- a translation of an interview by Dengeki with Takeshi Ozawa (director) and Yoichi Shimosato (chief producer) reveals some details about Valkyria: Azure Revolution

On the subject of losing a character:

Ozawa: “This is something that we’ve discussed a lot, but since death is a theme this time around, if we don’t have such deaths then the feeling of fear that comes with it won’t reach the player, so we’ve decided to go with it.”

Shimosato: “We’ve readied events and other story elements for sub-characters in order to further motivate players to not get people killed.”

Are there events that don’t occur if you lose a character?

Ozawa: “The main story will carry on, but the said character’s events will be cut out. However, like other Valkyria Chronicles titles, you’ll be able to redo things, and we’re planning on having players get to experience everything just by doing so.”

About how difficult is the game?

Ozawa: “I believe that there are definitely some obstacles there, and with that said, [the difficulty] is not that low. We plan on adding an easy mode and such for the matter.”

http://www.siliconera.com/2015/11/24/valkyria-azure-revolution-details-on-perma-deaths-difficulty-and-upcoming-demo/

I hope this game doesn't have auto-save. :(

yeowch,.. i hate perma-death. if my favorite character dies i'm going to throw a fit. i guess it's a good thing i can store a save file to the cloud but yeowch.

Permadeath? Nothing a redo on easy mode can't fix :)

Apparently yes, could be like Fire Emblem. I love that. Way too easy to find a strategy where you kill half of your men to win the battle, and then get your soldiers back to full health for the next battle. 

I've restarted battles hundreds of time in FE (well, before Awakening) to get perfect strats even with occasionally weak characters or bad luck (critical hits...), and it's still the best thing in FE for me (especially since Awakening this time :D ). 

The system was less obvious in VC because you could revive your character if you were able to heal him/her within 3 turns IIRC (no permadeath in VC2 though? There was an hospital...). So, interesting, but less stressful (and I mean stressful in a good way). 

Noooooooooo! Not really permadeaths are a good idea to add that fear to try keep everyone alive. The only problem with is, if there's event I might not see because of certain characters dying then I'm the type of person that will end up replaying a level if I lose characters! I like to make sure everyone makes it through :)

But erosion sly the more I hear on this game the more I'm massively hyping up for it. I loved VC and VC2.

^ this.

Perma death isnt acceptable with auto saveing only games, you need to have manual control over save games, and be able to load a previous one, if you end up loseing your favorite character and such.

VC always have manual saves before and during battle. So the perma death thing should not be a big deal unless they only force you to have auto save.

I have the feeling - but can't actually be certain - that VC had the option of pressing the Start button and restart the battle. Maybe someone can verify this.

Yeah, it's like that mode was put there for that same reason... until some awesome character dies on you while you are way ahead in the progress of the game.

Completely get what you mean.

No point in perma-death if you can redo things. The entire point of characters dying permanently is that their lives mean something. You should be forced to auto-save.

What game does that? The most notable game with perma-death is Fire Emblem, and a death just leads me to reload my previous save and try again.