Valkyria Chronicles 3 - To be announced/shown on Thursday (at TGS)

Loved Valkyria Chronicles 1. Haven’t played part 2 yet, though I’ve ordered it. I just need to wait for it to ship and to be delivered to me.

Any bets on which platform VC 3 will be released on? I dimly recall a “promise”, that if VC2 sells well enough on the psp, that part 3 might be on the PS 3 again?

HURRRAH

It had better be on a Sony platform, because I now have both a PS3 and a PSP…

I’ll be the optimist for once and say, “PS3.”


if ( PS3 == platform )
    print "Most excellent news!"
else
    print "Bah."

VC 1 was a few giant loopholes (most notably the "single character sprint to the flag) shy of being a really good game. The 2nd is, as you all seem to agree, on a platform of no use to me. I hope the third time’s the charm.

I agree that it’s sad, that you had to play like that if you wanted to A rank missions, but after I solved a mission like that, I always replayed them, using my own D-rank slow-and-steady style.

For me, grading systems are very important in terms of how they challenge me (eg Fire Emblem) to complete objectives in a puzzle solving way. That’s pretty much all the genre has to offer me, other than appalling cutscenes and stories. I tried to detach myself from the grade ranking, but it was no use.

I didn’t really mind the story or the cutscenes or even a “bad” grade.

What annoyed me about not getting an A grade was that it left me horribly underlevelled at times, thus forcing me to grind repetitive skirmishes (which wasn’t very painful, after I got all the orders for alicia-godmode)…

Hah, I played pretty much the other way around. I used methodical, combined-arms tactics, didn’t abuse orders, and routinely scored Bs with the odd A or C. Then as my personal challenge, I would work out how to speedrun the skirmishes (without abusing orders unless I really wanted to farm xp.)

That makes absolutely no sense.

I’ve heard this complaint, although I never really experienced it. Maybe it has to do with which difficulty level was selected, but I don’t think I did any of the skirmishes more than once or twice, and I was pretty nicely leveled the whole way through.

I also felt that the A rank was really intended for 2nd playthrough. You play the first time using real combined arms tactics, and to learn the layout of the level. I don’t see how people could possibly get A rank even in Alicia rush their first time into a map, since you often don’t know where the objectives are.

I resent getting less XP when the only criteria being used to judge my skill is amount of turns. I felt shortchanged every time I didn’t get an A, and consequently quickly picked up on the most correct way to play the game by its own rules: the Alicia rush.

I also felt that the A rank was really intended for 2nd playthrough. You play the first time using real combined arms tactics, and to learn the layout of the level. I don’t see how people could possibly get A rank even in Alicia rush their first time into a map, since you often don’t know where the objectives are.

Well, it’s doable simply because the rules for cover are so firmly set (to their credit) and the Alicia rush allows you so much spare time. Granted, I only played the first third of the game or so before losing interest, but having to force myself to play the game “wrong” and potentially get less xp by actually using all of the tools at my disposal was an obvious flaw in the game that made itself known very early. It’s great that people can look past it and enjoy the game anyway, but there’s no good reason for the combination of the grading scale being so narrowly focused and the combat system so easily exploited. There are a wide variety of ways to get good scores in other, better designed games (including ones with harsher consequences, and including tabletop games assuming we staple score onto victory points and the like) and ignoring this shortcoming in a sequel would be a mistake. That is, if they are interested in getting word of mouth beyond the same crowd that bought the first one.

How did the PSP one play? Did it suffer from a similar problem?

Yeah, a lot of it might just be expectations. I never expect to get much better than a C in any game with a per-level grading (ever since Devil May Cry), let alone in a Tactics game, which I’m not great at.

I will say that I totally agree with this. Whether or not the scout-rush made the game unplayable for me, it’s clearly a weakness in the design. I’d love to see the battle mechanics cleaned up in a variety of ways in another installment, especially re: Lancers, since they were especially useless (I’ve heard that’s a little better in VC2, haven’t been able to pick it up yet).

I wouldn’t expect the Scout Rush to be fixed in VC3. VC2 uses the same scoring system and it’s just as weird and out of place there. It really wouldn’t be hard to make a better grading system either, which is part of why it is so frustrating. VC2 at least makes other classes more usable, but it still encourages stupidity over tactical depth.

Wow, really? That’s not good news at all.

Hope it’s for the PS3. If it is, I’ll be getting it. VC1 was a bright spot of gaming, for sure.

I hope they change their mind and do alter the grading system. In VC1, my core armies consisted mostly of scouts just because it was much easier to get an A rank. I pretty much didn’t use any other units, because their movement bar was too low so I couldn’t justify using them most times since I wanted to get the A rank. Obviously, I could just ignore the ranking and play it more tactical and take my time, but my obsessiveness with getting an A rank doesn’t allow that =)

If you look at the last pages of the VC1 thread, someone linked a developer interview that explains why they chose that particular scoring method.

Now, if they’d only see the problems that arise in practice…

I can understand the ideas behind it, but the execution is just really poor. They certainly should grade on speed, but it should be a reward for setting up your troops properly to intercept enemies on their own turn or to have support fire on your own. Instead, it feels more like every turn not spent running wildly into enemy fire is a turn wasted.

It’s technically possible to ignore the grade, but you shouldn’t have to. Hell, even adding multiple ways to get an A rank would be nice. Allow players to decide if they want to be speed-demons or defensive kill-all-enemy types. Add a series of potential end-of-match bonuses and give the player an A rank if they get enough of them.

Mind pointing out where? I can’t find that at least in this interview.

Actually, in anything but the most scripted missions, I was able to get the A most of the time on the first try. I did use a machine gunner sometimes instead of a scout (or in tandem with), as they were a bit better at mowing things down and taking fire.

The main thing, on top of the grading system, is to get rid of any orders that allowed Soldier and Scouts to become Anti-Tank, and invalidate the other two classes (Tank and Lancer) And scouts definitely shouldn’t have a cover buster, as that just makes them silly.

I was thinking that having damage do both health and reduce your time gauge would help some scout rushes, along with just reducing their movement a bit in general.