While the story is a fairly regular RPG tale of Good Guys vs. Bad Guys with shades of grey mixed in, the gameplay is unlike anything you’ve played before. Sure, ultimately the game is a tactical strategy RPG, but the way it’s presented and controlled is, in a word, refreshing.

When you finally do get to a battle (usually once a chapter), you’ll begin by selecting which units to place on the map. The game features several classes of units, from snipers and engineers to tanks and lancers (anti-tank troops that shoot exploding lances), and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Which classes you select to use on each battle is largely dependent on what you’re most comfortable with (or who you leveled up the most), but later on in the game you will find after failing once or twice that certain classes are more integral than others.

Once you’ve laid your pieces on the board, it’s off to war. At the beginning of each turn, you’re given a number of action points, the number of which depends on how many leaders you have deployed. (And, as leaders get killed, you’ll lose their AP for future turns.) To use your AP and activate a unit, simply highlight them with the analog stick, and hit a button. This will zoom you in from the board-game like map with all known troop locations, and put you in a third-person perspective behind the selected troop. Now that your troop is selected, they’ll have an action gauge displayed on the bottom right. Moving your troop slowly depletes the action gauge, and once that’s empty they can move no more. You can take cover behind obstacles and in trenches a la Gears, you can heal yourself or allies, or you can select a weapon and hit R1 to enter your firing mode.

After hitting R1, the camera pulls back and allows you to aim at your target. Much like a shooting game, critical hits like headshots will drop enemy units faster than shots to the gut or leg. Unlike almost every other SRPG, if you’re aiming out in the open and enemies can see you, they’ll constantly fire until you end your turn. This gives the game a more hectic feel than many RPGs, as you have to not only position your units in a spot where you can take the best shot, but also in a way so that enemies can’t kill you or wound you tremendously before you do so. It’s an innovative blend of the popular current shooter model and the more traditional tactical RPG one, and it works extremely well.

If the game has any faults, it’s that the developers may have been too eager at times to prolong the experience. I’ve already mentioned the lengthy cutscenes; some of the later combat scenarios will make the cutscenes look like loading screens. We’re talking multi-hour battles, many of which you’re very likely to lose at the last moment just because you started with the wrong unit two hours previously. It can be extremely frustrating at times to play for three hours, lose because of a lucky enemy shot, and then have to restart and try again. Several times, I ended up doing that very thing because the enemy would manage to flank Welkin and fire a rocket into the weak point of his command tank, instantly killing me. Time to load…thankfully, you can save in the midst of battles. It won’t always help, but it’s a nice gesture and does help in most situations.

I’m sure many of you saw the trailer for Valkyria Chronicles during this year’s E3, and thought “Well it looks pretty, but I bet it’ll suck or be gimmicky.” I thought that very thing; I even declined a chance to play it behind closed doors with Sega to squeeze in some more time elsewhere. After giving the game a shot, though, I’m here to tell you not only does the game look gorgeous, but it’s fun, challenging, one of the most innovative strategy role-playing titles in years, and definitely the top RPG on the PS3.

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