Big Guns and Bigger Eyes

I recently obtained a Sony PlayStation 3 Home Computer Entertainment System, and the first thing I did the morning after I got it was pick up a copy of Valkyria Chronicles, which I mentioned way back around this time last year.
It's really good.

That is to say it's mechanically really good. How it combines turn-based strategy and light third-person action is a triumph, except it comes wrapped in a JRPG presentation that carries the overwrought narrative baggage expected from the genre. Every character suffers from verbal diarrhea, complete with the standard half-hearted diatribes on subjects like human nature and racism mashed with the somewhat inappropriate feeling cutesy humor, the kind which is very often punctuated with a "Tee hee!" by one of the female protagonists. The cut-scenes are entirely skippable, but I suffer from an affliction that requires me to view them, because while it might be virtually impossible, especially at this point, to get me emotionally invested into the storyline, I like to know what's going on and what led up to a particular mission. It does help that the game has a great look to it, if I were so bold I might even say gorgeous, the way everything is presented with a painterly, watercolor look.
The short of it is that I don't really care for the story or characters, but now that we've gotten that out of the way we can talk about what I do like. When you are mercifully allowed to participate in the game proper, it is essentially a gridless turn-based strategy game. At the start of your turn you are presented with a map of the battlefield and a set of Command Points with which to move your units, selecting a unit brings the game into a third-person mode in which you move them about and attack in real-time. While they do less damage than they would during your turn, enemies can still fire upon the units you are moving, so speed and use of cover is still a factor, giving it a more action-y feel. Once your unit is in "aim mode" they have all the time in the world to pick their shot and fire, with headshots obviously doing more damage but being harder to make. Your units can only fire once per use, but can be reused multiple times in a turn, though the distance they can move decreases significantly with each use.
While the most I've ever seen allowed in a mission is 9 units, you assemble a squad of 20 from a large roster of characters in different classes, each with their own special "potentials" which can be good or bad and are only activated under certain conditions (e.g. Works better alone, not as effective in urban environments, etc.) and other characters they prefer fighting with. The experience you earn is spent on leveling up unit types (Snipers, scouts, shocktroopers, etc.) rather than individuals, which is a great relief. The money you earn is spent upgrading and modifying each class type's equipment, and you'll pick up some enemy weapons along the way, further allowing you to customize your squad.
There's a lot to chew on here and I've been taking it pretty slow, but so far it's a game with a surprising amount of depth considering it's coming from Sega. Maybe it would need to have a different context (I keep thinking about shoehorning Team Fortress 2 into this style), but it really feels like the kind of game that would do better on the PC.

-K.