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Today the Valkyria Chronicles English-exclusive demo hit the North American and European Playstation Network Stores, either with Qore in NA or for free in Europe. Some early reviews of the Japanese version of the game have been giving it glowing reviews, but how does the demo stack up?

I’ve provided a tl;dr version at the bottom for those who just want the skinny.

The demo starts you off with a pre-title screen cutscene, which has the potential for containing some spoilers. If you’re really that concerned about it, just close your eyes and listen to the music because it’s definitely worth the listen. The intro scenes showcase some of the most gorgeous visuals seen on the PS3. They’re not the best the system can do technically, but they’re stylized to the point of being some of the most unique graphics this generation has seen.

The main menu gave two gameplay options: Tutorial and Skirmish. The tutorial presents you with a simple introductory mission in which you control Alicia, Welkin, and a generic Scout unit against three enemy scouts. The game does a good job of explaining the basics, but is by no means comprehensive. It neglected to mention things like Potentials (which kept coming up in the Skirmish), weapon switching, destroying cover, and other things. Hopefully the tutorial section in the full game will cover these, as they seem to be too important to neglect.

Following the quick tutorial, I jumped right into the Skirmish. The Skirmish map is the same as the tutorial map, except you’re approaching from the opposite side and have to capture a point rather than kill every enemy. The game gives you two scouts, two assault troops, two Lancers (anti-tank troops), a sniper, an engineer, and a tank, and pits you against an enemy force of the exact same load out.

The very first thing I did was charge out with Largo, the anti-tank troop and get mowed down by covered enemy assault troops. I sent Alicia out to rescue Largo, who was promptly mowed down as well. This addressed a previous concern I had with the game, being that enemies ceasing fire as you aim could lead to encounters that were too easy. On the contrary; if you’re standing in front of a fully automatic machine gun, amazingly enough, you’re likely going to take a lot of bullets and die.

I figured fighting tanks with tanks was the way to go, and wasted the rest of my command points using Welkin to down the enemy tank. In the following turn, after calling Alicia and Largo back to the battlefield, I charged out with Rosie who activated her potential no less than 5 times each turn and mowed down enemy troops. Assault Troops seem to be the close range powerhouses, since as long as I could get close enough with Rosie the enemy was going to die.

Having discovered this lovely machine gun maiden’s abilities, the rest of the demo map went smoothly with her systematically murdering anything she came across, with Alicia following behind her to capture the single point and claim victory. I got a D rank thanks to those early deaths.

Throughout the battle, the voice acting (forced in English for the demo) was thoroughly mediocre. Normally I give both tracks a chance, but you won’t be missing much if you jump right into the Japanese audio once the game comes out in November. The controls were incredibly solid, my only gripe being forced manual control of the camera. While this is fine and good, it’s not so much when you’re trying to dodge enemy fire while getting to a position with cover. All in all, though, the demo was fantastic and I will be replaying it many times before the full game hits.

TL;DR VERSION

The Good: Awesome music, awesome graphics, solid controls, and plenty of challenge.

The Bad: Map was too small to have some classes really shine. Assault Troops hurt, both for and against you.

The Ugly: Voice acting, completely manual camera controls.