cyan's Journal: Valkyria, Valkyria. May the bloodline live forever.

So you may have heard something about Valkyria Chronicles lately, and I just finished it over the weekend. This game is nothing short of awesome. I've always been a fan of very bright, colorful graphics (ANSI, 16-bit RPG's, and old DOS games in particular), and Valkyria Chronicles does this very well. It's *so nice* that the gaming world seems to have realized that 3D polygons isn't the be-all and end-all of gaming. Thank *god* that era seems to be over.

The art in Valkyria Chronicles is a sort of bright anime/watercolor hybrid, which sounds like it might look weird and not work. But the appearance and presentation is absolutely fantastic, and won't displease any anime fan. They also kept the original Japanese voice track in (with English subtitles), which was a smart choice. It's just very awkward to watch a Japanese-created story in English. Case in point: Tidus in Final Fantasy X.

On the downside, Valkyria Chronicles only had a print run of 40,000 copies, easily putting it in the 'uncommon' category. Although, rumour on the net has it that another 40,000 is forthcoming. Even at 80,000 to 100,000 copies, it would still be an R3 or R4 on the Digital Press rarity scale.

Valkyria Chronicles concentrates on a small, fictional principality called Gallia. The story of Gallia, a small, neutral country wedged between large super-powers, reminded me of Liechtenstein or Switzerland. Actually, the whole back story takes place on the "Europan" continent, which is just an alternate-reality version of our modern Europe. This seems like it's kind of quirky and lame (after all, how hard is it to create your own map, really?) But they managed to make Europa a far different, interesting and mythical place than our own Europe.

The Gallian history and storyline is surprisingly deep (in a Final Fantasy Tactics kind of way), while still retaining that playfulness that makes anime so great to watch. It definitely doesn't try to take itself as seriously as Final Fantasy Tactics does. Regardless, the game itself only scratches the surface of possibilities within the Europan continent. I smell a sequel in the works. That's not to say that they hinted at it (just the opposite, the ending wraps things up very nicely), but because the world is just so *large*, and the story focuses on such a small part of it, it would be easy to create a whole other game based on another section of Europa.

Let's hope that the quality of the work keeps up, as that tends to slip with sequels. There are exceptions, however, and let's hope that Valkyria Chronicles can be counted as one of them. Hopefully, Sega will allow the Valkyria Chronicles team to keep their artistic license without viewing it as some kind of cash cow to be milked until dead.

Speaking of cash cows, now that I'm done with Valkyria Chronicles, I decided to pick up a completely different kind of game: Grand Theft Auto IV. What a difference. I went from the wonderfully bright, colorful world of Europa to the dark, dingy streets of Liberty City. By dark, I really mean "can't see a thing." I was about to put the game back onto the shelf for good, because while I appreciate Rockstar demonstrating that the black levels on my LCD TV are acceptable, I would rather be able to *see* what I'm playing. It wasn't like I was going to adjust my perfectly set contrast ratios on my TV just for one game. But that's when I found the brightness settings within the game, and after turning them all the way up, it was suddenly playable.

Most people view the GTA franchise as a sort of 'sandbox' game, where you turn it on for a few hours, screw around, and then turn it off. Very few people take the time to play a GTA game through to completion. I've only completed one GTA game, Grand Theft Auto III, but that was many years ago. Folks, Rockstar makes these games *tough*.

Compare the GTA difficulty against Valkyria Chronicles, which was challenging (but not particularly difficult), and it gives a good contrast. I completed Valkyria Chronicles in 32 hours, but it takes much longer than that to finish a GTA game. Actually, the "New Game Plus" mode in Valkyria Chronicles offers you an added difficulty to the skirmish battles, which makes it appealing to play through again.. ..but, anyway, they changed the controls around in GTA4. So I found my thumb always straying to the square button to brake, since that's how it was in GTA3. I don't mind the new controls, using R2 and L2 for acceleration and brake respectively. They make sense, given the PS3's analog buttons there. It just takes some getting used to. They also tweaked the vehicle control, so you can no longer brake and turn on a dime. You actually need to slow down, like a normal vehicle would, before being able to take sharp corners and the like.

The storyline, one of the best showpieces of the GTA franchise, is solid in GTA4. Niko (the lead character) is literally fresh off of the boat from eastern Europe, and to watch his confusion about certain North American mannerisms is pure comedy in motion. I just doubled over laughing the first time Niko and Little Jacob (who is from Jamaica, strong accent and mannerisms all) interacted. The story has a very strong eastern European influence, so you have references to the cold war everywhere. For example, a theater named "Perestroika". Awesome.

The game has been highly rated everywhere, but sentiment on the street seems to have cooled now that a considerable amount of time has passed since its release. That might owe to the fact that the general public sees it as a 'sandbox' game. More of a toy than a masterpiece, which is a shame, because the underlying story of the GTA games has always been very entertaining.

I'm sure that the completion ratio (i.e. percentage of game owners who have actually completed the game) between Valkyria Chronicles and Grand Theft Auto IV is very, very different. After all, there are only 40,000 copies of Valkyria Chronicles in all of North America, but over 10 million of GTA4.