Charming and challenging, Valkyria Chronicles turned this sRPG skeptic into a fan.
The first thing that caught my attention in VC, besides the gorgeous art direction, was the writing. Japanese games tend to be riddled with cliches, and while you'll definitely see your share of familiar World War II "moments," I found the overall storyline, world lore, and character development in VC to be extremely well crafted, mature and thoughtful. You'll fight alongside dozens of personalties, and the developers do a great job of bringing these faces to life and making you care who dies and who survives. The parallels to real-world events also lend the game some gravitas in the same way Metal Gear Solid games can feel ripped from reality despite all the sci-fi or fantasy underpinnings.
The combat and leveling systems are also fun to tinker around with. VC does a decent job gradually unveiling core mechanics to the player as you move along, and mission levels are some of the best I've seen in the strategy genre ... Story-based and consistently creative and challenging. This is a long game, so you can expect to tire out a bit as you wind up the game's final third or so, but it's impressive that game fatigue rarely sets in, even when you're repeatedly loading mission progress in particularly tough maps. The first-person viewpoint on the combat field does a great job of keeping you engaged with each mission, and never feel like you're just shuffling chess board pieces around a table.
Even if you've never gotten into turn-based strategy games before, Valkyria Chronicles is easy to recommend.