Valkyria Chronicles II – gameplay advice

I finished the game so it’s time for some gameplay advice, hoping it’s useful for both newcomers and people familiar with the franchise.

In battle:

• Most times, it pays off to have control of the areas, and we achieve this by capturing enemy’s camps. By capturing a camp we don’t only block their reinforcements, we also boost Morale and have a ready-to-deploy base for ourselves. Besides, this game features special camps called gate camps, and if we capture them we can use them to deploy to additional areas.
• Always keep in mind mission objectives and failure conditions. A common failure condition is to lose our main base camp, so we better keep track of nearby areas and have at least an ally nearby protecting it.
• This game distributes the battlefield across areas, so we need to quickly adapt to the current situation by deploying and undeploying the correct soldiers. Examples include deploying lancers to effectively countering tanks.
• Idle, unnecesary people better be removed from the battlefield because we can have at most 6 soldiers (tank included) deployed.
• Use orders effectively and keep in mind they are CP expensive. However they come in handy in tight spots for boosting attack and defense stats, and for healing requests.
• Snipers are actually better and more useful than what we believe they are. And promoting a sniper to Elite Sniper is one of the best things we could do to have the upper hand on many situations, but specially while fighting bosses. Having an Elite Sniper means a sick combo of all accuracy, range, firepower and little risk.

Outside battle:

• Don’t forget to go to the Drill Grounds every now and then. When leveling up, I strongly suggest to give priority to the frontline soldiers: scouts, shocktroopers and lancers.
• Go to the R&D lab frequently and upgrade as most equipment as you can. Try to keep some balance between upgrading the tank and upgrading the soldiers equipment.
• On this game, I believe the tank is so much better than the APC on every mission. Besides, you should know the tank may use only a CP by picking the correct body.
• We may purchase more orders at the Shop, so it’s always a good idea to pay them a visit and see if they have anything useful. (by the way, it is very cool to have Welkin and Alicia here). Purchasing an order costs EXP instead of DCT, so keep that in mind and don’t use all EXP only on leveling up.