Posted October 22, 2018
Valkyria Chronicles: Though the gameplay and presentation were quite good, the story was far, far from the gritty war drama I was led to expect. Unfortunately, it just served to cement the belief that Japanese audiences and creators will never, ever let go of their decades-old tropes that they repeat in every single RPG. You can't just have a contained conflict with ambiguous morality, it always has to come down to a save-the-world-from-evil plot with an overly theatrical, unrelateable villain. It ticked me off so much I could rattle off a bunch of gripes I had with the plot and characters, years after playing it. Plotholes, wasted opportunities and tired tropes.