Valkyria Chronicles

Valkyria Chronicles is a 2008 tactics game from Sega, set in a world closely modelled on Europe in the Second World War. Gallia, a small neutral country, is invaded by a large empire, and a militia squad led by Welkin Gunther and his tank, the Edelweiss, fights back.

Its battle system mixes turns and real time. Each turn you have command points. Spending one lets you take direct control of a soldier, whom you move yourself in real time while enemies fire at them, until you stop and take a single aimed shot. Squad members who fall must be reached by a medic within a few turns or are lost for good.

Its look, like a moving watercolour, is unlike anything else, and its battle system is clever: the same command points can move one soldier many times or many soldiers once. Each squad member has a name, a portrait and a personality, and losing one is mourned in the story.

Its story is earnest and sometimes naive, and some missions are won by rushing a single scout to the goal. It came to PC in 2014.

Valkyria Chronicles shares Jagged Alliance 2's attachment to a squad of individuals with names and quirks, and its turn-based shape, and adds a real-time element inside each turn. It is the clearest case of a Japanese game reaching the same idea as the Western ones: the people in the squad are the point.