Currently Playing: Oh Shit, There Go My Grades

About 6 years ago I graduated from college with a very useful degree in Military History. Since then, the job offers I’ve had in that field have been incredibly numerous and lucrative… Okay, that’s a lie.

In reality, I realized that History, while I enjoy it and think that it’s fascinating, isn’t really my calling. I don’t want to spend years of my life researching some obscure historical event, only to write a book that will most likely be read by eight people and some poor Midshipman at the Naval Academy who, by pure chance, was assigned a report on the very event to which I devoted my entire life.

Instead, I’ve returned to school to get a degree in engineering, which is much more suited to how I think and view the world.

Naturally, I’m impatient, so I’ve completely overloaded on credits in a vain attempt to get to graduation as soon as possible. Consequently, video games have taken a distant back seat to School.

And the work seemed to be paying off. With only a bit of ego, I can say that my grades were great and the semester was shaping up nicely… until Tuesday, October 5, 2010. At approximately 9:45 in the evening, I fell head-over-heels in love.

I started playing Valkyria Chronicles.

I want to have it's babies.


The characters, while still loosely conforming to the JRPG stereotypes, seem like real 3-dimensional people. Granted, the occasional cheesy line gets in the way, but otherwise the characters are all fairly likeable. In almost every JRPG I’ve played, there is at least one character that makes me groan and say, ‘shut up, shut up, shut up!’ every time they open their mouth (I’m looking directly at you, three-quarters of all Final Fantasy characters). But, so far, I’m pretty much annoyance free right now.

Annoying.

The story is top notch. I truly feel that I am but a small part of a much larger war, and not just a lone group of people who fight off the entirety of the cosmos to ‘save the world.’ Additionally, the equipment, time period, and geo-political situation draw heavily on the Second World War for inspiration, making everything familiar enough to feel like it could easily have taken place in our world, rather than some distant fantasy world. At the same time, however, there is enough change from the actual Second World War to make it a fresh and new experience and not be a mere ‘change of names to protect the innocent.’

More Annoying.

Additionally, gameplay is extremely fun and intuitive. It took me less than one battle to get my bearings and there were very few tutorial sessions. Coming off my last game (Final Fantasy XIII), where the first 20-odd hours of gameplay was essentially an extended tutorial, Valkyria Chronicles was extremely refreshing. To boot, the combat is just plain awesome. I seriously can’t get enough of it.

Die in a fire.

Lastly, Valkyria Chronicles has succeeded were almost every other RPG of the past few generations has failed: it got me interested within about 15 minutes of starting. Understand that, while I love RPGs, I despise starting them. It always feels that first few hours are like pulling teeth: with tedious fetch quests that ‘teach’ you to use different game mechanics; boring exposition scenes that try and set up the story; and multiple, painfully long explanation screens for how different mechanics work. Valkyria Chronicles was designed extremely well to either camouflage these aspects, or respect the fact that I have some intelligence and can figure most of it out on my own.

Needless to say, I’ve already broken down and played about 6 to 8 hours this week… hours I should have been studying.

I’m screwed.