seiyuu3

Some of you might have noticed the buttons on the side for awhile now, Sega is again running a campagin for one of their games Senjou no Valkyria (I want those signed prizes!). Thanks to Senjou no Valkyria (I refuse to call it by the English name), my Playstation 3 had got dusted off for reasons other than playing Blu-ray disks.

A brief background on the game – Senjou no Valkyria is a strategy game developed by Sega. The game quickly caught the attention of the gaming world due to its unique graphic style and Sega themselves drummed up this point – that despite being fully rendered in 3D polygons, it has a hand-drawn, water-coloured like quality which the industry had never seen before. Coupled with the fact that the game was handled by the team that brought us the infamous Sakura Taisen series, this game seems to have the ingredients to be a winner. So the big question is – did it manage to deliver on the premise and live up to the expectations?

Set in a fictional alternate 1930s Europe where war broke out between the Atlantic Federation and the East European Imperial Alliance, the game focuses on a small independent country named Gallia confronted with invasion by the East European Imperial Alliance for Gallia’s rich deposit of a mineral called Ragnite – which is your typical miracle energy source in works of fiction. The hero of the story is Welkin Gunther, a 22-year old university biology student aiming to become a teacher that just happened to be caught in the heat when his hometown was invaded and he ended up enlisting in the militia in order to bring his hometown back to peace. It’s your overused cliché heroic war story setting, but just like the Sakura Taisen series, where the story lacks originality it more than makes up for the deficit in its near flawless presentation.

Hero and heroine – Welkin and Alicia

The story is unfolded in a retrospective story book fashion – the narration told the player straight up that this is a chronology of the miraculous triumph of Gallia over the evil invaders and how the militia fought a brave war over a 7 month period, so immediately they subtly conditions you to the right mindset – to expect a straight forward good triumph over evil storyline. The main characters are easy to like – Welkin is a bright young man with a love for nature and peace, Alicia Melchiott – the heroine who is strong, caring, capable and responsible, Largo Potter – your typical big guy with a big heart, Brigotte “Rosie” Stark – flamboyant with both her looks and personality, and Isara Guther – Welkin’s adopted sister who’s a gentle and intelligent engineer. All these presented in the unique graphic style and you can’t help but be immediately sucked into the illustrated children book like atmosphere. The story of Senjou no Valkyria is totally linear and there is no renai element to it – unlike the Sakura Taisen series, and nothing in the story is ground breaking and is quite predictable – but again, because of the way they presented the overall package, you can just let go of your inner cynical side for a bit and let yourself be immersed in the simple story.

It really does look like this.

On the gameplay side, the semi-realtime battle engine lends itself to some pretty in-depth strategic, though in times frustrating, battles. Borrowing heavily from Sakura Taisen 3’s ARMS gridless, action point-based system, Welkin has at his disposal a small platoon of infantry of 5 different functions – fast moving and far reaching scouts, assault troops carrying machine gun, bazooka wielding anti-tank troops, fix-it-all engineers, and long range snipers – and finally a tank for good measure. You have a limited amount of “command points” which you spend 1 point at a time to move a unit, or 2 points to move the tank, and each unit has its own “action points” which determines how far you can move. For each time you move a unit you can also select to perform a particular action once – to attack, heal, or do nothing. Each troop, individually chosen by the player, has their own buddies and potentials which affects their effectiveness. Buddies means that some troops performs better when placed in close proximity of other characters he/she likes, and potentials are special status modifiers which triggers randomly or under special conditions. Some are your standard attack up/defence up, while others are more specific such as “lone wolf” (gets status boost when working alone), “panic” (opposite of lone wolf), and some are comical/bizarre like status boost when surrounded by the opposite sex, or even the same sex for that matter. After each successful battle you earn a certain amount of money and experience depending on how well you did, which is rated by a rank between S to D. The experience points are then spent on levelling up your troops while the money is used to upgrade your weapons and tank. There are also extra goodies in the form of side episodes to unlock outside of the 18 main chapters etc but I won’t go into the details. When you beat the game you can also use the cleared save data to restart the game from the beginning where you inherit all your troops level and weapon research to encourage the player to play a second run, and since you won’t be able to unlock everything the first time round it’s worth playing again. The map designs are fairly challenging in that it will punish you for mistakes and that you are likely going to be replaying some stages a few times before you can pass it, but it’s also not impossibly hard such that it disheartens you to the point of throwing the controller on the ground and stop playing the game. If you’re on the second run with all the upgraded weapons and high level troops at your command then you can try to better your score or try different tactics – and what’s good is that the game is actually fun enough that you are quite likely to play it through a second run.

The battle screen

Now how would this game impression be complete (and worthy of being mentioned on this blog) without a mentioning of the cast? Sega knows full well the attraction of having famous seiyuu in their games, and for this game the main draw comes in the form of Inoue Marina playing the heroine Alicia. The character of Alicia can be said to be going against some of the common traits designed to induce the moe feeling of which a lot of us had became used to in the recent anime/manga/game entertainment world – as she doesn’t have any sort of personality short-comings or quirks, she’s not clumsy, airheaded, dreamy, short-tempered, preachy, tsundere (despite having twintails and Sega claiming her to be on several occasions), bad at cooking etc. Alicia just has her feet firmly planted on the ground and does the right things at the right time. In some ways you could even say that she’s boring, but being normal in an entertainment world currently so full of abnormalities can just be the right quality to make her stand out, which is probably why Alicia is so easily likeable since she won’t be hitting on any sensitive nerves. By this Inoue Marina, probably thanks to her own level-headed personality (despite her trying so hard to not be), is a perfect fit for the character of Alicia. From displaying Alicia’s gentler feminie but not overtly girly side when away from the battlefield, to portraying a capable and responsible soldier looking to protect her homeland, all delivered in just the right normal voice pitch without any sort of peculiarity.

There are other big names in the game such as Kuwashima Houko playing as the quiet Isara, Toyoguchi Megumi as Rosie, and even Noto Mamiko as Princess Cordelia of Gallia. But arguably the other big attraction – or LULZ factor, depending on your view point which I’ll get to now – comes in the form of Fukuyama Jun playing as Maximilian, the prince of the East European Imperial Alliance who leads the invasion. Maximilian is reminisce of Lelouch in so many ways that you can’t help but think that the people at Sega had probably watched a little too much Code Geass in their spare time and hired Fukuyama Jun just to satisfy their inner otaku. Even us here at seiyuu3 can’t help but dish out a few “Yes! Your Highness!” whenever Maximilian issues a command in the cut scenes.

In conclusion, Senjou no Valkyria is a highly polished game that you can spend many fun hours on. Highly recommended.

Omake: The TGS event on nico nico douga.