It’s the first mission where I’ve noticed bonus enemies out of the way of the main action. In this case, a yellow-capped enemy was on a completely different map to the main action. (Enemies with yellow headgear give item bonuses when you kill them, I think.)

Possibly more interesting, though, was the sheer rubbishness of the enemy AI. I left my tank facing away from an enemy shocktrooper, its weak spot exposed and the stupid enemy didn’t even move during his turn. I hope this is just because I’m still in the very early stages and not an indication of what I can expect throughout the whole game.

I kept the first group the same, but set up a second group of reserves who have an APC, rather than a tank.

Both vehicles are equipped with the same flamethrower turret, however.

It’s just a shame that the one mission I finally ended up doing gave me a preset APC and didn’t let me take my own vehicle.

I don’t know what it is about this series, but the Valkyria Chronicles games are the only ones where I see sitting through more dialogue as a reward.

It’s very, very, very special indeed – a fact confirmed by the existence of at least one dialogue scene all about knitting. The girls involved sounded just like my wife and and her friends

Not, though, that much has been sacrificed in the transition. The graphics have take a hit (though they still look great), squads are smaller and maps are split up into separate areas. None of this seems to hurt the game. I was slightly worried by the splitting up of the maps when I first read about it, but it works very well in practice.

It seems, though, that developers worried a bit about seeming to have dumbed down the game, so they’ve added huge amounts of new stuff that I’ve not even begun to get my head around yet. New classes, a new school-based interface between missions, tons of way to upgrade classes, weapons and individual soldiers… even having played the first the amount of stuff that keeps being opened up is dizzying.

It’s going to take some time to really become comfortable with all the processes, but the game seems like a brilliant sequel based on the first three hours or so.

However, after that I had to get to the second enemy camp, across open ground, past enemy snipers, shock troopers and tanks. When I’d done this in story mode a convenient sandstorm had blown across the level and hidden me from view, but there was no such help this time. So, I, er, tried exactly the same tactic again.

And it worked. Sort of. It was carnage, but I managed to get into the enemy camp and, with a sliver of health left and being at shot at from close range, one of my guys managed to capture the enemy flag. It shouldn’t have worked, it was incredibly stupid, but I won and I managed not to lose anybody permanently.

It’s still niggling at me now. It was clumsy and came incredibly close to being a complete disaster. Urgh.

Anyway, I then moved on to Chapter Nine of the story and had a much easier mission. I had to stop an armoured car from getting from one end of the map to the other. On my first attempt I made a mess, so reloaded even before I died. The second attempt went well and I won with a B rank. Hooray! (It could have been an A if I’d remembered to use an order to increase Vyse’s attack power, but I never remember orders.)

Interesting to note that I consider that a success – a good result on the second attempt – but that I consider the skirmish a failure – a win on the first attempt.

After completing chapter six I went to buy new guns, level up, all that. Ms Ellet, the reporter, was selling a new bonus chapter, so I bought it. It was cost 50,000, um, whatever the in-game currency is called. That’s very expensive – around ten times the cost of the other bonus chapters. I thought this might include a new battle, some new potentials (basically, context-activated stat changes) for my characters, or something. But no, instead I got some bonus models of the main characters in swimsuits to look at. (As well as extra cut scenes, of course, so not a total waste of money.)

Must remember, if a bonus in a Japanese game costs way over the odds, chances are it involves female characters in swimsuits and/or underwear.

Wonderful stuff all round, really.

It’s a pretty epic battle. There’s a huge tank that’s covered in guns and which you can only hit during certain turns, which is hard enough. But after you do some damage to the tank, Severina (I think that’s here name) turns up – and she can kill all my troops without any effort whatsoever. What had been a reasonably easy battle – after one attempt during which I got completely killed very early due to not knowing what the heck was going on – became a real struggle for survival.

Vyse had to run round the battlefield rescuing fallen soldiers while my tank tried to keep between him and Severina so he didn’t die, while my tank and remaining lancers concentrated on the enemy tank. Any spare CP went to bringing more troops on to the battlefield.

It was touch and go, but I managed not to lose anyone permanently. Vyse was the only “dead” soldier on the battlefield at the end of the battle, but it seems that winning the battle counts as a rescue. Phew.

Anyway, the hero of the battle was Walter, whose anti-armour potential meant that I managed to destroy the tank. One more turn and I’d probably have been toast.

So, I ended up with a B rank and a whole lot of money and experience to spend. Hooray!

I’ve become quite attached to some of my troops. Vyse, Walter, Dallas and Melville are all favourites of mine, for reasons I couldn’t really explain.

The second time I tried I used Largo to take down the gun emplacement from afar, then moved in on the tanks. Unfortunately, I’d wrongly assumed I’d taken out all the enemies bar the tanks and that I was well-hidden in some grass, so I was surprised by an enemy shocktrooper throwing a grenade at my guys and knocking them out of cover. I just managed to survive until my turn and with my three command points I got Welkin to kill the enemy trooper, then got Largo to take out the two tanks with two shots. Job done. Phew.

So, that’s the first mission I’ve had to redo. Entirely my fault – and I was very lucky to finish it off the second time I tried. I must try to be less careless. I have a feeling that any carelessness is going to be heavily punished in missions to come.

For my second session I decided to tackle the third skirmish map, which is basically a replay of the woodland mission I’d done in the story previously. This time things went better, as nobody died permanently, but it was a bit messy. I tried using a sniper only to discover a fence in his way and spent far too long dithering over how best to approach the southern enemy camp. Still, the final assault on the eastern camp was beautiful. I’d already taken out the tank there – thanks Walter! – and stormed in from all directions. I concentrated on approaching from the rear to soften things up, then took out a couple more guys from the west, than ran a shocktrooper down from the northern entrance to mop things up and take the camp. Lovely.

I had a hard time at first, being seemingly unable to advance. But after getting a sniper up on the ridge and few scouts running around causing trouble, I managed to clear a lot of enemies away and take the first enemy camp. After that, it all went my way. I distracted the enemy with my tank (with an engineer running along behind to repair damage every turn) while a small force consisting of Alicia, Largo, Vyse and, er, one of my other shocktroopers went up and around, coming into second the enemy camp from behind and killing all their defenders before claiming the camp.

And that was that. Job done. Hooray!