Fun gameplay and great voice acting overcomes a confused plot and horrible characters.
Gameplay: 8
Gameplay is very complex so bear with me. VC:C is kind of like chess. You move, then your opponent. After both you and your opponent have moved, it ends a "turn". The CPU and you move by command points "CP". Each CP lets you select one character to move, attack, ect. Also, just like chess, you can only attack once per CP. CP is given to chosen members of your squad by the game. Each member who contains a "star" icon gets CP points awarded each turn. Let's say you have two characters with stars. You use all your CP points in turn 1. Next round you will be awarded 2 CP points so you can move again twice. You can also end your turn without using all your CP points as well, saving it for the next turn. Your enemy also has "star" members. If you eliminate them, the AI has less moves which will be to your advantage.
There are a total of five classes of soldiers to choose from: the Scouts, Shocktroopers, Lancers, Engineers, and Snipers. Each class has their own good and bad. The game limits how far you can travel with "AP" points. Scouts travel the furthest, down to the closest with the snipers. Scouts are the most well rounded group of all and the most used-which brings the game to its first flaw. Many missions can be beaten with one scout causing all the other classes to be labeled plain useless. Shocktroopers are best for killing anyone and their high defense makes them better equipped for firefights then scouts. The problem with the 'troopers is that they can't travel far leaving them to get left behind most of the time. Lancers are the second most useless group to use (first being snipers). They are good only for taking out tanks. Even then, because they are so low in AP (even lower than the 'troopers") they have a hard time actually getting to the tanks to take a shot. Even when you are in position, most of the time if it's not a point blank shot, Lancers usually will miss their intended target. You can see how it becomes a problem: first you can't get close enough to the tanks and even when you get close enough to the take the shot, they miss unless it's point blank. Next on the list are the engineers. For the most part they are useless but because they can refill ammo and fix your tank, they receive more uses coupled by the fact that they too can travel long distances. Snipers are really the most useless of all the classes. They can only take a few steps. You might have to use two CPs to get them in position to attack; even then most enemies take more than one shot to kill. Just like the Lancers, most of their shots will miss as well. Low ammo (3 shots only), limited AP, low accuracy, CP hog, and low one shot kill encounters leave the sniper class as the worst. Now that the hard parts are explained let's get down to playing the game itself.
This game is no MW2. Probably why I died so many times and gave up the first time. If an enemy is taking cover it will take a long time to kill them, so how you play this game is you have to take out whatever you enemy is taking cover behind first. Most of the time its sandbags (or it looks like it). Cover can be destroyed by grenades, your tank, or lancer weapons. VC:C is game where your best defense is a great offense. You must go out and take out cover spots and shoot your enemies. When it's the AI's turn and they run into your line of fire, your team will shoot them which will cause the confusion of letting your enemies come to you and picking them off. You cannot just let your enemy come to you and pick them off one by one (like MW2). You will lose by this method. Most of the time your team for some reason won't shoot and when they do they don't do much damage. Your enemies will flank you and kill you. Overall however, it's fun to play once you learn how to play the game the way it's meant to be played.
Graphics: 7
VC:C is a beautiful game when it wants to be but mainly it's not worth mentioning. For the most part you will be given a wallpaper for a backdrop and a square with the characters faces and listen to them talk. The charters are animated for lip sync and small facial animations and that's it. Sometimes you get a regular cutscenes with full motion and everything but mostly is the backdrop and box with face and dialog. In the gameplay I would say "cel-shaded" has come a long way. This is the next generation of "cel-shaded" graphics. Its 2D in a 3D world. The only thing I don't like is the filter that causes a hazy-like feeling and the little white frame on the outer edge of the screen. It's kind of like looking through picture frame. If you have played Killzone 2 with the black edges then just imagine white edges. (youtube VC:C and you will see what I mean) Animation is great if a bit repetitive. Overall it's a good looking game.
Story: 6
Story is the weakest aspect of this game. Many characters, if not close to all, are forgettable and annoying. There are six main characters in this game. The hero, Welkin Gunther, is a wimp. There! I said it. If he's a real commander I would not follow him to war. I know America loves manly, grunt, and macho guys for heroes, but damn, this main character makes me wish he could've just been another bald-headed marine. Alicia Melchiot, is the girl of the game. She is annoying as heck towards the end of the game. Alicia falls into the anime category of the girl next door. If you've seen one, you've seen all. I won't go into detail of the other members but they are annoying as well, all falling into usual anime clichés of personality.
There are too many emphases on how valuable life is and how even bad guys should be kept alive in this game. The game struggles to keep the image of the "Empire" constant. It can't decided whether or not they are bad/evil or just kind of evil but not bad. Confused? Yea, so am I. Without spoiling too much I'll bring up a couple of situations of the game. Don't worry these won't give away anything important. When the game first starts, Empire soldiers fire upon civilians trying to leave town. Heck they even tried to kill a pregnant woman. Flash forward down the road where your squad, squad 7, is well known as a threat to the empire. Welkin and Alicia is outnumbered near an old hut but the enemy commander lets them GO! Alive! Only because they buried a dead empire soldier the night before. Here you have civilians getting murdered but you let an enemy with a threat at large go unscathed? Because they bury one of your soldiers? WTF? Here's another one: you take on a mission that involves taking down an enemy commander who tortures and brutally murders civilians and soldiers alike. At the end of the mission Welkin and company won't let their commander, Varot, kill the enemy general because this guy is now a POW. Funny thing is they, Welkin and co, killed all the soldiers guarding the evil general. They killed all the soldiers who weren't as evil and just following orders but have a big fit with Varot over killing some civilian torturer, murderer, and evil general? WTF? That's not even the worst part. The worst part is that Squad 7 sends the general back to the empire and the empire executes him. What? Yea you read that right. The empire, with direct command from the emperor, executes one of its own generals because he's evil. This emperor is the very same emperor who has said he will kill anyone in his way. This is the same emperor who desired so much power that he would invade another country and have his soldiers kill civilians for his takeover. But now he's executing his own general for evil? It makes no sense whatsoever.
Sound:9
Call me crazy but I prefer the English voices over the Japanese. All the main characters in this game have excellent voice-overs. Welkin sounds like a good wimp, Alicia's voice is amazing, Hedy Burress plays Rosie (Hedy is Yuna FFX FYI), even Largo is convincing. The only voice that I hated would be Welkin's sister Isara's but even that isn't because of the actress's fault. Isara is meant as an anime clichéd soft spoken girl. I would even go as far as to say that Sega assembled and A-star class of voice actor/actresses. Watch the credits and some of the biggest names including Nolan North (Uncharted Drake) and Quinton Flynn (MGS2 Raiden) have lent their talents to this game among others. Guns sound good, effects sound good, and most importantly the voices are top notch. The English voices actually make the Japanese voices sound bad.
Conclusion:7.5
Notice I said at the beginning this game is good. Not great but good. The gameplay needs to be tweaked so that all the classes are used and not just the scouts for the most part. You team must do a better job of shooting the enemy if the enemy runs into their line of fire. Overall accuracy needs to be fixed because there are too many missed shots that will causes even veteran players to get frustrated. The game needs less boxed conversations and fully animated scenes to tell its story. And speaking of story, the story needs to be clear on what side is good and what side is evil. On one hand the Empire is brought up to look like Nazi's and in another moment they are just a victim of war. War is hell so make it so. The characters need a fresh new personality that doesn't involve in the usual anime clichés. The sound department was the shining spot on this game so keep all the old voices. All in all--fun gameplay and great voice acting overcomes a confused plot and horrible character personalities.