Valkyria Chronicles

About

Valkyria Chronicles is a military role-playing video game series developed by Sega initially for the Playstation, with later installments of the game released on Microsoft and Nintendo consoles. The game takes place in an alternate version of Earth during war times of the 20th century. The game was a critical and financial success, with several spinoff pieces of media and four overall installments of the main series of games.

History

The first Valkyria Chronicles game was released in Japan on April 24th, 2008, with releases in the West appearing by the end of the year.^[1] The game used tactical RPG gameplay and was directed by Shuntaro Tanaka and Takaharu Terada. It originally released on the Playstation 3, but its success led it to be rereleased on the Playstation 4, XboxOne, and Nintendo Switch (launch trailer shown below).

The game received scores between 84 and 86 (depending on the platform) on Metacritic.^[2] Initial sales of the game were not promising, but a 2009 release of an anime series based on the game helped sales increase. In 2014, a PC rerelease of the game topped Steam sales the day of release. The game won several awards from publications, including Best Artistic Graphics from Gamespot, Best Original Soundtrack from GameSpy, was acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as the Best Strategy Game for the Playstation 3 in 2010. It was also notably reviewed by Zero Punctuation in one of the series' earliest reviews (shown below).

The following two games in the main series were released on the Playstation Portable (PSP). Valkyria Chronicles III was not released outside of Japan.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 was released in Japan for the Playstation 4 in March of 2018^[3] and worldwide for the XboxOne, Nintendo Switch, and Microsoft Windows in September of the same year. The game again scored well on Metacritic, with scores of 81, 84, and 85 on the Switch, PC and PS4 respectively.

Anime

After a manga was made of the first game, an anime series based on the first game helped bring attention and sales to the series. It premiered on April 4th, 2009, directed by Yasutaka Yamamoto, and was produced by Aniplex's A-1 Pictures. The anime took some liberties with the original game, generally following the plot but changing some characters' personalities and adding others.

Online Presence

The series boasts a decent online presence, with over 6,800 fans on Facebook^[4] and a subreddit with over 3,200 followers.^[5]

Search Interest

External References