Sorry for the many photos but I LOVE the style of this game and wanted to share it. 
First off the games opening movie is accompanied by a really nice ballad.
The art direction is fantastic I have to keep reminding myself that it is a game and not an Anime that I am looking at. The game is very much story driven, which means for someone like myself you have to make up quite a lot from the action in the scenes.
As far as I can tell from the prologue the basic premise is that there is an power struggle/war between the Eastern European Imperial Alliance and the Atlantic Federation. Caught up in between these two powers is the Principality of Gallia which is also the centre for the mineral resource Ragnite. Which is a valuable power source. Gallia must now defend itself from invaders intent on turning the tide of a war that up until now hadn't touched the land of Gallia.
The game is presented as a picture book recounting the events of this period.
All the pictures in the book start off greyed out, the images that look like still photos will open up movies that relate to the story. Images of battlefield maps will open up missions to be cleared.
The missions themselves are turn based, with limited free movement on the map with enemies returning fire or even firing upon you first to keep things interesting.
The first mission outbreak occurs just after Welkin Gunther has been reunited with his sister Isara, this coming after he was stopped and detained by Alicia Melchiott who with her two man patrol found Welkin idling by a river sketching Rainbow trout.
The first mission is a rather simple case of eliminating 3 enemy soldiers who have just tried to ambush the trio and is designed to help you find out about the control system.
This map screen appears between each of the players moves. The number of moves you have in a turn is determined by the number of stars in the top CP section. Here it indicates you have three moves in this player turn sequence. Foot soldiers take up one star, later on tanks use up two stars.
You can only move one character in each move phase, you could choose to just move into a position, duck behind cover, hide in tall grass, move then shoot, shoot then move, or move, shoot, move, or use any of the above except for an attacking move and use a Ragnite lamp to recover lost health.
The three blue circles are the players characters, red circles are the enemy, from the second battle onwards, enemy soldiers can appear from hidden positions and may be heard to move but not seen until encountered. So planning becomes necessary especially against machine gun equipped enemies and tanks. Fortunately there are only three riflemen to deal with here.
I've selected Welkin to begin this mission, L1 brings up a mini-map. The orange bar indicates the distance my character can travel on the battlefield, when it runs out you would need to use another player move to be able to move again. The green bar is your health bar. The weapon screen shows he's equipped with a rifle with unlimited ammo, although again you can only shoot the once in each player move phase. Square changes the equipment, for now it's not needed but later missions would see you select grenades, Ragnite lamps (to restore health) and different gun options on the Edelweiss tank.
Here I've been able to move up behind some sandbags, by pressing circle I can duck down for some cover. Useful when an enemy has seen you as he will start shooting and not wait for you to fire upon him, machine gun soldiers can prove devastating if you delay too long as I have already found out in a later mission.
Fortunately this enemy is facing away from me so I get to line him up. Press R1 to target. The idea of the aiming system is to generate a low red number in the box on the left. The lower the number the less effective the targeted enemies armour is. This guy went down in the same move phase.
The next move saw the second enemy killed.
The third saw the last one go.
Stat time.
Ranking is based on the number of player turns you take, here I got an "S" because I killed all the enemies in the first player turn which consisted of 3 moves.
In the second mission I took time to kill all the enemies and only scored a "C" as I took 5 player turns.
The third mission I scored an "A" and this mission was the first one to introduce the Edelweiss tank.
I'm really enjoying the game, visually and sonically it impresses me (I've already preordered the soundtrack released 21/05). I know I'm missing out on parts of the story due the lack of subtitles (don't want no English dub, thanks). But there is enough of challenge here to hold me for quite some time I think.
Famitsu scored it (8/8/9/9) 34/40.
I've rambled enough now, I think.
First off the games opening movie is accompanied by a really nice ballad.
The art direction is fantastic I have to keep reminding myself that it is a game and not an Anime that I am looking at. The game is very much story driven, which means for someone like myself you have to make up quite a lot from the action in the scenes.
As far as I can tell from the prologue the basic premise is that there is an power struggle/war between the Eastern European Imperial Alliance and the Atlantic Federation. Caught up in between these two powers is the Principality of Gallia which is also the centre for the mineral resource Ragnite. Which is a valuable power source. Gallia must now defend itself from invaders intent on turning the tide of a war that up until now hadn't touched the land of Gallia.
The game is presented as a picture book recounting the events of this period.
All the pictures in the book start off greyed out, the images that look like still photos will open up movies that relate to the story. Images of battlefield maps will open up missions to be cleared.
The missions themselves are turn based, with limited free movement on the map with enemies returning fire or even firing upon you first to keep things interesting.
The first mission outbreak occurs just after Welkin Gunther has been reunited with his sister Isara, this coming after he was stopped and detained by Alicia Melchiott who with her two man patrol found Welkin idling by a river sketching Rainbow trout.
The first mission is a rather simple case of eliminating 3 enemy soldiers who have just tried to ambush the trio and is designed to help you find out about the control system.
This map screen appears between each of the players moves. The number of moves you have in a turn is determined by the number of stars in the top CP section. Here it indicates you have three moves in this player turn sequence. Foot soldiers take up one star, later on tanks use up two stars.
You can only move one character in each move phase, you could choose to just move into a position, duck behind cover, hide in tall grass, move then shoot, shoot then move, or move, shoot, move, or use any of the above except for an attacking move and use a Ragnite lamp to recover lost health.
The three blue circles are the players characters, red circles are the enemy, from the second battle onwards, enemy soldiers can appear from hidden positions and may be heard to move but not seen until encountered. So planning becomes necessary especially against machine gun equipped enemies and tanks. Fortunately there are only three riflemen to deal with here.
I've selected Welkin to begin this mission, L1 brings up a mini-map. The orange bar indicates the distance my character can travel on the battlefield, when it runs out you would need to use another player move to be able to move again. The green bar is your health bar. The weapon screen shows he's equipped with a rifle with unlimited ammo, although again you can only shoot the once in each player move phase. Square changes the equipment, for now it's not needed but later missions would see you select grenades, Ragnite lamps (to restore health) and different gun options on the Edelweiss tank.
Here I've been able to move up behind some sandbags, by pressing circle I can duck down for some cover. Useful when an enemy has seen you as he will start shooting and not wait for you to fire upon him, machine gun soldiers can prove devastating if you delay too long as I have already found out in a later mission.
Fortunately this enemy is facing away from me so I get to line him up. Press R1 to target. The idea of the aiming system is to generate a low red number in the box on the left. The lower the number the less effective the targeted enemies armour is. This guy went down in the same move phase.
The next move saw the second enemy killed.
The third saw the last one go.
Stat time.
Ranking is based on the number of player turns you take, here I got an "S" because I killed all the enemies in the first player turn which consisted of 3 moves.
In the second mission I took time to kill all the enemies and only scored a "C" as I took 5 player turns.
The third mission I scored an "A" and this mission was the first one to introduce the Edelweiss tank.
I'm really enjoying the game, visually and sonically it impresses me (I've already preordered the soundtrack released 21/05). I know I'm missing out on parts of the story due the lack of subtitles (don't want no English dub, thanks). But there is enough of challenge here to hold me for quite some time I think.
Famitsu scored it (8/8/9/9) 34/40.
I've rambled enough now, I think.
I stopped writing one cut scene too early, now I've reached headquarters. Welkin has officially joined up to the tank core. 
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