Valkyria Chronicles - Episode 15

Following on from the harrowing ending to the last episode of Valkyria Chronicles, it's unsurprising to see that the Gallian militia's troops are downbeat and fatigued; let's face it, in the face of such terrible loss and human suffering nothing is going to cheer everybody up. But what, what's this, a party? Forget about all that death and sorrow, let's sing and drink - Hurrah!

So goes episode fifteen of this series, although of course in pure plot and character development terms the aforementioned party is little more than a vehicle for the ever shifting dynamics within squads one and seven. Ergo, we see Isara asserting herself with Rosie after the latter refuses to sign in front of any Darcsens, which in turn takes us into Rosie's past and why she feels the way she does about said minority group. This in itself bolts in to the larger personality clash developing between Faldio and Welkin, with the former not only upping his pursuit of Alicia quite considerably but also proving more adept at solving some of the other social issues affecting the squad, be it forcibly using his position of superiority or otherwise.


Despite well and truly taking us away from the war and battle that feeds this series, this actually proved to be a pretty interesting episode simply because of those shifting character dynamics I just mentioned, with some moves that might have been rather unexpected all things considered. While Welkin was clearly never going to be the most adept of people when put under the spotlight in terms of personnel and personal issues, to see his hand so drastically weakened over just a couple of weeks against Faldio's rather brash decision-making process is a bit of a shock in character development terms, while Isara's newfound assertiveness is perhaps less surprising but still not entirely expected. Couple that with the closing moments of this episode which really shake things up and there should be some interesting times ahead in relationship terms, although this may well disappoint you if you're hoping for a bit more actual warfare, guns and tanks next time around.