Valkyria Revolution Reviews
Overall, Valkyria Revolution is definitely not a perfect game, suffering from flaws in nearly every aspect of it. Be it the war story, which shows surprisingly few brutality, the low difficulty, lack of tactical depth, enemy repetition, overload of cutscenes, in order to characterize its huge cast, or the many frame drops and mediocre AI. In comparison to Valkyria Chronicles it falls short in a lot of ways, even tho it wasn´t a perfect game either.
Valkyria Revolutions suffers from some pacing issues and stiff cutscenes that make it hard to follow the serious tone of the story, although it attempts to mend some of its flaws with the excellent battle system.
I enjoyed my time with Valkyria Revolution and enjoyed it’s well crafted story. While it does have some issues with iffy animations and its necessity on grinding it’s not too dissimilar from other JRPG titles. If you go into the game thinking you are getting another Chronicles game you will be disappointed. But If you are looking for a decent RPG with a semi strategic battle system and interesting characters this might be right up your alley.
But that level of sensibility doesn't come front and center enough. Valkyria Revolution is constantly at odds with itself. It tries to be an action game, but at the behest of fans, more strategic elements were shoved in. You'll go into an action-packed warzone full of enemies to slice up, then you'll be rewarded with a seemingly endless amount of cutscenes lacking sound and fury and signifying nothing. Sega shifted its direction many times during its development due to feedback, and I'm not convinced it was the right move. Maybe if they had just stuck to their guns and made it a full action romp it would have turned out better.
Valkyria Revolution might not hit on all cylinders, but there is always a positive aspect to make up for a nagging flaw.
I really don't get what the developers were trying to achieve with Valkyria Revolution. It pretty much takes everything that was good about the prior games and just throws it out of the window, replacing it with tedium and banality.
The true misery of Valkyria Revolution is how much of the series' roots show through, and how much Revolution itself doesn't know what to do with them.
Despite some promising elements, mismatched expectations and an unsuccessful attempt to set things right cause this Valkyria Chronicles spinoff to crumble under its own weight. Ultimately, Valkyria Revolution is a game that suffers from an identity crisis and ends up not being quite sure of what it wants to be. I just hope that the Valkyria franchise gets another chance to do what it does best and deliver a new entry that's more faithful to its roots.
Valkyria Revolution's story falters while its different, action-oriented combat shines brightly.
Valkyria Revolution is an intense, special, and downright important game, with a powerful message to share not just about war itself, but also how we also talk about, and share stories about, war.
Valkyria Revolution is an average action RPG with some strategy elements that is held back by way too many issues and only really has its soundtrack working in its favour.
Overall Valkyria Revolution is an interesting and fun game, but it does take a while to really get going. The introduction and early chapters are really the low points of the game so if you can make it through those you should be good. I had no real issues with anything in terms of anything not working correctly or performing badly. There are however a lot of loading screens and they can sometimes feel like they take forever, but none were very long. For anyone who enjoys action RPGs with a heavy focus on storytelling, this game will be a winner.
Valkyria Revolution has the confidence of a much better game. The story is presented in a historical lense meant to pull at the player's heartstrings, the gameplay combines action RPG elements with strategy features, and the cast is depicted so as to highlight the realities of war. While that all looks nice in concept, Media Vision's execution is seriously lacking. The plot simultaneously needs to let scenes breathe more, instead of dragging them out for minutes on end. What should be thought-provoking combat turns into mindless button mashing. The depiction of war, as poignant as it can be sometimes, never manages to hold onto its brilliance for longer than a minute. There are genuinely great ideas present, both from its narrative and gameplay, but Valkyria Revolution fails to live up to the potential of either.
While there is some fun to be found in Valkyria Revolution's battle system, it's just not worth sitting through the story bloat and excessive loading to get there.
Valkyria Revolution tries valiantly to weave a tale of political intrigue, but it's undermined by repetitive mission design, poor menus, and an anonymous cast. If you were hoping for a worthy successor to Valkyria Chronicles, you will be sadly disappointed.
Valkyria Revolution is far from perfect. However, its gripping story, gorgeous soundtrack, and wealth of addicting customization options go a long way towards making what would otherwise be a rather ho-hum action game a bit more memorable.
There's no doubt that Valkyria Revolution won't be everyone's cup of tea, especially if you're not interested in a story-heavy RPG. There's a lot of repetition for battles, and lengthy sequences of cutscenes can certainly slow things down, but Revolution tells an engaging story with characters that grow on you over the hours of gameplay. Similarly, the combat system and customization grow, providing a much more engaging action experience in the latter half of the game.
Valkyria Revolution tells a decent tale of war, but the strength of that story is dulled by overlong, boring, and poorly animated cutscenes. It sacrifices the unique historical setting and art style of the Valkyria Chronicles series proper in favor of generic JRPG elements that fail to leave a strong impression, and its hack-and-slash combat offers little in the way of strategy and ruins its own flow with an poorly matched magic system.
Valkyria Revolution is an experiment, more similar to a musou than to all of its predecessors, and this won't resonate with the majority of the fans of the franchise. But, taken for what it is, it's still a decent action game with light RPG and strategic elements.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The game's politics have negligible emotional impact due to contrived voice acting and obtrusive loading screens.