One of my recent distractions in Japanese was beta testing a spinoff Valkyria Chronicles game. This is an online card battle game on the well-known Japanese game portal Hangame. Fans of the Valkyria Chronicles series may have or have not heard of SEGA’s spinoff entry in the series, which sounds horrible at first, but it’s surprisingly fun and well done.
It has a mix of RPG and strategy game elements to keep things interesting.
Cards represent the characters from the Valkyria series. The cards differ in rarity, potentials, orders, attack power, and cost. The total attack power of your battalion determines who wins battles.
The Good
Music – Personally, I am a huge fan of the music of the Valkyria Chronicles series, and this game does not disappoint. I haven’t played the series games in a while, but I recognize a lot of the music from the first game, which (in my opinion) has the best soundtrack of the three.
RPG Elements – You can level up your cards by combining them.
Other familiar elements from the series – Potentials and Orders appear in the form of attack bonuses. If the leader card has an order(more likely with rarer cards I believe) it will automatically activate at the beginning of every battle. Potentials only activate at a certain rate. The rate can be increased by combining the card with other cards with the same potential, levelling up the potential of the original card at a fixed success rate.
This would probably work better with a video, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to do that the beta testing is over so now I have to wait until the official release.
The Bad
Connection issues – This is probably a combination of the game being in both beta and Japan, but I often got kicked from the server for no reason. Not really that annoying, unless I’m in the middle of a boss battle.
The spectator seat – The site is crazy about showing of their “3D battles”. What they choose to leave out is that they are glorified cutscenes. In other words, you have no control of the characters during battles. It makes sense as a card battle game, but a little disappointing nonetheless.
Overall, I like the game and will continue to play once it’s officially released.
You can check out the site for yourself here and leave a comment with your username and alliance if you join once it’s open to the public. Expect a more in-depth review near the end of July, when it is currently scheduled to be released.
Leave a comment (or question) below if you have any questions (or comments).
