Valkyria Chronicles 4 - Review @ Metro

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For Metro the new Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a good remake of the original Valkyria Chronicles:

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Valkyria Chronicles 4 review - better late than never

There is an art and science to knowing when and how to create a video game sequel. Rush too quickly to make a follow-up and you risk sacrificing quality and the long-term fortunes of the series but wait too long and there's the danger everyone will have moved on by the time it comes out. It's a delicate balancing act and it seems fair to say that Valkyria Chronicles has, up until now, got it completely wrong.

The original Valkyria Chronicles was released in 2008 and was one of the most critically acclaimed of the PlayStation 3's early wave of exclusives. But its strange mix of genres and influences was a hard sell and despite strong reviews it did only mediocre business, especially in the West. That meant its sequel was demoted to a PSP-only game and the third entry was only released in Japan. Which wasn't as tragic as that suggests given the games had already become more interested in cliché anime storytelling than the innovative gameplay that made the original so interesting.

In the intervening years though the first game's reputation has grown, and it received a recent port to the PC and an upcoming one to the Switch. And then finally we got last year's Valkyria Revolution which was... dreadful and seemed to completely misunderstand everything that was great about the series. But now, 10 years later, we finally have the sequel that always should have been.

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Score: 8/10