Valkyria Chronicles melds three gaming genres into one entertaining package

Sega is showing American Play Station 3 owners some love with Valkyria Chronicles, a remarkable game that melds three different genres into one neat little package.

Even though the PS3 launched in 2006, it has only managed to snag a select few epic exclusive games.

The games integration of multiple genres sounds like a complicated mess, but the combination of turn-based role playing game elements, wartime strategy, and first-person shooter action is highly entertaining.

Valkyria Chronicles centers on a primarily female army unit fighting against a powerful empire during an alternate World War II. The storyline isn't the greatest, but it should be enough to keep most gamers interested.

The actual game-play of Valkyria Chronicles is where it truly shines. There are basically two main areas of the game: battles, and unit organization.

The battles themselves consist of command mode and action mode.

Command mode is where players issue orders for troops to follow. They can have soldiers focus on firepower, defense, evasion, or healing.

During action mode, you take control of individual characters and move them about the battlefield according to their action points (AP). Various soldier types have varying amounts of AP, so certain characters are more mobile than others.

As well as moving the characters, the gamer must also manually aim and fire at targets.

Attack efficiency works similar to a rock-paper-scissors system. Certain classes are more efficient against others. For example, tanks are powerful against infantry, but vulnerable to anti-tank troops. Anti-tank troops can easily destroy tanks, but can easily be dispatched by infantry.

I recommend Valkyria Chronicles simply because it is unique.

PS3 owners seeking the next great exclusive game should definitely seek out Valkyria Chronicles.