Valkyria Chronicles for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

Don't get confused. This is an RPG, but it's a highly tactical one. That means, there aren't two lines of enemies, with silly little prancing attacks, followed by characters running back to get into their lineup. This is more of a freewheeling romp of attacks. You send your characters out across the map to attack and the opposition does the same. It's basic Rock, Paper, Scissors from there, but so much more interesting.

The artwork is superb and the characters really pop, like you're watching a Saturday morning cartoon. The story is also compelling.

What keeps this from getting a perfect 10 is the AI. See, at times, it downright cheats. You can be winning a game, and suddenly a Lancer shows up and blows your main character's tank to smithereens with one blast to the front of the tank! You will learn to save and save often. Also, some of the characters could use more fleshing out. Give us compelling reasons to level up different characters, rather than just leveling up classes in general.

Some of the cartoony nonsense really blows, but this game is an excellent proof of concept for what all future RPG's need to aspire to. The engine is solid. I can't wait to see what this studio produces next. I would suggest something with swords and sorcery elements!

Valkyria Chronicles is probably one of the most perfect, enjoyable games i have had the pleasure of playing on any console.

While at first the battle system was a little difficult to get the hang of, after a couple of battles you can take all the guess work out of what your characters can do, how far they can move, what they can kill and how accurate they will be, etc.

The visuals are beyond beautiful and offer a great experience for most gamers using a new canvas tool software giving a water colour painting in motion effect. I'm no software buff though so i won't embarrass the system with my terrible explanation of it.

The story takes a few missions to really get into the full swing of things but when it does it doesn't stop. The story is definitely heavily character driven which is good, i mean, it's a RPG! This is a good thing! Your in game barracks are slowly filled up with new characters throughout the game each having their own special abilities making them better suited for your upcoming battle or rendering them useless. You can choose up to 20 soldiers from here to bring to the battlefront and just to give that game an extra great touch, they have given each and every character their own back story. Basically no one makes an on screen appearance that doesn't have a story!

The game length is excellent and has amazing replayability qualities. (You've gotta get them special wepaons and A ranks on your missions!) And Let's not forget the great downloadable content available.

All in all, i'd say you should go out on a limb and buy the game outright. You'll love it and want to keep it if you rent it anyway.

5 Stars!