| Valkyria Histrionicles |
[Dec. 12th, 2008|12:37 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | thoughts, videogames | ] |
| [ | the knight hears |
| | Kenichiro Fukui (Einhander Soundtrack)-- Assault | ] |
Alright, I'll admit it-- I bought Valkyria Chronicles because some of the female characters seemed interesting to me. This interest was not enough to make me actually play the game, much to my own surprise. My initial gravitation towards the game seemed habitual more than anything, vestigial almost. True, the game has its weaknesses, but I used to be able to suffer through much more just to get to know some new and fascinating specimens of fictional femininity. However, in this case, not only am I not interested in Valkyria's offerings, but I am increasingly disinterested in seeking out or awaiting any other conceivable newcomer from any other angle.
There just doesn't seem to be any point anymore. You know of what I speak. I used to pursue. Now I have no need to pursue anything. At least in that department. True, I still enthusiastically create female characters hither and yon, but I think of them more as daughters than wishes, really.
Please don't bring up the matter of the attires I pick and choose for them. :|
Valkyria Chronicles is going to a different interested party, and may he derive the joy from it that is now happily lost on me.
In the meantime, my impressions from four missions + what I saw from m'amour's landlord's playthroughs; lol, war.
In a nutshell, there's no problem at all with its cartoony, pastel-colored aesthetic; that was a selling point for Advance Wars, and it works here too. The art style is clean and pleasant, technically robust, coherent, and conveys most of what it needs to (although I do have a personal little twitch about the main girl character's ribbon-headdress type thing that they couldn't help but add to what was already a fine design (interestingly enough, there is a character who wears pigtails, of all things, but I somehow do not have a problem with this, and am, in fact, rather amused by it)).
Now if only what it conveyed was any good. Don't get me wrong, I was weaned on many stories similar to what Valkyria seems to be trying to tell, but it is precisely because this sort is so much associated with my childhood that I am trying to get away from it. The trouble isn't so much in subject matter as it is in scale: they have an overly simplistic vision of war that works in the more abstract, chessboard approach of Advance Wars, but falls flat when you get to the trenches of Valkyria.
I can't speak to how it plays gamewise, or tactically; I only have impressions and preferences. Take this as coming from someone who played through Final Fantasy Tactics over six times, but lost interest in Disgaea after like, thirty minutes.
Advance Wars at least shows you units being blown away by the platoon, and little icons that explode, leaving no trace; you can imagine for yourself what actually happened in each individual skirmish if you're the sort. Valkyria leaves almost no room for the imagination, as it shows you exactly what transpires step-by-step, and that pretty much kills whatever proper spirit of war they were trying to capture. Or maybe they weren't trying to capture it, I dunno; all I know is that they might as well have made a story that had some concession to a 'bloodless' war of some sort, like in the old Lazer Tag cartoons, and I'm sure the story wouldn't have been hurt any. Well... except maybe where [SPOILER DELETED] dies.
And even then, me, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) allisino and her landlord just kind of laughed, as horrible as it may seem. "Bummer," he says, followed by a spoiler for some of you, "now who's going to drive my tank?"
It's just too animu, complete with lol Empire, lol Resistance, lol tsundere, lol racism, lol disturbingly convenient superweapons ("Oh, by the way, we have a special tank in the barn!"). If you're going to play with war, at least take it seriously! Or something.
Srsly though, I'm getting kind of tired of the 'war happens only for materialistic and economic reasons' bull already. Just say that the Empire wants to conquer the world and be done with it. At least the Black Hole Army never pretended otherwise.
|
|
|
