THE GOOD:Valkyria Chronicles' art is simply gorgeous. I'm generally not a fan of anime, but seeing what essentially amounts to a moving watercolour in 720p blows away any visual nitpicks I might have. The characters designs are excellent. They aren't too extravagant (I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy), nor are they bland (like Generic FPS #4567). Every character has personality, even the insignificant extra troops you may come across, and a great deal of this comes through in their combat abilities ('potentials') during gameplay as opposed to non-interactive cutscenes.
The gameplay is easy to learn and hard to master, and it keeps getting deeper as you progress through the game. The missions throw enough different objectives at you to keep things fresh. You ALWAYS have to be thinking.
The story is quite good-- just over-the-top enough to appeal to JRPG fans while keeping a solid grounding in World War 2-esque war storytelling to cater to those who might not like fighting ancient muta...
