Valkyria Chronicles 4 Switch Free Download Romslab

Valkyria Chronicles 4 Switch Free Download comes off as Sega trying to get the series back on track, returning to its roots and leaning heavily on what made the first Valkyria Chronicles so good 10 years ago. That’s mostly a good thing, and this latest entry adds some new mechanics and balance changes that make it feel like more than just a rehash, even if some of the first game’s issues make a not-so-welcome return as well. ROMSLAB.COM Best Switch Games

Valkyria Chronicles 4 Switch Free Download Romslab

There’s no other strategy game quite like Valkyria Chronicles, and describing its mishmash of genres can sound like someone took a few throws at a dart board covered in game types and hoped it would all work out. It’s a JRPG set in a colorful alternate-reality World War 2, with deep turn-based tactical battles where units are controlled with semi-realtime, third-person shooter combat. Like I said, extremely weird on paper, but it works extraordinarily well in practice.

Turn-Based Tactics Anime

Those battles are really what make Valkyria Chronicles so much fun. Battlefields are fairly large and often dotted with dozens of enemy units, making it a fun challenge to keep track of multiple engagements at a time. There are six different soldier classes – ranging from fast-moving Scouts to slow tank-busters called Lancers – fortified enemy bunkers to destroy, and even tanks to control, so you have a massive amount of options during any given fight. Bravely Default II Switch NSP

Valkyria Chronicles 4 Switch Free Download Romslab

I loved surveying the battlefield at the beginning of every match, enthusiastically playing the role of commander and tactician as I plotted out my strategies and attack routes. As with any good tactical puzzle, it rewards you for thinking ahead multiple turns and punishes you – severely – for not considering how your opponent might counter-attack once it’s their turn to move.

Grenadiers are a great addition, opening up new strategies that simply weren’t possible in previous games.

Most notably, Valkyria Chronicles 4 didn’t just bring back the original five classes, it added a brand new one: the Grenadier. Grenadiers allow you to drop long-range explosions on enemy units, and they are a ton of fun to command because they open up new strategies that simply weren’t available in previous games. For example, you can blindly fire guess shots to test if areas behind by buildings or hills are hiding enemies, and that proves to be true often enough that Grenadiers quickly became a staple of my squad. Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling Switch

Valkyria Chronicles 4 Switch Free Download Romslab

I also found that their presence alone got me to use my Engineer units significantly more than in the first game. Engineers are essentially weaker versions of Scouts that can repair tanks and refill ammo, so pairing one with a Grenadier meant I could constantly top off their mortar ammo and fire significantly more rounds in a turn.

That strategy was fun to discover and refine, but it’s borderline game-breakingly powerful: once I unlocked a new type of mortar for my Grenadiers that deals extra damage to tanks, their extended range and ability to hit a tank’s weak spot without having to walk behind it essentially made my Lancer units obsolete. I even managed to win a huge, climactic boss fight against a stronger tank enemy toward the end of the campaign with a single grenadier in a single turn, just by walking into range and repeatedly pelting its radiator with bombs.

Memoirs From Battle

Another thing that’s stayed the same is the uneven balance between story and combat. Fights can last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, which are short enough that they aren’t daunting but still long enough that the really epic fights truly feel it. But in between those fights, you usually watch between five and 25 minutes of story cutscenes, which can be a bit much. You’re basically alternating between commanding a fight and watching a full episode of an anime that’s fairly melodramatic in a way that’s sure to be familiar to anime fans, which I was okay with once I knew to expect that pattern. Cadence of Hyrule Switch NSP 

Valkyria Chronicles 4 Switch Free Download Romslab

Valkyria Chronicles 4 takes place at the same time as Valkyria Chronicles 1 and 3, but from a completely different perspective in the war, so you don’t need to have played the others to jump into this one. It half-heartedly tries to root its characters in Gallia (the neutral country that the other games take place in) by making the main characters of your squad in the Federation army be from there, but doesn’t significantly tie Gallia into the story after that. As a result, the plot mostly misses an opportunity and feels disconnected from the greater story of the series. Capcom Arcade Stadium Switch NSP

Add-ons (DLC): Valkyria Chronicles 4 Switch A United Front with Squad 7