Valkyria Chronicles III

Valkyria Chronicles III brings turn-based tactical battle strategy combined with direct real-time unit control to the portable PSP console and tells a side story that takes place in parallel with the series' second entry. The player commands the Nameless unit, a squad of soldiers condemned to the most dangerous and dirtiest missions, who fight on the front line of the second European war while the main army deals with political intrigue back home in the meantime and effectively sacrifices the unit as expendable. The game's tone is therefore markedly darker and rawer than in previous entries, with strong emphasis on the cost of war, betrayal, and the moral compromises characters must make to survive. Members of the Nameless unit are also convicts and outcasts with their own pasts and motivations, so relationships within the squad are far more conflict-ridden than the friendly atmosphere of Squad Seven from the second entry.

Even though the game runs on the performance-limited PSP compared to the PlayStation 3, on which the first two entries were made, it retains the series' characteristic CANVAS system with turn-based movement planning and direct real-time unit control during shooting, as well as the distinctive visual style reminiscent of watercolor paintings on the map. The story, character cast, and side missions are entirely new, and the game was released only in Japan - it officially reached the West only years later as part of a remastered collection for PlayStation 4, so for a long time it was content unavailable outside the Japanese market, and it's clearly a standalone work with its own plot, not just a technical port of the series' previous games to weaker hardware. The smaller screen and lower performance of the PSP also forced adjustments to the clarity of battle maps so they remained legible even on a handheld.

Why play it: Valkyria Chronicles III is for tactical RPG fans who want a darker, rawer detour from the main series, with its own story about the price war extracts from ordinary, expendable soldiers.