my vid, so you can get a better idea. It's a strategy game but it doesn't require you to be a strategic mastermind to have fun and be able to beat the game. It's perfectly balanced, hard enough to be challenging to get a rank A and easy enough to make it possible to enjoy the story without try harding the fights (most of them at least).
4. Pacing. The game managed to keep introducing something new throughout my 60h of playtime to keep fights interesting. It never got boring.

Cons:
1. Main villains of the story are poorly written. (2 of them have the weirdest motivations ever, the rest are great). I get that "they're just crazy" is a good explanation but is a very weak motivation for a good story. Made the ending very anticlimactic imho. I feel like the game should have ended 1-2 fights sooner than it did. But it's just my personal opinion.
2. 2 boss fights (not the same one that I talked about in the previous point) felt very puzzl-y. This game is supposed to be a strategy yet 2 particular boss fights that are happening back to back and were meant to be fun and fresh and unique are actually just puzzles that you have to solve by doing a specific thing in a specific order in a specific amount of turns or you gonna start losing units and will lose. These fights were so annoying, they deserve a place in a "cons" list. On a positive note, you can always look up a playthrough of the fights on YouTube and repeat those specific step to get rank A without any issue.
3. If you dislike standart anime overreacting overacting overgasping etc, then there's plenty of that in this game. I don't mind it that much but sometimes it just made my eyes roll. Still, I don't think it's such a big deal. I'm not an anime fan and it didn't take away from the story a bit. It's still SUCH A BRILLIANT STORY!!! imho of course

Overall we got 8.5 Crymarias out of 10 (to be fair) but it's a 10 out of 10 in my heart!

Thank you for reading my review <3 Hope you have a nice day and fun gaming!

oh boy i sure do like metal gear solid, cheesy anime with dramatic, romantic, and comedic elements, and divergent history world war two analogous settings!

One of the best games for the Steamdeck. Great storyline, turn based RPG, great mechanics.
Also check out the original Valkyria Chronicles here on steam.

A lovely game with a lovely story. The gameplay can at certain times become repetitive, but it never ceases to throw a curveball at you at the right time and force you to change up your strategy.

It's Valkyria Chronicles to the T

You should try it, if not for the gameplay then for the story

This series is unique. turn bases strategy game. I have played the other 3 and this one does not disappoint.

A shallow and boring tactics game. Gameplay is very basic and rudimentary, actions take a long time to complete.

i have been looking at the reviews for a little bit now some of them shock me. Like to me everything about this game is great. I love everything from the main cast and the side characters to the story and art direction. People are saying the story/characters are garbage, I would have to completely disagree. I would say you get pretty close to the characters and even the side characters. The story is amazing, your pretty much watching friends from when there were kids slowly growing up because of how war changes people. I do got to say though, since it is a anime style game it will have those anime cliche moments but it doesn't ruin the game what so ever as some reviews claim it does, they do it well and gets some laughs from the scenes when necessary. Overall i would have to give the game a solid like 8.5/10 maybe a 9/10. I hope my review makes you give the game a solid chance.

Miles, you need to STFU boi

The writing in this game is horrible and cringy and is nothing like the first game. The majority of the characters also have no personality, while the first game has a lot of characters that stand out and are incredibly likeable.

The only good things about this game are the graphics and the soundtracks.

One of the greats for its time.

Despite being a 2018 game with visual novel elements, VC4 still lacks an auto button.

Well, you can't win them all, but I wouldn't mind a VC2 + 3 duology release in the future.

This game has way too many problems. One of the clunkiest UI/UX you can find without coming back to games made in the 90s (and even then, most weren't that bad, from memory) where "looking good" is more important than being practical (and you use the UI A TON during your playtime); badly written main characters, terribly written antagonists (for most of them), nonsensical lore breaking events in the main story, and game rules that encourage not playing strategically but instead abusing the strong component/The Ai's stupidity.

Speaking of the AI, it's way too passive for that type of game, often unable to use most of its move points each turn because it simply doesn't know what it should do, and therefore ends up doing nothing; and you know what? That's actually not the worse the AI does, suiciding several troops into your interception fire without achieving anything is basically one of the most frequent stuff you'll see from the AI outside of "doing nothing".

Luck based attacks are also a terrible implementation in a game that heavily rewards the player for winning in as few moves as possible, since this also heavily encourages reloading fest (and remember what I said about the UI/UX? Yes, that's making the reloading worse as well, of course).

The fact that many of the missions' goal is simply to take a specific camp is a terrible idea when it's coupled with "taking the camp" simply meaning clicking on a flag in a 3 m x 3 m zone without any enemy standing in the zone, since it means that you can win the battle by bringing ONE soldier even with 1 hp left to the destination, without bothering to kill the dozens of enemies in between, and not even bothering to kill all of those that were guarding the camp since if an explosion blows them outside of the 3mx3m radius they're not counted as contesting anymore. This leads to double scout rush/APC rushes with battles ending in your first turn with the enemy never having a chance to play any move.

Would be fine if that was a sport, but tell me why is the enemy routed just because there's a half dead scout standing in the middle of your tanks and troopers that managed to put the enemy flag there instead of theirs? And remember, the game rewards you for taking less turns. Taking the time to win convincingly by wiping out the enemy with no casualty, or at the very least strongly locking the objective zone with defenders if you don't kill everything, should be a logical way to play that kind of game outside of "we need to reach this fast enough before something bad happen" kind of limited situations, yet it is NOT the rewarded way to play 95% of the time, rushing to the objective with barely killing anything is.

The game at its best moment is nice and compelling to play, but there are way too many problems to call it anything else than a mediocre sequel to the original. It had a few good ideas compared to the first one in the series, like the addition of the direct Command feature and the addition of the APC in particular, but due to the overwhelming amount of problems, using these features regularly feels more like just cheesing the AI with them rather than actually enjoying their tactical potential. At least the first game of the series had a good main cast and a better main story. This one doesn't even have that. Also the bosses in the main story are just stupid to play against.

These things makes the end game gameplay, once you're finished with the story, a way better experience than the main story is.

All of this, and more (I could do a few pages of rants, as well as a few pages of how I would change things to correct those problems, like changing the way a camp is captured, for ex), makes me not recommend the game. I went through it fully and got all the achievements yes, but that was because I already bought it and already invested lots of time going through the story anyway (remember what I said about the post game content being better than the main story phase? that was simmilar in game 1 so I was kind of expecting it). If I knew from the start that it would be that bad, I would have simply never bought that game, and never started playing it.

It's sad because I think that the idea of directing directly the soldiers is a nice idea that is almost unique to this series, and having tanks -and even better an APC- really adds potential to strategies that can be used, but it all fall flat due to the vast amount of problems the game has otherwise.

Also,I had to disable the music entirely because the port is bugged with the BGM and it keeps bugging out (well known bug, never fixed in t he port because SE never bother to patch their PC ports).
And I hate that attitude of bare minimum effort for PC port that you see in several console centric publishers. It's crap and there are no excuse when some small publishers manage to have excellent PC port with tons of added value and quick bug patching simply outsourcing the work to peoples that know what they're doing (like PH3 for ex).
If at least the game had a good port I may have been willing to be more lenient and give a green thumb conditioned to buying the game during sales. But if they're not going to do any efforts for PC players, why should I be forgiving?

One of my favorite strategy games. The combat system which switches between a top down tactical view and controlling your squad members in first person is really fun and I wish more games did this. Art and music are both very pretty.
Scout units are as OP as ever and it would make much more sense to me if EXP was tied to enemies killed and not clear time - currently you/re encouraged to just run past enemy units towards the goal. But combat is still very fun and all unit types have their uses.

I have played the other VC games and I pretty much enjoyed playing this one too. Score: 8/10. Recommendation: Yes, even at full price.

(REPLAYING FOR SECOND TIME ON PC) I don't recommend this game. In my personal experience, I find playing into the mechanics how the missions suggest is always punished with an uphill battle. 9/10 times the best solution is just to fly straight into the enemy base with armored cover and dump units, regardless of mission details. That strategy becomes cheesy quickly, but remains the only reasonable-feeling and non-RNG approach i've found to get through most situations after the introductory missions. No sense in clearing a path with snipers or bump and cover with small fire teams when you can run the infantry over with an APC and drop some combo of lancer/gren/scout/shock to attack radiators and stationary targets. This also felt like the only viable method of getting high rankings on missions. Plenty of room for skill issue on rankings, but I'm pretty sure speed is the only metric considered on rankings, which feels quite bad and saps the opportunity to have strategic fun.

I've witnessed a strange mechanic behavior as well -- Enemy units don't get intercepted by my own infantry, maybe because of the enemy unit's awareness of invisible boundaries where counterattacks are activated. Trying to fortify an area for counterattacks on advancing enemies was pointless every time. I've saved mid-battle and tested counterattacks out to no avail. For example, you may find that enemy shocktroopers can run past 4 of your own shocktroopers (running in total line of sight, and eventually face to face) and will mow down your units with no friendly unit reaction whatsoever. I've gotten the Hafen to react occassionally, but it's always too late and has never made contact with enemy units. This does NOT happen for friendly units, and your units will get devastated by counterattacks. I've read that some odd behaviors in this port can be tied to your system's framerate, which I have not explored, but if you experience similar problems and want to try to resolve it, limiting your fps may be a good start. Speculatively possible that the port itself runs strangely on a higher end system.

Story is utter garbage, full of eye rolling cringe anime cliche moments. There's also a severe lack of animated cut-scenes here. 85% of the story is just frames of the characters emoting. You could argue that's been the case for the whole series, but I found it much more distracting here.

However, art direction and gameplay reach new heights with this installment. Characters control well and the visuals are gorgeous. The battles are fine tuned as well. There's never a fight that I felt completely overwhelmed in.

It's a serviceable game enough. Albeit about a 5/10. Would highly recommend picking this up on a deep sale. No more than $5. (It's been going on sale pretty cheap during the past few summer and winter sales.)

Hopefully the series continues. I'd love to see a new game with a tighter narrative and more likable characters.

Great game

Not great, not terrible, but I still had a good time playing it. Very underrated franchise. I hope for Valkyria 5.

nostalgia to the max settings, woop woop

Story is trash and it constantly does anime pervert fan service jokes but gameplay is 10/10.

Even though this game kinda lost me with the challenge content which ended up just feeling like doing the same thing over and over again, the main game is great. Awesome art style, a lot of charm, likeable characters and a story that is solid for the most part. I do wish that the combat was just a little deeper, but they do introduce new mechanics at good enough intervals that you have new things to look forward to all the way up until the end of the story.

Good Game play. The turn based system allow both tatical and stratigic planning (Sorry about spelling). The interactions of the different charactors adds to the enjoyment.

I'm sure there's a character that's not completely insufferable hidden somewhere in this game but I don't have the endurance to tolerate the godforsaken dialogue and characters long enough to find them

Straight up gas

one of the best games ever made

This shit good.

I got about half way through this game then stopped. There it sat in my library for 2 years untouched. I just can't bother to go back and finish it. This does not mean it is a bad game, it is quite enjoyable, but compared to VC1 the story and the characters are just so bland that it killed my investment with it.

Great game, fixes a lot of the issues with the original plus add's a lot interesting tools. The new mortar class is op. The game also runs great on the Steam Deck.

I bought this game (VC4) on PS and now also PC. Please make more Valkyria Chronicles style games!

IT HAS A GERAT STORY LINE AND ALL THE MISSIONS ARE FUN I WISH THAT THERE WAS ANOTHER ONE.

Kinda goofy how VC4 loves to throw curve balls at you in pretty much every mission which can really fuck you sideways if you aren't playing safe
Not quite sure how to feel about being forced to play safe or be forced another lengthy restart of an already long battle

Story is goofy so it might be a bit cringy if you aren't fond of the whole 'we can do it because of our friends' that's on repeat the whole time but otherwise decent premise and worldbuilding

Otherwise game overall is aite I guess but kinda grindy

A relaxing and simple strategy game combined with comic story with some charm. Also, plenty of side stories to discover along with the main story. All in all, a good game to buy on sale.

like the first one

The same vibes as in Valkyria Chronicles 1 = pure bliss, both gameplay and story. 10/10 from me.

I love this game. The first game had a much better story, but this game has more refined gameplay. However, the animations are still too slow and the mission ranking system needs reworking. Why reward speed and perfection threw the whole game when it shines when your flying by the seat of your pants. Constintly triping and breaking things, but making what's left work. Plus you lack a lot of information and deal with a lot of RNG. The only way to get good scores is to save scum. That is slow and unfun.
If you can ignore the score system, you will have a good time, but that might be tough since the game is stingy with the currency.

Put briefly: This is a great game and I give it TWO thumbs up! It builds on VC3 in terms of gameplay, squad building missions (getting to know the whole squad not just main characters) and it has a more serious tone than VC3 that works. If you enjoyed any of the VC games you HAVE TO get this one! Awesome soundtrack too!

At length: The new class of grenadiers is welcome. I liked the squad stories as it fleshes out the other soldiers in your company, which VC3 didn't do. I like the slight customisation that you get to see on your tanks. Your starting tank is kind of light but as you develop it you can see the extra armour and barrel length of the tanks growing until you have a beast of a metal machine. Where VC3 highlighted WW2's anti-semitism with the portrayal of darcsen hatred, this one highlights the Atomic bomb and the human cost of superweapons. The use of ship is cool and the soundtrack is more moving during the sensitive areas and a bit more pumping during clashes. Whilst I enjoyed the protagonist of VC3 a bit more, I like the cast overall in VC4.
This is easily a 9.5/10 game.

a great game for those looking for a turn based tactical game with an anime flare. the cut scenes are skippable which is great cause there are a lot of them and the story is pretty predictable. some weird fan service aside, all around fun time and can be very hard on the right settings.

Your mileage may vary here, as I personally prefer high transparency, low chaos tactics games. Nearly every mission in this game has some unforeseeable gimmick that makes most of the gameplay feel pretty arbitrary. It's nothing challenging, mind, as the AI is very rudimentary and encounters are designed mostly around outgunning the player until some side objective is met; however, with the permadeath factor and the inability to ascertain ranges for movement and attacks, expect a lot of minor frustrations leading to tense situations leading to easy resolutions.
The setting is identical to the prior games, and the writing sits between juvenile and trope-y. If you are going to play, I'd at least consider skipping all the cutscenes. Anything of consequence is repeated during battles, and you'll save yourself some cringe-worthy moments.