Valkyria Chronicles II - The Concluding Remarks

After roughly a month of playing, I was finally able to finish Valkyria Chronicles 2...literally. Completed the main storyline (from January till December story missions), although there are a lot of awesome post-game contents to be explored. I've tried a few post-game missions and stuff, and although not much new features were added, the extra missions were more challenging and somehow made the game even more interesting :)

Overall, my final impression toward Valkyria Chronicles II:

In term of story (which I'd best not spoil), I'd say Valkyria Chronicles 1 is better than Valkyria Chronicles 2, but in term of character likability, VC2 wins for me. I am personally more fond with the likes of Cosette, Aliasse, Anisette, Juliana, Marian in VC2 than Alicia, Selvaria and Isara in VC1. Oh except Edy, she's just too awesome :3 Not to mention, other classmates in Squad G are also interesting. Lotte with her "DUDES", Melissa with her hardcore stalk, Sofia the man-hater, the incredibly lucky Joachim, the double-faced vice-president of student council Randy, the unexpected "sibling" of Franca/ Nichol, and much more.

Overall I really like the improvement made from previous VC1 gameplay. Lots of new features made battle much easier to plan and execute, especially the fact that you can call and standby your unit within the same turn. Addition of specialized class also made things more interesting. With Medic, you can instantly revive fallen allies. With Gunner, you can take out enemies that try to capture your bases. With Anthem Corp, you can boost your stats... immensely (no joke). With Mortarer you can take out enemies that are stupid enough to stay close to each other.

On the other hand, it kinda saddened me that we still can't utilize the power of Valkyria in battles. Despite that, having the "Valkyria" potential coupled with "Mysterious Body" within that person do make a difference in battle (awesome potentials). Too bad that all Valkyria are scouts, which made their usefulness in battle rather limited (mostly just to tag bases).

At some points, the game can be quite annoying especially when it comes to farming credits and certificates to upgrade your character's class. The randomness in which credits were given after each missions was so unpredictable that it made class switching a pain in the ass. In the end, what I did was sticking with the same 20 characters in my fixed group and used this same group in each and every missions. Over time, the random credits received accumulate and I managed to upgrade most of them to tier 3 Class in no time.

People say that Fencer is overpowered, but I thought Commandos are much more OP. Great AP, high HP and defence, and then those imbalanced Flamethrower... Yes its true that Fencer Elite can 1-hit kill most enemies, but their AP is so low that I made it hard for them to excel in large battlefield. I personally only have 1 Fencer in my fixed 20-units group, mostly to defend bases from those annoying V2s. This might change when I do more post-game mission, but until then, my opinion doesn't change.

The unlockables, especially additional combat characters are awesome. You can get Selvaria, Isara, Edy (!), Alicia, Welkin and many other characters from the original Valkyria Chronicles to join your squad. You can even unlock Emilia (Phantasy Star Portable 2's main heroines) to add to your luxury collections :3 If only they have their own side-story...

Nevertheless, I certainly would love to see an anime adaptation of VC2, and it would be immensely great if they would also include each of the classmate's story, maybe as a small mini episodes.

game evaluation:

Story - 6.5
Characters - 9
Graphic - 8.5
Gameplay - 8.5
Quests - 7
Replay value - 8

Final rating: 8/10 (must play for jrpg fans)