Better sneak this in now before our next update. The 3rd instalment in Sega's fantastic strategy RPG series, Valkyria Chronicles 3, is being fan-translated. The first game is, to my mind, still the best game on the PS3, in terms of inventive gameplay and stunning aesthetics. The PSP-only sequel, if we're being honest, sucked. They forced you to grind for random and arbitrarily given certificates to level your characters, meaning you spent the entire game using crappy recruits. The third game Sega said will never be localised because we didn't buy enough copies of VCII. Recently Sega has announced a 4th game in the series, a card game for browsers, effectively killing off one of the best new properties this generation. Thankfully VC3 is undergoing fan-translation into English. They've had some good progress, have test screens up, plus 2 videos. They seem to be making fast progress, so let's keep an eye on it. Good luck, gentlemen!
I might actually need to hack my PSP to play this. As for VC2, it had its flaws but I still enjoyed it enough to put 90 hours into it and it kept me sane when I was writing my PhD thesis.
ReplyDeleteVC2 kept you sane?!?. I can still hear avans laugh ringing in my head.
Deletelike "AHAH AHAHAHAHA!"
DeleteI put 80 hours into VCII. At the time I seemed to enjoy it, but looking back, most of that time was farming Certificates which I never earned. Actually receiving them is easy - the character has to participate in battle, I think by killing an enemy, but which Certificate they receive is randomised, and specific types are needed for specific rank upgrades.
ReplyDeleteConversely I only put around 65 hours into VCI, but that was 100% just pure playtime for the sake of it. Maybe I'm being too harsh on VCII, but random certificates was a terrible idea.
I'll have to fully agree that the random certificates were a bad idea, albeit one obviously implemented to force players to mix it up a bit when grinding---in VCII, it is no longer sufficient to get really good at one skirmish and repeat it for hours to max out your class levels; instead, you have to play through different mission types (each with different potential certificates) with different sets of characters (who actually need to be /used/ rather than simply deployed like in the first game) if you want to unlock everyone's full Potential (get it? ...ugh). A good idea...in theory; unfortunately, in practice, it just ends up being annoying and time-consuming. I was also unhappy with the extent to which they nerfed Orders in the second game, though I'll be the first to admit that they were significantly overpowered in the original.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, the third game solves a lot of problems, and adds in some neat new stuff like branching mission paths, and both the ability and incentive to change characters' classes from their defaults (not to mention the romance element)---all of which greatly improves the replay value. Given the current pace of the translation effort, I'll probably be finished playing through the game in Japanese before it comes out in playable form, but VC3 is definitely a game that deserves a second go (especially when I'll actually be able to understand all the dialogue without resorting to a dictionary).
Thanks for sharing this one.
ReplyDelete