Valkyria Azure Revolution – New Character, Battle System/Demo

This week’s Famitsu arrives with a substantive feature on Valkyria: Azure Revolution.

First, the reveal of new character Maxim. His outfit prominently features teal and he sports white hair. Maxim is an antagonist character. The Valkyria series has had a propensity for creating a squad of sub-antagonists under one main antagonist (as the Drei Stern were to Maximilian), perhaps Brynhildr and Maxim might fulfill that same role in Azure Revolution. Besides that, we learn that he was born in Rus Empire-occupied territory, selected to be a young soldier, and received an experimental (possibly unsafe?) Ragnite implant that allows him to use Magic Arts.

Additionally we’ve also got some new information on the battle demo for Azure Revolution that is featured in Valkyria Chronicles Remaster, and how battles for Azure Revolution play out. You control your party through a field and when encountering enemies on the field, you can choose to preemptively attack an enemy party with long range options (described as R1 or L1+Square, separately.) The Circle button can be used to interact with your environment to give yourself cover. If you successfully use a long-ranged attack to surprise the enemy party you’ll be given an as of yet unspecified advantage for the “real” combat phase – Close Combat.

In Close Combat, the player is given four attack inputs, which are assigned to your melee weapons and Magic Arts. The behavior of your allies and the enemy is sensitive to things like terrain, whether or not you attacked first, and how the battle is going thus far. If you initiate a successful preemptive attack, for example, the enemy party will react to your moves in a sub-optimal manner. This all would seem to capture standard Japanese ARPG combat with some Valkyria Chronicles-flairs.

However, should one of your party members reach 0 HP, they’ll enter a near-death state where a timer where appear above them. Either you reach them and heal them, or your party member is permanently incapacitated. Another Valkyria Chronicles staple with a new twist on it for Azure Revolution!

The Famitsu article states that music transitions between the field and entering battles will be seamless. A focus on how to treat and create seamless transitions seems to be more of an adopted trend amongst Japanese RPGs as of late, as opposed to loading screens that produce fights on a separate battlefield.

Yasunori Mitsuda will be contributing his talents for this game’s OST – it’s not clear in what capacity he’ll be around, whether it be for direction or composition, or if he would even be the sole composer. It also notes that Australian-Japanese singer Sarah Àlainn sings the “Song of Death” that can be heard in a recent Azure Revolution trailer. I’ll link it below in case you missed it or want a refresher!

Credit to Gematsu for the translated information.