Thank you SEGA for sending us this game to review!

Not long ago I had the pleasure of reviewing Valkyria Chronicles Remastered on PS4. This classic is the first in the series and worthy of the retouching done to it. I hadn’t played the other games in the series until now. While Valkyria Revolution has a gripping story, it does have other glaring issues that may deter many from experiencing it.

The game begins at the grave of the five traitors. A student is researching their history and asks the nearby teacher to help fill in the holes to their historical records. It just so happens that the teacher, Richelle Caudrup, has inside knowledge that was not recorded in the history books. As she retells their story, you’ll learn about each of the five traitors and their role in the war.

The traitors are childhood friends who lived at an orphanage that was burned down by the emperor of the Ruzi empire. In the fire, they lost many of their friends and the lady who ran the orphanage was kidnapped and never seen again. Each of the children were eventually adopted and all lived in Jutland which was being blockaded by surrounding territories and was on the verge of economic collapse.

Solomon was a member of Jutland’s parliament and proposed going to war with Ruz to ease the blockade that was in place. The diplomat between Ruz and Jutland was against the war from the start but was outvoted by the majority who were in favor of liberating Jutland and other nearby territories. Solomon’s dedication, scheming and military tactics were key in the traitors getting their way and the revenge that they desired.

Fritte was a newspaper columnist who often wrote political stories to sway the opinion of the masses. He would put a positive spin on all of Jutland’s battles even if they were defeated. Thankfully, with Amleth’s leadership as an army captain, the losses were minimal. Most of the game is shown through Amleth’s perspective.

Basil was a businessman who helped his adopted father run his ragnite factory. While Basil is flashy and likable, he’s got a crude tongue and cusses the most out of all the characters in the game. Thanks to his connections, the anti-valkyria squad always had the most technologically advanced weapons available. Research of secondary weapons, grenades, and character upgrades can all be done at Basil’s factory.

The last traitor is Violette who gathered military intelligence by seducing enemy officers. Her outfits were rather revealing in the chest area. Violette isn’t the only character to flaunt her “assets” in this game. The female valkyria is crazy endowed, so much so that she probably doesn’t require a tray table and could get away with using her chest to rest her dinner plate. The valkyria talks about pain, suffering and agony and with having such a disproportionate and unrealistic body shape, I can see why she suffers so much. The story sequences are good but often short and disrupted by loading screens every couple of minutes. I’m not sure if the PS4 or Xbox versions are any better in this regard. The Vita did run the game admirably though it stuttered occasionally during some of the intense boss battles.

Ragnite is the mineral that everyone is fighting over in this universe. With ragnite you can level up your character’s affinity towards it and make their attacks more powerful as a result. Alchemy attacks are elemental based and each of the enemies and bosses have an elemental affinity/weakness. Each character has a battle palette that lets you equip a few ragnite attacks along with access to secondary weapons and grenades. Make sure you have all of the elements represented because it’s not fun facing a boss that you don’t have a counter elemental attack for.

Even with my potentially under-leveled characters, many of the boss battles were overly long and drawn out in my opinion. A couple of the battles took me over an hour to beat due to the boss’s health regeneration. There’s a dual headed mechanical snake tank that has one head vulnerable to physical attacks while the other is weak to fire alchemy. If you’re not fast enough in disabling both heads, the boss regenerates a third of its health. Besides the heads, you can disable a couple of the middle sections too, but I discovered too late that the heads are the main parts you have to focus on.

Most of the time you get to save before a big boss battle. However, there was one boss in the finale that one-hit killed my entire party and I had to repeat a 3-part mission to get the “honor” of fighting him again. In total, there are ten chapters and a finale in this title.

Overall, my experience with this game is mixed. The action RPG elements are merely okay and the boss battles were unpleasant at times. Despite the flaws, I did enjoy the story and suffered through long battles and loading screens to see it to completion. Due to the violence, language, and sexual references, this game does earn its Teen rating from the ESRB. I have seen PS4 and Xbox One versions of Valkyria Revolution on sale for less than $15 on Amazon and for that price it’s worth considering. Just make sure you give yourself plenty of time to complete the boss battles. The convenience of powering off and resuming battles on the Vita was a life saver so portability is worth it for this game in my opinion.