I had Valkyria Chronicles on my wishlist for nearly a year as, although it looked splendid and intriguing, I did not realise what a gem it is; when it came on sale, I thought about it again and decided to try it. Oh my word, I wish I had never waited. This instantly catapulted itself into my heart – not just the way the art looked amazing, the story flowed interestingly or how the general design excelled, though they did – no, this apparently was a tactical game too.

So what are you getting here? Not a large scale battle show but a skirmishing delight with a fair range of units and upgrades; not so many as to swamp you in pointless detail, but enough that you have to make choices about progression order. The difficulty starts to ramp up as you go through, till you reach a point where you will fail a mission and have to rethink your approach.

The presentation of the story is in a book form with chapters and episodes – that does not sound like much but the volume’s layout is a nice touch and adds charm. Each chapter will have at least one battle in it – no, this is not a Final Fantasy game (for all that it looks as good as one) with their grinding mentality. The rest is made up of interesting little scenes that build the plot, flesh out the characters and generally enrich the game. This does not mean that there is not enough combat – the balance is pretty good, since the skirmish battles take some time to complete.

You can develop character traits and choose troops that complement each other. Your main hero is a tank-driving commander but you will probably get attached to a fair number of the others and protective of your squad of twenty soldiers.

At the time of writing this review I am nowhere near completion but, to be honest, I knew I wanted to give it a big thumbs up after about ten minutes. Nothing in it has disappointed me since.

I had Valkyria Chronicles on my wishlist for nearly a year as, although it looked splendid and intriguing, I did not realise what a gem it is; when it came on sale, I thought about it again and decided to try it. Oh my word, I wish I had never waited. This instantly catapulted itself into my heart – not just the way the art looked amazing, the story flowed interestingly or how the general design excelled, though they did – no, this apparently was a tactical game too. So what are you getting here? Not a large scale battle show but a skirmishing delight with a fair range of units and upgrades; not so many as to swamp you in pointless detail, but enough that you have to make choices about progression order. The difficulty starts to ramp up as you go through, till you reach a point where you will fail a mission and have to rethink your approach. The presentation of the story is in a book form with chapters and episodes – that does not sound like much but the volume’s layout is a nice touch and adds charm. Each chapter will have at least one battle in it – no, this is not a Final Fantasy game (for all that it looks as good as one) with their grinding mentality. The rest is made up of interesting little scenes that build the plot, flesh out the characters and generally enrich the game. This does not mean that there is not enough combat – the balance is pretty good, since the skirmish battles take some time to complete. You can develop character traits and choose troops that complement each other. Your main hero is a tank-driving commander but you will probably get attached to a fair number of the others and protective of your squad of twenty soldiers. At the time of writing this review I am nowhere near completion but, to be honest, I knew I wanted to give it a big thumbs up after about ten minutes. Nothing in it has disappointed me since.