When Valkyria Chronicles Remastered launched in Japan, it came with a playable demo of the next title in the series, Valkyria: Azure Revolution. If you've been keeping up to date with this one, you'll know that Azure Revolution is trying a lot of new things; judging from the gameplay that we've seen, it appears to be far more action orientated than its predecessors - it even looks like a hack and slasher at times, with the main character wielding a big bloody sword.
We were more than willing to wait it out and see how the finished release ended up, but it seems that the project is going to undergo some major changes before it releases in the East later this year. These alterations are being made based on player feedback, and it sounds like many who played the demo weren't happy with the way things were going.
Unsurprisingly, the big complaint was that the game didn't feel like a Valkyria title. According to director Takeshi Ozawa, translated by Gematsu, the battle system has "changed greatly" from the one found in the demo, and it's more "RPG-like" now. The developer's implemented a new action gauge mechanic, and players will be able to stop time when using weapons and magic, supposedly giving proceedings a more turn based feel. What's more, another demo is expected this summer, which will include all of the revisions.
Are you glad that Azure Revolution is taking a few steps back from its action based gameplay? Is it always a good idea to listen to fans? Put down your oversized sword in the comments section below.
[source blog.esuteru.com, via gematsu.com]
Comments 12
It's pretty much inevitable you'll upset a lot of fans if you completely change the gameplay of a series. Action games are great but maybe dont use the Valkyria name if you don't want to get lots of upset fan mail. To be honest I had written this one off and quickly lost interest on hearing it was an entirely different game. But I'll check out reviews once it's out, hopefully it can live up to the original.
It it ain't broke, don't fix it.
There's nowt wrong with the tactical turn based combat in the previous VC games, I can only imagine that they changed it to action orientated to try to pander to new players. I dislike when developers/publishers streamline their games to garner new fans (cough* BioWare).
I like when a game company can take criticism of a demo, go back and redesign to make things better. You don't see this often; more recently with FFXV and now Valkyria Chronicles. This is why all games should have a demo early in its life cycle (early enough that things are not set in stone yet).
It reminds me of Agile vs Waterfall. The ability to pivot and change direction based on feedback, rather than pushing forward with no chance of reversing course, is crucial in all design.
@LieutenantFatman Reminds me of Capcom and Resident Evil:. Don't f*ck with the core mechanics of a series if people love that about said games. Just create a new IP or spinoff or something.
Just because your focus testing group of twitchy tweens love [Action Games]/[Call of Duty] doesn't mean you should change a beloved [RPG]/[Survival] series into one. **sigh**
Nice to see that developers actually listening to players
I hope it turns out well, since the art style is lovely!
@ventage Bingo! It's pleasing to see to communication between developer and consumer. Plenty of other companies that should be taking note of this!
@AyeHaley Definitely. I appreciate games sometimes need to modernise to an extent and improve in various ways. But scrapping everything that came before when everyone loved it is a massive oversteer, a waste and a good way to lose most of your original audience.
The footage I saw looked terrible. I'm glad they're willing to take fan feedback on this.
The problem is that changing the core gameplay in the middle of development is risky; a half-baked product is a good possibility. Rush decisions could be made in order to meet their deadline and the final product may still dissatisfy the fans.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for feedback, but this could easily backfire.
@AyeHaley
Well said. Took the words right out of my mouth.
Know your base. Your base is strategy RPG fans. Their little focus groups tell them action games sell better so they turn it into an action game but retain enough to be reminiscent of previous entries. Which totally alienates existing fans and does absolutely nothing to garner the interest of the mainstream. Then the game flops and they wonder where it all went wrong.
I'll tell you where it all went wrong. It went wrong the day they decided to put greed ahead of all else.
@AyeHaley Well RE was actually a case listening to the fans too much funnily enough. People were comparing that by 3 the series had hardly changed, they complained about the save system and various other things. So they made the series more like a silly action movie with 4 and totally scrapped the entire story so far with Umbrella being killed off in the opening movie.
We went from barely surviving a zombie outbreak to being a special agent rescuing the president's daughter and literally riding off into the sunset with her (seriously go and watch the RE1 and 4 endings now on YT to compare). We went from limping around a spooky mansion to flipping out of 3rd storey windows through the glass and then suplexing a not-zombie (remember the game clarifying "no zombies in this game!" within the first minute.) Autosaving removed any tension, the previous save system removed at fan request.
So Capcom had intentionally made a cheesy action movie plot where you dodged laser beams in slow motion in QTE sequences and had knife fights with super soldiers. A game where dying only takes you back a couple of minutes and where you can instantly kill most enemies with a wrestling move, though watch out for the not-zombies wielding miniguns. It was perfectly logical to move on in that direction with 5. The fact that fans then rejected in 5 what they'd previously adored led to the schizophrenic 6. The irony is that if Capcom had ignored their fans, the series would still be slow-paced, puzzle and exploration oriented survival horror games.
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