Grenadiers are Valkyria Chronicles 4‘s notable addition to the franchise, and I despise them. I’ve seen it argued that they discourage sending your scouts to finish off levels in a single turn, but that’s not true at all. More than anything, they exist to be annoying; your grenadiers tend to miss a bunch of shots, while enemy grenadiers are mostly placed so that they can hit you with cheap shots during unskippable combat animations and necessitate rushing to the end all of the time rather than merely some of the time like in the original Valkyria Chronicles. Chapter 4 is where it becomes obvious that cheesing it is really the only non-infuriating option available in this game, and you’d better believe that I have video backing all of this up.

Chapter 4 consists of the first big battle, and it ends up being quite the difficulty spike. Things like anti-Tank gunners (who can use interception fire against tanks but not infantry) and pillboxes (which are fortified machine gun forts) are suddenly introduced, and it’s possible to get screwed over by the former before the game tells you that they’re there. Case in point, an anti-tank gunner took Riley out at 30:30, whereas the dialogue about their presence only came up at 31:27 once the squad’s tank had crossed an invisible line into its range. Needless to say, I got cheated by Valkyria Chronicles 4 big time here and this ended up being the first mission I failed.

Another introduction is the APC, which is basically a troop carrier that can carry 2 units. I didn’t find a use for this thing right away, but believe me, we’ll talk about it.

Among chapter 4’s many little irritations are walls that can’t be destroyed by armor piercing rounds for some inexplicable reason, and a squadron of tanks that arrive once you cross an invisible line on the map. Those tanks can be a real middle finger if you only have 2 or 3 command points left when you trigger their arrival, and while you’re quickly given an assortment of friendly tanks to use against them, the whole thing feels kind of cheap. It took me 9 turns to finish because of how many grenadiers and other annoyances required playing cautiously, which was enough for a D-rank (which earns you less than half of the experience and money of an A-rank).

The second of chapter 4’s battles is similarly bad, with Valkyria Chronicles 4 hinting that using an engineer to repair a ladder would make for a helpful shortcut, only for that promised shortcut to lead to a dead end and exit that effectively doubles the number of enemies you have to face while spitting you out surrounded on both sides. Oh, and the enemies call in reinforcements from every single one of their bases every turn. Brilliant. There was also an ace hiding in the grass who simply refused to die, ducking two attempted headshots in a row at 2:06:14. It ultimately took 7 command points to kill that one guy (6 if you don’t count my lancer missing).

After that last victory, Raz decided to be an idiot (as always) and got pinned down with sniper Kai, who sustained an injury while saving him from himself. That means that the third and final of chapter 4’s maps is a glorified rescue mission. Also, you’re being rushed by a bunch of tanks, so I made sure to bring along my lancer. Here’s a “fun” little discovery, though—the enemy gets their first turn before yours, which means that they can kill any of the units you put near them before your turn arrives. The only bright spot is that Riley gets a new grenade type that lets her stop tanks with her interception fire. By this point I was irritated enough that I threw up my hands and decided to have a scout rush to the finish, and this strategy worked just as well as always despite the annoyance of enemy grenadiers knocking the scout around. It became obvious what Valkyria Chronicles 4 was all about at this point.

I didn’t want to blow through maps by ignoring most of the enemies, though, so I instead started grinding after a new skirmish map opened up. It was really annoying to only get a B-rank for finishing in 4 turns, though, and moments like 21:10 where enemy grenadiers killed off my units while they were in unskippable animations started to leave a really bad taste in my mouth. Eventually I got irritated by the number of these cheap shots and just turned off my Playstation 4 in a semi-ragequit.

That brings us to the APC, then. Rushing scouts to the finish is no longer practical because of grenadiers knocking them around with interception fire explosions, but the APC gives you the ability to protect any unit with a tank, make a huge amount of progress, then dump the unscathed unit with full AP onto the map to rush the rest of the way. This cheapens the gameplay even further by allowing any class to rush to the end, not just weak scouts. This earned me an A-rank in this third skirmish map, and even the first 2 battles in chapter 4 were trivialized by this strategy once I figured out how far I could move without triggering the tanks. This is Valkyria Chronicles 4.

I hate it.

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