| Valkyria Chronicles 2  | 
| From: Sega Of America, Inc.
Category: Video Games
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $35.00
as of 9/7/2010 01:08 CEST details
You Save: $4.95 (12%)
New (20) Collectible (2) from $35.00
Seller: Just Used Games
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 276
Platform: Sony PSP
Genre: role_playing_games
ESRB: Teen
Media: Video Game
Edition: Standard
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Number Of Items: 1
Batteries Included: No
Operating System: Sony PSP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7 x 4.1 x 0.6
Multi-Cartridge Multiplayer
MPN: 66031
Model: 66031
UPC: 010086660319
EAN: 0010086660319
ASIN: B003Q9RG9K
Publication Date: September 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | All-new ad hoc wireless 2-4 player multiplayer modes include: a co-op mode enabling battles for up to four friends and versus mode for fun challenges for friends on-the-go | | • | Revamped, turn-based Blitz battle system allows you to control units from an overhead view and then zoom in to control each individual character in battle from a third-person perspective | | • | Customize your weapons, tanks and characters with over three times the options as before | | • | Prep 30 new military units extend your options on the battlefield | | • | Explore through 200+ missions tailor-made for play on the PSP |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Valkyria Chronicles, the PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system's most acclaimed tactical RPG, returns exclusively to the PSP (PlayStation Portable) system with the highly anticipated sequel Valkyria Chronicles II. Now you can experience the immersing mix of distinctive visuals and addictive game play of Valkyria Chronicles on the go with your PSP system.
Valkyria Chronicles II takes place two years after the conclusion of the original game and takes you back to the epic adventure set in 1930's fictitious Europe. In this sequel, you play as a group of young Gallian Military Academy cadets who find themselves plunged into a bitter civil war when the newly formed Gallian Revolutionary Army stages a coup. As the drama and battle unfold, you will experience stories of friendship, love and growing pains during a time of war and revolution.
The CANVAS" engine originally developed by SEGA Game Studios Japan for Valkyria Chronicles on the PlayStation 3 is being fully redesigned for the PSP system. This incredibly distinctive engine will power over 20 new distinct and visually stunning environments where you will have hundreds of different missions to explore. The BLiTZ" battle system has also been re-designed to offer the freedom to strategically move around the environment and attack enemies using real-time controls, something never before seen in the tactical role-playing game genre. 4 characters, 4 different storylines - Select Sonic or one of his rivals and play through each of their story through fast and winding stages Extensive reward system based on card-collecting - Enhance your character's various skills through character customization WiFi connectivity - Wager trading cards for various multiplayer challenges
Amazon.com Product Description
Valkyria Chronicles 2 is a tactical role-playing game (RPG) for PlayStation Portable (PSP) set in a fictional European country where players find themselves in the shoes of a band of cadets honor-bound to defend their nation against rebellion. Sequel to the PlayStation 3 hit Valkyria Chronicles, this next chapter in the franchise features a revamped battle system, customizable weapons, 200+ missions, new unit types and 4-player wireless multiplayer options, including co-op. Join Together to Defeat the Rebel Forces In Valkyria Chronicles 2 players get to be the hero in a dramatic fight to save your country alongside fellow cadets from Gallia’s Lancir Military Academy. Two years after the great battle against the Imperial Army, Gallia and its plentiful mineral resources are under attack again – this time from the rebel Gallian Revolutionary Army that aims to conquer Gallia's new regime.  Join with fellow cadets to protect the solvency of your nation.
View larger. Improved BLiTZ Battle System The completely revamped Blitz (Battle of Live Tactical Zones) battle system built into Valkyria Chronicles 2 allows players access to more customization options, more military units and hundreds of new missions. Split between an overhead Command Mode and third-person Action Mode, and utilizing command points to direct unit activity, this updated Blitz system provides for the most in-depth Valkyria Chronicles battle experience ever. Awe-Inspiring Beauty The breathtaking watercolor look created by the CANVAS graphics engine has been redesigned specifically for this PSP system-exclusive. Venture deep into 30 all-new beautifully rendered battlefield maps and 10 unique environments. Key Game Features - With the revamped, turn-based Blitz (Battle of Live Tactical Zones) battle system, maneuver units from an overhead view and then zoom in to control each individual character in battle from a third-person perspective
- Customize your weapons, tanks and characters with over three times the options as before
- Prep 30 new military units for battle
- Explore through 200+ missions
- All-new ad hoc wireless 2-4 player multiplayer modes include:
- Co-op mode - battles for up to four friends
- Versus mode - fun challenges for friends on-the-go
Additional Screenshots  4-player support.
View larger. |  Customization options.
View larger. |  200+ missions.
View larger. |  30 new units to command.
View larger. |
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| Customer Reviews:
Accurate to the Original Given the Hardware September 2, 2010
Christoph S Verlo
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
When it was announced that Valkyria Chronicles would be getting a sequel, I was simultaneously thrilled and intensely angry because that sequel was coming out on PSP.
I'm not as angry anymore.
There are things the PSP cannot do. It is not driven by a cell processor, and UMD cannot store as much as a bluray disc. I won't fool you by saying that this is a perfect sequel to VC 1 because it is not; the cutscenes are clearly done on a space budget.
That said, when you get down to the real game play, it's the same familiar setting with a few new tricks. What you lose in the conversion to a smaller screen with annoying dialog you gain in customization. You have more control over your squad's development and armament then you did before, which comes as an equitable trade. I wouldn't want to try VC on Hard EX on the PSP screen or with the PSP's controls, you just don't have the fine grained control to micro manage movements around terrain. But for VC2's maps it's fine.
Best Strategy Game September 1, 2010
Kismo
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I dont play the first game on Ps3 but i can tell you Valkyria Chronicles 2 is the best strategy game on console portable for me. Great music, great gameplay, very good atmospheren, very good story, engaging characters, i recommend this game if you want a very nice game to play ...
Great Stuff! September 5, 2010
Matthew Brown (Marshall, MI)
If you like Valkyria Chronicles for PS3 (and if you haven't played it, you absolutely should), you'll love this. It translates very well to the PSP controls. Just extremely well done. Highly recommended.
 Still not a 5-star game. Impressive...but not perfection. September 5, 2010
M.D.C. (San Diego, CA)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
That title will either confuse you or infuriate you. If you don't know what I'm referring to don't worry about it. Those that get mad, well...
Skip to the very bottom for summary judgment. For the purposes of this review I will refer to the first VC as just VC, and part two as VC2. As an aside, it is NOT required to play VC to enjoy VC2, but your enjoyment will increase somewhat if you had. You'll also understand the gameplay much easier if you do, as VC did a great job of teaching you how to do things. VC includes little helpers but they're not nearly as good.
I initially had my doubts about Valkyria Chronicles (VC). I didn't buy it when it first came out, even though GameStop and many others had advertised it as the next big thing. First off, SEGA is notorious for releasing obscure games amidst other more notable, more popular games. They've done it with almost every game released on either Dreamcast or the next gen systems; a lot of notable games came out around that time, and even though I didn't play them, a lot of people skipped VC like I did. It wasn't until later that I got the gumption to actually download the demo and found that it had some potential to be good. When the price dropped I picked up a copy, and quite frankly, it's the only PS3 game I enjoyed through and through - almost more than my other games. VC1 had a special something about it that really cannot be replicated, beyond the simplistic gameplay. I did put up a review and you're welcome to read through that for my thoughts. In summary though, the only real complaint I had was the fact that they punished you for being dominant. In a game as fun as VC, it was a real heartbreaker to see that you got piddly experience for dominating each map and instead were encouraged to rush through things.
When SEGA announced VC2, a lot of gamers who had later picked up and enjoyed VC were ecstatic, except for one thing: its system of choice. Why the PSP after releasing the first one on the PS3? It was explained that this change was primarily done to target a larger audience in hopes of drumming up enough interest to get a third game out on the PS3. In retrospect it's rather humorous that people are upset at SEGA for doing what Square Enix is already doing (since Kingdom Hearts has had an iteration on PS2, cell phones, DS, and PSP thus far), yet SE gets lauded for "innovating". In any event, I'm here to review VC2, and one thing is readily apparent: the limited hardware of the PSP does not hinder the experience at all. In fact, I would daresay that the core engine is quite impressively done, and like Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Warriors Orochi, VC2 maximizes the experience so much that it almost feels like a natural fit on the handheld.
VC2 takes place a few years after the first. Though the war has ended and Cordelia has accepted her Darcsen heritage, there are still some who believe that the Darcsens caused the Calamity that ravaged the land and thus find it hard to follow a Darcsen leader. This new faction is referred to in game as the Rebels, who hold various public events denouncing Cordelia as the reason for the unrest. Your primary character is Avan, the younger brother of Leon, who was a hero at a local military academy. One of the teachers stops by and informs you that your brother has fallen in battle, but he is unable to tell you why or how it happened. Some rebels attack Avan's village, and he organizes a small team of stronger villagers to fight them off. Afterwards, he decides to apply at the Academy himself in order to eventually find out what happened to his brother. From the start it's clear that Avan is not the school type. His academic prowess is less than ideal, though he is quite good at military movements and strategies. He, along with Cosette and Zeri, are placed in Class G - the lowest and least regarded of the school classes. It is here that Avan begins his development.
VC2 is strikingly different from VC in that you are not initially involved in a large-scale war situation. Here, you'll spend the bulk of your days at the Academy, participating in war exercises and minor skirmishes, and training and developing Class G. You don't have to deal with the school side so much (ala Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3), only the military and training side. As a side quest you will also have random encounters with other members of Class G; these encounters occur similar to the events in Record of Agarest War, where you go to the area that they're located and watch a small cutscene play out. Depending on how many times you have encountered that character, you may also be asked to participate in a special character skirmish, and if successful, the bond between you and that character will be strengthened and they will unlock hidden Potentials. This is key in battle; the Potential usually improves upon a negative Potential, or adds to their skillset in battle. A good bond between characters improves battle performance which is critical in most of the boss battles. A lot of people have referred to this as "dating sim" but it's far from that. They are short, quick ways to develop bonds between Avan and his troops, and it feels quite natural and realistic in a school setting like this.
Academy time is broken out in months. Each month reveals a certain number of required skirmishes that you must participate in to unlock the primary objective. These objectives, as you will learn in the first month, are instances where you are called into primary combat, either to defend or lead an attack, or to escort important citizens. These primary objectives are often substantially more difficult than the skirmishes, thus the need for ongoing training and development of your squad. Secondary to the training is the R&D, where you can develop new weapons and improvements for your team and tanks; however, unlike VC, improvements don't just randomly appear. You will have to kill notable enemies to steal plans for the weapon enhancements. I have a mixed opinion about this, but in any event, it adds to the overall difficulty by ensuring you don't just run to the final base and take it over. What's more, very few objectives even care about taking bases. There's a good reason for this.
Most large-scale PSP games section off maps in order to facilitate navigation on handheld units. VC2 is no exception, but the difference here is that the sections actually lower the difficulty somewhat by allowing the player to control the inflow of new troops. It also allows for faster deployment to remote areas, which was a big issue on VC and led to a lot of people using "Undead Alicia" to speed to the final base and take it in order to get the highest rank. As I stated, very few missions call for you to just take the enemy base. Some require you to escort an APC vehicle to a destination while protecting it. Others may want you to dominate everyone on the map (YES!). Some just require killing of a main commander. There is variety here that was sorely missing from VC and I was happy to see it, as it was clear that they listened intently to some of the complaints. Battle has been streamlined as well: there's no longer a "Medic!!" per se. You can evacuate incapacitated characters at the cost of 1CP (replaced one of the orders in VC). You can also have characters retreat from the field and if needed, redeploy elsewhere, also at a 1CP cost (replaced another VC order). If a character is in an allied base they can retreat at no CP cost which allows quick redeployment at an adjacent area. Animations such as the CP badge shatter, the successful kill animation, and the enemy movement animations have all been simplified down so as not to affect the overall flow. Everything just feels touched up and improved.
Another positive to the game is the (in my opinion) corrected grading system. In VC, the lower your grade, the lower your points gained after battle, and if you got a D, you got nothing except some piddly experience from the peons you killed in battle. While VC2 kept the grading system and also the lessening of points, the effect is not nearly so severe as to amount to a punishment. Even a D rank will net you some basic experience for the killing you did in battle, and it doesn't feel like you got shortchanged due to an unbalanced battle (Dirk anyone? More on that later). Of everything this was the biggest improvement to the game. You also get Credits, which are basically troop-specific accolades, for each active participant in the battle. These Credits are then used to adjust your characters' class, creating almost infinite opportunities for customization, another big plus. While I wasn't keen on all of the changes (more later), it still felt refreshing to know I wasn't stuck with the same basic formations like in VC. Additionally, they fixed one other big complaint on VC: much later in the game, you can assign leaders to the squad. You still will have your primary mates (who aren't required to go into battle, but must be on each group), but you can delegate who your commanders are in an effort to increase your CP count. Great to see that you can now customize this and control who your leaders really are.
You can define groups of combatants and even name them, with different tank customizations and formations. I didn't really find much of a value in this except to provide quick access to different configurations of troops. In VC, you had to pick a certain number of teammates and that was it; you had to use some variation of those people in every battle, unless/until you went and swapped them out in town. Here, you'll get so many people assigned to your class that you almost have to eventually use the group system to delegate different specialties to each skirmish or battle. A maximium of 19 people, including Avan, Zeri and Cosette, will be allowed per team, but you'll have access to many more than that, and sometimes you may need more Scouts than Shocks, or more Lancers than fighters. The group system allows you to create these configurations to assist you in battle. Each group can also have a different tank configuration, which is both helpful and annoying (if you use the same configuration no matter what, you have to customize the tank the same way for every group, which can get a little tedious).
Speaking more of these customizations, everyone has a primary job, with potential to change to a subjob once the required Credits have been obtained. Scout, Shocktrooper, Lancer, Engineer, and Armored Tech are the main five (there is another one, for a special character that I won't go into, that you get later). The changes are basically as thus:
- The Sniper is no longer a primary job (boo!) and must be earned as a subset of the Scout job. Tradeoff: WAY more accurate than the VC Snipers.
- The Scout can no longer gain the Grenade Launcher upgrade (boo!!), which was given to another subjob. Tradeoff: they're not nearly as fragile as in VC.
- The ShockTrooper can no longer equip flamethrowers (boo!!!), again, given to a subjob. Tradeoff: none that I can see.
- The Engineer can no longer defuse mines; that was given to the Armored Tech (err?). Tradeoff: The Engineer can now heal from a distance.
- The Armored Tech, a new job, is basically a high defense, high AP melee "tank" (for those who understand MMORPG terminology). You might think this weird, except for the fact that from the front, they are impervious to any and all gun fire, and often, one swing of whatever they're equipping can kill their enemy, even stronger enemies that you'll encounter later. They also have the ability to defuse mines.
Everyone will start as one of the above base jobs, then they can earn Credits to learn one of the subjobs under the main job. For example, a Scout can eventually learn to be a Scout Veteran or Sniper over time. At least initially, Avan is the only one that can basically employ any of the jobs once he's earned the required Credits. Unlike Welkin, Avan is constantly on the field as a footsoldier, as another character is manning the tank. Welkin wasn't that good as a Scout, but Avan definitely can hold his own. His specialty by far is interception and counter fire from cover; he can hold down bases like nobody's business. Being able to give him any job gives you confidence to send him into the battle without worrying about him getting killed. Another nice point here is that unlike VC, most skirmishes don't end if Avan gets hospitalized; you just don't get the CP bonus that he gives you by being there.
Time passage in VC was decent, supported by the various cutscenes that ran through the game which told the story of Welkin and his cohorts. In that game, the story was so powerful as to give you the sense of actually being there, in that time, during a period of war. VC2 took a different route to illustrate this passage. During the month, as you complete skirmishes, you will be sent back to Avan's room to review notes or to go to sleep for the next day. Every so often, a new classmember will join the team and be available for battle. If members are incapacitated in battle, they are "hospitalized" for three cycles (days) and not available to be used. This adds to the illusion of the passage of time, as does the ongoing development scenarios with other members of Class G and the bonds that are created between teammates. While it doesn't really have the same inclusive feeling as VC, it works for what the PSP offers in terms of "pick up and play". I was bothered by a few things here...more on that later.
Some things I didn't quite enjoy about VC2 (And they're all compared to VC, so if you never played VC, they probably wouldn't affect you any, but shame on you).
- I'm not really a fan of the type of cutscene used here, with the cards and still images. It's not a big deal, but I at least would have preferred fully animated images like VC.
- The AI is still not that smart. There were many times the enemy was standing inside my open main base and could have taken it yet didn't, allowing me time to go over and take him out. Unlike VC, the enemy tanks are also not hell bent on assaulting your main tank, probably because they know it's now a useless endeavor (for the most part, your tank is not a loss condition). They don't duck nearly as much as they used to, and rarely have I seen them chuck a grenade.
- The cost of Orders went up substantially, and I don't just mean the cost (in XP) to buy them, I mean the cost to execute them. 4CP seems to be the average, and the only scenarios I needed to make use of one, I had 3CP available on each turn. Fortunately, they don't seem to be nearly as needed as they were on VC due to the lighter difficulty.
- In Classmate skirmishes, you'll often be feuding with other female students who challenge you to battles. However, on the field, they just look like normal footsoldiers, no names, nothing. It would have added to the immersion to see these students actually look unique and like the cutscene that preceded it. A minor detraction.
- Some scenarios are just unbalanced. There is one with a character called Dirk where, depending on how you clear the map, he may withdraw to the final area and then basically sit on one of the two entrance bases. Problem with this is that there's really no defeating him and he's obscenely strong; so bringing someone in there is a death sentence. Many people ended up in the hospital that day.
- A lot of the maps are basically reused over and over and over again for skirmishes. Unlike VC where you had different areas of Gallia that you battled in, VC2 has oversimplified this down to reusing of the same map. I suppose this is logical, given you're stuck at the Academy, but it would have been nice to see some more variety here.
- The character development. IT's good, but it pales in comparison to its big brother. It feels forced and not nearly as natural as the first. In VC, I felt emotional bonds with Isara (definitely), Alicia, Welkin, Largo and even Rosie, as well as a lot of the other lesser members of Squad 7 (Edy, Susie, Marina, Cezary, Audrey, etc). It just naturally happened as I played through the game and it never felt forced. VC2 feels like it wants to force these bonds upon me and while I don't begrudge them this approach, it just feels...I don't know, less than the first for some reason. I admit that VC created a standard in character development that no game may ever reach. Persona 3 came close, but I was not affected by any Shinjiro nearly as much as I was Isara (trying not to spoil here), which is telling in of itself. The anguish felt by Squad 7 was palpable, and VC2 does not come close to that level. May be a good thing for some who felt overpowered by VC, but for me it's a big negative.
So in summary....do I recommend it? Absolutely. Despite what the detractors say, VC2 is a solid sequel that unfortunately, many people will pass up because they don't want to buy a PSP for whatever reason. It's a shame, because the game is crazy fun and deep. There are some shortcomings which keep it from a 5 star ranking, but a lot has been improved here and I encourage you to pick up a copy and try it yourself. Though, since SEGA decided to release this around the same time as Metroid, I'm certain it'll yet again be overlooked. Silly SEGA.
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