Sounds like it has the same issues as Star Ocean III, namely the pacing issues and awkward storytelling, so fans of the series will still love it.

Hated the pacing and the way the story was presented but loved the gameplay and overall, the game got a good score. This only proves that good gameplay can overshadow a game's flaws enough to be good. Stiffly animated cutscenes don't really suprise me since this is not an inhouse Square-Enix game. FFXIII will have cutscene and facial animation on par with MGS4.

Very positive review. Cutscenes can be paused though can't they? By using the xbox button on the controller?

Considering I agree with the order that they rated these games, that's a good sign.

After the rather negative preview, it´s still a wonder how the reviewer gave it an 8.

So Valkyria Chronicles remains the highest rated JRPG on HD consoles ! GO VC !!!

As for Star Ocean review it quite confirms the impression I've got form the videos : except from the battle system, there is little incetive to play the game.

How about the replay value, the progression system, and the private actions?

I'm more interested on seeing the love affairs unfold in this game.

Please say that the cut-scenes are pausable!!! 45 min cut scenes would be unbearable without that, and one thing MGS 4 did have was good dialogue and fantastic voice actors, so these cut scenes will likely not be as good....

Things like having to change disc all the time seems really annoying, but I am not going to bother waiting for the PS3 version to sort that out. I hate really long dungeons with infrequent save points, one of the reasons I never finished IU.

Ultimately it seems that they have not learnt all the lessons they should have learnt from IU, and it still has poor pacing, though it still looks like one of the better jRPGs, but not as good as LO (hurry up Mistwalker) but those achievements look incredibly annoying

you can skip them, but you cannot pause them...which is pretty stupid. I could have sworn you could pause them in SO3.