Valkyria Chronicles 4

Valkyria Chronicles 4 returns the series to what made it famous: war in a fictional Europe, watercolor stylization, and a unique blend of turn-based strategy with third-person action. The player leads a Federation squad under the command of young officer Claude Wallace during a desperate winter operation meant to end the war with a strike on the enemy empire's capital. The tone is serious — freezing soldiers, bad decisions by the high command, losses among people the player knows by name — and the game presents it as a war chronicle you leaf through, with chapters opening like pages of a book.

The combat system gives the player a limited number of action points each turn, each spent on one soldier. Once selected, the camera switches to over-the-shoulder view, and the player moves them through the terrain in real time and aims manually. While moving, enemies fire at the unit, so the player has to plan cover, flanking and attack order. Every soldier has a class, personal traits and weaknesses — one might get nervous in open ground, another fights better next to a friend. The fourth entry added a grenadier class capable of indirect fire and a reserve-summoning system usable at certain moments in battle.

On Switch the game runs smoothly, and its art style — where everything looks like pencil and watercolor drawing with heightened outlines — is a huge advantage over more technically demanding titles: it doesn't age and reads well on a small screen. The music is orchestral, with marching motifs and mournful themes, and the scenes between battles get plenty of room to breathe. Reception was good, seen as a return to form after the series' mixed attempts on other platforms. Today it's one of the most distinctive strategy games you can play on a console, and a title that keeps its own shape even years later. The combination of carefully planned tactics and moments where the player aims and goes all in has few equals in the genre, which is exactly why people keep coming back to the series. The campaign runs roughly thirty hours.