Valkyria Revolution review: Bore games
Sega drastically changes up the formula for the Valkyria franchise with Valkyria Revolution, but none of it is for the better.
Developer: Media Vision
Publisher: Sega
Platforms: PlayStation 4 (version reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation Vita
Release Date: June 27th, 2017
Valkyria Chronicles is hailed as one of the true hidden gems of the PS3 era. The game featured amazing and extremely challenging tactical gameplay, a cool alternate universe and an incredible art style. Somehow the game slipped through the cracks when it was released, however, and it didn’t sell much initially. It bore two sequels, but both were on the PSP and the third game never even came out stateside. It seemed like Valkyria Chronicles was set to be remembered fondly by a few.
But amazingly, Sega not only released the first game on PC, but also a remastered edition on PS4. Both versions sold pretty well, especially the PC one. Surely this meant Sega would make another amazing entry in the series right?
Well, somebody sure decided to make another game bearing the name Valkyria all right. Valkyria Revolution claims to be a spiritual spin-off to the Valkyria Chronicles games, but it literally bears no resemblance to the series in any form. The gameplay style is completely different. The cool cel-shaded look is gone. It takes place in, and I’m quoting here “a different timeline, continent, and universe than its predecessors.”
As nonsensical as that all is, if it’s a different, but still very good RPG, I’d be all for the change up. But Valkyria Revolution is a big misstep in just about every possible aspect, resulting in easily one of the most disappointing games of 2017.
Let’s start with the extremely convoluted story. You are the leader of a task force specifically trained to take an out extremely powerful being known as a Valkyria. This spirit is at the behest of an evil empire (of course) that your country is trying to liberate itself from. But the generals of the evil empire also burned down your orphanage when you were a child because of course they did. So you and your friends from that orphanage grew up to be some very influential people in society (none of these friends are in your task force though) and have manipulated things into war as part of an extremely overly complicated and convoluted revenge scheme (this is all revealed in the first hour of the game).
It’s a needlessly complicated plot, but that’s a sin of many games. What really sinks Valkyria Revolution’s story is the awful pacing and dialogue. Cutscenes move at a snail’s pace, and there are loads of them. Plot points are constantly repeated as if they knew people would constantly be skipping scenes. And to make this even worse, there is an extremely unnecessary framing device of this actually being a story told 100 years or so in the future between two people sitting in a forest. Why? Who knows, but it already brings a slow story to a grinding halt. The cast is also massive with you, your friends from the orphanage, the Emperor, the Valkyria, the evil generals and your rather large squad. Despite my time with the game clocking in at around 40 hours, most of these characters had little to no development. They might be given a character quirk, but that’s literally all there is to them.
Graphics is another area where Valkyria Revolution pales to pretty much any of its predecessors. Gone are the gorgeous cel-shaded looks of previous games, replaced with something that frankly has the look of a budget RPG from the PS3 era. Battlefields don’t have much variety and are incredibly lifeless. There are only a handful of enemy types, and nearly all of them have extremely uninspired designs. And even with graphics this simple, the game often slows to a crawl when there’s a lot of action going on with massive frame rate drops throughout.
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Building up your characters in Valkyria Revolution is ridiculously complex, as well. There’s a crafting system, but it’s entirely guesswork as to what makes what items and I never needed to really upgrade or even change out my armor. Secondary weapons such as guns and grenades weren’t completely useless but seemed redundant when every character has magic that replenishes on the battlefield over time.
And then there’s the Ragnite system. See, Ragnite are basically rocks that give you spells. You can select some several of them to use at any time (and you can upgrade to get more slots). Ragnite is also what you use to upgrade stats. So yes, there is a push and pull between saving good Ragnite to use in battle or using it to upgrade your characters. But you really only get good Ragnite fighting battles, and the drops are random. Ragnite is usually set to specific classes, and so you can imagine just spending hours and hours grinding not only to get the ability to use high-level Ragnite, but also then getting said high-level Ragnite for the specific class.
It’s hard to understand why Valkyria Revolution even exists.
There might be some hope for Valkyria Revolution if the battle system was done well. Sadly, at best, it is passable. Playing somewhat like a slowed down version of Dynasty Warriors game, Valkyria Chronicles is an action-RPG. You run across a battlefield trying to complete objectives, which 99.9% of the time are just to kill a certain enemy when they appear after you’ve killed enough of the other enemies. Regular missions are perfectly fine, but usually when you get to a story mission with a boss is when things drone on far too long. I’ve had missions last an hour or more, and the gameplay in the field is only a little more strategic than button mashing.
In fact, real tactics only come into play in the last couple chapters of the game, and that’s mainly because the last several major boss fights are just massive sponges that take ages to beat. Part of this is due to the fact that your A.I. partners might as well be just dummies that run around to be a distraction for the enemies because that’s pretty much all they are good for while you aren’t directly controlling them. There are also some major camera issues that pop up whenever you are facing giant tanks, which is quite often. Characters will get lost or just stuck.
It’s hard to understand why Valkyria Revolution even exists. Sure, it could be an attempt to try and desperately squeeze some cash out of some desperate fans. But it also seems to be made very clear from the start this is no way a game any fans of the Valkyria Chronicles series would have any interest in, and there is certainly nothing to attract any new fans. Valkyria Revolution could have breathed new life into the series. Instead, it pretty much dug up the bones of this franchise and burned them so it can never try to make another return.
4. Valkyria Revolution is an extremely wrong-headed attempt to re-invent a series that needed no such treatment, and falls short on just about every level.. Media Vision. . Valkyria Revolution
A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.