I recently had the opportunity to try out the Valkyria Chronicles 3 demo from the Japanese PSN, and I must say, it left a very strong impression on me as I eagerly await the final version of the game to be released.

One can only hope that Sega will provide the option for players to choose between English and Japanese audio this time around, unlike Valkyria Chronicles 2, which only offered English audio.

Several aspects of the demo caught my attention - namely the music and gameplay. The music was exceptional, and it seems that the composer from the previous games remains at the helm.

The gameplay builds upon the enhancements introduced in Valkyria Chronicles 2.

The first improvement was that Valkyria Chronicles 3 allows up to 9 character units per battle, harking back to the larger deployment scale of Valkyria Chronicles 1. However, the restriction of 5 units per map remains from the previous game1.

The convenience of being able to retreat and deploy soldiers without sacrificing a turn continues to be a great feature inherited from Valkyria Chronicles 2. In addition incapicitated units that are not rescued are simply no longer accessible for the duration of the battle which is an improvement on its predecessor where the character would be inaccessible for the remainder of the battle and other battles.

The animation sequences for character special attacks, such as Valkyria Mode2 and OPEN FIRE, is nothing short of visually impressive. Although these special attacks are useful they appear to be limited to 3 uses for the entire battle.

A character who truly stands out is Imca, as she is depicted as a stoic bad-ass, with a unique weapon, and bold attitude.

Interestingly, Snipers, Armored Techs, and Engineers are now distinct classes instead of a branch of another class. I hope this is a sign that the developers have removed the Anthem Corps which was the most useless class in the previous game.

Although I won’t deny that I am disappointed that Sega is continuing to release new Valkyria Chronicles games on PSP, I am satisfied that the developers are going in the right direction by returning to a more dark, serious narrative reminscient of the first game, hopefully they have also managed to to limit the amount of excessive grinding to upgrade all the characters.

  1. I believe for some maps in Valkyria Chronicles 2 the number of deployable units per map would vary, however in Valkyria Chronicles 3 the number is specifically 5 per map. ↩︎

  2. Finally we get to control a character as a Valkyria, it only took 3 games. ↩︎