戦場のヴァルキュリア４！Valkyria Chronicles 4!
It’s not often you get exactly what you want when a video game sequel is announced, but VC1 fans who have been pining for a return to the original are getting just that with VC4, released on March 21 in Japan, around the same time in Hong Kong (with Japanese voices and Chinese text), and TBA in North America and Europe.
The original story was just one part of a much larger war, and at the time it looked like many other great stories could be told about it. VC2 took us two years into the future, to a short-lived rebellion in 1937 Gallia, but the third game returned to the main war and told a story of a penal unit comprising a bunch of misfits (and anime tropes) exiled to this dangerous squad for various infractions. Now we have a story from the perspective of the barely-touched-on Atlantic Federation, the western power that makes up the Europan equivalents of France and the United Kingdom.
It’s not often you get exactly what you want when a video game sequel is announced, but VC1 fans who have been pining for a return to the original are getting just that with VC4, released on March 21 in Japan, around the same time in Hong Kong (with Japanese voices and Chinese text), and TBA in North America and Europe.
The developers have given the name Edinburgh to their faux UK and its huge army takes on Gallian volunteers: this is where our protagonists hail from.
We get to see a little more of Europa than we have previously: we finally get to see the equivalent of Scandinavia, and Gallia’s two small independent neighbors (Nemur and Emmen) are labeled clearly.
The Federation institutes Operation Northern Cross to attach the Schwartzgrad, the imperial capital 1500 kilometers inland, from the north. We'll be moving across snowfields and traversing icy oceans in this game.
And how about the actual gameplay? It's back. And it's basically exactly what we have come to love:
(We get to see the excerpt from the Federation's anthem for the first time since the kidnapping mission in VC1. Admit it: you paid close attention to this part when playing that mission just so you could read this, didn't you? Now it's a big part of the game.)
Ace enemy soldiers are back -- Image with very minor spoilers here: Yts8E9w.jpg on IMGUR -- and the battles are the same aesthetic triumph that they were in VC1.
The beautiful hybrid German-Fraktur-letters-with-Irish-numbers font is used everywhere again, and it looks as great as it always has. The developers even got to make use of things they had always wanted to use, such as this numerical signaling board that you might remember from the VC1 artbook:
In between battles you'll be developing your weapons and tanks just like you always have:
The slogan on the side of the tank is "It Will Be Done", which seems to be Squad E's motto. Your tank, the Hafen, is piloted by Claude Wallce, our new protagonist. I'm still in the early stages of the game and haven't gotten to know many of the supporting actors, but you've got leaders (who give extra turns to your squad when they're on the battlefield) as before, and people can die if left on the field while injured for three turns.
(Gun development with a minor trophy spoiler: look for 8PSOjfp.jpg on IMGUR)
And the mood-lightening sophomoric humor hasn't gone anywhere:
(Raz: "So she's a naval officer, huh? Check out that butt! Women of the sea, they're all right, yo!")
The rating system is back, too, and S-ranks (I hope they start with A again in the translated versions) aren't too hard to get, even on Normal mode:
If you can read Japanese, this game is available right now. Move out, Squad E!
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