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 Valkyria Chronicles is a series published by SEGA that’s mostly stayed on Playstation consoles throughout the years and makes a name for itself in its interesting art style and rather unique tactical combat. The first game, Valkyria Chronicles 1 was a PS3 exclusive for quite a long time until it wasn’t, but then got remade again later. The first game was about a scrappy militia defending their homeland from the invading empire in a dramatic war that mirrors both World Wars. So, what’s the game we’re playing? Valkyria Chronicles 2 is recreational software about a school with guns and wacky students. No, really, what is it? Valkyria Chronicles 2 also takes place after the events of the first game where a racist rebellion is gaining power and is threatening to undermine the whole country. Instead of a scrappy militia on the gruesome frontlines of war, we have a wildly irresponsible academy that sends out our ragtag group of quirky anime dudes and gals to handle the uprising. Oh, but that happens while we’re not having our wacky high school hijinks, because anime. Due to the memory limits of a UMD disc (it’s a PSP exclusive this time,) it doesn’t have a wide variety of unique maps and constantly stages battles in the same areas instead of unique maps like the first game. It plays very smoothly though, its controls are mapped well, and it’s visually okay for a PSP game. I nearly finished it years ago but had to stop when my bargain bin PSP decided it was going to fry itself. I should've realized that my PSP died for a reason: keeping me away from this terrible drat thing. What’s it like as a game/ compared to the first? What I would say before I began this tortured journey: At the base level, it’s still mostly the same game (a third-person shooter crossed with turn based tactical warfare) but a few things set it apart. Firstly, it makes some changes compared to the original’s balance by adding another base unit class and dividing them all into sub-classes through its promotion system. Units have many traits, with their most glaring flaws/personality issues being curable through side missions unlocked in a way similar to Fire Emblem supports. Damage tends to be more polarized with many things doing only chip damage and other things that do gruesome amounts of damage per hit. The AI is usually not very smart and only has an advantage in sheer numbers and the capability to be a cheating bastard. From what I’ve gathered, there’s a bit of a divide where some folks seem to really hate this game, and others really seem to like it. I’m somewhat in the middle of those two extremes- parts of this game I really don’t like, and other parts I find nice enough. (I haven’t played VC1 in years and I also haven’t finished this game, so take that into consideration if you have an opinion on it.) Whether you hate or love this game, feel free to weigh in with your opinion on it, as I’d like to hear it at least. Edit From Later Twybil, only 10 Updates in: I'm still kinda on the fence, but I'm leaning a lot more to the hate side now. I forgot how dumb this game was. What I can say about it now: This game is a trash fire filled with an endless grind, a terrible story, and a never-ending uphill battle against both mediocrity and it's overwhelming cheating. Unlike other awful games, such as White Knight Chronicles, this game lacks any truly terrible aspect and instead remains a level of bad that is uninteresting and devoid of anything to really poke fun at. Well until the end, really, where the development took a huge turn into  Read this thing from start to finish to see the spirit of a fresh, new LPer become increasingly more broken until I relapse into pure apathy. I tried to maintain a neutral stance, to have fun with this, and it tore me apart. This game is "aggressively mediocre", and infinitely draining to play on an in-depth level, and ruined any desire for me to even inspect the other games in the series despite multiple assurances that the others aren't this bad. Regardless, the resulting LP could be better given I run out of effort to give halfway through, but I think it's more than enough for this awful thing. If you think you like this game, then I can only believe you're either delusional or that you don't truly remember what this game is like. If you don't want to see me bashing it, then I don't suggest staying. What about spoilers? Do I need to know the story of the first game? This game is a sequel, thus it spoils parts of Valkyria Chronicles 1. As result, feel free to discuss VC1 in the thread freely, I don’t mind. If you don’t know anything about VC1, you’ll probably be fine as there’s only a bit to the previous plot that matters. This game hardly gives a gently caress about the previous one anyhow.  Spoilers for this game are off-limits, so please don’t. It has a story, What’s the LP going to be like? Any chance for thread participation? This will be a Screenshot LP. The battles in this game are much shorter than they were in the first (A-rank is usually 3-4 rounds), and I think I can explain everything enough. I'm no longer doing battles as per thread vote. Trust me, you're not missing anything. It's the same boring routine repeated over and over again. Oh, and there's lots and lots of  , I had thread participation once, but really now its just voting for which character's awful story you want to see so that the awful main story can be spaced out. But of course, that too was in the past and it really just atrophied into me doing all the updates and saving a vote for the final update. As a final note, don’t be a creep. This game is anime by nature and does fall into the seemingly perpetual trap of having skeevy moments. There's not that many, but this game sure loves its fanservice when it has it. I'll put up warnings that way you don't have to lose as many brain cells as I do dealing with this. (The graphical fidelity of the first two updates will be a bit low, but this is swiftly remedied!) Updates: In Which I Try to Remain Positive About This Game: Update 1: "I'm coming for you Leon!" Update 2: Get Schooled Update 3: A Merry Band of Personality Issues Update 4: Move and Shoot Exercises Update 5: It's For Real This Time Update 6: That (Depressing) Anime High School Lifestyle Update 7: In Which Things Are Done, Not Unlike Last Time Update 8: Avan Gets Attacked By A 13 Year Old Update 9: Marion, In the Armory, With a Gun Update 10: The One I Forgot to Give a Title Update 11 - Avan Doesn't Do Anything, Yet Again Update 12: Friends, Knitting, and Fascism - Story Update 12: Friends, Knitting, and Fascism - Combat Update 13: (Now And Then) There's A Gun Such As I - Story Update 13: (Now And Then) There's A Gun Such As I - Combat In Which I become Increasingly More Tired of This Game: Update 14: In Which Everyone Does A Terrible Job - Story Update 14: In Which Everyone Does A Terrible Job - Combat Update 15: It's Christmas in March - Story Update 15: It's Christmas in March - Combat Update 16: "There are no items of note." - Story Update 16: "There are no items of note."- Combat Update 17: Food Talk, Femme Fatales, and Shipping Material; We've Got it All - Story Update 17: Food Talk, Femme Fatales, and Shipping Material; We've Got it All - Combat In Which This Game Breaks My Spirit: Update 18: Special Especially Long Post-Hiatus Update Special Update 19: Winter Whiplash Update 20: (Not A) Beautiful Noise Update 21: Night Maneuvers Update 22: Mega Update, Giant Sci-Fi Lasers, Maximum Anime In Which I Stop Giving A Flying gently caress: Update 23: You Can Stand Me Up at the Gates of Anime Update 24: War and Art Update 25: Mega Muscle Man Medic Moen Update 26: The Indigenous Hunting Culture of Pseudo Poland Update 27: In Which Diebal Village Gets Attacked Again Update 28: You Hurt Captain Anime's Feelings Update 29: Avan Gropes A Lady Update 30: 4/10 Could Be Dryer In Which The Game Takes A Steady Decline: Update 31: Avan Gets Owned By A 13 Year Old Again Update 32: Avan Gets Cutscene Killed Update 33: The One Nobody Was Looking Forward To Update 34: Leon, Valhalla, Oh, and Zeri's Tsundere Waifu Too Update 35: Shots Fired and Laser Lady Talk Update 36: Kodachrome In Which The Game Runs Out of Material And Sputters to A Finish: Update 37: Operation Didn't We Do This Already? Update 38: The Finale of Captain Anime Update 39: The Nightmare Ends (It Was Just A Bad Version of VC1 After All) Extra Updates: Bonus Update 1: I Got an A in Blitzkrieg Class (Entrance Exam A Rank) Bonus Update 2: A Merry Band of Personality Issues - Character Details Bonus Update 3: Character Details List, Somewhat Updated Bonus Update 4: The Beach Scene (As Part of Update 33) The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Mar 14, 2020 |
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Oct 25, 2019 22:23
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Oct 25, 2019 22:24
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Update 1: "I'm coming for you, Leon!" A short note: All original text from the game is in print and any comments I have to make will be in italics unless we’re out of a cutscene, marked by a line of dashes: -- -- The game has an animated opening video, but it spoils a lot of plot points like VC1 did. You can watch it if you want, but I’d suggest you don’t. It’s not bad, it’s just filled with spoilers. I’ll likely show it at the very end though. Music: Valkyria Chronicles 2 Main Theme The composer is also the same person who did Final Fantasy Tactics apparently. The music in this series tends to be pretty good, so I’d recommend a listen if you get the time. VC2’s music isn’t as great as some of VC1’s, but I think it matches the theme overall pretty well. I'll make all of these links to the soundtrack.   I just have to note that selecting options on the main screen actually makes a gunshot noise. I guess it goes with the military theme, but I always thought it a bit odd. I’m used to it by now, just like a great many things in this game. We’ll be starting a new game, of course.  Easy mode just makes your units take less damage. I’m picking Normal just because I’m used to it. Bullets don’t usually do as much damage as you’d think they would for quite a long time.  After I choose a save slot, the game goes to loading. It’s a nice little animation of each bit on the page fading in as if it was being written. We’ll see it a decent bit, but not nearly as often as we would if I was playing this on the console itself and not the emulator. -- Music: Valkyria Chronicles Series Main Theme This is all narrated by a character we’ll meet soon enough. I’ll point it out when we get there.   Welcome to Pseudo-Europe, basically.   The two big names on the continent of Europa. We’re not part of either of these, though.  Narrator: As they vied for control of the continent,  Some footage of the Imperial Army charging in. This is brought over from VC 1.    If you look above the flag, you’ll see a faded blue splotch. That’s Gallia. That’s us.  Here’s a closer look. Randgriz is Gallia’s capital. Don’t ask me why the other capitals are in lowercase though.   Narrator: -a valuable energy source. Ragnite is basically a miracle material and is probably magic or something. We use it for both medical kits and grenades. The empire attacked us because of this stuff.    A bomb drops for a massive explosion while these two civilians flee.  Pictured: Ridiculously huge Empire landship slamming through the main walls of Randgriz.  A tower familiar to those who’ve played VC1 starts falling down…   The filter clears as we begin covering the modern day: EC 1937.   The pieces meet up, signaling military encounters.     Music: Unknown Remixed Theme from VC1 It’s a calm piano, similar to VC1's "Quiet Chat". It only lasts about 5 seconds though.   The speaker here is the same as the narrator from before…  Pictured: Avan Hardins, our protagonist, speaking this line.. Avan here is apparently one of the most hated parts of this game, which is bad because he’s the guy you’re stuck with 24/7 in this game. I can say I partially get this; he’s definitely got some annoying aspects we’ll see as time goes on, but I think they do work towards trying to give him some likable bits too in the process.  I won’t lie, this screenshot looks kinda off, but it’s not my fault. That’s just how he looks in this animated bit- he looks better nearly everywhere else though. This one’s just particularly off. Music: Royal Military Academy *All dialogue is voiced for the following scene.  Here is the narrator, Brixham. This is the in-game art that we’ll be seeing often in comparison to that four second long cutscene from a second ago. In fact, most art is better than that last cutscene. That was probably done as a last second rush or something, judging by the fact it could've easily be done with this art.  The art style for this game is a bit different than what you'd typically see, but you get used to it quickly. Meanwhile, we learn that Avan’s brother is in a military school.  Uh oh. This doesn’t seem good.    : I realize this is sudden, and it pains me to be the bearer of sad tidings…  Music: None  : I offer you my sincerest condolences.Music: Conflict  : All that goes on at the academy is classified for national security.: I am afraid I cannot tell you any of the details surrounding his death. I’d be angry too, honestly. I’d imagine most people would be ticked off to hear this.  Avan then immediately goes into denial.   *A loud explosion can be heard.* Music: Unknown Track (Substitute: Return Battle) : That was close.Gunshots start ringing out in the distance. They keep coming after every bit of dialogue as well.    One of Avan’s better character traits is his tendency for heroism. He’s also a bit reckless, though, and hardly ever stops to think. A pretty typical combination, really.  O-okay! : Just remember what we learned in training, and we’ll be fine! : Now let’s go!-- Music: Briefing  Now we’re met with our first mission of the game. You can’t back out of this because, well, rebels are attacking. This is a minimum grade mission and at a difficulty of LV 1. It really doesn’t mean anything right now, so feel free to ignore it.  Going to the next screen takes us to unit deployment. This is all still tutorials-ville stuff so I’m not really able to change anything meaningful here.  Music: Exciting Battle I think it’s perhaps a bit too upbeat for this moment, but then again, a lot of the early tracks will be.  Every map opens with a voiced exclamation from Avan. In a few special cases, someone else will do these, but we won’t see that for a long while either.  So here’s the map view-  Soundbite: "Listen up, now." -Well, how about I just summarize what the game gives me. Tutorial- Unit Actions: When we begin a mission, we get a map view of all the units. Here we look at what we have to deal with, and select a unit to move forward with.  All those binoculars icons you see are Scout class units. They move fast, have decent accuracy, and have average firepower. The blue ones are mine, and the red are the enemies. The yellow lines indicates which enemies I can presently see. The other two units on my side are identical:  You’ll note that Avan has nearly double their HP value. This is because he’s the main character, naturally.  Here’s Avan’s stats. HP is exactly what you think it is, AP is basically stamina for moving, Shoot determines accuracy and damage, and Evade is our percentage chance to completely dodge an enemy attack. Those three items off to his side are his equipment. Gallian-1 is a 5 shot rifle (all guns have unlimited ammo), the grenade is a grenade, and the Field Suit is just body armor. Those stats will make more of a difference when I get more units, so I’ll just go ahead and select Avan and move forward.  : “Okay, let’s go!”Every character also has specific lines for selecting them, attacking with them, rescuing, etc. I’ll list’em as they come. Later on, there's also some neat radio chatter which I'll list out, but that won't be for a while.  Tutorial- Moving It costs AP to move. When it runs out, you’re left standing in place. This is what the game looks like in action mode. We now get to run around freely with Avan just like it’s an over the shoulder shooter, provided we still have AP left over. Nobody else actively moves, but enemies will still shoot at us from where they’re standing, provided they can see us.  Tutorial- Targeting: Enemies won’t make suppressive fire while in this mode. Line up your target with the aiming crosshairs. Once you fire at an enemy, if they’re still alive, they’ll counterattack. I move up to the sandbags and tell Avan to crouch. Crouching reduces the damage we take and makes us harder to hit, but can only be done at sandbags. It also nullifies headshot damage. At any point we can enter targeting mode by using the square button. I’ve already done this, so Avan here shoulders his gun and now we get an aiming reticule. There’s a crosshairs in there somewhere, but JPG compression isn’t nice to it. Those orange dots in a circle represent our accuracy deviation, and it’s pretty bad early on. While we’re aiming, enemies won’t make suppression fire but we can’t move from our place either. We’re given all the time in the world to precisely line up our shot, usually to go for headshots.  The game is helpful enough to give you an estimate of how many shots need to land to kill at your current damage output. Because this fool here has his back turned away, it gives us bonus damage and counts as a surprise shot (he won’t counterattack).  I adjust my aim towards his head, and the shots needed to down him go to 2. At this poor of accuracy, it’s more likely I’ll take him out this way. Now let’s shoot this man because he shot at our mans.  : “Comin’ at ya!”  : “Enemy down!”Every headshot makes a louder ringing noise, just to let you know that you hit them. It’s actually kind of rewarding to hear it when you pull off a long-range shot. Tutorial- Ending Actions: A unit can only attack/use equipment once per action. After acting, you can still move if you have AP left.  Avan’s still got plenty of AP left, so I run him up to this next line of sandbags. I eat a few bullets on the way there, but they do hilariously low damage at this point in the game. A good thing to also note is that suppression fire does use rounds out of an enemy’s clip, so when they use every shot in their gun, they’ve got to stop for a moment to reload. Also, Avan only takes 3 damage from these rebels' bullets.   Your units visually reload when you end their action. Units without guns have a different little animation.  Tutorial- Command Points: Making an action with a character costs one Command Point (CP), represented by the medals at the top of the screen. When you run out, there’s not much else to do from end your turn. You’ll now note that Avan’s AP bar has restored, but not fully. Every consecutive action with a unit has them starting with less AP than before, up to the point of nearly nothing. All AP is fully restored when you end your turn, so this is mostly to keep you from blazing across the map with only a few units (which we’ll get away with later, anyways).  Let’s give one of these town guards a chance. “Y-yes, sir!”Tutorial- Sandbags I already covered this, so I’ll note that grenades knock enemies from cover.   Watchman B here goes for the head. It’s worth noting that since this guard is looking at us, we won’t get bonus damage on our shots. Doesn’t really matter, since these guys are complete pushovers anyhow.  This screenshot makes the game look more gruesome than it is.  I’ll move him over a bit and end this guy’s action. Not much else we can do right now.  I use my last CP on Avan. Watchman A down there is too far to get a comfortable shot on this last guy, and we only get one turn for an A rank on this mission. With three enemies to kill, you cannot afford to spend more than one turn fighting any of these guys. Yet, the stakes are pretty low on this mission. It rewards nearly nothing anyways.  Oh, and you can also vault over sandbags. This doesn’t use any AP, so it marginally increases the range you can move provided you don’t waste that saved AP shuffling back and forth behind the bags.  I get Avan to move over to the sandbags farthest ahead so he can take a shot at this last guy. Using the sandbags so much on this map is uneccessary because these rebels do so little damage. The quick strat for this map is to just march Avan right up to all 3 of their faces and headshot them point blank. A strategy which we will use quite commonly later on.  I line up the shot… At this range and accuracy, I’d actually be questioning this decision a lot in the late game if I wanted to make this shot. Doesn’t matter here as much though.  And he’s down as the first two shots hit true. Avan fires his last three bullets in the same direction, likely taking out the window on that house for no reason. (All units will fire every bullet from their clip before stopping, as to provide a way to take out more than one enemy in the same action.)  Yep, that was all!  I can’t remember if he says either of these intro/outro lines later, but they’re all similar to this. Music: Reward  Bam, A rank. I’ll go ahead and explains some stuff about this screen. Dct is money, Exp is exactly what you think it is. The first row is our base value for the mission, the amount we’d get for a minimum rank. As you can see, A rank tends to give you double, which is really handy as the battles go on in this game. The “Defeated” table lists out how many enemies of a specific type we took out. Generic mooks like the guys we just took down reward nothing. Leaders are special units that add bonus CP on the enemy’s turn, provided they’re still alive. Aces are just particularly powerful units. Tanks are literal tanks. Key targets are any unit specified by the map as needing to be taken out, which is sometimes all of them. We get bonus exp and money for each one we take out. Lastly is “Allies Defeated”. Having nobody go down on your side is nice but remains an incredibly pitiful reward throughout the game. You get nothing if one person goes down, and it turns into a penalty if more than one goes down. The penalty only gets bad when maybe six or so units go down, but we likely won’t see it ever go that far down (until late game). -- Music: Days With Classmates *All dialogue is voiced in the following scene.*   : (A fine bit of leadership, gathering those men in the face of surprise attack.): (Apparently it’s a family trait.)  : You really won’t tell me how my brother died? : That is correct. It’s classified information, I’m afraid. Yep, that’s it. You know how I kept referring to a late game and how I got most of the way through this? I was bluffing. This game was a tech demo-  -Yeah, this is what we’re going with instead. Avan is going to enroll at a military school so he can try and get information out of the government. It’s not a bad start to a plot, but… well, this doesn't seem like a smart way to get answers. He’s actually incredibly calm when he says this, which makes me think this portrait was used by accident. : What? You want to enroll?Yep. : Leon can’t be dead. My brother wouldn’t go down that easy. Period.That's, uh, some kind of logic. Also, this portrait reminds me of a piranha, but I don’t know why.   : Spare me the paperwork!*Ripping noises* Dude, I don’t think you can just tear up government documents like that. : I’m telling you, I don’t buy it. Not until I see the proof with my own eyes!To be fair, I’d be denying it too. I wouldn’t be running off to join a military academy and ripping documents up in front of officials, but still. : Hm.: Then I suppose you’ll be needing this.  : An application for new enrollment at Lanseal.I’d question why he’s just carrying this around, but then again it’s a private school and he’s a teacher so I suppose it makes sense.  Uh…It is a private school, man. So private in fact they’ve already established that the stuff they do is classified by the government, remember that part?  *Insert witty comment about this whole thing seeming like it was probably scouted out in the first place.* : If you still wish to apply, I won’t stop you. All are at liberty to try. : But if you think just anyone can get in, well… You’ll learn soon enough.Shouldn’t you be encouraging this kid? I mean, you said to yourself that he’s a born leader, and you just saw him take out 3 rebels without breaking a sweat. …Perhaps he’s already realized what a mess this is going to be. : Now, if you’ll excuse me. Perhaps we’ll meet again. Good day.*He walks off* Music: Valkyria Chronicles Series Theme   : If Gallia's ever gonna be at peace again, guys like us have to fight for it.: Application for student enrollment? Fine, I'll pass your stupid test.  -- Next Update: Entrance exams!  (…and I make more fun of the game than I did this update, because a death in the family really ain’t funny.)
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Oct 25, 2019 22:25
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theshim posted:Brixham is a favorite. Brixham is  , hands down.theshim posted:
Oh, but did you want a reminder?   : Baha-aha-hahah!
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Oct 25, 2019 23:13
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Omobono posted:Promotion Talk Regarding promotions, though, I'm already dreading the grind because I don't even know if there's a way to manipulate which credits a person gets. Last I ever played my main file I was having to farm credits for my best characters because the game was swarming me with 3rd Rank promotion units and I wasn't able to wait for the credits on my units to come naturally. The final tier of credits, the ----IIX ones are awful but necessary to farm. Anyways, next update will be up tomorrow morning, and it's bonus update will probably be put up tomorrow afternoon depending on how things go on my side. ...I was wondering, since I can do some brute-force recording like I did with Avan's laugh, would the readers like me to record at least one line from each character so they can get a feel for how they sound? I know those who have posted so far have played this before, but it's for those who haven't heard the voice acting before. If so, it'll all be put into the third update, which will be quite large once it's done.
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Oct 27, 2019 00:52
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FoolyCharged posted:In all honesty if it's as much of a grind as it sounds to be from what I've heard, just cheat the spoiler in. It's not like it would hurt your enjoyment of the lp/game. It's a bad grind, but it seems really up to RNG more than anything. I never had to grind until chapter 9 of the game, which will be a long time away. Considering I'll have the thread picking our units, it may get screwy, but I can manage. I unfortunately don't know a thing about cheating on a PSP, but I'll wait until we get the spoiler character as part of the main story. I personally never got them in my gameplay and only know about them because I was briefly spoiled by the wiki when trying to find portraits to make my job easier. There's a unit we'll get much earlier that will let me breeze through the game after a certain point because this game has poor balancing. (I'm also replying a lot because two of the next three posts are really wordy and each have about 150+ images as well, so I gotta help run these to the next page quicker. Can't help the length due to still being in the tutorial.)
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Oct 27, 2019 03:31
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Omobono posted:Frankly, I think it's a matter of map design more than class design. I'd agree with this. A lot of the game and going for A-rank from what I've found is carefully knowing what distance you can safely push. In the early game it's very easy to run past enemies or take them down with headshots, and you usually have to run very far to cap any bases. Shocks really benefit from the later, smaller areas where you don't have to go far but you have to push through packs of enemies. Their defense is invaluable on maps with non-stop reinforcements since they can actually retaliate against everyone who shoots at them unlike the fifth class. Shocks are also a lot better at removing crouched enemies from the field since they do tons of point-blank damage, and don't even get me started on their promotions. Oh, and I'll have Update 2 up in just a minute. It's a long one.
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Oct 27, 2019 15:28
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Update 2: Get Schooled Last time on Military School Musical we were introduced to Avan Hardins, our protagonist and a brave but foolhardy kid. His brother’s death was classified by the military, so he decided to join the military to get the answers the hard way. Now the plot stops becoming so serious! But first, an intermission from the Gallia History Channel: Music: Desert Battle  Narrator: Still reeling from the recent invasion, Gallia now faces new troubles from within.   *I’ll briefly cover who the Darcsen are after this. Just know for know they’re discriminated against. Headlines Flash Onto the Screen: Cordelia Makes Surprise Confession Citzens Support Cordelia Cordelia Not Valkyrur *I’ll cover Valkyrur as well, don’t worry.  Narrator: United by their hatred of the Darcsens, a group of nobles forms the Gallian Revolutionary Army.     It does a big flourish with the music here. I suppose this should've been the end of the last update. So, small lore lesson: Darcsens: The Darcsen are an ethnic group that are often treated badly by others because it is believed that they invaded and nearly destroyed the continent of Europa in ancient history (they didn’t). Even thousands of years later, many people still carry this prejudice and believe Darcsens bring with them nothing but destruction and bad luck. The Darcsen, for their own part, refuse to retaliate to any sort of attack on them because they believe that returning violence for violence will tarnish their pride as a people and will confirm the notion that they are a violent race. - A good enough explanation taken from the IGN wiki. Valkyrur: Basically, this was an ancient race with what amounts to be magical technology made from ragnite, and they primarily used it in the form of giant gently caress-off lances that shoot lasers. Their race exists in small, hidden quantities to this day, and there were two notable ones in the last game. They’re anime as hell, and this is an anime game, so what did you expect? They also left behind a crap ton of propaganda that inspired the belief for hating Darcsens. Music: Royal Military Academy   : Your school—the Lanseal Royal Military Academy!His soundbite for his laugh plays here. I've already actually linked to a clip of his laugh, but I'll do it again, just so those only reading the updates get a chance: https://lpix.org/3567462/Avan_Laugh.mp3  : My butt’s still numb from the train ride. Soundbite: “Hm…” : It’s pretty cool to see it for myself after hearing all about it from you.: Leon… Soundbite: “I’ll do it!”  I captured this mid blinking frame so he looks incredibly smug.  Narrator: Lanseal Royal Military Academy: Curse you, Brixy- not more of your History Channel advertisements!     Some dudes shoot guns with surprisingly low recoil. It’s also not even using a sound effect moderately close to the same gun; for shame Sega, for shame.  A tank drives over whatever this is while a bunch of people stand stock still. They all seem to be lancers (a unit we havent seen yet) or scouts, judging by the symbols on their backs.  -- Music: Winter in Lanseal  Hey, recognize this place from the title screen? Well, this is where we're going to be for a long while.  The entire school is modeled on this screen, though it won’t let me scroll around and give you folks the tour yet. Double exclamation marks are an indication it’s a story event we have to see in order to progress the game. --  : But what kind of school requires you to wear a uniform to be on campus?Lots of them, actually.   : National security and blah blah blah, outsiders arrested on sight. Brutal!Avan, if you knew this, why did you even question the school not telling you about your brother’s death? They’re obviously paranoid as all get out! Anyways, I personally think this pose makes him look more like his brother. : Well, that’s the military for you. At least I got this loaner for the exams.I wonder if the military is this way now because they got shown up so badly in the first game by the militia. They were honestly pretty useless, and pretty much treated you like cannon fodder from what I remember.* Edit: I have just been reminded that the military was mostly wiped out, and the militia often took the stupidly hard missions anyways. Still, they ended up doing better than the army in the end.  This sprite. That face. It won’t be the last you see of it. : I think this calls for a dip into the Leon Files.Ah, here we go. One of Avan’s center pieces of his character…  : “Your greatest adversary lies within. Wage war with the weakness in yourself.” So, Avan carries this journal around with him that’s filled to the brim with Leon’s quotes that he refers to often. I think this might be another of the reasons people don’t like Avan, but it's not that great of an annoyance. It reminds me a bit of the Dwarven sayings from Tales of Symphonia, but instead of comedy, it's just for re-iterating Leon being “the bestest, bro” more than anything else. Not to say I don’t get it. I’m a younger child, and I understand the feeling of looking up to an older sibling. : All right, Leon. I’m gonna go do this! Wish me luck!--  Avan still has some really good expressions. I know I’ve made that face before at a test. It’s also a worthy bit of visual characterization that Avan never buttons his jacket even though most of everyone else we’ll see does. Also that one guy with the crossed arms never changes position at any point.  A girl walks up and Avan starts scratching his head. Because anime, the skirt is very short, because they always are on schoolgirl uniforms in these games. I don’t like short skirts, so I don’t really get it. It’s also the middle of January in northern Europa. Her legs have to be freezing off.  She leans over and speaks to him. The camera angle is unfortunate. There are more unfortunate angles, however.  It pans upwards, because of course it does. Leaving out the skirt shot.  She does this little bow thing, probably because her hands are full.  I doubt he's actually looking there since his head actually never moves from here to the next frame. This is probably another unfortunate angle.  I stopped on this frame in particular because it looked odd enough to and these cutscenes use a lot of in-between frame fading, so there’s a lot of blur when viewing it frame by frame. I also like how this makes it look like he hasn’t closed his mouth since he started talking.   Here is Cosette. If you couldn’t guess from her prevalence in this cutscene, she’s story relevant. She was also, y'know, on the cover. Also, where is the tip on that pen!?  *Someone coughs in their direction.*    His glasses reflect over with light. I’m sure you’ve caught wind of his personality already. Music: Everyday Life of the Class  Soundbite: “Honestly…” Wait, test? I thought they were studying. Anyways, this guy is a Darcsen. All their hair colors are like this dude’s.   : What’s your problem, man? You don’t have to be all rude about it!  : Supportive? Look, I came here because I was scouted.Soundbite: “Hmph!” : Thanks, but I don’t need support from some starry-eyed applicant. *Avan slams his desk and the screen shakes*  : Ngh!: Nnnnnngh!Cosette, you okay?  : C-Cosette? Are you okay? Hey, what’s wrong?!This is Avan's best portrait in my opinion.  *Cosette shakes, moving up and down slightly.*   Yep, this is Cosette’s main personality bit. She’s not that bad as a character, though. She just wants everyone to be friends, really.  : Wha--? How did that seem like a good idea to you?! Here is this dude’s best portrait. I’m withholding his name until the game tells us. Also, yes, but what a glorious train wreck this will be.  *Avan’s portrait shoves the other dude’s over.* : Hey! She was only doing it because of your jerk comment! *He shoves back.* Oh, dear. Cosette, this screenshot catching you mid-blink doesn’t do you much good.  : I don’t recall asking her to asphyxiate. Though it’s sounding more appealing-Whoa, dude, loving harsh. He, uh, gets somewhat better later. But, drat, I forgot how much of a jerk he was this early on.  Wait, I thought it already started? Whatever, random teacher lady. : Hmph.  At least Cosette is nice. This back and forth fighting will be a common reoccurence, by the way. *They get back to their seats.*  …Yeah, these two random dudes can be heard across the room. Quite a good many people suck in this game. This mostly serves to show that even here, some people are still prejudiced against Darcsens.  …But I suppose you can see why he acts like he does. Even if he is jerk for a while, I feel sorry for him. (Regardless, that one comment was still uncalled for, dude.)  Most of the time when this teacher lady shows up, her soundbite of “Hey!” goes with it. *The school bell can be heard. It’s a low melody coming from large bells in a tower across campus*   : Bleagh. I managed to get to all the questions, but I was mostly guessing.I’ve had tests like that. Especially when they don’t give you enough time to think.  Soundbite: “Ngh!” or something like that. Kinda sounds more like “Nyugh!” -- Music: Royal Military Academy  We’re back here after a tutorial on how to save. Yep, we’re still in the tutorial! --  I’m pretty sure this guy was in VC1, but they just called him Drill Instructor. He actually has a name in this game, though.  : You will now form teams of three and participate in simulated combat.Teams of three, huh? I wonder where they’re going with this… : Answer when called. Cosette Coalhearth! : Next is… Zeri! Yep, his name is Zeri. One of the sad things about Darcsens is that they’re typically stripped of last names as well. This isn’t always the case, but it applies for most of the time. Girls also tend to have names beginning with M while guys tend to begin with Z. Again, not 100% from what I know, but its still a common thing. : Last up… Avan Hardins!  Wow, all three of us? Who could’ve guessed this would happen!? It’s not like it was telegraphed or anything! : You are Team A!Wait, we’re the A-Team? Now that’s a surprise!   : Hey, we’re on the same team, Avan! Let’s give it or best shot!: You bet! All set to go, Zeri? : Just my luck I get the two of you dumped on me. Technically a valid sentence, I think, but it’s a bit odd. : Excuse me?! You care to repeat that, tough guy? : H-hey, guys, stop it! We should focus on the test now!  Are these the same bullets the Rebels use? Because this is basically how their bullets work. “We’re using BB guns folks, but they might still be lethal.” …This also isn’t really reassuring. : Don’t go dropping your guard just because this is a simulation.: As if! I’ve got plans, and none of ‘em involve dying here. : Hoo… I’m all nervous. I hope this goes well. See, I told you that you’d be seeing the book pretty often.  I have to seriously wonder if they did write all of these, or if they only stole them from a motivational book. There’s quite a few. : We’re going to win this! In a landslide! For sure!Yes, it’s spaced out just like that.  : All right, let’s go you two! Move out! : Okay! -- Music: Briefing  Finally! These cutscenes seem so much longer when you do them in text form. Anyways, here’s some actual combat to end today with. We’ll see more than three turns this time, and I doubt I’ll need to explain as much last as last time. All we’ve gotta do is get someone to capture the enemy base camp this time around, unlike last time which was an elimination mission. We’ll see more base camp missions, and unfortunately for the game, they’re much easier to cheese. I’ll be playing this one somewhat sensibly though.  If you look to the squad list, you’ll see that Zeri and Cosette have a different symbol than Avan, since they’re not scouts like we are. Zeri is a shocktrooper, and Cosette is an engineer. I’ll show you what that means when we get into the actual fight. I’ll deploy with what we have, since changing our units around right now makes no real difference (we can't even do that, actually.). Music: Practice Battle  I sure hope so, because otherwise I’ve wasted my time making portraits for all these characters we’ll never meet.  Jeez, dude. We’re not going to kill each other out here. It’s just another tutorial, but this time includes one of the more significant changes from VC1. Tutorial: Camps- Both sides have base camps marked by flags with stars on the map screen, and a long banner in the action mode. If your camp is captured, you lose immediately. Reinforcements can be spawned at any camp you own, and units standing within their range gain an HP regen bonus and a Defense bonus. You can also recall any unit for free instead of having to pay 1 CP to do so. Enemy bases with the swirl icon next to them connect to a camp in a different area and let you deploy there.* I added a lot to that tutorial, but those are all crucial details it’ll either tell us in installments, or never inform us of that I found out on my own. That last note is the new part worth keeping in mind. It’ll be a bit easier to understand in practice, but learning how to abuse the camp mechanics is how you breeze through a majority of the game. I’ll show some of it off in a bonus update that goes up with this update, but for now I'll play this like you'd be expected to.  Ugh, still 3 CP? I’m used to the near lategame where I have 10. Ah, well, let’s take a look at our stats first. We’re still missing a crucial mechanic that won’t appear until the end of this update, and we won’t even see it in action until the next update, but it’s worth looking now.  Ignore the fact that it says turn 2 in the corner. I pulled this from later in the recording. Zeri here has 40 less HP than Avan, 5 less shooting ability, and 100 less AP. Sounds pretty bad, right? (Well, ignoring the fact that Avan has nearly double HP from what he should have. If you asked me while I was playing VC1, I would’ve said that shocktroopers weren't that great as I didn’t find them to be much use there. In this game, they're a lot better. Shocktroopers differ from scouts in that they carry 3 grenades, and a sub-machine gun that sprays 20 bullets instead of 10. Early game, they hit like trains provided you’re not standing, and they provide amazing cover fire. Zeri is a bit beefier than some shocktroopers, but shocktroopers also have a high natural defense against bullets so it doesn’t really matter much in the end.  Compared to Avan, Cosette has nearly half the HP that Avan does, but 4 more evade. Her gear is a bit different though, since she’s an Engineer. Engineers now carry pistols instead of the same rifles as the scouts like they did in VC1. Pistols are less accurate than rifles, but deal a chunk more damage and have one extra shot. Ragnaid is field medicine stored in these little light bulb like thingies, and allows us to heal units. Engineers can also do it from a good distance away as well. (Missing is the Spanner, which only appears once a tank is present.) As a weird twist of fate however, Engineers no longer have the ability to repair sandbags or disarm mines. That was given to a different class we’ll see later. They can restock the ammo of anyone they touch though. Cosette is an alright Engineer, but later in the game she becomes really difficult to make use of for reasons I can't talk about yet. Here’s Avan’s stats from the first mission for reference- they haven’t changed at all regardless. Now that you’ve seen that, let’s get going!  : “Watch and learn.” Hm, you can see the waypoint flag in the distance. Zeri won’t be able to make it there in one round by himself, so let’s take out that guy behind those sandbags. Tutorial- Grenades Grenades and other explosives knock down sandbags. They’ll also launch people out of cover as well. However, their ammo is always limited, so be careful!  Grenades have a different aiming guide that shows the arc of the grenade. Unfortunately, nobody in this game throws impressively far, but then again, the grenade explosion is surprisingly short ranged. : “You’re through!”  Well, it didn’t take ‘em down, (he survived with 6 HP) but whatever, he was a shocktrooper and therefore beefier. I usually adjust my grenade throws a little bit inwards so that the enemies go flying away like you see here. Also, how is using grenades against each other in practice supposed to be safe even in the slightest? Anyways, let’s head for this sandbag with the last of our AP.  As you can tell from Zeri’s health, eating interception fire from both a scout and a shocktrooper at the same time can do a bit of a number on ya. Yet, it’s still so low it’s not that threatening for the time being. Tutorial: Capturing- If there are no enemy units in a camp, you can capture it. Enemies can capture it back if you're not defending it, though. That’s all you really need to know about it. Let’s get Avan moved up now. : “Moving out!”  I ate some bullets on the way there, and you can see how much a shocktrooper can do on their own. It still really isn’t that much, though.  This was just rude, but I did it anyways.  Legitimately, there is a reason to aim for the crotch or the foot in this game, and that’s if you have a weak enemy that you really don’t want dodging your attack. When someone’s evade procs they drop prone and usually make you whiff your whole attack, but if you run point-blank and aim low, you’ll still hit them while they’re laying down…You’ll see what I mean when it happens in the future.  I then run all the way to those sandbags in front of the flag and crouch on the other side. For some reason, this enemy scout isn’t doing that.  Lastly, let’s send Cosette in to deal with him. : “I got it covered!”  Since engineers have the same AP as scouts, she’s easily able to reach the flag. It’s also worth noting that engineer models are some of the most distinct given all the extra pouches and stuff. Cosette eats a few bullets, but they don’t really hurt as bad as the shocktrooper would've. I’m also trying to vault over the bags here, but I left Avan in the way, and I can’t vault past this enemy. I’m a goof sometimes.  There’s nothing special about the animation on the engineer guns, so I didn’t bother with a gif. I would like to note that this is the first shot on this guy, nearly point blank,and I whiff into his shoulder. Pistols have hilarously bad accuracy. Poor sap eats the next one right to the face though.   : “S-sorry…!”The delivery on this line is actually really great, despite just being one word. She really sounds like she’s wincing in reaction to seeing them go down. Kinda sad in a way, but also kinda hilarious in the “oh, that’s gotta hurt” it implies. With basically no AP left, I manage to vault the sandbags and just barely enter capture range on the flag. Cosette is standing at nearly at the edge of its capture range.  Easy.  The enemy gets their turn, but makes literally no action. The difficulty of the AI right now is incredibly low. As designated on the bottom, the rest of the enemies are all in area 2. I mentioned it in the first post, but the maps in this game are divided into different areas due to space requirements. It ends up having some fun uses though.  Tutorial: Transferring Maps- I won’t put any of this in bold considering it’s mostly my words anyhow. At any of our camps we can recall one of our units from the field using the “Standby” command without any CP cost. Away from a camp, it costs one CP to do so. Standing next to a flag also lets you input the command to standby immediately. The unit is then put in our reserves, which we can deploy from at any of the camps we own. Camps like the one we just took correspond to a camp in another map, giving us control of both and providing a method to change maps. Units put in standby also get an ammo refill, which is nice.  I’ve mentioned this already, but from the map screen you can use the “triangle” button to open up commands, and standby away from a flag. Since Cosette here is already within the range of the camp, I can put her on Standby for free. Let’s do that.  Welp, we deleted her. Sorry Cosette.  No, but really, if you look at the bottom of the screen you’ll see where we have one unit in our reserves now. Also note the Unit Max and Area Max. Unit Max is how many units we can have on the field overall, and area max is how many we can have in one area at a maximum. It’s a balancing limitation, but the enemy never really seems bothered by it and it never really goes higher than Unit Max 6 and Area Max 5 which is incredibly annoying on large maps.  Since Avan isn’t in the area range, (he’s just inches away), it’ll cost me 1 CP to put him on standby.  I actually opt to move Zeri up to the flag and put him on standby as instead.  This game loves its onomatopoeia effects.  Bringing Avan over would almost entirely waste our turn and I think I can manage with just these two for now.  I opt to send Zeri even though his AP is reduced from already taking action this turn. Tutorial: Downed Units- If your units hit 0 HP, they’ll go down. Run up to them with another teammate to automatically withdraw the fallen unit. After 2 turns, they’ll be ready for action again. If your unit is captured by the enemy or lies unconscious too long in bad weather conditions, they’ll have to be hospitalized. We’ll avoid fallen units, but it’s going to happen at some point. For now, let’s keep downing these enemies to pass our entrance exam.  I move Zeri on forward. There’s a lot of sandbags here, which means I might have to drop a grenade or two. To go easy on us though, none of them seem to be crouching thus far. Tutorial: Engineers- I already told you about these.  : “Enemy sighted!”You see that line off to the side? The enemy team was hiding a scout behind that first storage crate.  Zeri ran out of AP, so I can’t really go any further. Shooting this guy would be a bit of a waste, though. Range and damage falloff is really killer on shocktroopers as you can see by the 75 shots required to kill.  This dude is much closer, however…  Yeah, he didn’t stand much of chance. : “Enemy silent!” Let’s bring out Cosette now. She should be able to handle that scout giving us that mean look.   As she passes by Zeri, that little box icon floats up from him making a charging noise. It means we restocked his ammo, and since he didn’t use any grenades after coming to this area, that doesn’t mean anything. Woo!  The power difference on pistols is more noticeable later on, but we’ve got an extra shot to take this guy out than if we were using a scout rifle.  She then proceeds to land the first two shots for 25 damage a piece, and whiffs the last four off the left.  This scout then gets to do something we haven’t let any enemies do yet: counterattack. He lands 4 out of 5 shots on Cosette and brings her down to 116 HP. Ouch.  I move her over here and end my turn. That didn’t go as planned.   The enemy takes an action this time around, but seems to be moving a unit to the north around. Because we can’t see them, they just show up as *shuffle*s for their steps.  Oh, it’s a scout.  …A scout who promptly shoved off somewhere else though my units are acting as if they can still see him. Huh. Normally, if an enemy unit is moving in sight, it’ll cut to the POV of the nearest unit with line of sight to it like this.  He ends his move and the camera focuses on the scout, giving away his position. Yay for bugs!  This is one of the few bugs I know of in this game, and it’s only ever beneficial to you. It just seems to happen on a few maps where line of sight is questionable.  That question mark represents where we last saw him, even though the camera kept tracking. Anyways, the visible scout took his turn now.  : A-ah!He lands one shot that hits her in the noggin, hits one on the shoulder, and whiffs the rest. Luckily for us, being crouched prevents headshot damage, so she only took four HP for that.  : “Hah!”We get counterattacks too, by the way.  It doesn’t end well for the dude. Him going down sends our morale value up to 4. I’ll be honest, I don’t really remember what morale even does, aside from maybe increasing the chance to trigger potentials, that mechanic we haven’t seen yet. I usually never have it fall lower than 4, and it usually stays max when I play thanks to camp capturing shenanigans.   Let’s get this done with. The update’s taking long enough as is. Zeri, you're up.   : “I see you there!” I go to point blank the guy, only to find another scout hiding back here. Huh. You know what, I think I’ll try something out…  If you hit the “triangle” button while aiming, it switches shoulders while adjusting your aim a bit. The game doesn’t recognize me as being able to hit this, but I’m aiming using the models, not the reticule…  When you hit someone without a reticule on them, it shows a healthbar instead. The healthbar is a bit slow to update though, so this guy goes down with it showing half his health left.  That’s what I wanted!  Two for one! Oh yeah! Getting twofers is pretty hard to set up, and it really only happens often with one of the promotion classes designed for hitting in arcs. The enemies in this game hate to bunch up so that you can’t wipe them easily with mortar fire or grenades, making this exact scenario rare in my experience.  Low on AP, Zeri only gets to move a bit forward to end this action. He’s already done more than enough this round.  ...But he’s not done yet. That shocktrooper is within the flag’s range, meaning I won’t be able to capture it unless he’s gone. He’s crouched and he has a defense boost, so Cosette won’t be able to really outmatch him with her damage output.   I ended up a bit too close, so I blasted him from the other side of the sandbags. It’s not that great of a move, considering I could’ve just knocked him out of the camp’s range and captured it right from underneath his feet. I’ll show that off later since I did this for the sake of example.  Y’know, these guys are fellow students. Perhaps I shouldn’t be dropping grenades at their feet. …Nah. If the school allows it, it’s all fine, right?   Yep, he’s still in range, so I can’t capture it from him. Ah, well, I’ve still got another CP point thanks to the double KO earlier.  Let’s send in Cosette to finish this off. (Avan is fine where he is, doing nothing, don’t worry about him.) : “Here I go…!”   Yeah, why not? I won’t get to do this often in the late game.  : “Enemy down!” Cap that flag!  Avan, you shot one dude in the crotch. That’s all. (To be fair, that’s all I made him do because it would’ve wasted CP trying to bring him here.) Music: Reward  drat it.  ...I mean, yay, we passed! But still, drat. Didn’t even ace the entrance exam, easy as it was. You only have 2 turns for A rank on this mission, which is kinda harsh for new players as even wasting a bit of time is impossible. Welp, that’ll be a bonus update to look forward to in the very near future. -- Music: Days With Classmates  : I have all of you three of you on Team A as having passed the written exam.Wait, already? How short was it? I mean, I figure there’s a lot of applicants and this battle didn’t take that long, so that must’ve been some quick grading! : Guess that means you’re in. : It’s because you guys helped push me along.I haven’t noted it, but I know one showed up in a screen cap earlier in the update, but occasionally you’ll have little anime emotion signs pop up. Cosette’s got a sparkle effect when she says this. : No worries. Heh, the field examm was the only part I wasn’t worried about.Which is fair, you’ve had actual combat experience back in Mellvere.  : What aptitude are they screening?: Eh, guess we’ll find out soon enough.*The three head off*  Hey, this line is actually fully voiced by her. Normally it’s just soundbites for “Hey!” and “Quiet!”  : What does this thing tell you? I don’t get it.Using ragnite to test aptitude screenings? Huh. Apparently the stuff must really be a miracle material or something. Who knows, this might come up again later. *Time passes* Music: Everyday Life of the Class : I did it, Avan! I got placed as an engineer!: Is that what you wanted?  I’d like to note that she’s apparently so excited to be an engineer that she didn’t even change out of the engineer’s field uniform from earlier.  He kinda comes off as a bit condescending in his voice acting, but judging by the expression I think he’s just a bit more intimidated than anything. : What did you get, Zeri?: I placed as a shocktrooper. And you?He sounds so exhausted and fed up here in his voice acting. I don’t actually know if he was aiming for anything else though. : I’m not really sure. They told me I could be any unit class I wanted.How about that for plot contrivances! Yeah! As I hinted in the opening post, this is actually a mechanical choice. We can have Avan be any of the 5 classes: Scout, Shocktrooper, Lancer, Engineer, or Armor Tech. I won’t poll that choice yet until we’ve seen all the units in action. : Oh, does that mean you have an aptitude for all of them? That’s amazing! You know what Zeri? That was actually a pretty good burn right there. Do that more often than telling people to asphyxiate. : You jerk! You gonna be like this all the time?For a while, yeah. Can’t remember how long it’s gonna be, though. : Don’t you two start again! We all just made it in. Let’s try to get along.Cosette’s going to be breaking these two up for a while, have I told you that already? : Yeah. I guess you’re right. We’re in this together now, guys. This little voice line is so happy that it’s kinda hard to not  , even for a overly serious, hard-hearted person like me. : I came here with a purpose.: And I’ll tell you now, it isn’t to pal around with clowns like you.Why do you have to be such a jerk this early on, man? : I’m going to the headmaster’s office now for my class placement.*Zeri walks off.*   : Um…I kind of doubt it’s because of his glasses.There’s a bit of sass in this remark that’s hard to explain, but it’s actually kinda funny. Cosette’s better than I remember, actually.  : Ooh, but I should head off now, too. I’ll see you later, Avan.*She moves on as well.* : All right. Next stop, the headmaster’s office. Oh, wait, that’s why we were here. Hard to remember after all the we’ve been through.I’d forgotten how much dialogue this game has. At the point where I was at, I was getting about maybe one cutscene per mission while I was farming for commendations. -- Next Update: Even more , and only in our military strategy game.…But don’t worry, we’ll get to meet our class next time. And you’ll get to vote for stuff! (Bonus update up in a couple of hours, with improved graphics!) Extras:  Zeri has a frame on his anime glasses shine where it ends up like this. Must be why he thinks he’s too cool for this bunch of clowns.
The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 15:31
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HardDiskD posted:Also Gallia has a full-on desert in the roughly center of its territory. I really wouldn't worry about weather/climate in this series. Yeah, honestly. We'll come to find out later that Gallia is host to some strange things, including an indigenous hunting culture, of all things. (Not really much of a spoiler, but I'll leave it in blackbars. It's related to someone we'll meet. I'm only really worried about major plot spoilers.) e: Also, thanks for the heads-up, Psycho Knight. I could've sworn I fixed all of this, but whatever- I'll get to it. I've got a much more efficient style of doing this now that seems to reduce how much I have to patch these errors. e2: FoolyCharged posted:Hard truths, from below Yeah, I haven' t played VC1 in eight years at this point, so the plot is still vague in my head. I remember some of that, I just forgot that Welkin was part of the throwing themselves at the empire thing. I'll reference that in the edits as well, thanks for reminding me. The LP is intended to be informational, so if anyone reading notes a mistake, feel free to correct me- it's appreciated.. The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 18:29
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Bonus Update 1: I got an A in Blitzkrieg Class (Entrance Exam) Welcome back folks, in new and improved clearer visuals!   Now that we can see better, we’re going to make up for that sorry display from before and ace this mission. Knowing that I likely won’t get a chance to re-do the entrance exam, I used my time manipulation abilities (read: savestates) so we can get it right the first time.  The mission is the same as it was the last time, we can’t change unit placement, so let’s get on with it. Our main strategy will simply be hauling rear end across the training field, because ranking is based on the time it took to do the mission- not how efficiently you did it. A-Rank for the exam is 2 rounds at most, but I’ll show you how to do it in 1 round using an adaptable cheese strat. Music: VC 1 – Desperate Fight I figured since this was a bonus update and rather short, I’d link to some Valkyria Chronicles 1 music so you could get a sampling of it if you’ve never heard it before.  That we will, Avan.  First action is me immediately selecting Cosette. I noted before that the engineer units start with the same AP as scouts, and that's our key to beating this mission so quickly.  Ah, doesn't that look much better? Anyways, we're going to charge forwards.  Running over the hill without taking care of the shocktrooper has Cosette eat quite a few bullets, but since none hit her in the head, she'll be fine. Using her mobility now is crucial as her frailty will be a hindrance to the next step of this mission.  As you can see here, bullets can manage to do a lot of damage in this game if you keep taking hits. Since this scout isn't crouching, he's going to take a lot of damage as well.   : “Enemy down!”Point blank damage hurts a lot, folks. Cosette is nearly down after charging in, and if she'd taken a stray bullet to the head, she probably would have gone down.   Either way, we got what we came for. I go ahead and put Cosette on standby, though she's done for this update anyhow.  Now we put Avan on standby. Again, since he's within range of a flag I own, this doesn't cost anything. We need him now because he runs fast and has a grenade.   : "Okay, let's go!"And now we can just pop him into the next map. Later on in the game, playing "Standby Pinball" as I call this, is very useful. Constantly hopping fresh units across maps allows you to cover great distances and constantly thwart enemy assaults. You can also call it "Base popping" if you want, it's also a snazzy name. (I'm sure I'm not the first to arrive at this strategy, this is just what I call it.) Heck, when their AI priorities improve just a bit later in the game, we can use this to manipulate them into wasting their turns as they try and reclaim control of their bases. For now, let's press the advantage with Avan.   The amount of AP we have left is crucial here, so I make sure to save it by cutting corners as close as possible. We're not going to bother fighting these two guys, so Avan's going to take a few bullets.  As we run out of AP, we meet up with this guy. You'll need to take him down in this action, otherwise you'll end up taking too much damage running past him. The Gallian-1's marginally better accuracy needs to pull through here for me.  Here's to hoping this works!    : "All-right!"On the first two shots, too! drat, good on you Avan. That's what we needed.   We take another turn with Avan, the end right ahead of us.    On the way there, I need to make sure I jump at least two sandbags to save AP. Now it's time for the master strat.  Grenades have incredibly short range.   As for you, shocktrooper...       Long story short? Just blast 'em out of range.  Easy. (For later missions when you'll need to hold the base, just pop in a shocktrooper and sit them next to a remaining sandbag (if-existing). If not, just pop an armor tech instead, fix the sandbags, and block the camp with them. This is strategy is generally effective on most maps, especially any maps that include reinforcements if you include the above defensive technique.) The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 00:09
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Solitair posted:I still need to finish the old LP of the first Valkyria Chronicles. I'd go and do that when you get some time if you're worried about spoilers. I don't have any spoiler restrictions on VC1 for this thread, so it may get spoiled as time goes on. You don't have to worry about missing out on this LP either, since we'll be here for quite a long time. This is a long game, especially when you don't know exactly everything you're doing. My original file still has 46.5 hours clocked in on it, and I never reached the end of it. Psycho Knight posted:I honestly can't remember what characters I relied on in VC2. Avan was positively not one of them and neither was Cosette. I don't think I used Zeri either. I know of one shocktrooper that I used a lot, but we haven't been introduced to her yet. I only ever used Avan out of the necessity of him being able to be the tankiest scout alive and him being the commander unit. Zeri has potentials to be an absolute defensive beast (I still didn't use him that much), but I'll be covering that in our next update when we truly meet everyone. Cosette is unfortunately very  as a unit for reasons I will keep concealed until later. She's nice and it makes me sad I don't use her all that much personally, but it'll be up to the thread when I start the voting.As for the shocktrooper you're alluding to, I think I know exactly who you're talking about. She's great when you first get her, and only gets more ridiculous with promotion. Psycho Knight posted:I know the tank commander is a loving beast in terms of gameplay, just as an example. I'd go out of the way to say that they're the best unit in the game for reasons we'll see later, mostly once we reach a particular chapter. Tank type B + Captured AT cannon, here we come!
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Oct 28, 2019 02:13
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Mathwyn posted:Things to say, many of them Tolerance for anime hijinks, a preference for lighthearted/slice of life stories, and more focus on character driven story rather than plot driven story is why end up with a rather mild opinion of the game. VC1 had a good amount of character development, but it was mostly on the five, then four main characters plus the villains. It makes for a tighter story, sure, but you end up with all of these units who you only really get story in the form of their character bios. VC2 has its problems in places, and being a negative person I'll probably harp on them a lot, but I try to point out the parts of the game I do like. (Some of that coming up with the next update as well.) If I have time after this LP, I may take up VC3, but that's a long time from now. Never played it, never seen anything about it or VC4. All I know is that it plays better than this one. Keeping that under spoiler bars is fine enough. I never really thought about it too much, but that really does make sense, now that you say it. Doesn't improve my opinion of the school any though. I don't know if it's ever mentioned when Lanseal was actually established, but given World War technology, the size and prestige of the campus suggests it's been around for a while. I forget, did any of the battles we see in VC1 take place in southern Gallia anywhere near the Lanseal region? I think most of it was up north due to the desert and the ragnite mines until it migrated towards the capital when the Empire started making the final push on Randgriz.
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Oct 28, 2019 03:06
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theshim posted:Interception fire in VC2 mostly just tickles for almost the entirety of the game. That was one of things that really caught me off guard when playing VC3, enemies actually hurt again there Interception fire does get real bad later with Machine Gunners and Gatling Bunkers, but yeah, for most of the game it's basically a tickle. Especially when we're talking about armor techs and their promotions. They can eat most of anything to the face without taking damage and are basically required for a story mission in the late game, at the end of chapter 8. Avan's only advantage is his health and commander benefits. He can be a capable member of any class, but he hardly ever shines. FoolyCharged posted:If memory serves it's home to the kloden wildwood where you take on jager for the first time and capture the imperial supply base. Ah, jeez, I remember the Kloden Wildwood now, bombing all those trees and especially Jager and his surprises. Jager was a pain all the way until the end- I remember being stuck on the last mission involving him for quite a while. I'd take a look at VC4, but my pockets are a bit empty these days. I'll probably give it a look sometime if I can find a nice LP of it somewhere. HardDiskD posted:Speaking of, is there any particular LP that you recommend? The one in the LP archive has mostly been eaten by blip.tv getting shut down. I didn't know the archive one had been down, but I suppose I should have figured that since it was done in 2008 or something on the original release of the game. I don't know of any, so I'd also be interested in knowing if there's a good LP of it out there somewhere, perhaps just to jog my memory about it a bit more. Checking on the Master List, it seems like there was a finished one about 4 years ago here, don't know if it's any good or not: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3698184. (Hey look, we've almost managed to push this to the next page! After update 3 and its supplementary update with all the relevant character info, most updates should be a good bit shorter than this, hopefully, but they'll take a bit longer because I don't already have them nearly done. Update 3 and all that goes with it will be up sometime midday tomorrow!) The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 05:33
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Update 3: A Merry Band of Personality Issues Music: Autumn in Lanseal  Cripes, these money rewards are awesome. So last time, we were- …Wait, wrong file. Music: Winter in Lanseal  Yeah, that looks more like it. Anyways, last time we went through a lot of to meet a nice girl who wants to be a doctor and a jerk named Zeri who called us a bunch of clowns (also some other stuff). We passed our entry exam and Avan was determined to have the power of free choice.Now we get to go meet the principal and endure even more before we get to do tactical things again. This whole update shall be , but there’s going to be a good bit of mechanical stuff towards the end.But first, anime. --  Hey, look, the game did the sound effects for me this time.  That haircut is an odd one. I’ll forgive it because you have good facial hair.  We aced it with as perfect a score as you can get, by the way.   : I am the headmaster here, Laurence Kluivert. It’s nice to meet you, Avan.: Hmm. It seems your exam results place you in Class G. He sounds rather disappointed in a way. We’ll probably see why later. : I hope you’ll make the best of your time here at Lanseal, my boy. Right, we were here to interrogate him after all. Better get to that part. : Is there something else, son?   This place is pretty irresponsible in all honesty. We’ll see, later. : Your brother was a student of great promise, and a true patriot.: He stood out amongst his peers in intelligence, strength, and leadership. This line sounds very rehearsed. Makes you wonder how often Laurence here has been in this situation before.  So...the government is paranoid, but I suppose it makes logistical sense. : But just before his death, he was appointed to a special mission.: A special mission? Wait, you already knew he was on a special mission? This seems dumb, but I’m having trouble pointing out exactly where.   …Was that it? Really? Anyways, this doesn’t tell us much since we don’t know how long it was between these two events. Figuring out anything about Leon right now aside from “he was the bestest” doesn’t seem likely.  Just the one? I mean, Gallia’s like the size of the Netherlands, but I’d figure you’d at least have two since you’ve got so much ragnite. : The students here study and train tirelessly to keep their nation safe.: That was Leon’s aim in accepting the mission that cost him his life as well.Well, it’s been confirmed that Leon died on the “special mission”, but we easily could’ve figured that. I figured Avan would’ve, but his surprise reaction suggests otherwise.  I want info!  Maudlin? So either it means sentimental or drunk. I’m going with drunk, just because. : …: Gallia’s people are living in fear and anguish in the face of rebel atrocities.: I pray you will grow to become a powerful force for justice, Avan.I mean, he’s already got twice the HP of a standard unit plus the power of free choice.  Avan’s not particularly excited about this. I wouldn’t be either.  Outside the dorms…  …Now we’re inside the dorms. I don’t know why he’s already got trophies sitting up, but whatever.  For my first crack at dorm living, it’s not so bad!It’s still quite messy. Also, why the heck do you have a soccer ball with you? I could also nitpick the anachronism of it having the black and white style, but it’s anime, so I’m not going to bother at this point.   Yeah, I would be too- wait, that was all during the same day? Sheesh, that’s rough. Better get a good night’s sleep in before classes start up tomorrow!--  Well, there’s not much to say here right now. After a mission from now on, we’ll usually end up here. We get access to some more options later, but for right now we just sleep to progress the story. --  Better be careful not to screw it up on day one. Leon if you please… I told you we’d be seeing these a lot.  That…uh, “king”? Hm. This one sounds really self-important.  : I came here to find out, but so far it’s all still a big blank.Well, it’s not nothing. We were pretty definitively told that he got taken out in the “secret mission”, but then again, that was pretty easy to figure out on our own.  Hey, now this actually sounds like a reasonable approach! I like it! : Maybe he’ll tell me more about that mission once I’ve earned a rep.: Now that that’s settled, I’m stoked to get started! Next stop, Classroom G!Soundbite: “I’ll do it!” One vertical fade later…    : Who shows up late to class on the first day?! Dude, didn’t you say that you weren’t “going to screw it up on day one?”  Hey, look, a random guy! I’ll have to remember to make him a portrait at some point.  Easy enough. : Got it. Thanks man!Thanks, stranger dude!  *Avan is trying to catch his breath-* This distortion is part of the ROM, not my recording. I’ll have to go check if it was this way on the physical version.  He nearly runs into these dudes, managing to keep balance as he swerves out of the way.  He hardly stops when saying this. It’s hard to get a non-faded frame.  : Wooo hoo!   Oh, hey, it’s some girl now? She’s out of breath too, by the way.  Well, at least its not an attempt at a skirt-shot like it usually does.    Avan_bwuh: Woaah, ugh! Avan barely manages to catch onto the door to stop from running past it.  Well, he’s out of AP for the round.  *The tower bells are ringing.*  *Someone comes up behind him, also out of breath.*  (Ignoring a skirt shot that came before this )On that note, hey, Cosette!  …Because anime.   Sounds smart. : But then I was so full, I kind of nodded off. I got here just under the wire.That’s why I don’t eat that much for breakfast- I get full really easily. I’d also complain that the bell had rung before she made it here, but she’s nice and I’m not going to be mean. My teachers were strict enough to shut the door in your face if you were right on the bell.  Speaking of nice, here’s someone who isn’t. : Oh hey, it’s Zeri. What do you mean what are we doing here? We got put in Class G.: What?! Ungh, of course I HAD to be placed with you.I’m sure some of the readers sympathize with this statement.  Well, we should’ve seen this coming considering both of you had cutscenes and your both on the box alongside Avan.  Huh? *There’s a bit of mumbling amongst the people in the room.*   Oh, no, not you. Imagine the one of the most haugty, rich girl voices you can think of.   I’ll be up front, I like Avan more than this lady. : Me? I’m Avan Hardins. I’m in Class G, starting today.At least he tries to make a good impression.  This encounter partially makes no sense, and we’ll see why a lot later on. Also that “hmph” is as filled with contempt as you get. I can’t deny her voice acting at least.   Before you ask, yes this did start with another scroll-up and skirt shot.  Hey, we aced that entrance exam!   : It’s the unalloyed truth. You haven’t even produced a class chair.: Your sustaned presence at this academy shames me. You stain Lanseal’s name! Same here.  Shy girl’s voice: Um… Shy guy’s voice: Hm…  : Hmph. Not a one. You see? Just as I said, Class G is a— Music: Are We a Spoiled Class?   : I just got so angry listening to her talk, my hand just shot up! I repeat,  She’s actually quite wrong in this regard- Avan does manage to be a good enough leader. Though I do wish Cosette was our leader. : What? What’s your problem, talking down to everybody like you own the place? : Please. You’re barely fit to follow, let alone lead. That takes an elite.What is this, Fire Emblem?  : There are few things more pathetic than the pedigree of a self-styled elite.Hey, Zeri stepped in for us! See, I knew you weren’t that bad. : Y-You impertinent beast! A Darcsen, presuming to mock ME! I’ll have your—*Footsteps show up from behind.*  Oh, hey, it’s Brixy again.  The way he says this is almost like its out of a MGS game. : Juliana. Is there a reason you’ve chosen to visit us today? *She walks off.* Finally. *The tower bells ring again.* : All right, let’s begin today’s lesson, shall we?Yeah, he’s our teacher. Just wait. Music: Theme of Class G   I think that counts as a burn. Let me look that up. Oh, it just means “to enroll”? Huh. Brixy, why would you be surprised? Avan is an obvious anime protagonist- of course he would’ve enrolled. Whatever, I’ve actually learned something today.  Here, Brixham introduces all three of them in their full view, letting you see the height differences. I skipped his one-at-a-time introduction because you already know who they are, hopefully.  Ah, yes, the true nature of Avan. : I’m glad to be here, and I’m sure we’ll all get on great.That’s some odd phrasing.  …And again begins the Leon fan-wagon.  Soundbite: “Hmm…” An incredibly androgynous one at that.  Soundbite: “Hmm.” These are both characters we’ll meet soon. I like both of them. : What, you all knew him? We’ll never hear the end of it, will we? : Let’s return to your introductions. Cosette? Hey, I do that too! Huh, I explicitly remember not liking Cosette that much, but I’m having trouble remembering why. (Well, aside from one thing I won’t tell you yet.)  At least he’s to the point about it.   I have no loving clue why this little bit is here because it makes very little goddamn sense to me, if any. You’ll see why in a bit. : Avan will serve as class chair. You signed up for it, dude. Honestly, this sounds more like Cosette’s line than it does Avan’s- it feels off.  drat, Brixy. This line is quite rude, but I can’t help but laugh at how up front he is. The semi-patronizing smile is what really makes it, though. He's really wrong in saying this, though. Most of the class members are actually good at what they do. : An ambivalent newcomer is a vast improvement.I don’t know if ambivalent describes Avan well. : Isn’t that kind of harsh? How does a teacher say that about his own class?!: It’s the truth. Lanseal has no need for those cadets unwilling to try.I’d honestly say most of the kids here are trying their best, but it’s their personality issues that becomes the problem. : Organizing and outfitting the squad for training exercises will be your job.: You’ll have to learn the ropes between classes. You get no special allowances.…So what you’re saying is that Avan is royally screwed. Yeah, this sucks, but I guess a hero type like him would put up with it.  This is one of Avan’s positive qualities. The guy, though gullible, oblivious, and rash as he may be, the guy will stand up for others. How well he handles this, is up in the air though. : You can start right now.: The class needs a squad name. : Here a Lanseal, each class is also considered to be a single squad. Me neither, dude. Well, I get it, but it’s not really used for much. I think it’s for online information or something, but who actually plays this online?  Well, that’s immersion breaking. Either way, we can name our whole squad, with a six letter cap. This time, I opted to go with a creative name, “Squad”, but in the end, I leave the choice up to you, thread readers. Six letters, no profanity or anything really obnoxious. Silly names are still fine though- I’d name it Awful (which is appropriate), or Squat, Squid, or even something in Cyrillic, I don’t care. (I’ve got the Cyrillic option because it’s a EU copy of the game.) We can also add titles to our name as well, one before and one after, though I never bothered before. We get a few starting ones, so wait to see those in a minute if you want to try and make a joke name. My first playthrough, I went with "Sevens" after the team from VC1, because I’d just come off of playing it when I picked this up.   Luckily, we don’t have to do any of this. There’s no class simulation or anything, just missions and events.   Yeah, they really want you to use him, so I can’t really pass this deal up. He has to be on the battlefield for this, so we’re never going to stop seeing Avan. Music: Winter in Lanseal  Gah, finally. Sometimes this game thinks it’s a visual novel. Normally I don’t mind, but that results in a lot of work on my end.  : These are today’s items of note.Soundbite: To begin, here is today’s news. Hello, Homeroom. We’ll see this screen every single day we wake up from bed, so get used to seeing it. For most updates from now on, this will be what we open with. System: You earned the title “Promising” - “Dream” - “Light” - “Holy” - “Fairplay” …? - “Elite” …Take that, Juliana? I guess? The hell did I do for that? I don’t even have that on my main file...?– “Sprinters” I don’t even know what all of those were for. Seriously. I was never able to figure out how to access them until yesterday, and I made it 45 hours into this game.  Ah, well, I’ll put up a list at the end of the update. If anyone wants to know what they’re for, ask and I’ll look. Tutorial: Game Progress- You do missions. Once you do enough Key Missions, you’ll move onto the next month. Extra missions don’t progress the story. There’s also some events on the maps too- only the ones with double exclamation marks are required to progress.  Alright! We’ve got a lot going on it seems. Here’s the Briefing Room. We take our missions from here. We’re missing three other locations right now because we’re still kinda in tutorial mode, but we’ll get them soon. For now, we’ve got some events to see, designated by the exclamation marks, and some tutorials to view, designated by the books at the training grounds. I’ll quickly get the tutorials out of the way, mostly word for word: Tutorial: The Hospital- Units that have fallen in battle and been hospitalized (captured or left too long) cannot be deployed for the next 3 missions. Be sure to aid fallen units to avoid losing key squad members for a crucial upcoming mission. Twybil’s Note: This has only ever happened to me once outside of savescumming. Tutorial: Potentials- Sometimes special abilities known as “potentials” are awakened in units during battle. These reflect their personality and provide bonuses or negatives based on certain conditions. Twybil’s Note: These are really more important than base stats, so you’ve got to watch out. By completing a character’s storyline, you’ll usually improve their potentials in some way or another. I’ll list all of these in a separate post so that this update doesn’t end up being so long on its own. Tutorial: Orders- As class chair, Avan can spend CP to give commands known as “orders”. These have effects upon the battlefield, often providing beneficial buffs to your units.  Twybil’s Note: From experience, most are useless. It rescues a downed unit for 2 CP. I don’t think it even has one of these flashy animations. Yeah. I’ll show you what I mean later. Alright, time to meet the rest of our crew so you thread readin’ folks can decide which of these folks we bring along. To the Mess Hall we go! Music: Everyday Life of the Class  --   It’s unfortunate what time will do to a word.   : I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced yet, dude.  : Wherever there’s news, there’s Netzel!Lotte runs her own newspaper, says “dude”, a lot, and has hilarious voice lines based on newsline headings. She's got a snaggletooth and her storyline is fun. She also makes a good sniper from my experience.   : Um… My sister is a shocktrooper here, too. Nice to meet you.Nichol is a good kid and a good scout, even if he’s a bit shy. He reminds me of myself in high school before I became a hard-hearted jerk. I’ve used him a lot in the past, and I’m not adverse to having him on the team again. He's a cool guy.   : The thought of serving under your command is… Bah.Was part of my reserve team, mostly because his potentials are hard to work with. He’s from the Empire, actually, and he’s seemed an interesting character. Wouldn’t mind giving him more of a chance since he hits hard, for a scout.   : Hee hee… Your back’s wide open, Hardins. You could get shot…Oh, and her portrait is always off screen like that. Get used to it, I guess? *Edit: I have been informed that Melissa is not, in fact, a Darcsen. Apparently I had it wrong all these years. Still, most of the other characters don't have issues with Darcsens, so I still don't get that scene. Thanks goes to resident forum poster theshim.*  : Don’t let her get to you, dude. That’s just her way of saying hi.*See above edit.  : Us scouts are super mobile and we’re good at sighting enemies, too.: I’ll remember that. It’s good to know that I’ve got you guys with me!-- One down, four more to go. Yeah, this’ll be a long one.    : You’re Hardins, yes? A moment, please.: Huh? You look familiar… Are you in--? : But I though I still ought to introduce the class shocktroopers.  Yep. Anisette is related to Edy Nelson from VC1, and follows suit in being bubbly, upbeat, and a shocktrooper. Her voice lines are actually pretty funny and her potentials make her possibly the best shocktrooper available. No complaints with her, really.   : I trust we’ll get along famously.Marion’s a noble. I can’t really say too much about her without going into her storyline, but she’s a useful shocktrooper with some potential. She was mostly a base-defender in my playthrough, given her tendencies. She talks very fancy and uses sophisticated words.   : Hmph.*He walks off.*  : And there he goes. That was typical Erik. Erik Kampmann. : He can’t even spell the word teamwork, and he’s always getting in fights.Huh.  : We shocktroopers’ stamina and firepower make us the nemeses of foot soldiers.: Try to remember that if you have any intention of commanding this squad.Right, for some reason, Franca doesn’t even introduce herself fully. She’s Nichol’s sister and a pretty useful shocktrooper if my records tell the truth. Her schtick is her strictness and her voice lines are somewhat fun as well. : Heh, leave it to me, and I’ll leave the firefights to you!--  Moving onto the Grounds. --   : Getting there! You guys are all in my class, right?  : These guys are Class G’s lancers.Uh, you do realize the others are girls, right? “Guys” is relatively neutral at this point, but still.  Tristan is basically your Largo from VC1, except he’s not a special unit. He only has one negative potential from what I’ve seen, but I just didn’t use him all that much...?  : I want this war to end so we can all get back to playing ball already.Rene’s a tomboy, and also a cool person. All the lancers are cool, really. Her voice lines are sports based, specifically soccer. She was my backup lancer, but I remember her accuracy never being the best. She picked up a lot of armorslaying potentials, though.   : I look forward to serving with you!Noel’s into the idea of being a soldier, and she holds her own as a good lancer. I found her voice lines to be pretty fun and upbeat while her story's nice too. Her model even comes with the beret. Again, all the lancers are cool.   : If you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always around.Coleen, like all the lancers, is good people. She somehow ended up becoming a mortarer, which meant I never got to see all of her story because I tend to ignore mortar weaponry over old fashioned bullets. Her soundbite here is “Got a second?”, but I don’t know why. She’s nice in general.  Actually, they aren’t. Well, they are, but not for long. Lancers are unfortunately not as useful as you’d figure in this game, given that they’re people carrying giant, spear shaped rocket launchers. Still, when you’re low on other options and you need a tank or gatling bunker down, they’re the ones for the job.  : We also wear heavier armor to shield us from explosions.Yeah, but it also has less defense in the back, if I'm remembering right. Either way, lancers are pretty beefy in health and defense, but there’s another class better than them at that. : Good to know. And good to know I’ve got you guys in my corner!--  To the hospital we go! If you noticed from the screenshot at the grounds, the hospital has the engineer symbol on the roof- that’s who we’ll find here. --   : Mm? Hey, it’s the new kid. Over here, Avan!: Yo! You guys are, er… : We’re Class G’s squad of engineers.  : I look forward to great things from you, Avan!Randy’s an interesting engineer. Stat-wise, most of the engineers aren’t much to talk about, but I used him as a reserve engineer and somehow managed to see his whole story though I don’t use engineers too often. He’s interesting- that’s all I can really say for now.   : I-I’ll try my best not to get in the way!Raymond’s the gentle giant type. He’s big, he could hurt people, but he chooses to help instead. He’s a cool guy though, and I never saw his whole story. Not much else to say, considering most engineers are rarely different.   : And I have to say, I’m not impressed. Hayseeds like you aren’t my type.I’m sure quite a few people don’t like Sofia for reasons we might see, but I suppose the case is similar for a lot of the characters. She’s got  : Ha ha! Poor Magari is terribly shy, but she’ll warm up to you soon.: I hope so, because that was more than a little awkward.Magari was my main engineer until her promotions put her in a different role- Sofia took over from there. Magari’s neat, but one of her potentials is a bit straining on her usability and her max health is really low. Still, I tended to like using the Darcsens when available, and she also reminds me of my younger self in a way.  : We can use ragnaid to heal people from afar.With promotions, they can heal from stupidly long distances. They’re always in a support role, though. : I’ll bank on that! Thanks in advance for keeping us all alive!-- One more, and we can put a lid on this update filled with . We go to the courtyard! Ignore the fact that I did these out of order and tried to fix that without you noticing my editing! --   : Yo, Avan! What’s up, man?: Hey, you guys are from my class. You’re… Who are you again?  : I’m Joachim Osen, man! These guys here are all Class G’s armored techs.  : It’d be great if you remembered me. Or at least just the name.I feel real bad for Morris because I’m the kind of person who gets forgotten easily, and I uh… never used him. Like, ever. drat, that makes me feel like a jackass. Not much to say about him, aside from that his initial potentials are awful. Sorry, dude.   : I look forward to seeing you prove yourself worthy of command.Alexis is an incredibly androgynous guy, be not fooled. His voice acting is actually pretty good in this respect. Alexis is mostly a serious person, and I didn’t really give him much of a shot until halfway through the game where he turned awesome with potentials. I owe a few map victories to him, and his story is nice as well.   : Pay no mind to me. …I’m a Darcsen.Mischlitt was my primary armor tech, primarily because I like using the Darcsen characters. Her potentials are actually great, her story is good enough, and, well… her useful potential procs often. She does her job well, and when push comes to shove, that’s really what I need. She’s also the only girl on the AT team that we’ll have for a long time, if you were wanting to run an all female squad.  He means this in the literal sense. They have shields and wield warpicks in a game with rocket launchers. Yep. Their shields block most of anything for 100% protection, and they get mind-bogglingly tough throughout their promotion trees. Hell, just wait to see what weapons they get later, because it's ridiculous. : We’re also trained to safely disarm land-mines.Yeah, the techs stole that and sandbag repair from engineers for whatever reason. It makes the techs marginally more adaptable, but also hurts the usage of engineers. Regardless, I’ll need at least one, if not two AT’s for later in the game because, ye gods, do they make sure that you need them.  Oh, right, Joachim. I, uh, never used him, really. What I saw of his story wasn’t enough to convince me to use him, but judging the characters at first glance is usually bad so we’ll see where he fitts in later. His potentials aren’t bad, but I never liked him enough to use over my other units. : Hah, I think I got it. Thanks for the intros. It’s good to meet you!-- Ah, we’re finally done with today’s update, almost. This update ends here for now, since I’ll need to give my viewers a chance to pick out their favorite units to use first. Those who get used first, get their stories seen the earliest, so keep that in mind. I’ve already weighed in with my progressively biased opinions on the matter, so I’ll leave it to the thread. Participation: Cast up to 6 votes total, positive or negative, towards any of the characters in our class. Keep in mind that Avan, Cosette, and Zeri’s stories are tied to the main story, so they don’t matter. Also, Avan will always be part of the group unless I’m met with incredibly overwhelming opposition because he’s too good mechanically not to use. I will also always have at least one of each unit class, so also that’s an override if necessary. For example vote: Nichol, Anisette, Marion + 2, Randy -1, Joachim -1. Group Name + up to 2 titles chosen from. Six character limit, nothing explicit. See the below test post for list of all currently owned titles and character info. But wait, there’s more! Potentials have been mentioned a lot, and there’s also that list of available titles I promised. I have a list of both that I’ll put up in this separate update because this one has gone on too long, but be sure to check it if you’re voting for characters. Our next two missions are only training missions, but one is based on mobility, the other on clearing all enemies. The next update will be both of them, back to back, and perhaps more. Updates this long will be rare from here on out, just saying. --> Character Info and Titles <-- The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Oct 29, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 19:07
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theshim posted:
...Really? Cripes, I could've sworn she was. After checking to see if she triggers Zeri's Darcsen Pride and then taking a quick look at the wiki. ...I guess she isn't. Huh. How the hell did I misread that? I could've sworn she triggered it, but I guess I jumped the gun a long time ago based on her hair color and it carried over all the way until now. I suppose it explains why the ribbon in her hair isn't in a Darcsen pattern. I'll, uh, just go and edit that then. -- Anyways, I credited you for that, hope you don't mind. I can't really help the information overload if I'm to let the readers pick out units, since I want them to have access to any information they'd need on the subject. I honestly only expect people to skim a lot of it, which is fine by me. The only possible substitute I've ever had for Mischlitt is Alexis, and that's because he's really effective at destroying that one particularly annoying type of armored unit we won't see until later. Mischlitt rules. The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Oct 29, 2019 |
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Oct 29, 2019 01:31
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We presently have these votes: Primary Units: Marion - 4 Mischlitt - 3 Helmut - 2 Noel - 2 Sofia - 2 Franca - 1 -- Melissa - 1 Erik - 1 Reiner - 1 Coleen - 1 Team Names: Team Bad - 1 Team Anime - 1 Voting will stay open for 2 more days, at most. Still plenty of time to get a unit you've taken a liking to on the board, or to resolve the team name tie!
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Oct 29, 2019 03:14
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We presently have these votes: Primary Units: Marion - 4 Mischlitt - 3 Melissa - 3 Helmut - 2 Lotte - 2 Noel - 2 -- Sofia - 2 Franca - 1 Erik - 1 Reiner - 1 Coleen - 1 Anisette -1 Joachim - 1 Team Names: Team Bad - 1 Team Anime - 2 Team Anime is in the lead! I'll keep this open until this evening is over, then. After that, it'll be about two to three days for the next update. E: A small formatting edit, because I can't count to six, apparently. The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 29, 2019 14:04
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Alright, the voting's done for now, expect a new update within a few days (1-3) or so. Our team shall be Team Anime! Our six frontliners for the time being shall be: Marion, Mischlitt, Melissa, Helmut, Lotte, and Noel! -- Quite a lot of scouts in this group, but I'm not complaining- this will be a great offensive team. If I need an engineer, it will end up being Sofia, as she had the highest (and only votes) of the engineers. Healing won't be too necessary this early on, so its up to chance on my part if we do see her any. Something I haven't decided yet is whether I should poll for units after every set of battles, or should I wait until the end of a chapter to do so. Either is fine with me, but I'm leaning towards polling at the end of chapters. If anyone has an opinion on that, feel free to give it!
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Oct 30, 2019 02:07
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Psycho Knight posted:Unit voting should definitely be per chapter or every few chapters/game months. Every mission is way too much. I think there are 15 or 16 main story missions in VC2, plus 30 or 40 "free" missions which sometimes may as well be story. Not to mention extra and character missions. I'm not sure how many missions you intend to show in LP form. That was my thinking as well. I'm probably going to every mission possible in LP form, though some may be reduced to a matter of short updates, such as the later training missions that pop up each month. I enjoy writing out the strategies and such I take for each map, so even if that's a bit of an undertaking I'll still have fun with it anyways. (Well, aside from the missions that are purely a pain more than anything.) Strategies for A-ranking some missions may be written down to short asides with a few screenshots if they're relatively uninteresting, but I'll be going for Not to worry about scout supremacy though, since Marion and Mischlitt have higher votes than the scouts I'll be trying to use them a bit more often than I normally would. Obviously, Mischlitt might be a tough pick for the Maneuvering Exercise, but she'll be perfectly usable for the Combat Exercise. I'll try to give Noel some attention as well, even though lancers are pretty situational.
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Oct 30, 2019 04:49
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cokerpilot posted:Are you planning on 100%ing this? I ask because as a person who owned this game and really wanted to do that, I found that way lied pure madness. Hell even trying just to get 100 percent in the scrapbook is a nightmare that I was sadly never able to complete thanks to one particular achievement involving money. I may attempt straight 100% later on, but we'll have to see as time goes on. For now it's mostly just a casual completionist playthrough where I also show how to do A-ranks. It really depends on how I feel by the end of all of this. I've never had problems making money, but something is telling me that this achievement is probably some ridiculous amount, right?
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Oct 30, 2019 18:54
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Psycho Knight posted:The Graduation Album medal (not the Graduation Medal, which is different) requires you to get 20 Medals and 10 million Dct. Farming missions that can be completed in 1 turn only pay out about 18k I think. There may be faster money making methods involving farming equipment/rewards and selling those, but you are still looking at trying to grind to 10 mil at a pace of maybe 20-30k every 5 or 10 minutes. Urgh, that sounds awful to do. We'll see if I'm crazy enough to do it once I've finished the game. The grind itself is unavoidable, unfortunately.
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Oct 30, 2019 21:22
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Update 4: Move and Shoot Exercises.jpg) .jpg) What!? This never happened, why do I have these titles on my original file? I savescummed! -- Music - Briefing Anyways, back to another episode of How I Found My Brother, where we proceed to shoot dudes in the face because there was too much text last time. The poll was answered and our main team members for this chapter are Marion, Mischlitt, Melissa, Helmut, Lotte, and Noel. They will always be the units I'm first to rely on in combat.  This is the full group I will be taking into this chapter, consisting of the non-removable protagonists, our main six, and the other units that were voted for. Magari and Alexis are present to fill in the remaining slots, chosen on personal preference.    First up, the Combat Exercise. This mission is an elimination mission, requiring me to take out all enemy units. It's very easy.  The only two units I'm putting down initially are Melissa and Marion. The game always gives you a warning about this, but the only downside to not filling all your deployment slots is having to spend CP if you're using someone for defense, but even that's minor as you'd need to move them anyways to have them be crouching The primary reason I'm doing it is because of that enemy camp very close by. Calling in units from that base once captured will save me some AP and that's great. With that, let's head on in. Music: Exciting Battle  Tutorial: Morale- Morale increases the chance of positive potentials activating. If it hits 0, you lose. Morale is gained on taking out enemies and capturing bases while it is lost on having units go down or if your own bases are captured.  The first thing I do is move Marion up to take out this crouching scout and capture their base. : "My pleasure, sir!"  : "Enemy sighted!"The enemy in the distance is a crouched shocktrooper, and that's always a problem.  There's also a scout off to the side here. Marion's taking bullets from both sides, but you'll notice she hardly takes any damage from rifle shots thanks to being a shocktrooper.  Marion responds in kind by point-blanking this guy. She only needs 6 out of 20 shots to hit, and there's no doubting that at this distance.  He eats dirt, as expected. : "A clean hit!"  I quickly follow up by capping the base.  She'll wait over here for now. Melissa's up now.   : "Roger." : "Hmhm! Even I can barely find me..."She immediately triggers one of her potentials. I send her around to deal with that pesky scout off to the side.   : "Hey...!" : "You asked for that."It goes well.  I move her in sight of this shocktrooper for no reason. You'll note his icon is a bit different, and he has a CP point on it as well- he's a commander like Avan. If we take him down, the enemy loses 1 max CP.  Scanning the map, Marion's in sight of two more enemies- the last ones on the map, actually. A crouched shocktrooper and a standing scout. Before I take action again, I wanted to show this screen off.  This ranks each character's participation in the current map, defining how many credits they get at the end of each map. The top two get more for being MVP and Runner Up. I'll explain what this all means later.  This just shows you how much each action is worth. Anyways, back to the fight!   : "On my way."Let's bring in Mischlitt so I can show off Armor Techs.  Techs don't have the best AP in the world, but their shield and armor makes up for that.  Their shields block about 95% of all projectile types in the game. However, they've only got melee attacks in a game about guns. If that sounds dumb, that's because it kinda is, but wait until you see what ridiculous stuff they end up with later.  : "There are walls we cannot break."Moving her forth and past the shocktrooper, you can see the kind of damage she takes when hit from behind. Here she's also triggered a negative potential, Insular, which lowers her evasion...which doesn't really matter.  Aside from being able to destroy sandbags, Techs also have a huge swing on their weapons.   Case in point.  I end her turn right here. She'll be fine as we've got more than enough CP to beat this map in one round.  : "Engaging the enemy."Well, actually, let's finish this guy off.    : "A perfect hit!" I end with her blocking this guy's bullets so I can turn him around. Techs end their turn by kicking at the ground a bit with their feet.  : "Noel here!"Just to show off lancers, I give Noel some time to shine.  Valkyria Chronicles has spear shaped rocket launchers.   : "Please hit!"   ...They're not as powerful against humans as you would think. Lancers are mostly for armored target slaying. However, just like Armor Techs, their attacks have a knockdown effect that prevents enemies from counterattacking.  Girl lancers tap their foot against the ground a few times. Dudes just raise their lances kinda like a flag. Oh, and all the lancers, Noel included, are probably ripped given how well they handle these things.  : "I'm ready to go!"Noel needs a chance to get a few credits here, so I let her take out the commander.  : "I'm feeling good, really good!"  These shots were intentionally captured to be as obscured as possible.  I questioned the use of grenades, but doing this to a fellow student can't be legal. His face is smoking for crying out loud!  : "Hey, I got 'em!"Commanders also have a little effect of a CP icon breaking apart when they're taken out.   (Avan says this for nearly every elimination mission-) Music: Reward  Well, that one was easy enough. That wasn't done as optimally as possible, but I had fun, so I guess that counts.  These are just crafting materials for new weapons and stuff. We'll see some of that mechanic soon.  And here's the amount of credits everyone got! Their credit ranking just gives a character a placement, like 1st (MVP), 2nd (Runner Up), and then 3rd - 6th. Whichever place they're in determines how many credits they get, I think. I'm pretty sure the type of credit is RNG. I don't really know how this system works, just that it's grindy as hell. We'll see what they're used for at the end of the update. Music: Faint Youth  Well, we're back in our room, but we've got a few more options this time. Stats lets us check various statistics about missions completed, unit types used, etc. Yearbook lets us look at information we have on characters, as well as view any personal events we've already seen with them. Class Notes is just all the tutorials we've seen so far. Squad Name, well...   WE ARE TEAM ANIME...Anyways, let's go to sleep.  Oh, look, it's raining.  Hey, we've got some new stuff available. I'll cover this at the end of the update. -- Music: Briefing  Battle time, again! This mission is all about getting from one point to the other, which is why we'll bring our other two scouts, Helmut and Lotte. Not much else to this, so let's get to it then! Music: Exciting Battle  Another line we'll be seeing often.  First thing we see is a standing shocktrooper not far ahead of us. We can't avoid him because they blocked off that side path on the map.  Across the large trench is a scout waiting at the base we're here to capture.  : "Underway."We have to take action at some point, so I send in Helmut.  This is what I meant when I said the side path was blocked off. You can see these little steel barricades on the map, represented by brackets.  After ignoring a tutorial where the game tells us about grass, I crawl into the grass here. Crawling is about as effective as crouching, but has the benefit of also concealing where you're at.  Going commando, Helmut crawls forth and triggers his Sighting potential after seeing another enemy.  It's not a big accuracy increase, but it's something.  : "I don't miss."After promptly whiffing one into the wall behind the trooper, he proceeds to land the other four shots dead on.  : "Target destroyed."Like so.  I have to end his move as his AP runs out just before he reaches the sandbags.  : "Sure, dude!"Time to send in Netzel.  All the girls wear skirts in their combat outfits now, instead of that just being for captains. It's mid-January and this is a terrible idea.  Do you see how Helmut's name is in the upper right corner? This means he'll join Lotte when she attacks for an Assist Attack. For it to work, both units have to be standing somewhere close together and able to reasonably aim at the same target. It practically doubles damage, so be sure to do it often if you can.  : "I'll assist."At this distance, Lotte probably wouldn't win this on her own. The likelihood of all headshots at this range is very low. Even though the AI controlling Helmut aims for the chest, it's still good damage.  : "Death toll skyrockets!"With two headshots from Lotte and quite a couple bodyshots, this trooper didn't know what hit him.  To end, Lotte moves up...  : "I'm afraid I can't allow you to live."...And Helmut starts moving up as well.  See that little block on the ground there? That's a land mine. You step on them, you go boom. The damage they deal is more than enough to one-shot most characters at this point in the game. An armor tech can disable them, but we can easily sidestep these.  Around the corner, Helmut sights yet another trooper. Unfortunately, his AP ran out before he could approach a reasonable range. Attacking from this distance is mostly pointless (thanks to counterattacks), so I end his turn where he stands.  ...And I immediately move him again. He should have enough AP to reach the grass.  He sights a few more enemies while getting shot in the side. It's enough to dive for the grass, though.  Blue lines of sight mean they can't see him. Which is good, because they'll have a very low chance of ever dodging his attack.  I shimmy up through the grass and toss a grenade behind this guy.  : "You're in the way."The exclamation mark means this attack is a surprise, therefore the enemy will not dodge it.   Did what I wanted it to!  Last CP for the round- I need to get Lotte to clear this guy off of Helmut.  : "Here goes, full throttle!"Going well enough...  Aiming for the foot, just in case he tries to dodge...  Easy enough...  : "Death toll skyrockets!"But I'm just stuck out in the open! Curses! Ah well, she's got Helmut to back her up. His interception fire should be more than enough.   The scout from the flag moves up. If this looks odd, it's because the base flags actually have line of sight.   Somehow he gains an AP Use Up debuff? Either way, he goes to attack Helmut and whiffs completely.   It was a bad move on his part.   Lotte takes action first this time so we can even out their kill counts.  The game interrupts me to say that I can climb watchtowers and ladders. I'm skipping most tutorials at this point.  You know, that's a cool shot of Lanseal in the background. Really adds some immersion to the field.  : "Gallian girl attacks!"Her voicelines are some of the best. : "Got one!"This dude eats grass, but it ends up the same as if he ate dirt. Oh, and we hit morale level 4.    Lotte runs around the crate and prepares to take the flag on her next action.   ...Which comes after Helmut takes out the last guy. Woo!  : "On it!"*No commentary needed.   We'll also be seeing this line a lot, but even more than his other lines. Base capture maps are really common in this game. Music: Reward    And Team Anime gets the spoils of victory. Helmut was ahead of Lotte by one point in terms of credit value. The weapon materials won't be used for a while.  We're not ending it here, just yet. We've got a story battle to do tomorrow, so why don't I rewind time a bit and show off R&D and the Drill Grounds? --  Music: Everyday Life of the Class  Welcome to R&D. This lady right here is Lavinia Lane, and we'll get a proper introduction to her later. For now, she'll work on improving our gear.   Field suits are the defensive gear worn by Scouts, Shocktroopers, and Engineers. The other classes have their own specialized versions. We might've been able to afford this if I didn't continue the LP on the wrong save by accident, because it still has one mission listed as B-rank.  The only thing we can afford for the moment is an upgrade to the Gallian rifle, adding a measly 1 point to both of its damage stats and its accuracy.  Basic equipment like this gives you an option to auto-equip it to everyone in your squad. Choosing not to will only replace the guns of units still using the inferior model.  Some enemy Aces drop weapon plans that let us make specialized guns. These special guns are different from the main tree of guns and only produce 1 at a time. I'll cover it more when we actually get a chance to make one. As a last note, the X-series of weapons typically inflict status effects on shot. Unfortunately most of them are inferior to straight firepower. With that, let's hit the Drill Grounds.  Music: Royal Military Academy  Remember our ol' pal, the Drill Instructor? He takes care of leveling up our classes and allowing us to promote units.  Leveling up classes applies to all units of a specific type. This increases all stats at marginal levels, but affects every unit of that type. Every five levels we also get a new order.  I throw a level into scout and shocktrooper each because they're my most versatile units at the moment.  On to changing classes! We can do this for every unit, but I'm using Avan for an example as he has the power of free choice to be any unit type he wants. The general rule for all promotions is that the left option maintains the base mechanics of the class and just does an overall stat improvement with maybe a few goodies. The right path always changes something about the mechanics of the class. In this case, changing to sniper severely drops HP and AP, but gives them a powerful, long-range sniper rifle to use instead.  To promote into a different class, a unit needs a certain amount of credits from participation in combat. Only certain credits are handed out by each mission, and which ones your units get seem to be random- being MVP or Runner Up just gives you more of what RNG decided. This is where the big grind of the game is, and there's so many ways this system could have been done to make this better. For now, we'll have to put up with it. Now, have a montage of the details of every currently visible promotion!   (Very good at one shot, one kill, and can easily take out tough enemies from far away. Awful mobility, though.)   (Has special machine guns that have huge ammo capacities and are amazing at base defense.)   (Instead of rockets, has long range, high powered grenades. Ineffective against armored targets.)   (Drops their healing abilities to provide damage and defense boosts instead)   (Gets a high-damage sword instead of the winky pick, ridiculous defense. Can upgrade into something even more ridiculous.) ...And that's it! But that's not all for the update, as I have more reader particpation for you all! In the future we'll choose promotions for our units, but for now, we need to decide what class type will Avan be? I know I didn't use him in this update, but he will always have to be with us and he will be actively participating in missions. Choose wisely, or...don't! I don't really mind what class he's put into, I'll manage to find a way to have him be usable. Will this be the end of scout supremacy? Next time on A*N*I*M*E: things get real!
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Oct 31, 2019 16:33
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FoolyCharged posted:Since hes the boring protagonist we'll ignore as much as possible I suggest giving him shocktrooper into gunner so that he can defend the base camp while he sits in it providing cp. In doing that, he'll also maintain his health bonus, so he'll basically be unkillable at that point. And yes, it would also mean I'd be able to almost exclusively leave him on camp defense duty.
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Oct 31, 2019 19:49
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Psycho Knight posted:It's rarely a good idea to fill every deploy slot. Your home base is usually out of the way or is easily defendable by a Heavy Gunner or a Trooper. Agreed all the way. Blitzing is typically the strategy I go with, even on defense maps. I would like to note that certain enemy units will take more than one unit of action to capture a base, including home base. This AI is typically limited to defend maps, but I'm sure it'll happen elsewhere. All boss units and V2s will take more than one action if they feel like it.
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Nov 1, 2019 01:21
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With that, we're currently tied between Gunner and Fencer for two votes each! (I was actually hoping for either of these classes, so that's a happy coincidence!) Gonna need a tiebreaker vote! Will Avan be Boring Link or Very Stationary Rambo? E: theshim posted:Of note is that Anthem Corps are actually insanely good. I forget if this is the case in VC2, but in VC3 their equivalent can buff a host of stats at once, most importantly shots in a clip and gun range. These are incredibly strong buffs. The only Anthem Corps I had in my first playthrough was Magari. I put her down that path to lessen the effect of her Stage Fright by simply popping her in at a base, throwing buffs on units from there, then immediately putting her on standby again. From what I remember, the horns only give Infantry+Armor Damage up, and Defense up. Both effects are very strong and make Fencers and Gunners even more ridiculous. The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Nov 1, 2019 |
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Nov 1, 2019 02:01
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Stationary Rambo (Gunner) it is! For you two folks who voted Fencer, don't worry as at least two of our Techs will be Fencers in the future. You'll get to see some sword swingin' action on some of other (some would say, more interesting) units. Next update will be in a day or two, where we finally see an equal amount of words and guns!
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Nov 1, 2019 05:14
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Got all the recording done for the next update, but by goodness will it be another long one. To make up for that, here's an early taste: 
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Nov 1, 2019 20:27
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I decided to cut this update into two because this would've gotten really long otherwise. Update 5: It's For Real This Time Welcome back folks, we've got actual story again this time, but maybe not that many words. (It's a lie, there will be many words)   Spent the rest of our exp on leveling engineers. Got a relatively bad order in return.  The first real thing on our schedule is that Avan was voted to be a shocktrooper so he could become a gunner and play only a defensive role in our military. Let's do that.  Welp, that's about it.  His health is still beefy and his class potentials changed. I know he has Close Combat, but I really didn't bother checking. Done with that, let's get going!  Anyways, it's snowing at Lanseal and we need to go to class. Let's do that. -- Music: Everyday Life of the Class   You can see most of Class G in here. Try and see if you can pick out who's who. : Barf. History is like my worst subject. ...That was a pretty good burn, not gonna lie. : Hey, shut up! : Mm? Avan, you dropped this photo.: Oh, man! Thanks for catching that. It must have fallen out of my notebook. Yep, it's time for another round of "Leon's the bestest". : Yup! That's my big bro, Leon!They're really trying to make sure we remember him. : He's amazing at everything. He's totally my hero....And that's precisely why Leon is a boring subject. We really don't seem to learn anything about him aside from how great he was. : I mean, he's strong, super dependable, and smart too! And he's like the nicest--Avan's really letting his inner fangirl out here. : Pipe down. Class is about to start. Alright, I guess I can get behind some-- *Loud tower bell ringing*      *Various murmurs of "Huh" and "what"* Music: War Preparedness  Rene: Here we go... Magari: What? Reiner: Not again.  *Spoken by Avan* Alexis: You heard the bells.     *Spoken by Brixham*  Gah, what happened to you, Brixy?  : The Lanseal Royal Military Academy is responsible for policing southern Gallia.Yeah, they're sending in a bunch of misfit high schoolers into potentially lethal battle. Lanseal sucks. : It falls on us to address any threats that arise in our jurisdiction. : But wait, you can't mean-- Yeah, pretty much. : That is correct.: What?! But that's... We're not...: Two years after peace with the Empire, Gallia's defenses are still ragged. : That leaves you cadets. The creme de la creme of Gallia's youth.Just wait, it gets better. And by that, I mean worse.  : War is not so kind as to spare those with no will to fight.: Rrgh. I guess there's no getting around it.I figured Avan would protest this more, but then again, he's a rash kid who looks up to his war hero brother. : Meet me in the briefing room as soon as you're prepared to leave.--  No reason to hesitate, let's get at it. -- Music: Royal Military Academy  : As class chair, command in the field falls to you, Avan.I'd like to note that it's probably not the best idea to send a kid with one month of military training to command a unit, but whatever. : Right, I gotcha.: Your mission today is to drive the rebels out of the Arlem region.  : I expect you to win. Thinking of how to go about that is your job.Yeah, they're sending a bunch of teenagers out to fight a tank, with no help. Lanseal is still incredibly irresponsible, even if Gallia's backed up against a wall with this civil war. Also, Brixy sucks too for being no help in this. : That's easy for you to say! Their lives are all hanging on this!: Such is the nature of war. The exact same applies ot the rebels as well.: If you don't wipe them out, they'll gladly see you dead.: You act like it's easy. Fine! I'll get us through this without a scratch.That we will. This mission is really a pushover if you have experience with the game and you know how to approach it.   Yeah, Brixy has eyes. He only opens them when he gets serious. Music - The Rebel's Assault -Incoming war crimes-            : With me! : Treated like objects, just because they're Darcsens...: Hey, we've got an incoming rebel squad! : We'll never make it against a group that big. We're all gonna die. Real inspiring words there, Avan. : "It'll work out"? How can you say that with no grounds to back it up?Music: Theme of Class G  : "The most violent waves lay bare a man's worth the fastest."Unfortunately, Avan, they're kinda looking for assurance of your worth as a leader right now. : Those are my brother's words. Now listen good-- you give up and it's over.: And if I know anything, it's that we weren't meant to die here today.: That means we can't give up, which means we fight! Those are my grounds.I don't find Avan's speech here to be particularly rousing- it's kinda basic and boils down to "Watch me, I'll be a good leader! We ain't dyin' here today!"  : It's like Avan says. So long as we don't give up, there's still hope. And for some reason, I find Cosette's mini-speech somewhat more inspiring. Maybe it's just because I like her and Avan is still, well, Avan. : I'm with you. I'm no ready to end it here. I'll fight.: Just how exactly is that speech supposed to get us through this alive?: An appeal to emotion and some circular reasoning? You've got to be kidding.Yeah, that about sums it up.   : That's probably at the tope of their chain of command, issuing orders.: Destroy that tank, and you behead the squad.: B-But how?: There. : Right. I saw several of them littered about the area.: Fueling stations for the villagers' farm equipment, I'd wager.: If we lure the tank near those containers, then set them off with gunfire...: That's perfect! We can use the blast to take out the tank!: Zeri, you're a genius! I know I try not to bash Avan that much, but does anyone else get the idea that Zeri is a better fit for commander here? Regardless, he's still the team's tactician.  I suppose the one consideration though is that Avan actually cares about teamwork and Zeri hasn't shown himself as being that much of team player. --- Music: Briefing   Alright, story mission time! Arlem Village will be a common staging ground for missions,    This is also the first in maps where we can deploy units in more than one area from the start. Avan is force deployed in the cavern while Zeri and Cosette are force deployed in the town area. The trick to this mission is to take the waypoint base in the cavern first, as the tank we need to reach is easily accessible from there.  The only preparation I make is to put Marion with Avan. The cave isn't too long, and two stormtroopers will have the necessary firepower to blitz it. -- Music: Liberation Battle New battle themes! Get used to hearing this one quite a lot.    Welcome to the first real battle of the game! Since there's so many enemies around and Zeri won't be doing anything but defense, I send Cosette to standby. Those scouts would end her if I left her there.  Here's the map that has the tank on it. That camp to the lower left connects to the one on the Village map and the tank is near that little ragnite container icon on the map. Considering the low reward value and low number of enemies worth anything on this map, I'm just going to worry about taking out the tank to end the mission as quickly as possible.  The cave will get us to that upper right camp- it's just a march northwards covered in enemies. We could go around, but the fastest way is straight through them. I send in Avan first to scout out the enemies considering he has about as much health as a lancer and Marion doesn't.   Moving up, there's a trooper just around the corner and a scout not too much farther from him.  : "Comin' at ya!"I opt to take out the trooper as he's closer. Shocktroopers are surprisingly okay at getting headshots.  : "Enemy down!"Allied Radio Chatter: "Yes! Now we can move forward!" This is consequently the first mission to introduce the radio chatter effect. It only happens on maps where we're taking the role of the miltary instead of doing training exercises.   Using the last of his AP, Avan moves up and ignores the scout. There's two more shocktroopers waiting for us here, one of them a commander unit. That little boost in HP makes him very hard to kill while crouching, believe it or not.  : "My pleasure, sir!"Let's get Marion moved up.  : "I shant lose!"Firmly set on the belief that she's stronger than scouts, (read: she is,) Marion triggers her Scout Killer potential.  I aim for the foot because late game has made me paranoid.  : "Thank goodness!"Allied Radio Chatter: "Nicely done." He does not survive.  Marion ends inches away from Avan...  ...and I take another action with her. I've got a plan here.   Dodging interception fire, I contemplate grenading this guy from his position, but his boosted health means I can't kill him in one turn regardless of what I do with Marion alone.  Opting to move up some more instead, I approach the other shocktrooper and aim for the head. Marion's taken quite a good bit of damage from this, but a scout would have easily been KOd here.  Enemy Radio Chatter: "They got one of us! ...Watch your backs guys!" Somehow, she hits the first 4 shots without missing, taking this guy out with 4 times that to spare. We also occasionally tap into enemy radio- it's a bit more crackly, but it also suggest the rebels aren't well trained.  : "Yeah, I feel great!"Swapping over to Avan, this puts me down to 2 CP points left. He triggers Close Combat, one of the class potentials he got when he swapped class, allowing for this plan to go more smoothly.  Yes, this is what I wanted! Assist attacks are great provided you can get the positioning right to make it work.  : "Please, allow me!" This guy just got shredded. Taking him out in one turn like this is a major timesaver since the grenade->shoot face strategy uses 2 CP.  I bring Avan up to this corner where the flag is. I don't have enough movement to make another assist attack work, but I'll be fine.  : "Enemy sighted!"Bringing my CP count down to one, I move Marion up to clear the enemy off the flag. Allied Radio Chatter: "I-I can do this. Just stay calm!"   : "Prepare yourself!" Early game scouts are easily wiped by grenades, so this was a more assured kill than trying to gun him from here. Enemy Radio Chatter: "Gah! Who are these guys!?" You're getting beaten by highschoolers. It's just sad.  With my last CP, I bring in Mischlitt to help defend for no particular reason. If I just moved Zeri to crouch it would be about the same result. I didn't get Avan/Marion to capture that flag just yet because we can still get A-Rank next round and I don't want the enemy to recapture the base from underneath me. They're bound to have someone on the other side, so I'd rather wait. There's no reinforcements on this map either.   I have her destroy the nearest sandbag to stop the enemy scouts from taking cover. After that, I park her right next to Zeri where she'll be practically immune to gunfire. Crouched armor techs brush their shield off, by the way. Enemy Radio Chatter: "Hey! What's your situation there?" Music: Return Battle At this point in the game, the enemy usually has a corresponding battle theme on their turn. This is one of my personal favorites thematically as it manages to have quite the intimidating beat to it.   The enemy first begins the futile effort to take my base with scouts only. This one's a blatant cheater that walks through this sandbag.  He aims for Zeri because he's standing, but he actually triggers his evasion chance and immediately drops for cover. I can't remember if I've already explainted it, but this is all evasion does: dropping you to prone (like in grass), providing the defense bonus from being prone, and prevents knockback from most sources. It's great if it happens on your units, sucks awfully if the enemy does it.  Zeri's counterattack bans this man for defying the Fictional-Geneva laws on breaking immersion and being a cheater.  Scout number two bites it identically.  Scout number three comes from far away and out of hiding to shoot at Zeri from a distance just too far for him to counterattack. Shame.  Maybe realizing it's wasting it's time, the AI begins moving an unseen unit in the cavern but still ends up wasting its time. Music: Liberation Battle  Alright, time for us to end this little skirmish.  : "Taking action now!" I give Marion the capture because I'm just gonna leave Avan there and she's done for this map. Allied Radio Chatter: "Good. This should make things easier!" I'm waiting for Brixham to come over the radio. He will from time to time.  Zeri of all people comes to give me a tutorial from across maps about retreating units, another mechanic I've already talked about. Enemy? Radio Chatter: "I missed! Fall back and regroup!" Allied Radio Chatter (Lady): "Enemy spotted!"  : "Underway."Spawning in at our waypoint base, you can see I was right in assuming they'd have an enemy watching it. I bring in Helmut mostly to scout, but also because I thought he could handle this shocktrooper.  For the first time so far, Helmut lets me down by putting the first bullet in this guy's shoulder and whiffing the last two into the wall behind him. He eats half his HP in sub-machine gun fire in return. Allied Radio Chatter: "Don't panic!. Maintain formation and circle around!"  Running around to check the position of our true target, he eats only a few more bullets but nearly goes down thanks to not having the camp bonus. That there is the back of the Rebel tank. The dark blue canister is the ragnite containers mentioned in the story, but they aren't really more than a scarcely used gimmick. That other blue thing, the rectangle on the back of the tank? That's it's radiator. All but one tank so far in Europan history has suffered the catastrophic weakpoint that is the exposed ragna radiator. Planting explosives on those deal way more damage than shooting tanks in the front. A lancer will one-shot most tanks if they can launch a rocket into it's radiator. Long term, lancers are tank assassins, being used as small units who can sneak behind tanks to wipe them in one blow.  The game doesn't tell you about this strategy yet, but I've played VC1, so I already know it. Now you do too. Anyways, here's a close-up of Helmut's face.  : "If those are my orders."Every character also has a low health line, and Helmut's is appropriately hardcore. I'm giving him a chance to make up for that poor showing here.  : "Good."He doesn't make the same mistake twice. I wouldn't normally do this unless I was very sure that the unit in question would make the shot, as I'd retreat them otherwise. I knew he had this one though.  : "I'll show you what a man of the Empire can do!"...See why I didn't take the main path now? 2 shocktroopers, 1 scout in a sniper tower, and a forward facing tank? Doing this the normal way is a lot more difficult.  Because I've got CP to spare, I wanted to show off that you can't climb a sniper tower if someone's already on it. Allied Radio Chatter: "All core units, follow the front guard!"  : "I'm ready to go!"I could waste another CP doing whatever, but I'd rather be safe and not immediately assume this tank will go down in 1 lance shot. (Some won't later on.) Oh, and it lets Noel do her intended job instead of sticking lance grenades into people's faces.  : "Being alone is just so...lonely!"If ragnite canisters only have 1 HP, they seem like a massive hazard to have around. Anyways, let's not waste the farmers' fuel supply and do this the proper way.  Note that boss enemies don't tell you their health numbers. This is really aggravating later. Time to end this!   Obliterated.  Radio Chatter: "-Sha! That's a relief."  That we did, Avan.   drat, we salvaged the hell out of that tank!  Look at this weirdness: Zeri got runner up but he got only got two total credits! ...How did he get that anyways? I figured Avan or Helmut would. For gunner, we'll need to get Avan the Support X credit and a Certificate. His arms requirement should be filled by now. --- Music: Theme of Class G  *Spoken by Joachim* : I still can't believe we really beat the rebels all by ourselves.Look at his face- he really doesn't know what the hell is going on it seems. Poor guy. : We did it, Avan!: 'Course we did! I told you guys we could do this!: And thanks, Zeri.: For what?He actually sounds a whole lot friendlier now as he says this. : I never would have come up with that plan. You saved the day, man.Too bad we didn't actually use it. It's also nice that Avan doesn't take credit for this- at least he's not a glory hog. : I just offered a bit of logic. You might try it yourself sometime. He gets cut off even before he hits the second word. Avan's portrait sort of bumps into his twice. : Wha--? Stop that! Get your muddy mitts of my face!: Ah ha ha ha! That looks like fun! Let me in, too!Her portrait does the same.  The neat thing about the voice acting here is you can tell that as much of a serious person Zeri tries to be, he's actually having a bit of fun here.  They also do a good job with the filtering on the voicelines to make them sound like a radio but still easy on the ears. ...But Brixham's always easy on the ears, even if he is a bit of a jerk sometimes. : Hm hm! I'm pleased to see your first operation end in success, Avan.: Class G, you are clear to return to Lanseal.: Roger that. All right, guys, time to go home!: Aye aye, sir! -- Alas, Zeri shall not escape schoolyard hijinks so easily. And neither shall we! Another update shall come soon, but we've also reached the end of a month! Normally I wouldn't ask this, but do we want to bother voting for new units? Yes or no? We haven't seen any of our current units' stories yet and the missions now only start counting towards those. If we're voting for new units, save your unit votes for next time as we've got incoming character development and a new student! Next time on Hardin's Isle, we recieve the perfect means for a 3 turn tour!
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Nov 5, 2019 15:12
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Psycho Knight posted:This is one of the big reasons I hate VC2 so much. This is not a series that lends itself to a school setting. It's goofy "Avan is a moron" style anime hijinks (as well as other 'wacky' anime tropes we'll see later) one moment, and then we're watching civilians being shot dead in the street as part of an ethnic cleansing. You also have command of an entire squad being determined at random. There are lives at stake and this trash bin of a military academy just throws command over to a moron that only passed the entrance exam through dumb luck. The biggest issue with this game plot-wise is simply this right here, I'll admit. The game jumps back and forth tonally so much to the point I really struggle to take it seriously. The intro to the game puts Avan as a heroic kid trying to follow in the footsteps of his brother as he protects his hometown. And then it just goes progressively downhill in seriousness from there. I have a natural tolerance for "slice of life" type things in games, even high school hijinks, but I'm starting to get increasingly salty as time goes on it seems. I think my initial mild stance was just from not remembering that much of this game. I'm trying to be optimistic where I can, but the game's not giving me much to use to defend it with. I don't remember if the game ever addresses the "why" factor of not being able to raise the militia to deal with a civil war- this is directly harming the lives of the citizens, you've got unauthorized military use going on, and you're relying on a fancy boarding school to handle this? It's incredibly incompetent, and I can't currently fathom as to why Cordelia wouldn't just shut down this whole problem immediately. Like I said, I'm getting saltier in regards to this game. Hwurmp posted:This fits perfectly with everything else I've seen of the Gallian Army. I mean, the militia was nearly the only competent people in the entire military in VC1, so yeah. It's amazing that Gallia has managed to last this long. Next update in a couple of days. I've gotta make portraits for people the hard way, and that's always a slow process.
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Nov 6, 2019 00:01
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Poil posted:Hmmmm. The civil war is racial supremacists so is it possible the militia leadership is deliberately staying out because they also hate darcsens and want the rebels to win? Sure they might have an old law backing them up, but they're refusing to letting it be changed? I'm not going to say it's not a possible outcome, but we've already got a few units in our team (Helmut and Marion) who are prejudiced against Darcsens but don't support genocide. I'd imagine Welkin or Rosie from VC 1, both being prominent names in Gallia and the militia, would openly speak out against all of this, but they never really have anything to say about it. I mean, the Archduchess herself is a Darcsen who's already pushed the boundaries of the law before. Using military in general to deal with a civil war is pretty bad and might make her come off as a tyrant (happens all the time in the real world), but I don't know if that's worse than idly sitting by while people fall as casualties. The only form of policing they're using is the members of a single boarding school numbering 300 at best, many of whom aren't even legal adults, to fight off the rebellion. Either the alarm bells must be ringing every day or the rebels are an equally small number of people. Regardless, we should probably wait to continue discussing the oddities of this plot when we actually meet our antagonists and see what they're getting at with this whole civil war thing.
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Nov 6, 2019 15:09
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FoolyCharged posted:Huh, I just noticed something when I decided to play along. I was actually wondering if they did- I just really haven't bothered looking. It's not really hard to do development-wise considering they're using the same method they do for the faces: eyes, mouth, headshape/ body position as a separate sprite layered over each other. It's a lot easier to do because it lets you save on space/copying at the cost of a bit more processing. That's why, for instance, the Rune Factory games on the DS didn't use that method but 4 did because it had access to the more powerful 3DS. If you're playing along you'll also probably note that not everyone's portrait in my LP matches every scene in the game. It's minor, but I'll fess up to being lazy on it. (Doing these things manually is draining when I have to stop every time we meet someone new.)
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Nov 6, 2019 23:36
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HardDiskD posted:Is it ever explained how the rebels got their hands on an Imperial tank? Although it wouldn't be hard to believe they just found abandoned Imperial materiel... The leaders are nobles, as previously mentioned, so they're just rich I guess. They end up with all sorts of things that suggests they have quite a few scientists and engineers on their side, apparently. VC2 Spoiler: They also seem to be mostly against the Empire, so there's that too. They've got lots of tanks- I suppose most of them are reclaimed from the war.
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Nov 7, 2019 01:29
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Kibayasu posted:Personally I'm still hung up on Avan's "determined/angry" pose having his knee in the frame and above his waist. Imagine what it would look like if someone just threw their leg up every time they needed to express strong emotion at something. I personally named it MEGAPUMP in my portrait files. I internally sometimes refer to it as piranha face, but I like MEGAPUMP more because I played way too much of Death Road to Canada. For added hilarity, imagine him kneeling on the ground instead or basically doing a Mario Bros. jump. Also the next update should be up by this evening. Gotta finish a few portraits and copy in all the image links. We get a lot of character development this time around, including an event with Marion.
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Nov 7, 2019 21:33
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Update 6: That (Depressing) Anime High School Lifestyle  Hey, we finally changed seasons! Now it we've only gotta do this like eleven more times! Woo! But before we do anything, we must see the ultimately engaging storywriting that is VC2's plot! -- Music: Everyday Life of the Class  I'd first like to take a moment to note that because of the way they use the background, Brixham spends all of his time teaching while at the back of the room staring into a wall. : The leva-what, now?: A tournament, Cosette. Classes face each other in mock combat. It's a good test of class performance and one of Lanseal's oldest traditions.: That sounds pretty cool.   They could be worse. I've seen worse.  : If we win, the rest of the academy will have to respect us. Right?They could also dislike you even more for winning. Just saying. We'll kick their tails regardless, but still.  : That'd sure be nice. Yeah! So long as we're in it, let's go for the top!: There's no sense in competing otherwise. This once, I'll agree with you.: Heh heh. Well, I have a little present for you in light of your optimism.: Head down to the R&D building to collect it.I don't understand why we couldn't have had it sooner, but regardless,  Nope! Something much better is here! ???: Oh, wow. You're the chair of Class G, kid? : What? Oh, you're the girl who's always in here, huh? Technically, we've already met, but whatever. It's very easy to do this out of sequence because they give you the store so early. : What?! Hey! : Anyway, my name's Lavinia. Lavinia Lane. I'm Class G's tank pilot.: Tank pilot? Wait, we have a tank?! Although I'm happy we get our tank now, I have to express for a moment that all classes get a tank. The game directly shows that the other students have been here before us, so why did you not let us use it to fight an ENEMY tank? These kids literally could have died in that encounter! Sure, yeah, they're only kids and giving them a tank is a bit irresponsible, but you'll soon find that Lavinia is one of the most adult people around. I... just don't get it. Maybe it wasn't ready yet? I know they were holding back for gameplay's sake, but this is ridiculous plot wise. Whatever, I'm bound to go insane if I keep trying to interpret this plot. : I hear a lot of rumors about you Class G kids. None of 'em are good.This line only barely excuses the above if its true, because it sounds more like she's joking. Just gonna let all this slide for now though since Lavinia is in my experience, possibly the best unit available (provided she gets the right equipment).  : Gah! Fine, all right! Well, my name is Avan Hardins. Nice to meet ya. : Hardins? As in... : Never mind. Anyway, best of luck and all that....This suggests she has some past with Leon. Luckily she won't gush over him like everyone else does.  You heard the lady, folks. Time to come up with a name for our new tank! 6 letters like usual. : What, I get to name it? : Hey, you're the chair. Just try not to pick anything dumb, okay?  : All right. You got any questions about the tank, you come ask me. Got it?: Got it. Thanks, Lavinia!I'll cover the tank when we do a mission. Needless to say, it's a strong unit.  It has it's own parts to outfit it with. I have a very specific plan of what to outfit it with when, mainly to make the game more painless. We'll see the pieces when they become necessary.  Sweet. I don't know if which ones we get are random, but I know I didn't get them in order before. All I know is that they just show up.   : I'm not a fan of messy social situations, so just leave me in peace.Chloe is an edgy artist who wears sunglasses. She's a scout unit with some potential, working best as a sniper in my experience. Her character details will be at the end of the update. --  Information overload. I likely won't be doing any of those VS missions because, well...who even played this game in multiplayer? Music: Winter in Lanseal  Get ready for as it's time for events! (But not specifically for the characters you wanted. Those are coming, trust me.)First, let's do the tutorials, I guess. Tutorial - Evaluation: I've pretty much explained this by now, but go fast to get a higher rank. Credits are basically random and a pain to grind. Tutorial - Ace Soldiers: Some enemies have fancy, even more red uniforms and a name. These ace units have better stats, better weapons and usually drop a reward when taken out. Half of them are hiding in a corner somewhere. Tutorial - Special Units: Some enemies are wearing yellow helmets. Taking them down rewards crafting materials. They are more likely to be hiding in a corner or grass somewhere on the map and are usually very passive. Tutorial - Area Effects: Some missions have area effects that impact all the units taking part. There's nighttime or fog or heat waves, etc. I'll cover them when we see them, but most are easily nullified by certain tank parts or potentials.  Alright, well, let's go bother Chloe then. I'll just show all of these in succession, listing out where they happen on the map. --- Music: Everyday Life of the Class  : You're the class chair...: If you need anything, ask away, man. I remember what it's like to be new here.I think the units might arrive in random order, because otherwise Avan seems to think being around for about a month means you're not new. : Hmph. I need only one thing from you.: To be left alone. Avan, don't grab people without asking. That's rude. *Light footsteps*  : And what are you? : Oh, wow, it IS you! I am like your biggest fan ever! : That piece you had in the contemporary thought in paint show was killer! : What are you working on next? Is it another--? *She storms off.* : Chloe! ...And she's gone. Dang, she's prickly. No, Avan, don't. Speaking as a person who used to have a "shell", that's incredibly aggravating. I don't know if this applies universally, but pushing usually makes them withdraw even more. Regardless, this is the first of where we see Avan's rash side pairing with his obliviousness making him completely incapable of understanding personal space or the idea of introversion. He will continue force himself as psychiatrist to every single person he meets without asking. Get used to it, I guess. This is one of his most annoying traits, in my opinion. ~* Plaza *~  : Yes. It's an unwanted distraction. : Why is it that Class A doesn't have a single Darcsen, but we--Soundbite: "How outlandish!" If you didn't read the character bios, both Helmut and Marion have the Darcsen Hater negative potential.  : Oh, they're all the same, Noel, dear. Doomy and gloomy, inside and out.Marion is a noble, just like Juliana and the leaders of the rebellion. The prejudice against Darcsens runs through all of them, it seems, likely due to the long standing misrepresentation. At least she isn't calling them inferior.  Helmut is from the Empire where they normally think themselves superior to Darcsens. His priorities seem a bit different, but who's to say at this point..  Alexis doesn't have the Darcsen Hater potential, but you can see public opinion of them isn't necessarily high everywhere.  : Mischlitt and Magari are both on the meek side, and not team-minded.  : But the new guy seems different to me. We'll find out soon, I guess.Noel is a nice person. ~* Dormitory *~   : Why do we have to enter? All we're going to do is lose.: It wasn't thirty seconds into the last scrimmage with Class C I was shot.Ow. That's rough, man. I know how it is though. : It's hard to get motivated to face that again.That too.  If you didn't see the character info, Franca has the Nichol Hater potential. Nichol is her brother, by the way.  Sorry, Reiner, buddy. Today's just gonna be filled with pessimism I'm afraid. Strap in, folks. ...All the lancers I've had are cool people. Reiner's good guy who approaches situations better than Avan.  : If we keep training, we'll have a shot at winning! Let's stay positive.: You really think so? I can't imagine us winning at anything.: Me neither.~* Courtyard *~  If you were wondering, this game also subscribes to the psychic side conversations like Fire Emblem. Without Avan even being there, we see what's going on. Even with the villains. ...Also, is this optimism I hear? : Whoa, what is it, Raymond? I don't think I've ever seen you this worked up.: E-Even if we lose the Laevatein Cup prelims, I'm not going to cry!That's good, right? : That's great, Raymond! I actually promised myself something as well. ...I, uh... I guess that works?  : I'll prep in advance for interviews when we break our record for worst loss!...This line got a laugh out of me. Then again, Lotte's one of the more fun characters anyhow. : Good thinking! That will help things go a lot more smoothly, Lotte.: A-All right, you guys. Let's try our best to meet these new goals! *They leave.* They're a bunch of optimistic pessimists. It manages to be both endearing and incredibly depressing at the same time.   : I'll keep my beloved safe from harm.: Anyone who takes aim at him gets a bullet between the eyes. Melissa is a very dedicated stalker. ~* Courtyard (Again) *~ Music: Winter in Lanseal This is a seasonal event, not like the one's we've been seeing which are based upon the story. These tend to be within the bounds of anime school shenanigans.     : Well, I found it... : But, dude! It's frozen under like a foot of ice!Soundbite: "Come ON!"  : I tried, but it's way too thick to get through.: Ugh, guess I'll have to come back in the spri-- *A smashing noise can be heard.* : B-B-Barehanded!: Wow, you've got a pretty small frame, but I guess you're still hardcore!: Heh. I'm glad to help. I'll see you later. This is a fun little scene. This game doesn't do serious plot well, but it does it's high school thing good though, I guess. That's something. Music: Everyday Life of the Class ~* Old Campus *~  : Tch... Can it, Randy. : I'm not gonna sit through a stupid music class.*He walks off*  : Erik! Come ba--Why do you have a music class at a military school? I mean, Anthem Corps, I guess, but he's a shocktrooper. The only person here who can be one is Sofia. I'd defend the benefits of a music class, but this just makes Lanseal look more like it wants to be a high school than a military school.   : I so don't have the patience for her jealousy. So I'm cutting! Buh-bye.: Sofia, wait!I mean, you're not supposed to be talking in class anyways...  : Mischlitt?! Why you, of all people?: What meaning is there in a class where students stand around and sing?: Studying in the library is much more productive. Now, if you'll excuse me.I'd argue, but this is a military school. The library will likely end up being the most productive long term if you're training soldiers. : Hey, wait! Mischlitt!  : Er, AHEM!: I'll have to hope the new class chair whips them into shape... Fat chance.This sounds a whole lot like ulterior motives, Randy. ~* Classroom *~ *The bells ring*  The who now? : Coleen? Care to take a stab? Hey, we haven't seen you in a while! : Be sure to do all the assigned reading before class, hm? ...Anisette? : Anisette! What is that you're writing? Let's have a look. : !: "Dear Sister, Last night's concert was packed to bursting...": If you have the time to hold imaginary concerts, you can do the reading.: Y-Yes, sir...I used to work with some kids that was an accomplishment if you could get them to write. She's not sleeping in class, at least. : Joachim? Can you help them out?: Totally, man! I was hoping you'd ask. It's simple...  ...This really is just a high school simulator isn't it? They just try to trick you into thinking it isn't by patching in a strategy game, right?  : Ugh, seriously?!*He practically falls out of his desk saying this*  Like watching a train wreck in slow motion? Feeling that right now, actually. --  We're free! Well, almost. There's some more main story beats to see, but I'll skip that for this update. Let's go check out the store, then finish up the missions from last month.  The store sells bonus missions and various extra reading.  This is the only mission we've got to buy right now, and we're dirt poor.  On the terms of papers, Gallia Times is a news report typically based on goings on around Gallia currently. The Lotte Insider is Lotte's handmade newsletter and it's the absolute best (and cheapest). Lastly, the encyclopedia just has that world background informaton we were all just dying to know. I'll buy all of them as they're mostly a pittance, and I'll put them at the end of each update. Anyways, off to do some other stuff before heading our on a mission.  Continuing to level up frontliner units...  This is the only thing we can afford because we're poor...  And here's the mission! This one's really easy- it's just shoot all enemies and the rewards are pretty poor money wise. Gives Mch Gun Stock A and Arms credits.  We get two units we can drop behind the lines a bit. I put Marion and Avan in there in case I need to pull out some assist attacks.  As for the home base, I said to hell with it and put in all the scouts plus Mischlitt just to hold the base. All this prep is really unnecessary, but it's whatever. Also, I can't deploy the tank on this map. Maps with vehicle allowance have an extra slot called the Vehicle Slot which is the only ones you can start tanks at. Music: Practice Battle   I send in Lotte first to scout the situation.  : "Gallian girl attacks!"  ...And by scout I mean shoot the first dude I see in the face. Point blank, preferably.  I leave her in sight of quite a few enemies.  Next action takes Melissa onto the other side of the guy for an assist attack he has no chance of surviving.  : "I'm on it Melissa!"I did this mostly to show that characters that are friends with each other have specific lines relating to one another for assists/unconscious recovery.  : Goodbye.There was a low chance to survive.  : "Taking action now!"Melissa didn't have any AP left, so I left her where she was at. Time to scout out this side.  Fun. Looks like they've got a shocktrooper up in that sniper tower. I'll take out the scout for now, though.  I wasn't even aiming for the head, but sure, you go Marion!  AP runs out at the base of the tower, but that's alright.  With a bit of an adjustment, I get this hail mary shot here. I expect most of these will whiff--   : "Thank goodness!"Thank goodness indeed! Marion's on a roll today.  This map starts the trend of hiding enemies in the grass. Luckily, I've caught onto their little scheme already.  Back to the scouts. I'm going to risk seeing if Lotte and Melissa can take this shocktrooper at this distance.  : "Let me help, Lotte." Almost! He doesn't get a counterattack either because I'm just out of his interception range.  Helmut, my man, let's finish this off. I'm trying to trigger is Rear Guard potential, but it doesn't unfortunately.  : "I'm afraid I cannot allow you to live."Well, I got a potential. I'll take it!  : "Target destroyed."The sound of three scout rifles at the same time is almost terrifying.    This guy nearly died walking around the corner.  Lotte didn't wait to correct that.   On the other side of the training grounds we've got this goofy encounter going on.  What did you expect?  The enemy is being really passive.   : "I see one, sir!"...I don't. But I know he's there anyways- there's just another scout around this hill.  : "I'm bursting with verve!"What an old-fashioned word. I'll admit I'd never seen the thing before this game and I've read a lot of classics in my time.   : "A clean hit!"First two shots are headshots. Marion's calling all the shots today!  She's pretty low on AP leftover, but I figured I might as well grenade this scout.  ...And was a little too close to the blast radius. Sorry about that, Marion!  Let's do a bit more of explosions. Melissa's up.  : "Die."Melissa's being all sorts of terrifying today.   Too far away to really do anything to this guy, so let's just leave it here for now.  Helmut's up next. He loves triggering Sighting today it seems.  : "I don't miss."Did somebody say: explosions?  I swear, if the other classes aren't dreading having to deal with Class G, I don't know what else to say. Maybe we'll earn a reputation for this.  Helmut's out of AP, but this is an elimination mission, not a capture one. The flag really doesn't matter.  ...But, uh... Where's the last guy?  A turn later I find the last dude hiding in the grass. It's good thinking, actually, but it really annoys me.  Don't do that.     Hey, look, we won. The money reward is garbage, but crafting materials are cool, I guess?  A new day! We'll be done with this update in a minute.  You'll see that message almost every time you're in homeroom. It means there's events to see, which there's always at least one.   Today's special though, because we get our first Marion event! Let's check out this daily one first, and we'll end on Marion's storyline. -- Music - Briefing  Soundbite: Oh, really!?  : I'm knee-deep in snow, and they want me to run a full marathon? It's insane!  : This is not a trip, dear! : Ooh! How about we be marathon buddies, dude?: Having company for the run would make it feel a lot shorter!That worked for me back in the day. : I'm so dreadfully slow, though. I wouldn't want to hold you back, darling.You've still got possibly the best offense out of all the shocktroopers, so that's something. : Aww, who cares? We're friends, arent' we?: Let's head for that finish line together! : Listen up, maggots! I don't want to see any sandbagging out here!: The last ten to finish get twenty laps around the drill ground back home!: Uhh...: On your mark, get set, move your rears!  ...I think that line in the background is an emulation issue. Oh well. Let's go do Marion's now to finish off the update. Music: Everyday Life of the Class ~* Home Ec Room *~   : This is just some simple lace work. I'm knitting a gift for my mother.Hand done lacework is pretty neat. I've seen some folks do it before, but I'm terrible at any sort of knitting so I can't do it. : Wow, I didn't know you had such girly hobbies. I'm really impressed! : You always make the most unexpected observations, Avan. It's sweet.Avan is incredibly oblivious and states the obvious more often than not.  : I only know what I learned from my mother. I fear my work is a poor example.I'm sure she'll still appreciate the gift. Seeing kids take after you is a reward in its own respect.  : Shall I reattach it for you?: Wow, you don't mind? Yeah that'd be grea--Buttons are pretty easy fixes, though some can be tricky. I don't know why Avan needs the buttons on his jacket because he never uses them, but whatever-  Gah! Joachim?! What gives, man?He's here to ruin what was a perfectly nice little cutscene. : No fair hogging her all to yourself, Avan! : Hee hee hee. Watching you two is more fun than a day at the theater.: Hey Marion, you look a little under the weather. ARe you feeling okay? Ew, please don't. You're just coming off as a creep, dude.  For once, Avan is perceptive.  : Hello? Beautiful heiress to historied house, pure and fragile as a lily!: She wouldn't kill a fly! And you expect her to be fine out in the field?!She handles herself fine, dude. : It...It really isn't all that bad, actually...: So, did you get scouted before coming here, Marion? : Aaaah! Listen to you! You're too perfect, which is exactly what I expect!: Well, if you DO have any trouble, let me know. We'll figure it out.: A-All right, I will... Thank you.: If you'll excuse me, I should probably be going. Good day, gentlemen. ...I don't like Joachim very much. And seeing this scene never helps my opinion of him at all.  Well, at least it's over. Avan managed to not be awful, and we saw many words. Time to end the update. --- Next time on Valkyria Chronicles: Six Classes we do more supports. And probably a mission too. Vote for a tank name, if you want! New Characters! Tank Commander Lavinia Lane :"Heh, cute. I can take you all!" - On triggering BloodthirstyAge: 21 Class G tank pilot and mechanic. Plain-spoken but caring, she likes to help those in need. Potentials: Big Sister: Looks out for comrades on the battlefield, raising firing accuracy and attack power against infantry targets. (Very good potential that I can't complain about having whatsoever.) Bloodthirsty: Natural aggression lets them attack again before a counterattack. (Amazing ...when it decides to trigger. Nothing beats a tank firing twice in the same action!) Wounded Heart: Past regrets cast a shadow on their heart, lowering firing accuracy. (Not fun, but it doesn't trigger very often.) Scouts Chloe Blixen :"Needs more red!" - On attacking an enemyAge: 21 Class G scout. Up-and-coming artist who bases her work on the themes of night and darkness. Potentials: Moody: Fickle to the core, they even refuse to follow direct orders sometimes. (Awful potential considering it never goes away, but it is a price to pay for her very high accuracy.) Night Vision: Sight is unimpeded by the darkness of night, raising firing accuracy. (Great for nighttime missions. Useless otherwise.) Slump: The feeling that nothing is going their way lowers firing accuracy. (Bad, but it at least gets replaced.) Defensive Boost: Raises defense. (Good potential.) Nocturnal: Visibility at night equal as if in the middle of the day. (More night vision, can't complain. It's great if you make her a sniper.) Other People Shop Clerk (Welvar Glenn)  :"Hey there, Avan, how goes it today?" - Literally every time you enter the shopAge: 36 Storekeeper at Lanseal. He handles the store alone, and is well-liked by students. Papers: Gallia Times: Lanseal Admits 35 New Cadets Lanseal Academy announced on the 1st they had admitted 35 new cadets, bring into effect the enrollment system introduced last September. It is rare for them to admit over 30 new cadets at once, and some say this is a response to the rebel situation. The army, depleted in the 1935 war, has delegated peacekeeping duties for part of southern Gallia to Lanseal, and academ forces clash with rebels frequently. With activation of the militia forbidden, Lanseal will continue to play a key role. Still dumb if you ask me. Lotte Insider: Unraveling the Pointer Mystery Do you know why Class G's Professor Brixham always carries his pointer? Some say it's a weapon, or a conductor's baton. I decided to get to the bottom of the matter in a daring, tell-all interview. Here is what the professor had to say: "I only carry it with me in case I need to give an emergency briefing. By the way, waiting in ambush under my desk is not very professional." What can I say? There's no mountain high enough or desk low enough to stop me from getting my story! Encyclopedia: The Principality of Gallia Full of nature and rich in ragnite, Gallia borders the Empire to the east and the Federation on its western edge. This small, central Europan nation is a constitutional monarchy ruled by House Randgriz, the hereditary sovereigns of Gallia. The house founder, a legendary hero of the War of the Valkyrur, built a castle on the site where the capital is today, establishing his rule. Area: 38,567 sq km - Pop: 432,00 - Currency: Ducat - Policies: Armed neutrality, universal conscription Encyclopedia: Lanseal Royal Military Academy Gallia's only military academy was founded 217 years ago when Gallia was a monarchy, thus the "Royal" in its name. It was constructed around an old citadel, adding residential and training facilities. Cadets all live in the academy dormitory. Under the credit system, the average cadet finishes the program in three years. Lanseal often recruits skilled individuals rom other schools and the militia. Ages range from teens to those i their thirties. Graduates are commissioned as officers. With the entire credit system being basically a dice roll, I could see it easily taking you 3 years to get that last drat MarchIIX credit. Encyclopedia: The City of Mellvere A trade city situated on the River Mais in southern Gallia, it has long prospered as a link between Randgriz and the southern grain-producing region. Sometimes referred to as the south gate of Randgriz due to its position on the main thoroughfare. As southern Gallia escaped the war with the Empire unscathed, its cities have developed rapidly, and Mellvere now serves as a major supplier to northern cities still recovering from war. Many casual laborers from neighboring towns have moved there.
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Nov 8, 2019 00:11
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Psycho Knight posted:This is why I love characters like Robin from FE: Awakening, or literally every other Valkyria Chronicles protagonist. The player only advances in the game by winning battles, so the protagonist should be shown to possess some prowess as a commander in the story itself. Robin, despite being amnesic, is already a talented battlefield organizer, Welkin inherits a lot from his old man and develops into a skilled leader throughout the course of the game. Avan has plot protection and never seems to get any leadership traits aside from having personal energy. I suppose the actions you make in the game are perceived as Avan's calls, but like you said, he's really shown as lucking through every battle without taking any specific tactical action himself in what we've seen so far. Oh, and on this note, the next update or two is already all recorded, but it'll take me a bit to get it ready. My schedule on these will probably slow down a bit, even after I finish my part in the other LP I'm in. I've got a few projects I'm getting to, and these updates take a good bit of time to get finished. On the up side, we get to see quite a few character events, including two for Marion. At the rate I find myself using the double shocktrooper combo, Marion's probably going to finish her story very quickly. E: The name I went with is Taxi! for reasons that will be apparent in the update. I'll poll to change our tank name alongside the team name after every season. The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Nov 12, 2019 |
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Nov 12, 2019 02:58
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Update 7: In Which Things Are Done, Not Unlike Last Time Welcome back to another episode of Mr. Brixham's Not So Happy Neighborhood where Avan made himself stand out as way too optimistic and Marion got harassed. This time we do story stuff and shoot people, like always.  That being said, let's go do story stuff. -- Music: Everyday Life of the Class  *Stomach growling* : Do you ever stop eating? *Her stomach growls as well* : Ugh.: Well, I know there's a campus store. Want to go check it out? : Everything from textbooks to personal hygiene... Impressive.I mean, this is basically a boarding school with strict exit rules. Where else do you expect to get that from?  Oh, hey, it's Alicia.  : Augh! this is AWESOME! You're killing me here! : Hee hee. I just got my certification, but I stand by my bread.: I didn't know the school store ran a baker. This is great!: I just opened shop here today. Come by any time you want a snack.I think her voice actor is different, because she sounds a good bit older than she did back in VC1. Offscreen Voice: Hey, Alicia. Here are those sourdough rolls.  Yep, here's Welkin too.  : I got waylaid by a ruby swallowtail. They only live here in the south...Ah, his naturalist shtick from the first game. I personally think they play it up too hard, but I'll let you form your own opinion of that. : Oh, that figures! Honey, my first customers are here waiting. : Wait, Alicia and Welkin? Why does that sound familiar?You know, I'd figure everyone would recognize these two on sight. They're literal war heroes of the war two years ago, and their faces were definitely in the papers.  At least somebody is up to date on recent events. I'm in a very mellow mood today so I'm not going to bother getting worked up about things, but there's one thing that really stands out to me about all this... : You're Lieutenant Welking Gunther and Sergeant Alicia Melchiott!: Ha ha! I think you might be exaggerating a bit, but yes, I'm Welkin Gunther.: I retired from the militia so I'm not a lieutenant anymore, though. : Gunther? The the two of you are...?: Yup, we got married. Just recently, in fact. : I took up teaching. My first placement is in a town not far from here....And now I'll cut in. I know you're both married now and retired from the militia and all, but why the hell are you not helping to fight the rebels exactly? I mean, I'd want to retire too after that brutal war, but these people are literally trampling over half of what you fought for, and especially the memory of Isara. Shouldn't you be doing something about any of this? They're sending high schoolers out to fight against a racist rebellion, does this not bother you at all? I just don't get it. While we're at it, can someone in the thread remind me why Alicia gave up her Valkyria powers again? Those would be really nice to have, y'know. I'm not going to harp on any of this though, it'd be best if I just ignored any semblance of seriousness in this plot. : Alicia and I just moved down south from Bruhl.It's also basically a warzone, y'know. Not the best of choices.  : You guys are just so lucky down here. Even counting beetles, the diversity...: The other day I went bug-watching at noon, and next thing I knew it was dark!: At no point stopping to think of your wife, who was worried sick!: Ha ha! Sorry about that. Ooh, the next batch should be just about done now.: Right. Well, drop by again soon, kids. I'll have some fresh bread waiting.: And if you ever have any questions, I'm always happy to answer them!*They leave* And if I remember correctly, that's the last we see of them for quite a while.  : And I had no idea heroes knew how to bake bread, too. Maybe I should start! This screenshot speaks wise words. Unfortunately I'm in too deep to stop now. ---  Well, we're done with that little moment. It's almost pointless plot-wise as well, since that has no bearing on basically anything in the future. Welkin's appearance is tied to two minor things in the future, and that's all. Anyways, mission time!  For this month, our tank will be named Taxi! Unless I can't count, there was no overwhelming vote, so I went with this one for a particular reason we'll see in just a second.  We're starting with the APC Exercise and we'll do the Night Combat Exercise next. The Cooperative Exercise is tied to multiplayer, and well, I doubt anyone really cares enough to see it. Part of me finds it strange this game has multiplayer functionality in the first place.   So, the APC Exercise is rather pointless outside of being a tutorial and is also kinda dumb because the APC replaces the tank you just got. Instead of giving us a mission on how to use the tank, they give us one on using the alternate and less effective vehicle. This won't be the last time they take our tank from us, as some future missions will require us to drive an escort APC which is just the forced minimal version of our APC. It's very annoying to me, and that's why I used Taxi! as the name. Luckily it's easy enough to manage without our tank right now, given that it's not very good in it's present state. There might be people out there who like using APCs, but I never found them useful in comparison to the tank. Music: Practice Battle  Custom Tutorial: The APC Unlike the tank, the APC is only capable of carrying light weapons and has easily penetrated armor. A lance will easily destroy it from any angle, and even bullets to the radiator can destroy it; this is in contrast to the tank that is nearly immune to any bullet. The game informs you it is a good idea to use vehicle units as bullet shields for your footsoldiers. This is great advice for tanks, but horrible for APCs as mentioned above. It's only advantage is large equipment space and the ability to ferry units about that climb in. It also doesn't take 2 CP points to move, but its lower damage and terrible defense makes it a liability for any units within it are also knocked unconscious when it explodes. Enough griping about APCs, let's get a move on.   I start by taking advantage of the APC's strengths- if I'm stuck with it, I may as well make the best of it. In the same way you can send to Standby at a flag, you can automatically stuff a unit into a nearby APC for no cost. Deploying them will start their turn, though. : "I'm rolling out!" Again, as beefy as this thing looks, bullets still chink bits of health off of it.  All vehicles can plow through sandbags, instantly deconstructing them like a grenade would, but they are also blocked by those metal barriers. We can also run over people.  It doesn't do any damage, but it does fling people around as if you hit them with a giant burst of air. If you park on top of them, they'll just spawn next to your vehicle. This can also be used to gently shove enemies and teammates alike into more suitable positions. Got a shocktrooper with too little AP to ever reach the flag in a reasonable amount of time? Just keep bumping them forward until they're standing right on it. You'll need to be careful of a tank's double CP cost though, or you'll just be wasting time.  Here's me flinging another guy out of the way.  The standard APC comes with what is a more accurate submachine gun with 30 shots- which is great at this point in the game, honestly, but when we have to do escort APC missions later, it'll still have this gun... and this gun will barely scratch people later on. If you note all the damage I've taken, most of it's been from the enemy APC here. Scout bullets do a meager 1 HP chip, but anything more powerful hits for quite a bit more. A shocktrooper swiss cheeses the APC with interception fire, as they can hardly miss with how big we are. I also avoided a landmine in getting to this spot, and even though it's only a personnel mine, it'll still take a third of the HP off the Taxi!. An anti-armor mine, a type we'll see later, will instantly wipe an APC of nearly any size.   APC radiators are stupidly weak as well. Trying to even drive past a shocktrooper would have you taken out quickly. Doing this to a tank radiator is pointless unless you're using something with anti-armor abilities.  For the sake of example, this is what that early game personnel mine does to us. These are pretty weak though, dealing only about 70-80 damage. This is all I really need to go into detail on in this mission, so let's start blitzing through it.  : "I've got it covered!" I probably should've tried to line up a double shot with Avan here, but whatever.  This works too.  Yeah, friendly fire exists, and this just nearly wiped Cosette by landing two shots into the back of her head with a pointless assist attack.  We'll just have to stuff her into the APC for the rest of the map, then. I could have her heal herself, but that's going to be more of a waste of time than anything. : It's not me that- O-ooh... This is her wounded line. Sorry about that, Cosette. It was mostly my fault that happened.  I have her take out the remaining scout and then put her back into the APC. Avan's going to be more use during this mission anwyays. It's worth noting that Lavinia, our vechicle operator, doesn't get any credits whatsoever as she can't change class. Having her do things won't mess up credit distribution at all, aside from maybe taking a few enemies from the pool.  Let's move up.  : "If I'd been careful, they'd still be..."Lavinia has some unspoken past, and I can't remember if it gets brought up in any way. Regardless. this is a bad potential to trigger when using a tank. Early tank cannons have unreliable accuracy, and losing more is really bad because whiffing a shot that cost you 2 CP does not feel good. It's only triggered at random, but it seems to be pretty rare in my experience.   Also, wasn't this supposed to be just a training drill? I don't think these students aren't coming out alive if so.  Last enemy, let's bring Avan in.  For the sake of it, I throw a grenade right on the dude's head. Dodging a grenade is less common, but surprisingly still possible.  Ends as expected.  It's really an easy mission, though. Your APC isn't likely to explode given the weak enemy spread, even as fragile as it can be.    Music: Winter in Lanseal   After we sleep, we find we have some events to see, it seems. TITLES EARNED: Clockwork  Unfortunately, it's only a daily event and another story event. Let's go ahead and see. -- Music: Everyday Life of the Class  : Usually you have to get in mad trouble to be here. Whoa! Check this throne!Oh wow, I've never seen this event before.  : It's not even that dirty. Who'd know if we just left it like this?   : Are you blind? You should be ashamed!: That corner has cobwebs, there are prints on that vase. Carpet lint, people!Franca's more intense that the drill instructor, honestly. Keep in mind that she also has the Neat Freak potential, so this makes sense. : T-there's no need to go that crazy cleaning!  : I told you guys we'd get in trouble.Yeah, you did. Well, that was something. Onto the story event at the classroom then. --   : This, from the guy who slept through class. And snored incessantly, I'll-- Question: Why do you have the window open during a snowy winter? Are you trying to freeze? : Hee hee... It's all round and cute.: Ooh, a bird? Really?! I want to see, too! Where is it? Seriously. You took quite a few rounds to the head yesterday and you probably still have a concussion from it. : Mm?*A bird tweets* Music - Are We A Spoiled Class?  Yes, here's Jarde, Avan's pet bird. More proof that this game really wants to be wacky high school simulator more than it wants to be a game about war. : Um, you know this bird, Avan?: Know him? He was my pal back at home!: Leon and I found him with a busted wing and nursed him back to health.: He's been my bud ever since. Right, Jarde?Ah, how very protagonistic of Avan. Keep in mind that Leon was mentioned again, lest we ever forget the bestest guy to walk the grounds of Europa. *Jarde tweets again*  : Goodness, there seems to be something in the tube strung around his neck. : "Jarde's been lonely since you left, so I'm sending him along to you.": "Try not to fight too much. And don't over eat like you do. Love, Mom." I thought he was from Mellvere, but whatever. : Crazy, right? Yeah, he's always been super good at finding me. : Their strong homing sense has led to their frequent use as carrier birds.: Wow, you sure know a lot about birds, Zeri! Is that a hobby of yours?: I started reading up when I heard that Lieutenant Gunther was a naturalist.If you want to be more like Welkin, then take over command of the class then. You're a more competent leader really. You're not the social type, it seems, but at least you make plans instead of charging forward. : Well, I say we all pitch in to help take care of him as a class!: That's a great idea. Caring for animals can be very therapeutic.: I-I'll be responsible for his food and water!Isn't that most of the responsibilities already? *Jarde twitters*  : Yaaay! Good to have you in our class, Jarde!*Jarde tweets a last time* Hey, uh, remember that civil war we were having? The plot forgets about that sometimes. -- Music: Briefing  Anyways, we've still got another mission to do!  There's two areas this time: Silo and Storehouse. We haven't seen the storehouse yet, but it's nothing that exciting. I end up bringing Noel out of paranoia left over from later in the game, because there's almost always a tank in here. (Not this time, though.) Music: VC1 - Battle Since this mission uses the Practice Battle track again, I thought it nice to spice up this update with a VC1 track.  After this, the game stops to give a tutorial on nighttime maps, but I've already explained it. It's just a sight range reduction is all.  : "Taking action now!"I send in Marion over here first to scout the situation. They give us the chance to start very close to the enemy's main base, which is nice since this mission is dead simple.  : "I'm simply aglow today!"Unfortunately only metaphorically. It's very dark in Arlem at this time of night, and it usually allows units to stay hidden easier- even tanks.  : "I shant lose!"Marion's triggering a lot of potentials tonight. Although it seems the game didn't want to give us a very quick victory as they barricaded this door off. I'll have to keep running to the next door.  Of course, the opposition really isn't very strong.  Partly down this pathway, I have to take another CP point thanks to Marion only having a shocktrooper's movement range.  Here's a better shot of the inside of the warehouse. In typical missions, enemies are scattered all throughout the inside, and these sandbags act as both much needed cover and unfortunate obstacles. There's not much here right now, so I run Marion as far up as I can and take out a scout.   Marion's reliability in this LP has been downright amazing. Her AP is really tanked from so much movement, so I opt to try and do some stuff on the other area. I could still end the map on this turn if I wanted.  : "Moving out."I opt to send Melissa in to see if she can earn credit for a few takedowns.  ...Still nothing.  This is just half a second later. Nighttime is very effective at hiding foes, but the same goes for you. It's easy to work past provided you don't turn a corner around a building and come face to face with a tank you couldn't see before.  Provided, one of the enemies I couldn't see was a shocktrooper and he shredded half of Melissa's health before I had substantial time to react. I take a shot from a slightly uncomfortable distance...  : "You asked for that!"And it pays off! If she'd missed more than one bullet, she would have been downed easily.  After that, I decided I'd had enough and put Marion back in motion to finish off the mission for me.  Not angle I was looking for, but it was hard to judge at this range.  Being incredibly risky, I leave myself only one CP to capture the base while I send Melissa to get that enemy scout leader. It goes perfectly fine. I'll miss this when we get to the point that grenades are no longer sufficient to one-shot weak enemies.  On her side, Marion handles the last shocktrooper well...  ...and just barely manages to cap the flag! Yeah!    I think we'll see if we've got any non-story events and then I'll call it for this update.  Yep, looks like we've got something to see! TITLES EARNED: Dark, Fortress  Hey, look! A Melissa event! -- Music: Everyday Life of the Class  : Avan, mind you manners. Talking or eating, pick one and stick with it.: Ah ha ha!So far this seems just like an ordinary event. : Mm? Leaving already, Zeri?: There's a book I wanted to get at the campus store.: Okay, we'll see you back in class then! : Hee hee...: Is something wrong?: What? Oh, no, just saw someone standing there. Was that...?What? I didn't see anything.  : What? Whoa, you're right. That was weird.: We should probably head out, too. Don't want to be late for class!  : Ha ha! Fifty laps around the grounds is tough.Fifty seems like a bit much, but thena again, I've got terrible lungs.   : !? What's the matter, Avan? Brain finally give out on you?: Z-Zeri! There! Her! Look, that's her! Yep, Avan's finally lost his mind. : Huh?! But when did...?: What was that about not being tired? You dreaming of a girl in here?: What?! No! She was really there just a second ago! Oh, I guess this is actually about Melissa, then.  Yep, that's a pretty Avan type thing to do. --- I'll call it here for now, and use the rest for the next update. We'll get to do some real missions next time, alongside seeing a lot of character events. Join us next time on Hardin's Heroes where we do pretty much the same thing, although maybe more interesting! No wonder our ratings are going down! Yeah! New Characters: Jarde Age: 5 Class G messenger. A male Gallian swift carrier bird who is friendly with Avan. Welkin Gunther Age: 24 Former leader of Squad 7, he married Alicia when she passed her meister exam. Now a teacher. Alicia Gunther Age: 21 Belonged to Squad 7. Passed her meister exam after leaving militia. Loves to bake bread.
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Nov 14, 2019 03:06
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HardDiskD posted:If I had to guess, since the militia can't be used against a rebellion, they left it and then moved south to Lanseal on purpose to help train new cadets. I mean, if he was a teacher at the school like Brixham, I'd get it, but the dialogue just suggests he teaches normal education in a town nearby. I mean, that's great and all, but he'd do a lot more good if he taught at Lanseal for a year. You might be right about wanting to stay out of military jurisdiction though, because he does show up later to sell orders like the old general from VC1. I'm not going to bother putting tags on that because it's really nothing major, especially since most of the orders are very situational at best.
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Nov 14, 2019 03:49
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FoolyCharged posted:I kinda like the apc a lot. The ability to shift multiple units between maps with 1 cp is handy and it's other weapon option is amazing. It even eventually gets upgrades that let it not fall over to a stiff breeze! I'll admit I'm a bit harsh on the APC, as part of that is lingering frustration of having to use the Escort APC later. It won't let you use any of your APC parts, no siree, you've gotta use a completely standard, no upgrades APC on missions where a tank would be really helpful. "The enemy has 3 different tanks and tons of gatling bunkers" type of missions. I did get a taste of its usefulness here, but I've got a deep seated preference for the tank given how broken you can make it with the right gear. In the past I've often relied on a well equipped tank as a method to delete enemy tanks rather than using lancers, as anti-personnel is what I've got my land units for. Though, I'll admit I didn't know you could transfer multiple units between maps. I think I'll try and give it a fair chance, especially until I get the specific tank parts I need to trivialize the game. I remember the proposal part, and I get not going nuclear, but couldn't you have kept a lance and shield to help us out with? Their destructive as all get out, and their symbolic of Gallia's history anyhow. I feel like if she just went under a disguise and made a few public acts in favor of Darcsens, a majority of the rebel army would disappear. It's the lasting propaganda from the Valkyria that has maintained the racism, and if that got undone, the primary reason of the civil war would be null. I think the symbolism is enough to win people back and take the energy out of the rebellion. I suppose this is a conversation best saved for a later time, given there is some things about the Rebels that hasn't been shown yet, alongside a few other plot elements that would factor into this conversation.
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Nov 14, 2019 05:54
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Next update should be in a day or two. I've got recordings all the way up to the beginning of next month, when I'll need input again. I promised Marion events, and you shall have them! I've got a lot of character events and even a potential promotion coming for one of our characters.
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Nov 16, 2019 01:43
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Update 8: Avan Gets Attacked By A 13 Year Old Last time on Taxi!, our Taxi! nearly killed our engineer through wanton disregard for her resistance to bullets (that is, none). Oh, and we were getting stalked or something too.  Regardless, we've got story to see! Music: Everyday Life of the Class     You already lost Avan's bird? It's been like, one day- are you sure he just didn't bail on all of us? Would you believe this is a major plot event? : Guess I'm not the only one who gets lost on this campus.: If he is lost, he must be frightened. Will you help us look for him?: Yeah, I bet he'd come if you called him!: All right, I'm on it. Heh, so much for those amazing homing instincts.To be fair, Lanseal looks confusing as hell from the bird's eye view we get on the map. If the room layout is as bad as some I've seen, the place is probably a nightmare to navigate. I'd say a bird wouldn't need to care as much, but they are prone to not understanding windows.    *A bird tweets in the distance* : That sounds like Jarde! It's coming from that direction.Sorry, Avan. That might take you a turn or two with your shocktrooper's AP. It might be better to send Magari.  *Another bird call*   *Yet another bird twitter*  Person, you're going to break that bird if you keep doing that. Also, how does this even work in first place? *Stretching noises, more bird tweets* : Jarde?!*Stretching noises, even more twittering* Listen, I thought this game was rated T. I don't think medieval torture methods qualifies as a T rating. : Hey, what gives, man?! Let him go!  Well, that's a strange image, especially without context.       *He gives out an impressive cry of pain*   Riveting dialogue, as always. This is kinda funny to me, probably just because it's Avan this is happening to. : What's your deal? If you want a fight, you got one! : Huh? I don't really get this robe design, but I suppose that's not important.  : Nothing. I just came here looking for my bird, lady. : You're back, Mama! Did you finish your errand? : I did, though it went 18 minutes over schedule. : Uhh, okay? : What? You little brat! I find it interesting that Avan, of all people, picks up on something in this cutscene that few other characters will for quite some time. Well, at least from what I remember. It's also a spoiler, so I can't tell you what yet. Though, if you've played VC1, you probably already have an idea of what it is. --  What, you thought we were free of story events? -- Music: Faint Youth  : I never thought they'd send cadets off into the field!Game, don't remind me that you're trying to have a serious plot. : How did you do it? What was in your head as you fought? You thought we were free of the book, didn't you? There is no escaping the book! Also, isn't the best advice for a military squad leader. This is Avan's standard operating procedure, as well, so... : Works for me. I was never good with thinking anyway. Okay, let's get to work!  : His quotes? Is that what that notebook is?This cutscene is simply here to remind you about the book and how you got here in the first place, but nothing else. : Yup. I wrote down every bit of advice he ever gave me.Which is to say, Leon was spouting out inspirational quotes like an HR manager all the time. I feel like this would be better done if he had remembered these quotes and had flashbacks to moments with Leon where he heard them, instead of constantly referring to this personal self-help book. Yeah, that's been done before, but it works because it would give us some actual characterization of Leon and a reason to actually feel involved with their relationship. I'm not spoiling anything by saying that this main driving point of the plot does finally bear fruit, but it comes out incredibly lackluster and without weight to me because Leon is never given any depth or anything to relate to. Who knows, it might actually make Avan interesting.  This still doesn't tell us anything, really. Leon's still basically a non-entity and all we know is that he was "the bestest". : I see. You really do feel a great deal of respect for him, don't you?: Heh, you could say that. So, you knew him, right?: What was he like? Here at the academy, I mean. : He was a star performer at the Laevatein Cup. His squad adored him.: Last year, he used a decoy tactic, then ran in solo to take the enemy's camp.What? You thought you were going to get any characterization of substance?  This is the only new thing we know about Leon: he wasn't immediately popular at the school. He was still absolutely amazing, it just took a little while for people to join the fan club. : Wow, he never told me about that. That's awesome!: Lanseal has many talented cadets, but Leon was... special. Too special.: Do, uh... Do you know anything about this "special mission"? This right here is the only bit of actual development on this plot thread that we're getting.  : I figure if I can find out more about that mission, I might learn what happened.: I'm afraid I don't know anything.: Of course, even if I did, all that happens here is classified for security.: Even as a cadet, you don't have clearance to know much.Yep, this is code for we won't hear anything about this for a long time.  : Oof...: Just so you know, I'm serious about Class G winning that Laevatein Cup.: I expect the other classes may not agree. This is no easy competition Avan. Yeah, whatever. They're not actually that bad.  "I drank water without a cup. That was annoying." If you get the reference, congratulations. I also don't know why I made it, it just felt appropriate. : Heh heh. I'll be sure to clear my calendar.-- Music: Winter in Lanseal Finally. Let's go take care a few chores then move on to doing a mission. I'm going to try and cut the length of these updates down by about 40 or so screenshots, so let's see what we get into.  First up, I'm buying the lamp part for the tank. This is just one of many pieces of equipment that nullfies a certain area effect, i this case it negates the effects of nighttime for our team.  I level up scouts and troopers again. I try to do levels in intervals of 5, so when these two are done, I'll cap off techs next then engineers. Lancers are usually fine enough without too much experience investment.  We've got a lot of missions to do, and I'm going to do all of them, (minus the multiplayer ones,) before I progress to the next month.  As you can see, the game does not wait a second to remind us of how strong promoted units will be. We're already going up against snipers on some missions.  I'm going to go ahead and clear this skirmish out for now, since it won't be too difficult and I can try to prompt more character events to show.  This map makes use of the 3 areas we've already seen, with the final point being in the warehouse. I deploy my full six for no particular reason, but it'll be pretty easy to beat this mission fast regardless. Player Turn Music: Liberation Battle Enemy Turn Music: Return Battle   I waste no time using the usual strategy for this map. Avan scouts first, Marion follows, double team shocktroopers plow through everything.   There's a guy out in the distance, but he's no threat. While I move ahead, I go and take this trooper out before he causes issues.   Quickly burning through AP, I take Marion and follow Avan's steps forward.  She doesn't get much farther, but it's still good to play safe when there's bound to be enemies in our way.  : "Enemy sighted!"There's a single scout defending their camp in this corner. Somehow, I don't have a screenshot of it, so you'll just have to believe me. Enemy Radio: "They're not getting past us- stomp 'em dead!"  Unfortunately for the enemy scout, crouching does nothing in the face of Marion's gun.  This is probably the first we've seen of our tank, and I'm not likely to be using it this mission anyways. Unfortunately, the tank is only so good right now, and it's 2 CP cost is hindering given that it's not all that powerful yet.   : "Good."Just clearing out enemies.   : "Moving out." I've probably already showed this before, but the faster method across this map is up this ladder and into the silo/building.  : "I see you..."So begins the enemy's habit of hiding an enemy in the grass just feet from your base. If you left your base open for even a turn, they'd run in and cap your flag in a heartbeat. I brought Mischlitt to stand in place there and prevent the enemy from trying that cheating stuff on me.   There was a scout hiding up here, so Melissa takes him down as she moves along.  The flag's just around this corner.  So I take a risky chance and hope Melissa can one-round the shocktrooper standing there.   ...drat it. I expected this to happen.   : "It- it hurts..."That was a mistake. Sorry Melissa.  The enemy retaliates by wasting time attacking a crouched Helmut.  He even takes the fool down from a distance.  ...And that's all they do, apparently.  Time for Helmut to go in on a rescue mission.  I waste a bit of AP moving to the backside fo the trooper, but I don't want to take any more chances that I could miss and lose another unit. : "I don't miss." He doesn't.  This is my flag now!  ...And I run out of AP inches from Melissa.   : "MEDIC! Hurry, there's no time!"Helmut yells this very convincingly, though Melissa would be fine in a few rounds.  : *On radio* "Expand control of the field."On it Brixy. I told you he actualy talks over the radio.  Yeah, I can do this. 3 CP and either vantage point is more than enough. I'm still opting for the one in the upper right, because it's bound to have less enemies facing it.  : "Sure, dude!"See what I mean about placing an enemy right at the flag so they can recapture?  Of course he's laying down.  So I take the obvious choice.  : "What even is that, dude?!"Not really a problem given she triggered Evasion Boost right at the start.  : "Found one!"Enemy Radio: "Just spotted another customer..." I don't opt to do anything here, given that a Gallian-1 won't do jack at this range.  I can make this work, I think.  You can just lie down for a little while though. I don't want to have to re-cap this base if I can't get the flag this round.  I'm just going to hide Lotte behind Marion because there's no way possible. (Should've used Helmut.)  She lands one headshot, nothing else...  ...Before hiding behind Marion.   This turns out to be a profitable plan as the enemy immediately moves in on the two girls. This dimwit tries to take Marion, though, and gets the expected result.  3 Turns is still and A, so I'll settle for it, I guess.  Because I've used Marion so much, she's developed a new class based potential. These trigger based on how often you use a unit, and which list they pull from is different for every character and dependent on their class. Some characters, like Marion, benefit more from ones obtained in later promotions, while others, such as Anisette, get some of their best in their earliest class. Marion got one that sounds good in theory, but ends up kinda useless for shocktroopers. Clear Shot triggers when enemies are in sight, but far away, triggering a damage and accuracy boost. Unfortunately, this boost is lost on getting too close to enemies. It's a lot better to have on other classes.  I take the easy way out and shoot this scout.  : "Please, allow me!" Maxed out Morale just as I capped this. There wasn't anything immediately visible in the room for more credit gathering, so I ended it. This update's gone on long enough for my new limit.  What a shame, I missed out on 40 exp and 10 DCT. The reward for no fallen units is basically nothing.   Yep, we're gonna see some events now. That'll have to wait until next time, unfortunately. Cutting the updates at about 100 screenshots is plenty, and will let me put them out 30% faster, in theory. To make up for it, have these character bios and newspapers. Next time on Everybody Loves Leon, you get to see some of those character events I keep promising! Extras: Gallia Times   Lotte Insider   Why did Raymond subsitute for us? Did this happen before we got here or something? Clementia Foerster Age: 39 A woman in white who always seems to be with Aliasse. Seems to be a scientist, but the details are not clear. Aliasse Age: 13 Mysterious girl clothed in black, background unknown. She speaks and behaves strangely. The Flying Twybil fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Nov 22, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 23:18
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