Valkyria Chronicles II is one of those so-good-you'll-lose-all-track-of-time games. It's a big, shiny, AAA-class game in a tiny little package, and despite its small size it still does a fair bit of justice to the franchise name. A new story, battle improvements, new troops, and a ton of missions are exactly what Valkyria Chronicles fans were asking for. And while they may have not asked for it in a portable package, I don't think they'll mind too much. The good news is that you won't feel that there were any compromises made to make this sequel a PSP game. This is the real deal, folks. Don't miss this game.

Valkyria Chronicles II plays out pretty similar to its PS3 counterpart, but its a great game and shows you what happens shortly after the anime or the PS3 game. Its fun but has a few difficulty spikes.

This is a great tactical rpg game. The gameplay gives you both the turn-based overview map and the 3rd action. You can customise the squad from the characters you use to their classes as they advance and the weapons and their equipment. And even the correct use of your characters can be important since each of them has his likes and dislikes which change the way a country boy fights in a field or in a city, or how personal relationships between squad members affect their will to fight alongside each other. You have a full customisable tank/apc as well which you can change before each mission in order to use a different camouflage painting, or put a device that negates the area effects, or even change the whole tank from a light tank with a flamethrower to a heavy tank equipped with a huge gun in order to blow anything up or even use it as artillery support, etc. If thats not enough you can also use a special coating which is a mix of items you collect during missions to enhance your troops abilities. Having more than 20 characters from which you can choose to fit in your squad, i was pretty amazed at how much you learn about them by the events during the game. They aren't great literary characters that's for sure but you get enough information to recognise a lot of stuff about them and get to know all of them pretty good without trying since the whole comic/manga style of the "cutscenes" is enjoyable. The only thing that i didn't like is that you don't get the whole war-feel. It seems their personal affairs are more important than the war going on a few miles away. It's too light-hearted for a game concerning a war, but it's a great game nevertheless.

Lets get this out of the way first shall we? This sequel is on the PSP and it's still awesome... that's right, it doesn't need to be on a home console to still be as great an experience as the original! If you are one of the [relative] few that played the original game, you instantly know what to expect from this title. All of the core mechanics made their way back into this game making fans feel right at home straight away. The battles still unfold the same way, choose a unit to move from the map view, move the unit and fire upon the enemy in 3rd person view, rinse and repeat until the mach is won. Of course, there is much more to it than that, but you get the basic idea! This sequel improves the class progression system by adding tiered job classes. Now your scouts can progress to become longer range scouts or snipers etc. There also a new class in this one, defensive type that has a melee weapon! The presentation is just as sharp as the original, animation is fluid and the control scheme is awesome, really plays to the strengths of the handheld format. The story isn't as great or emotionally involving as the first game, but it stands up well on its own and the cameos are great! The main problem I had with this game was the slightly repetitive sound effects from the characters during story sequences which is really not that important is it? All in all this is a great game, huge value for money too - took me around 50 hours to go through it (and I still have a few side quests I didn't get to yet! Buy it, you will not be disappointed!