#31
Change YoY: -1 My Rating: 9.2 / 10
The original Valkyria Chronicles is one of my absolute favourite games of all time, and to my great delight it proved to be an unexpected success back in 2008. I was anticipating another home console sequel to be announced relatively quickly, but then it turned out the next game in the series would be released on the PSP instead. That wasn't a huge issue in the end as the handheld had enough titles I was interested in to warrant buying one. I liked the sequel a lot, but it was definitely held back by its platform, and failed to sell nearly as much as the first game, especially in the west. Following this, the third game was also a PSP title, but was never even released outside of Japan as the system really wasn't doing very well in the west at that point. As a result, for quite a few years it felt like the series was effectively dead. In 2017 we got a rather poor spin-off in Valkyria Revolution, but finally, Valkyria Chronicles 4 was announced for home consoles and eventually released in 2018, making this without question one of the longest waits for a game I've ever experienced. Fortunately, it more than lived up to my expectations.
While Valkyria Chronicles 4 is not quite on the level of the first game, mostly because the character and story are just a shade below in quality compared to the first game, this is still an exceptional game overall. On the gameplay side some great improvements and additions were made to what we had in the earlier games, including a new character class and some more variety and improvements to the existing ones, all of which allowed for some fun new ways to approach combat situations. Visually, Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a beautiful game, the anime-inspired, watercolor-esque style remaining one of the most attractive graphical styles in any video game in my opinion. The score is fantastic as well, composed by the highly talented Hitoshi Sakimoto, who also created the music for the first three titles in the series. This is without question a worthy follow-up to the first game, and hopefully we don't have to wait another ten years for the next title in the series, or if we can't have that then a re-release of the 2nd and 3rd games on modern consoles would be just fine too.
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