Zero Punctuation: Valkyria Chronicles

[Credge]

Thank you Yahtzee, for again verbally crucifying Japan's unnessecary mucking up of the RPG genre.

The game is about as far from an RPG as you can get. Unless you consider something like Heroes of Might and Magic or Fire Emblem to be an RPG, then sure.

 

[berettapunk]

i kind of consider fire emblem to be a rpg. tbh tho i couldnt care what its classification is because im just a huge fan of the fire emblem series. i was actually hoping to see yahtzee do fire emblem at some point.

Great review this week yahtzee!

 

[ElTigreNegro]

Thank you Yahtzee, for again verbally crucifying Japan's unnessecary mucking up of the RPG genre.

It's not that I don't like RPGs, it's that the Japanese way of doing it is "tell a story without the player or androgenous 12-year-old you're controlling be a major player in it, like you're just along for the ride instead of being a major player." The best RPG storylines are the ones where you're in control of the story and it focuses on you and any other people traveling with you, not the other people and you're just a secondary assistant.

Plus, dubbing is a big fat pile of shit over here in not-Japan, so there's another reason to hate it. If you're gonna have voice actors, at least make the vocals sync up with the actual animation instead of the crappy 1950s kung-fu movies dubbing.

The game has an option for the japanese dub.

Also, who set on stone all those "rules" about how a "good" story only revolves around one or two characters?

 

[zakwak01]

lol yeah funny liked the whole nazi thing

 

[SandroTheMaster]

So... Yahtzee admits he may (kind of) like TBS?

Well, ignore the Fire Emblem, FF Tactics, and other Japanese suggestions here. They can be good games... but their storytelling and gameplay are still too... japanese. Oh, and stray as far away from Disgaea as possible. This game will suck you dry, devour your soul, and chew it up for so much time you'll realize Boba Fett got it easy.

Good TBS were already mentioned. Any of the Heroes (of Might and Magic, not about that TV Series) and Jagged Alliance. X-com (this one is a must)... But there's also King's Bounty (both the old and the new, but the new is better), Fallout Tactics (good as a TBS, just don't mind about finding the storytelling), Total War (to an extent), etc... Yes, there's a distinct lack of any japanese games here.

About the Republicans joke. It's no big deal. Politicians ARE soulless baby-eating creatures of the darkness as a general rule. I still don't trust that Obama guy for the sole fact that he still is, in fact, a politician. The Republicans (the American ones, this is important) just have more of a fame there lately for their pseudo-nazi way of view (just change Aryan race for American race and you'll see) and mostly because of Bush's 8 years of telling the whole world to go fuck themselves (the world end up resenting stuff like this).

 

[MmmFiber]

[Maybe I just love micromanaging and lesbians with guns]

Who doesn't? Two of my favorite things I tell you. I enjoy when he trashes a game I like. It makes it even funnier.

P.S. I thought he was a serious reviewer for the first couple videos. They were games I had never played, so I thought "These game must be horrendous." Later I discovered how Yahtzee rolled.

 

[runtheplacered]

never played the game now i am sure i never will want too guess ill go back to my final fantasy tactics

You really base your judgment of whether or not to by a game by a Yahtzee review? That sucks for you, Valkyria Chronicles is a fantastic game.

 

[Shia-Neko-Chan]

This one sucked. Plain and simple.

 

[Evil Tim]

Not to mention that the gameplay is completely different, e.g. one of the main features of JRPGs is exploration, something which TRPGs never feature.

The meat of any JRPG is the combat, which consists of turn-based battles often built around a rock / paper / scissors attack structure [planes kill tanks, AA kills planes, tanks kill AA; sound familiar?], and the story, which is usually full of people in overly complicated costumes mangling perfect good philosophy. Exploration boils down to either finding where the hell the story's hiding or finding things to make combat easier.

A JRPG often is a cut-down, mutilated turn-based strategy game with a lot of useless grinding and wandering around thrown in to add a pretense of there being a world around you. That entire element exists for the sake of existing; so you wander around, fight a hundred Beasts of Bogwash and recover the Mystic Sword of Gobbledegook from the hallowed halls of the No-Vowels King. What can you do? Um, fight bigger things and go find other overpowered shit to fight even bigger things. Remove the useless wasting of time for it's own sake, and you have an extremely stunted and simplistic turn-based strategy game.

And as for your idea that no turn based strategy game has ever featured exploration, I guess you got me, since obviously none of these things exist [http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/snes/frontmis1/missionparts.shtml].

 

[Shadowlolz]

Very nice review .autosave was one of my petpeeves as well along "windows vista chronicles" menu systems. good job and it made me laugh too. my faith restored my fedorah-cladded captain

 

[Credge]

The meat of any JRPG is the combat, which consists of turn-based battles often built around a rock / paper / scissors attack structure [planes kill tanks, AA kills planes, tanks kill AA; sound familiar?], and the story, which is usually full of people in overly complicated costumes mangling perfect good philosophy. Exploration boils down to either finding where the hell the story's hiding or finding things to make combat easier.

There are plenty of non JRPG games that follow that formula as well. Heroes of Might and Magic, as an example. In fact, turn-based has little to do with JRPG's. It's a common theme, but it isn't exclusive to JRPG's.

The wide classification of JRPG and how anything that fits this classification is a 'bad thing' seems pretty... retarded. I'm not a fan of the formula when used in an RPG, but in a turn based strategy game? Yeah, it works.

The key difference is the word strategy.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

One of his best for quite a while, did enjoy this one, wonder what we've got next week....

 

[sneakypenguin]

Wondering when they are going to change the "EVERY WEDNESDAY YAHTZEE...." when it is always $@#%ing THURSDAY that they release the reviews

it's wednesday at 12 PM eastern standard time that they are posted.

 

[Mr. Blond]

until yahtzee admits these are really just very clever and funny rants i'll keep pointing out that, THAT WAS NOT A REVIEW!!!!...could anyone tell if he even liked the game?...did he finish it or did he just play enough so he had 5 minutes worth of jokes...i would understand...i will keep watching every week religiously regardless..."m@therfu@kery",can't wait to use that one...but i digress, yahtzee if you read these, despite your contempt for fans, please figure a way to express how much you liked a game...4 out of 5 headless pets...shit, maybe i'm asking for too much...nevermind

 

[kjrubberducky]

Excellent review. Made me lol a little. I still like FF 6,8,10,12 though.

It almost sounded like he was starting to get in to the TBS part of the RPG. If so, maybe he could try out Front Mission 3, or Final Fantasy Tactics. IMO, they aren't quite as mired in crap as Valkyria Chronicles.

Edit: I liked FF4 as well. I also just realized that I only like even numbered FF games... hmmm...

 

[Max-Vader]

Oh, I'm sorry, was there any point to your ad-hominem zealotry? Because it just seems like you and Yahtzee have a difference of opinion on the game, and nothing more. Way I see it, he played the game, didn't like it, wrote a review about what he didn't like, and then put it up here for public scrutiny. Why does it matter whether or not he beat the game? I haven't beaten Jade Empire, but I know I like it. Which is why I own it and will continue to play it. I do not own Halo, and I didn't have to beat it to know that I wouldn't even dignify it as a shiny frisbee. And the "he's just bad at it, that's why he hates it" nonsense? Stop. Please. That factors into everyone's reviews of games, not just Yahtzee's.

What ad-hominem zealotry? Do you even know what an ad hominem is? I didn't attack him personally. I didn't say he is bad at it. And I know why he hates it. My problem is not his opinion - for all I care he could think that JRPG-players deserve to die. I'm bothered by the fact that his opinion is based on false "data", so to say. And that is where the "he didn't finish it" becomes important, because as I said he either played it not long enugh, then he shouldn't complain about the story because he doesn't know it, or he is lying.

 

[esserius]

Actually saying someone is lying is an ad hominem attack, appealing to the person's lack of ability to have authority because of a specific characteristic (in this case their ability to tell the truth). Whether a person is lying or not has nothing to do with the integrity of their argument.

As for this review, meh. You know it's going to be boring when he brings out the Hitler references in the first thirty seconds.

 

[Max-Vader]

Whether a person is lying or not has nothing to do with the integrity of their argument.

If their argument is based on said lie, I think it its fair to point it out. And I just said he didn't play it for that long OR he is lying. I think it's the former, because as already pointed out by others, sometimes he was just plain wrong.

 

[esserius]

Even if an argument is based on a lie, it does not mean the argument cannot be sound.

For example, not telling a friend the truth in order to spare their feelings can be a good thing. This is the concept behind what we perceive as a white lie.

 

[Evil Tim]

Actually saying someone is lying is an ad hominem attack, appealing to the person's lack of ability to have authority because of a specific characteristic (in this case their ability to tell the truth).

Saying someone is lying because they have made statements that are not true is not an ad hominem attack. It's an ad hominem attack to claim a given statement is false simply because you believe the person who said it is a liar, because in that instance a conclusion is being drawn from the personal attack; however, saying an individual statement by a person is a lie is not the same thing. "That is a lie, therefore you are a liar" is a perfectly valid logical inference. It's "you are a liar, therefore that is a lie" that's the fallacy.

For example:

Fallacy: "Hitler just told me 1+1 is 2. Obviously nothing Hitler says could be true, so I know 1+1 is not 2."
Not a fallacy: "That guy just told me 1+1 is 3. Since I can do the math and determine 1+1 is not 3, I can tell that guy is a liar."

Also, regardless of whether its conclusion is true or false, an argument which is built on a false premise is not sound.

Even if an argument is based on a lie, it does not mean the argument cannot be sound.

Wrong, it necessarily means the argument is not sound, because a sound argument is one where the premise and inference are both true. It doesn't, however, mean the conclusion of the argument can't be true.

For example, not telling a friend the truth in order to spare their feelings can be a good thing.

That's an abysmal example. A sound argument and a comforting one are not the same thing.