Wolf Kanno's Bottom Ten JRPGs.

[Pete for President]

I liked the game, but I do have some issues with it. Coincidentally enough I have just watched this episode of Extra Credits and I feel Valkyria Chronicles is a prefect example of disjoint between story and mechanics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ44hVeVdEw

Imo, this game is way too forgiving, mostly because the option to save between every turn. With this there is no need to ever lose a member of your team. If the risk of losing a member was considerably higher (like without the option to save would provide) I would care about my team a lot more. I'd feel like a bad captain for losing a member. I would be involved. The game tries to be kind of rogue, and then decides not to. It clashes with the tone it's going for.

And this snowballs into a lot of issues: the surprises some missions throw at you have become completely void. Reload, reposition, and counter the surprise like you knew. The enemy is therefor never fearsome or as powerful as the story and cutscenes would suggest. There is no sense of threat and for a game about war that's a huge flaw. The player is never on the back foot, and the crew feels way too powerful to be this scraggy band of militia. The entire extra crew list doesn't matter as you'll never need replacements. That one casualty in the cutscene doesn't hurt as much as you've been a good cap'n anyways for having lost no other members of the crew. I think the impact would be much greater if it had a "not you too, not another one" effect.

It wouldn't go on my worst RPG list, but it didn't make it to my top 25 games list either.