[Donomni]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Hmm. Sounds interesting.
I'm going to have to get used to paying all kinds of money to purchase DLC for every PS3 game I buy, won't I? I noticed there was DLC for Uncharted 2, too. It's a relatively new phenomenon for me, not something I'm accustomed to as an old(er) school gamer.

Not every game has DLC, and some of it is free anyways, but it is a big jump from the days of the PS2. It does get sneaky, though, as some games come with the DLC on the physical disk. In other words, you pay for unlock codes. You can normally tell when the download takes 3 seconds. I mean, some new possibilities open with DLC, but godammit.

(Kind of intrigued to see what Valkyria Chronicles' interpretation of Hitler is going to be like, though. Just in case he or his fantasy equivalent shows up.)

He's not in this game. I think he's gonna be in the sequel... which is gonna be on the PSP, of all things.

...Is this a character I haven't met yet? So far, the extent of the "gay" characters I've met are recruitable folks in my squad who happen to apparently "fancy" people of the same gender.

There's a Lancer called Jan you can recruit. He's voiced by the same guy who's voiced Bender, with a positively stereotypically camp gay voice.

It'd be really offensive, if not for the fact that you normally hear said voice not giving a damn about meatbags, performing petty crimes, and coming by the occasional fembot.

I haven't really noticed the impact of the personality quirks yet.

They're called Potentials, and you gain them from either leveling up or having that particular person join you for enough battles. They also seem to activate randomly, but when they do, you'll generally notice the effects. I say generally because some effects don't seem to actually do anything much.

I have noticed a bit of an elongated Rock-Paper-Scissors dynamic going on. Scouts seem to have a far easier time of taking out Snipers than the other classes (both in spotting Snipers and their rifles appear to be actually more effective than machine guns in killing them.)

Snipers have the worst HP totals of all units. It's why they're pretty sucky for you at the start: They simply cannot take hits like anyone else, and it takes them awhile to get to where they can snipe and not die the next round. Like I said, once they get better guns with a longer range, this become much less of a problem, as a lot more places become viable vantage points. A Scout is naturally more accurate than Shocktroopers, and they can run circles around Snipers, so they can take them down easy. Of course, later battles will simply have Snipers placed absurdly far away from your units as well as behind much more hardy enemy units, so you'll eventually need Snipers just to take down enemy Snipers.

Still, Sharpshooters are good against other Sharpshooters, Engineers and Scouts -- which means they're good against the overwhelming bulk of enemies that have been thrown out at me so far. I really think a cohesive strategy is to have just one or two scouts, an engineer (maybe eventually two if I do get another tank), maybe a lancer and the rest as Sharpshooters. It's not that lancers are worthless, more that at this stage my tank is the single best unit to concentrate on other tanks, and the Lancer's piss-poor mobility ensures Welkin almost always does all the work anyway.

Eventually, the locations you'll be at make it really hard for Welkin to go where you want him to be, as well as the enemy having Lancers left and right just waiting for your shiny blue ass to be open for a one-hit-kill. Not only do Lancers have the ability to go where Welkin can't, if they die, the battle isn't instantly over.

Seriously, you'll need to be careful with Welkin. One good Lancer shot to the ass, and it's game over.

Welkin's tank is your best unit, but also the one unit you can't lose. This game will show you it knows this.