Hello all!
I missed the chance to play the original Valkyria Chronicles when it came out originally, but now I have the remaster on the PS4 and I must say it is a truly good game. But of course we are here to talk about the design and today I will talk about the combat!
The combat in Valkyria Chronicles has 2 repeating phases, not turns, but repeating phases.
1: The top down map view, placement and layout.
2: The third person shooter, movement and attack.
The power this game has is: it's subtle and smooth incorporation of both of these phases in a well tuned combat system.
THE TOP DOWN PHASE:
The top down map is where you select and see the placement of your units, bases, and enemy units. The catch is the only enemy units you see are the ones that are in view of your units. This lends well to adding more strategy to the game because you have to think of placement for sight, along with the defence and attack. When the enemy moves all you see is the map with sound effects of movement pop up, unless they move in the line of site for one of your units. This also adds a level of challenge of understanding how each unit works, understanding their move distance and understanding the noises one makes when they move through certain terrain. As the enemy moves you know their general area due to the noise they make being visible on the map. Due to this you may not see them but, you will know they are hiding in tall grass or it's a tank that is moving closer to get to you. This helps to give you enough knowledge to prepare for an attack but not enough to know everything for there may be more units than you know in an area or different units than you expected. The other powerful thing about the map is that it has enough detail to understand the layout, more than well enough to know where to go and how to plan but also leaves a little vagueness. The map doesn't account for altitude very much meaning there is still some exploration in the area than just seeing it all up front. Usually when you play a tactical RPG you see the whole map and everyone on it but here you have some mystery which lends to a more captivating experience. If they move out of view you may forget that someone is there and run into a enemy that can gun you down or take a lot of health, it's rough but that is part of the charm, it's not just seeing it all but using memory, reasoning, and tactics.
THE THIRD PERSON PHASE:
The second phase is the third person shooter. Here you really become the unit and move freely and shoot like a TPS. Knowing where those units were on the map is important because you have to understand their position and how to get to them or avoid them. Since it plays as a TPS and character can be hidden in some cases, it becomes part of that tactics to look for enemies in certain places, or position your units to be able to see a certain area so you will always have knowledge of the enemies position and movement. You can only move so much, each unit has a certain distance they are able to move before they have to stop. This helps add a little something to each unit type. Scouts can move far and see far. Shocktroopers move a shorter distance but deal more damage. Lancers move short distance but fire anti tank weapons. It becomes part of tactics about how to explore, maybe you have to move a shocktrooper to a spot to make sure there are no enemies there but then you have to move them multiple times per turn. There is also a line of sight bar that pops up above the characters to show what your character can see and the colour shows if you can possibly hit the target. This is helpful to see targets you would normally miss other wise, but it can be turned off. The attack works as a third person shooter still. Meaning you get agency with attacks that normally you wouldn't. You can aim for the head to deal more damage and risk missing or aim for the body for a more likely hit chance. If you line up your shot right you can still hit the head and mitigate some of the chances of missing. Also this lets you attack stuff that may be hidden, like lobbing a grenade to blow up a specific spot that will destroy sandbags to take away the enemies defences instead of the typical highlight enemy and click attack, the character only aims at the enemy and shoots taking the strategy of shot placement out of the game.
CONCLUSION:
Over all Valkyria Chronicles does a really good job at relaying information to the player and also hiding it with out making it overly complicated or boring. The game does a good job subtly blending in tactical placement on a map with player agency on the movement and visibility. While taking the game off of a grid base system and the subtle blend of top down tactics with the agency of a third person shooter it creates a more organic and free flowing strategy game. This also opens many possibilities for all new mechanics or obstacles that other games would struggle doing or not be able to implement properly. For example Valkyria Chronicles has mines that if you aren't paying attention to can be really deadly and a shock when you run over one This would not work in a grid base tactics game because you don't have the organic freedom of the player's agency of movement but straight lines or diagonals for movement. The obstacles would then have to be visible to the player for the game to be fair. This style of game play also opens up better level design and much more interesting bosses. Because of the third person view you have a more organic target and instead of targeting the enemy in total or just a limb you can have much more precise challenges and ways to defeat enemies. For example tanks have a weak spot on the back of them, you can either run around to the back and attack it or you can try to lob grenades or shoot ragnite barrels to deal damaged to the weak spot which would be much more difficult to pull off on a grid base system. Also this lets you position units for ambushes, defensive lines and be able to hide enough info like the type of unit to be able to pull off more types of battle plans than most games.
If you haven't played Valkyria Chronicles I highly suggest trying it for a couple hours at the very least and see how you feel compared to games like X-Com, Fire Emblem, or even Project X Zone.
Have a good day/night!
BYEEE!