This probably jumps half a star up if I wasn't playing the vita version. The framerate is pretty rough for the action combat. And I liked the action combat. It's pretty fun! And simple. Also some new content in other versions that I can't comment on too much.

I like premises like this, and in ys it's executed pretty nicely. Just some cliched anime cringe to detract from it. And a mixed bag of the character cast. At least they tried and I did like a handful of characters by the end.

Music is so epicccccccccccc damn

In spite of some frustrating aspects, and some really bad stages, I came to enjoy the interesting take on the strategic gameplay in Valkyria Chronicles. The ability of physical objects or character presences to affect the outcomes of encounters outside of their turns, damn. This makes the game feel less conventionally turn-based and more like a pseudo real-time game. Fascinating stuff... Even though it doesn't always work, I have to respect the commitment to refreshing the situations you find yourself dealing with throughout the story.

Story is no slouch either. I certainly didn't expect the narrative of anime but bootleg world war 2 to be nearly as graceful as this turned out to be. It tackles some subjects you wouldn't expect, and I don't have many issues with the way they were handled, just that some parts didn't seem to go anywhere far. I also liked the main cast of characters, Welkin is such a dork xD Shame most of the side-characters don't get anything for themselves beyond combat traits and battle lines, but those do work out for seeing their nature and how they relate to each other.

The picture book approach to ui elements and visuals in general fit VC like a glove

RDR 2 feels like the culmination of everything the open world action-adventure games that emerged and became popular in mid-00s aspired to be. It also feels like a conclusion for the Rockstar games of the same kind.

It's an absolutely stunning world with an unmatched level of detail that is free to explore at leisure. The technologies and effort put in, to make all of this work as seamlessly as it does continued to wow me throughout a great deal of my experience with this game.

It's not a sandbox type of game, it's more like a massive amusement park with a western theme. There are so many scripted sequences created to immerse the player into the world, and while some of them don't present themselves naturally, they definitely bring life to the surroundings. If you've ever caught a bit of a TV show called "Westworld", that's what the general layout reminded me of. But you get to really feel this one!

After getting past the initial impressions of the world and dipping a bit into some of the more hands-off side-activities, that I found turning into a chore rather quickly, I focused on the story. The story is quite something too... It's undoubtedly massive, sometimes too long for its own good. Honestly, some events in the story don't make much sense and/or feel forced for the sake of creating explosive set-pieces, the ones that make the combat gameplay feel alright outside of its limitations. There are definitely cliches here that I got tired of (don't you love all the antagonists just pulling on a massive monologue performance instead of actually taking down the main characters right in their grasp?) And yet, the heart of the story is lovely, the main characters and the narrative grew more and more captivating the further it went. It brings together so much of what I've done throughout the story in a beautiful way... that emotional core continued to resonate with my experience in the game like magic.

I've dropped a lot of open world games of this genre way back because of their overwhelming nature crumbling on itself. But Red Dead Redemption 2 managed to make it work.