What a game what a game what a GAME!

I played the first Valkyria Chronicles in 2016 without ending it because of highschool exams at that time. Nonetheless, I never forget it: Alicia was my desktop wallpaper for years and I considered this game the pinacle of the genre waaaaaaaaay ahead of Xcom for instance.

I bought this game before my switch and fell instantly in love with it. I mean, there's a shiba with a cap on the box, how could I resist? I started it on august 2022 and finished it, 70+ hours later, the 1st march of 2024.

Where do I start? I'm kidding, the only thing that matters is gameplay. It is... Tasteful. Extatic. Carefully crafted. Polished. Subtle.
The game's a TPS-Tactical-RPG. You control a squad during an alternative WWII leading its way through axis troops using two weapons: guns and minds. At the beginning of your round your given action points. You can spend one to control one of your squad member. If you do so, the game stop being turn based to become real-time based until your character has done an action (disarming a bomb, firing its rifle, launching a grenade, healing its wounds...) and/or is exhausted.

This. This smart, subtle game design tweaks, in which actions aren't solely random based (as they are in most Tactical games) but are also skill based (you have to aim before shooting, carefully watch for your step to not be seen/ to not walk on a mine...) is -there I say it- one of the best idea of game design I have ever seen in my life. It brings a ton of dynamism to the fights, as well as a massive amount of tactical depth. For instance, moving your sniper to the top of a building makes a lot more sense than it does in Xcom, because in Valkyria, doing so actually CHANGES the perspective from which your soldier sees the enemies, which means it changes the actions your soldier can do (aiming for the head instead of the belly, aiming for a contextualized action like shooting an explosive barrel, retreating because you discover 5 more enemies that were hidden before...)

So, this is the basis of the franchise. It was fun in 2008, believe me it is still fun nowaday. So what's new gameplay-wise? Well, aside from new characters (I'll speak about that below), the main novelty is... Mortars! Yay! Litteraly a brand new dimension: now, placing your soldiers under roofs is crucial. Interceptions, which are automatic counterattacks of soldiers during real time phases, are totally changed: you don't want to go through a field covered by mortars. Mortars can also attack tanks, neutralizing their tracks and dealing them moderate to major damages. Eventually, mortars redefine the role of snipers, that are now either more short-range semi-shocktrooper capable of picking key units, either very long range pickers very useful to counter enemy mortars.

This is tasty. But that's not all. Because you know, sega can be generous. Now, every class (there are 6 of them) can equip three different weapons slightly modifying the specialty of the soldier. In addition, mid game, you receive a brand new side weapon for each class that redefine the way they're played. Scouts become semi long range soldier capable of destroying covers with their grenade launcher. Shoctroopers gain the ability to clean very large areas thanks to flame throwers. Anti-tank units can become less specialized in anti-tank job and much more deadly for infantry troops.

Did I talk about tanks? I didn't talk about tanks. Some units are tanks. Tanks are armoured: They're essenstial to protect your unit and charge strong enemi units. Unfortunatley, they're large: there are areas they canno't reach, and you must watch for anti tank mines as they are deadly for your tracks and healthpoints. This 4th episode adds 2 mores tanks to the game. One of them is capable of transporting troop, which is again the best idea they could have had. It redefines your game plan between small squads: the scout squad going forward in a light armoured tank and the big guns following as fast as they can.

A lead and promotion system is included. you can define which caracter of your squad is a leader, and then you can use leaders to move several units in a single move. This again is very pleasant and subtle.

All this wonderful gameplay is deserved by top-tier level design. Objectives are varied. Maps are great. They're re-used a ton of times in very clever ways. The pace is MAMA WAHOU I LIKE IT. Really, this is a wonderful action experience...

...Deserved by a wonderful RPG experience! Each of your soldier is actually someone. That is great storywise (I'll get to it better), but that's also great gameplay-wise. Because people are people. They aren't perfect. Some people are distracted for instance. That mean they can loose their ammo on the battlefield. Some other people are racist. That means if you put them at the immediate proximity of darcsen (the quivalent of real life jewish people), they'll be debuffed. Some people like to tchi-tchat, which lower their precision.

But of course people also have qualities. Being daredevil is quality on the battlefield: it allows you to play with your life in the worst circustances. Being sadistic, or full of hatred toward the enemy can also be a wonderful quality (I think you begin to see why this game is also perfect narratively-wise). The consequence of all of it is that my favourite soldier is a nazi. This is morally interesting. I love you Viola. Yeah, i love you too Vancey. Yeah, I love you too Lily. I love you all.

All these gameplay traits are served by wonderful chara-design, which lead to a wonderful progression system. Honnestly, it is one of if not the best chara design I have seen in... There again certainly my entire life. It is Kojima-tiers. For instance, a sniper is bald. Being bald reflects light: I know it, I'm bald myself depsite being 25. This character has a debuff in discretion because of its chara design. It is as clever as funny. A girl wears an iron mask and helmet. Consequences: she barely cannot see. Consequences bis: she is immuned to critical hits on headshots. A french girl is -what else- a professionnal swordwoman. It increases its damage in close quarter combat, but decreases its precision overall. My personnal favorite "little story between the gameplay" is the following one. A female character has the following trait: Unintentional flirt. What does it do? It lowers its avoidance when she crouches. Translation: she has a very nice butt. Let's be honnest, it is funny and smart.

As stated before, this also features a wonderful progression system. If you play enough with your favourite soldier, he'll rank up. Once he reaches the grade of caporal, you unlock his "squad story". A squad story is a dedicated story and level, aside the main quest, that explores a part of the character's background aswell as the friends he teams with. Of course, everything is very well written, using characters personalities to establish interesting situation varied by their tone and objectives. Once you've beat the situation, characters learn from their defaults and mistakes. As a consequences, their affinities with other squad member change, as well as their traits. For instance, a japan undercover spy that cannot hold its secret anymore (and is addicted to men's pheromons but that's another sotry) is much more relaxed once its secret is discovered: its debuffs change for buffs. Another example is a constantly drunk shocktrooper that remembers she's actually a former elite soldier, which unlock its inner potential in combat (instead of simply getting in a etyl comat in the middle of a fight lmao)

The main story and main character are great. I think they're a little bit, but just a little bit under Valkyria Chronicles 1 characters (I mean, there was a massive sergent weighting 200kg who was fond of vegetables in the 1st game), which actually means they're above pretty much any game in the industry. Story wise, I think it's a little bit under the 1st game aswell, which showed harsh things such as concentration camps in a very japanese way of talking about war (which mean a way of talking about war as it really is: a catastrophe), but it nonetheless is very appealing. It namely deals with the military AND civilian use of nuclear technology in a way I'll never forget. There are very smart twists in the human relations, as well as a full development of the world. Antagonists are, imho, very human, which makes them waaaay more terrifying and interesting. I really want to talk more on this, but this imply spoiling so I won't : go play this game, we'll talk later.

Did I mention both graphics and sounds are 10/10? They are.

There are virutaly no reason why you should'nt play this game if your just a bit into videogames, japanese games and/or tactical RPGs. As for myself, I consider it the pincale of the genre. It is a masterpiece beyond the materpieces. It has earned the temporary spot on my favourite games list on backloggd, taking the place of Katamari Damacy (which you should play aswell).

Have a nice day, and play Valkyria

Gun mecanics are simply WONDERFUL. The bullet time is straight on point, and the level design is precise enough to create an action game in which you feel endangered. Guns are varied, so are the situations and objectives. One mission is an escort mission, another one is a sniper assist mission, another one features a lot of plateforming, another one is a giant ghost train featuring small puzzles, another one is a race to find back your weaponery...

Characters are iconic and quite well written. It is as goofy as parodistic as... I don't know, serious? Sam Lake does seem to be serious about it... Boss fights are great, mise-en-scène is inspired. The pace is 20/20, the game length is ideal. Art direction is strong even nowadays.

I see no reason for you not to play except the PC version is, apparently, bad. Like really bad.

This game is super addictive. That's a fact. I surprised myself not wiling to let the controller down when it was 2am because I had to water my vegetables. I HAD TO.

IMHO, this addictive force is due to 5 factors:
- Routine: You know what you have to do tomorrow when you go to sleep, and you know the convenience store will be oppenned at 9am. Pace-wise, it's wonderful.
- Very good small feedbacks: The fishing sounds, the sound when you gather things, the colors of sprites... All of this is well done and polished. It makes playing the game without purpose a fun time on its own.
- Indicated hard-reward: You want a henhouse? Please bring 6000 coins, 400 wood and 200 stone. If you do so, you'll have your henhouse. Beleive me this encourage a lot mining stone and chopping wood.
- Fishing: It features a fun mini-game and can be done whenever your near water. Considering the level design places very smartly rivers, seas and lakes, you find yourself able to fish whenver you want to fill a gap in your schedule. This again, is brilliant pace-wise.
- There is no failure

Unfortunately, in my eyes, all this seem... Way too big. Pointless. I found myself walking, walking and walking again to do what? Gather shells? I Gather a TON of ressources to... To do what? Gaining access to cows, whom I'll milk, to do whoever knows what with this milk... What is the point of planting a tree that need 28 days to grow (which is an entire season) and gives fruits in spring while you already are in spring? The point is to benefit from it next year? Seriously? That means you'll harvest fruits in at least 32 real-world-hours!!!

I question myself: is it fun? I mean, it looks like work. I don't want to water my plants. I want to harvest them. I don't want to go in the mine. I want to have copper ingot to upgrade my tools. Eventually: I simply don't want to go to the convenience store because it takes me 1h in game to reach it, which is way too much.

Too much to do, so little time to do so. I wonder how a game advocating a peaceful return to what's important, to a quiet pace of life can be so stressful. Timetables are the worst idea this game might have had. It feels like this game... Doesn't care about the player. I mean yes, it is 17h10 and you end your day at 17h00. I get it. But guess what? Your a robot constituted of 0 and 1, I'm a player. Let me in, I have garbage to sell. Many many times I get to places to do a precise thing, I did other thing there, left, and totally forget about the thing I was supposed to do until I reached my house and it's 18h, which means in my eyes I wasted my day. This is one of the most frustrating feeling I ever had in a videogame.

I must point out the combat system isn't good. That's cool, because we're not here for a combat system. But here's what impressed me: you spend winter in the mine, using the combat system. This is... Audacious at least. Unseen and mad considering this is a farming game. Kudos to the devs for believing this much in the game's combats.

I must point out I played it in split-screen. This imply two major flaws:
- We can't see nothing
- The time continues to fly during cutscenes, dialogs, inventory managment, which believe me is a HUGE waste. As a consequence, I skipped every piece of narration because I wanted to not waste my day.

I get why it is the favorite game of a lot of people, but this isn't for me.

It begins like... A level I have already done in COD 1. Ok, you have a passe on this one game. What do you have to offer? An oudated control assignation (it's near awful, for real). What else? Very dark environments... Well, this isn't good. What? You say you want me to play a "hold the train station" phase, fighting an army on my own with my sole sniper rifle? Will do. But rassure me, when you say "Hold the ground for 15 minutes", you don't mean 15 real minutes don't you?

You do. And when I die afterwards, I have to redo the 15 minutes sniping phase. Alright you beat me game.

Good point: There is an important female soldier. It is rare for a COD game.

Tetris is one of the most famous game in history. It has many children, some of them had great destiny, like Puyo Puyo or all the match-3 genre.

Suika is based on Tetris, but twist its core essence in a clever way. In suika, you don't manipulate tetrominos. You manipulate spheres. If two spheres of the size touch each other, they merge into a bigger one. Simple and smart. The biggest size you sphere can reach is the size of a watermelon (suika in japanese).

I must say, due to the very cute look of the game and its juicy sound desing: this game is fairly addictive. The brilliant idea of the game is using round-shaped puzzle piece. This lead to a lot of rythm variation. On time, you drop fruits as fast as you can to transform a fruit just before it falls on a pit. Another time, you precisely point the very specific location you want your fruit to fall on for it to stay in place.

But there are a low of small flaws that, added to each other, lead to a not-so-good game experience. For instance, you will loose. This is mandatory. Of course: fruits add on top of each other without being deleted in any way. All they do is gaining in size. This mandatory deafeat isn't pushing you to play, and displayed highscore look like an absolute unreachable limit. Another default are collisions, which aren't great at all. Sometime fruits touch each other and do not merge. Sometime fruits are displayed on onto another, which leads to strange physics beahviour. Fall location detection isn't precise, which might be frustrating.

A very smart way to polish a ludum dare game.

It is simple: you have a gun, you fire it.

Unfortunately, there is no enemy. You aim for your own head.

So what will you do to survive? Will you buy a helmet? Will you improve your dodging abilities? Will you improve your luck so the barrel jams more regularly? Will you buy a bigger revolver featuring more bullets in the cylinder? Will you buy regeneration items that provide you health and mana on shots that don't hit? Because yes, there are also magic spells as well as an xp system.

Very clever, very well design. Unfortunately, relies a bit too much on the first shots.

Soleil Studios is made of former Team Ninja member. You probably know Team Ninja for Ninja Gaiden and/or Dead or Alive. Their way to do games is the following one : go all in a CQC combat system, mix it up with great chara design, spicy mise en scène, not so good technique and hardecoreness at every level of the game. Honestly, even finishing one of these games is hard. They know it : I unlocked the "Hard japanese" difficulty mode when I finished Wanted Dead.

In my opinion, Team Ninja is misunderstood in the western world. Most people simply see DDDDD breasts and stop it there. But what's behind those breasts is a deep combat system, actually deeper than most combat systems.

You've understood that I like Team Ninja. That's why I follow Soleil's work with attention since its birth. I was offered Valkyrie Elysium by my sister and didn't take the time to play it (my lover finished it and she's fond of action RPGs so I guess it's quite good). Then, my lover offered me Wanted Dead. I didn't want to let it unplayed for long: that's a question of respect at this point.

So I played it. And oh pal what a game! A very controversial one at least. Why is that? Well, it's actually a very good game. But nowaday, people tend to, quite rightly, seriously dislike technical issues. This and difficulty spikes. And old school linear structure. Wanted Dead has all the three of them.

So why do I consider Wanted Dead a good game? Let's have a look at its 3Cs.
- Camera : Nothing special here. Camera is never an issue. The game uses genres standards to counter the camera's weaknesses: it zooms when you look at something and your character automatically choose a target when attacking with your sword, wether or not this target is out of frame.
- Character : A military police lieutenant expert in both gunfights and swordfights.
- Controls : A clever assignation, in which shooting gameplay relies on sticks + circle + triggers + RB and fighting gameplay relies on sticks + LB + cross + square + triangle. Really, the only thing wrong with controls is you pickup items with R3.

That's it. The game is BOTH a TPS and an Hack-n-slash. And none of these aspects are neglected. Now don't get me wrong : the shooting part isn't as good as Gears of War and the hack-n-slash part isn't as good as Bayonetta. But both parts are good, and more important : they're smartly articulated together. For instance : long range enemies are weak to katana whereas CQC enemies are weak to bullets. This leads to a constant high-risk-high-reward decision making, in which you have to choose between charging and exposing yourself to enemy fire or force retreating the best you can to create space between you and the short range enemies.

This high-risk-high-reward mentality of design is applicated to every aspect of the game. Upgrading your weapon is much more about personalizing your weapon. Each thing you buff in a hand leads to another thing nerfed in the other hand: increasing your clip size decreases your reload time. Healing yourself is also a high-risk-high-reward move, considering it slows you hard making you ultra vulnerable, and can be interrupted.

Ammo managment is also high-risk-high-reward based. Basically, you have... Very few clips for both your main weapon and your secondary one. This forces you to switch between your main weapon and the other one, because enemies drop weapons for one or the other, not for both. Considering you can change your secondary weapon for more funky weapons, like greandes launcher or shotguns, considering the higher damages a weapons deals, the less ammo it has, this lead to interessting gunfights, in which switching weapons is common and the order in which you switch weapon is essential.

A parry system similar to the souls' one is implemented. It works very well, provinding you either a low-risk-low-reward permanent protection in the detriment of your speed either a high-risk-high-reward timing parry system. Unfortunately, mastering this system, paired with the counter attack binded on triangle, is necessary (I mean it: NECESSARY) to finish the game. This would not have been an issue if this system was necessary as well to reach the final boss, which it isn't.

Wonderful transition to bosses, characters and narration. In ne word for each of them: unequal, nice and surprising. Bosses are overall interessting, with many patterns and a good variety in their move set and the one you have to assume to deal with them. Some of them even have very clever design, like the rain one, vanishing into invisibility, which lead to a stressful deadly hide and seek game, or Tom Cruise, or should I say Tom CruiseS because there are two of them, which double the patterns you have to watch for and leads to interessting decision making about whom to down first. Unfortunately, there are the second boss and the last one, whom are very harsh difficulty spike, forcing you to learn things you didn't had to learn before (like perfect parrying), and relying and what can be seen as unfair design: insta-kill moves and arenas flooded with henchmen.

Characters rely on objections. Herzog is both popular and upopular, is both an ass and a nice dude. Doc does surgery while being drunk. Cortez is silent, which makes you over attentive to his moves and animation. Gunsmith is -you get it- a gunsmith, but also a former idol fan of cats. Captain lectures you and your team, but eventually asks for a kiss at the end of the meeting to forgive you (the meeting was about how many people you killed and how much it cost). Bad guys are really cool : I talked earlier of the invisible girl and Tom ruise, but Richter and the club owner are wonderful too. Eventually, Hannah, the main character, is a brutal yet soft abandonned mother, very empathic, whilst being a true killing machine, hurt by wars that aren't her's.

All these people are brilliantly mise-en-scène in a Kojima's way. There a huge attention to futile details, like how gelly is their gelly (spoiler: anti-gravity tiers). The switch between art style is wonderful and well-thought: outside the club is realistic, inside it's anime. Shoutout to this level by the way, which is by far the best one featuring the best enemies and level design.

The world and story told are a post-80 pro capitalist society that killed public services and destroyed many lives in its insatiable appetice for profit. Pretty much our world, just a little bit more fascist. Private armies tend to destroy police to conquier this last market. Girls with no family and a kid have no futur: there are no social services to help them. They'll, as shown in a cutscene, marry a douch that'll eventually come home drunk and kill them. Not gonna lie, it can be harsh. This is very nicely constrasted to the colorful sound and visual design, which is based on the 80s culture, quite happy-go-lucky and egocentric.

Wanted Dead isn't a perfect game in any way. But, as the other Team Ninja (in this case, their child Soleil) games, it focuses on things it considers important and delivers a 20/20 game on these things. If you want a well told anticaptilistic game, based on mixed combat system, featuring great sword AND gun fights, Wanted Dead is for you. If you want a game that runs perfectly on a PS4, that has no difficulty spikes nor linear level design, this isn't for you.