Can't wait to play it.

Wow, more VC praise, nice to hear. I wish I could say I was going to buy this, but... my cousin has it. So I'll be borrowing & playing his instead (soon enough, about 2 weeks).

I know, no sale from me sucks... sorry SoA team, I'm cheap like that

Well I've only played Fire Emblem Wii a little bit, but I'll do my best.  First off is that VC has no melee as well as no grid system.  In VC you move a certain amount of distance, and you can do an action at any point, and continue moving afterward.  The setting makes it so that everyone is using a gun and noone uses a melee weapon.  When you aim your weapon you do so in an FPS style.  Final difference is that in VC if a character's health goes to zero they don't automatically die, but they will die if you don't save them within three turns, or before the enemy touches their body. 

Those are the big differences as far as battle mechanics go.

cant wait to play the game, i am getting it for christmas. :)

Just about everything except for the Triangle system and the fact that the armies take turns.

Well and the promotions are kinda Fire Emblemesque.

Oh, and the high chance of permanent deaths...

also it does have a bit of a "make one wrong move and your squad will seriously be hurting." in some cases.

It's similar to fire emblem in some respects, but also very different. This is fully 3d and from a 3rd person perspective, so when you move, rather than showing a grid in which your character can move based on his stats you have a "running meter" as it were that depletes as you run. Different classes and ranks of classes have different running meters. Scouts can run fast and far, but rocket launching Lancers are slow and can't get very far.

Turns are handled differently. In fire emblem, everybody gets a chance to move, then your turn ends, the enemy gets to have everybody move. In this you get a number of "AP" and you can spend it however you want. Each AP alows a character to be used, and they can be used as many times as you want as long as you have the AP. However their stats go down a bit with each successive use of them within a turn, especially movement. After 3 times moving somebody they won't be able to run but a few steps. Tanks cost 2 AP to move compared to normal units, but obviously they can be pretty brutal. You also get "orders" as the game goes on, which are essentially buffs that cost AP. You can use an order like "everybody attack" which raises everyone's attack power for that turn and costs 2 AP, or "Aim carefully" which boosts one characters AIM stat for the rest of that turn (fantastic for snipers) and costs 2 AP. When you run out of AP, your turn is over and the enemy gets to spend all of his AP. Any AP you don't use is carried over to the next turn.

After you get yourself into the position that you want you press R1 to go into attack mode which brings up cross hairs, you select your weapon, aim and attack. different weapons get different numbers of shots. Assault rifles can fire 20 times or more depending on the model, but regular rifles for instance only get 5 shots per attack. Your weapons have different distance, accuracy, attack power, and armor piercing stats that affects how well they will perform. Headshots count as critical attacks, but obviously provide a smaller target. A characters evade stat enables them to occasionally "hit the deck" as it were, and just drop to the ground dodging most bullets. Enemies do get a chance to counter attack if they have counter attack capable weapons (rocket launchers and sniper rifles don't counter attack) and are within range as decided by their weapons range stat. However, a big difference is interception fire. Characters with counter attack capable weapons can fire at anyone in their sight range without being prompted and different classes have different fields of vision, meaning you can set up defensive perimeters and anything that enters it will start to be fired upon, but the enemies obviously can do the same. This can be very important. Interception fire ceases once you enter aiming mode though, and then you just have to rely on or beware of the counter attack.

There isn't a "rock paper scissors" element to attacking, but their are some natural strengths and resistances. Lancers (who are largely anti-tank units) are resistant to explosives such as tank shells, grenades, ect. But they are weaker against bullets. The opposite is true for shock troopers. Tanks obviously don't care much about bullets, but can be hurt badly by explosive weapons.

Terrain also plays an important role. Trenches or sandbags enable your character to "crouch" behind cover which increases their defense and more importantly makes them immune to critical hits. Standing in the open and ducking behind a sandbag wall can mean the difference between holding your ground and having a group get completely wiped out. But walls and other forms of cover (excluding trenches dug into the ground) can be run over by tanks or blown up by grenades or rockets. Though they can be rebuilt though by the engineer class. Flame throwers are another good counter for attacking enemies (or enemies attacking you) behind cover. They are incapable of doing critical hits, but they do large amounts of damage, but they are close range weapons meaning if a good perimeter is set up they have to go through alot of interception fire to just get within range to use it. Placement, and position is critical, and cover is a very important thing.

Characters can die permanently, but it's a bit more forgiving than in fire emblem. If a character hits 0 HP they are wounded, if 3 turns pass, or if an enemy touches their body they are gone for good. But if you can get to their body before that happens then you can call in a medic and evacuate them to safety.

There isn't Magic or MP or anything, but stronger attacks rely on Ammo to be used. It gradually refills as the fight goes on or you can use the engineer class to refill people's ammo.

It also has fog of war as it were, which I don't think all fire emblem games have (some might, I dunno). You won't automatically see all enemies, you have to spot them first. Characters have different line of sight abilities too, so scouts for instance have a much better ability to see enemies at a distance compared to shock troopers.

Leveling up is handled a bit differently. Characters don't level up individually by killing enemies or healing, or what have you. Rather after the battle you get experience points based on your performance, enemies killed, ect, and those can be spent back at base. But rather than spending them on individual characters they are spent on entire classes. You level up your scout class, you level up your sniper class. And everyone that belongs to that class benefits. Characters are set in their classes, but you get to pick from a wide assortment of characters who will be in your squad. You have I think 20 or so places on your squad, and you have to pick from 40-50 characters I think, though not all of them are available all of the time. Then at the beginning of a battle you choose 8-10 characters to participate in that battle.

 Though you can't change characters classes, they differ greatly beyond just their class. They all have personalities which give them perks or draw backs, and you can view these traits in their stats screen. Lone wolves might get a boost from being by themselves away from team mates, a homosexual man like Jann will get a boost from being around other men (especially ones he likes), some characters are racist and will lose stat points from being around Darcsens (the race everybody loves to hate in the game), some love nature, some have allergies, some love the challenge of being outnumbered, others cower in fear when being fired at, some are closterphopic, some love the safety of tighter spaces, some like to charge out in front of the group, others like to bring up the rear. Also they have friends, people they prefer over others. If standing near other characters team attacks can be activated, and friends will get boosts from helping each other. These things all have to be considered when assembling and balancing your team.

Hmm...if theres anything else you can think of that you'd like to know, just ask. I really like fire emblem especially the radiant ones, and I adore this game.

Thank you Vagabond. I couldn't have done it better?

I'll get this together with KZ2... Right now it's very impossible for me to get this with my own funds. I currently have $0.00 and a pending $100 balance...

It pains me that.... Me no have this yet..... DAMN!!!!!! HURRY UP FEBRUARY!!!!

Thanks everyone and especially Vagabond.
I'll definitely will try to find a way to play this. Fire Emblem is among my favorite series and I'd love to play this.

good, i'm glad you found it informative. As a fire emblem fan I think you'll really like this too. Both are really solid awesome Srpgs.