I recently bought and play Valkyria Chronicles. I haven't finished the whole thing but so far so good. I think it is a very nice and unique TBS/Actoin/RPG (or maybe it should be categorized as another genre all by itself) game. The visual and art of the game resemble water color arts of course, which is also very unique (I don't think any other games ever done it before). Also the story telling, the presentation and the imaginary world reminds me of Japanese anime, especially the older one directed by Hayao Miyazaki such as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Porco Rosso and Laputa: Castle in the Sky.
The idea on the combat system is actually not totally new. In fact, another game I played recently, Eternal Sonata, has similar combat system. They are not the same, and the resulting game play works out quite differently, but the concept of taking turn, move 1 unit at a time to attack enemy or get into position, while the other unit stands by or taking defensive measure (blocking in the case of Eternal Sonata, dodging or firing back in the case of Valkyria Chronicles), is similar. Even the Action Point (AP) system has been used quite often in other TBS including X-Com. Also in X-Com the units will take defensive measure (shooting at enemy) as well, but only if they have extra AP left. There are a lot of difference in camera, controls, AP consumption,...etc, which in accumulation make the resulting game play very different, even though the general concept is similar.
Which brings me to another thing I noticed: is Valkyria Chronicles what Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge could have been like? For those who don't know about DC: FR, here are some link containing some interesting information on this canceled project from the developer of X-Com:
Now why would DC fail while VC succeed, even though they have similar concept? I think perhaps the technology really makes a huge difference, and perhaps DC was overly ambitious. On the technology side, improvement on graphics, programming and animation technology etc really makes a difference I think. The improvement in animation expands the possibility and makes things easier. DC was overly ambitious I think because the developer of DC seems to want to do more than VC, such as realistic physics, even though DC's development was a generation before VC. I actually saw a small demo of DC physics engine in development back then, it was quite impressive, especially during the time when realistic and versatile physics engine like Havoc isn't quite popular yet. Also, if they want it to be like X-Com, they need random generated terrain and stages, unlike VC which has set pieces of stages. I think my development experience seems to indicate that it's dramatically more time consuming and expensive to make random stages etc interesting. I think a guy from Blizzard also point that out, I remember I put it in the blog somewhere. Plus, they wanted to do all these things on PS2 and the PC back then...It's really an enormous task in my opinion. Other consideration might be how come those publishers spend so much money on so many mediocre X-Com spin offs like Enforcer, Interceptor and others that eventually get canceled as well, instead of on fewer worthy possible successors like DC...but that's out of the scope of this log and probably outside of my game history knowledge. Someone might be able to write an essay on that though o
Another thing that I think really give VC a distinct advantage is the flexibility of today's technology to make things look like arts and unrealistic. A lot of people say graphics don't matter as long as the gameplay is good, but is that real the case? This unrealism might have more impact than just superficial eye candy, and here is my reasoning. The game mechanism is itself unrealistic. You have people getting shot but not dying right on the spot. You have unit "taking terms," which means one unit is running around like crazy while other stay mostly stationary. That's not what real combat is like. It's an entertaining and simplified combat that has nice game play and challenges, but it's not realistic. Now, can you imagine it actually has realistic graphics, in WW2 era, and still play the same way? It might work but I think it will most likely take player "out of the game world." In another words, they will start thinking why doesn't that guy move, he's so dumb, etc. How could a guy taking so many bullets and still standing, with no armor? Man, he should be already dead when that grenade exploded etc. If it has realistic graphics, it probably needs more realistic (although not necessarily more fun, depends on who is playing) squad based combat system like Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.
Hmm...now if they can somehow make another X-Com type of sci-fi tactical game but with modified VC combat, that would be awesome.
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