"Because there's always room for more Valkyria Chronicles."

It’s hard to believe it has been almost a full year since the last Valkyria Chronicles DLC was released. By this point, I had almost forgotten that more was on the way. But when it finally came, I was eager as ever to return to my “Game of the Year” of 2008.

The “Challenge of the Edy Detachment” DLC pack will cost five of your earth dollars and contains six new skirmish battles. Unlike the last DLC involving Edy, you will not be locked into using a specific set of characters. Instead, you’re free to select your own characters from your squad, complete with the levels and equipment set you left them at last time.

Each mission focuses on the strengths of a specific job class. Before you start, you’ll be briefed by the character within the Edy Detachment of the corresponding job class. Because this DLC was localized such a long time after the game’s release, you won’t be able to select English voices. But let’s face it, the Japanese voices are better anyway.

Susie’s Challenge: The Wildwood I - Scout Trial

In the scout trial, you’ll need to protect your base while eliminating sneaky enemies. The map is littered with patches of grass and branching paths. This is probably the easiest mission in the pack. The only tricky part is the boss unit in the end. Get near his gun and you’re toast. But take him down and you can earn his weapon: a high powered, short range rifle.

Jann’s Challenge: Naggiar Plains North - Lancer Trial

Being a challenge for lancers, it should come as no surprise that the mission is littered with tanks. But it’ll take more than just lancers to clear the challenge effectively. You must defend your base in the center while eliminating a well placed sniper, hidden shocktroopers and scouts, a ridiculous amount of tanks, and whatever other reinforcements show up before you capture their three bases.

Marina’s Challenge: The Wildwood II - Sniper Trial

This is quite possibly the trickiest challenge in the pack. At the start of the mission, you’ll have only two slots to deploy units. The goal is to prevent enemies from reaching their own base for several turns. If so much as a single unit reaches the base, it’s Game Over. The problem is that your base is isolated on the opposite side of a ravine as the enemy. And since snipers won’t reactively attack on the enemy’s turn, you’ll need to be extra discerning in who you choose to shoot.

Homer’s Challenge: The Warehouse District - Engineer Trial

Ah, my favorite challenge. This is the only challenge that takes place in the city instead of the wilderness. The objective is to get your tank from the south east corner to the north west corner. The problem is that your treads are broken and your engineer (and whoever else you deployed) is already at the north west corner. You have to get an engineer to fix the treads and send the tank back home. Visibility is low thanks to all the tall buildings and danger is waiting around every corner. It’s very well put together.

Edy’s Challenge: The Arboreal Wastes - Shocktrooper Trial

In the shocktrooper trial, Rosie is stuck on the left while your other units are on the right. You’ll each need to eliminate the enemies while making sure none of them get past your line. But if you finished the last DLC like me, you’ll have already unlocked Ruhm, a high power machine gun with near sniper-level range and accuracy, leaving Rosie with little to no problem fending for herself.

Edy Detachment Challenge: Barious Ruins - Tank Trial

Remember the map in the main game where you had to slow down a giant tank by knocking over walls of ancient ruins? Well, now they’re in the way of YOUR tank! You’ll have to blast them away while avoiding enemy fire as you attempt to get your tank to the destination on the opposite side of the map.

Final Thoughts

I found the lack of difficulty settings a bit disappointing, but the motivation to replay the missions is still strong since you’ll want to achieve the highest rank on each one. The addition of several new weapons to acquire from enemy units is a nice, unexpected touch.

While many, if not all of the missions use maps from the main story, the objectives, enemy and base locations, and other special circumstances make them so radically different that they are practically unrecognizable. Since each mission focuses on the strengths of a single class, they all have a very unique flavor giving the battles a great sense of variety. At less than a dollar per mission, I’d highly recommend the “Challenge of the Edy Detachment” pack to anybody hungering for more Valkyria Chronicles content before the sequel drops on our shores.

Tags: dlc, downloadable content, Sega, strategy, Valkyria Chronicles

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.