How often can games be about war before it starts to lose its emotional impact" It’s a question I’ve personally grappled with a lot over the past few years, and depending on the game that’s making me consider it, my answer varies greatly. Sometimes it feels like we’ve lost sight of what made war games good, substituting the glimpses of humanity in between the fighting with cleaner kill-death ratios or technology that makes the battlefield more dynamic.
Sometimes, though, games like Valkyria Chronicles 4 come along and remind me why there’s still so much more to do with grand scale combat settings. The cast is memorable and, once they power through their inital clichés, provide some much-needed character depth to the game’s already impressive tactical prowess. While the mechanics of the game alone would have been enough to make the trenches worth diving back into, the story and artwork make for a game that’s yet another strong installment for a series that never seems to run out of things to say about fighting tyranny and injustice. Faster Than My Bullet
One of the first things that stands out about Valkyria Chronicles 4 is the adoration the game’s developers, Sega CS3, have for the tactical warfare genre. Nothing about the game feels like it isn’t being done without specific intent. The battlefield is deliberately laid out to cater toward different approaches to each problem, and sometimes even tempts players w...