This morning SEGA has announced that  the entire new series branch in the Valkyria Chronicles series, Valkyria Revolution will be heading to the west on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PlayStation Vita (Digital Only) in the first half of next year.

 The Valkyria, the embodiment of death is returning to the battlefield in Valkyria Revolution and players will have to do – and sacrifice – whatever is necessary to seek out their vengeance. Previously reported as “Valkyria: Azure Revolution,” the newly titled Valkyria Revolution will release in the west both physically and digitally for the PlayStation®4 and Xbox One™, and as a digital-only title for the PlayStation®Vita. Valkyria Revolution is also in a sense a revolution from the traditional Valkyria Chronicles universe, as it’s set in an alternate timeline based on the European industrialization era and eschews the traditional turn-based strategy gameplay for a new hybrid of real-time combat and tactical strategy across battlefields. Valkyria Revolution will be available in Q2 of 2017.

All it takes is a single spark to start the inferno of war, and in the story of Valkyria Revolution, players will experience that firsthand. Five lifelong friends consumed by personal revenge plunge an entire continent into a terrible war, sacrificing the lives of countless innocents for a cause based on twisted half-truths and outright lies. This “Circle of Five” use their combined influence in their political and military positions to motivate their small, economically blockaded homeland to rise up and become a powerful resistance against its imperialist oppressors. Will the Circle of Five be remembered as heroic liberators, or will their selfish motives expose them as traitorous conspirators who sacrificed untold lives just to carry out a personal vendetta? Players will watch this history unfold in Valkyria Revolution and find out the truth behind the events…

Valkyria Revolution Features:

• A Brush with Death – Turning the tide of battle in Valkyria Revolution is Brunhilde, one of the last of the ancient and powerful Valkyrur, magical beings with near limitless power. She’s bound by oath to the enemy forces and players will have to figure out how to defeat her.
• Prepare for LeGION – Valkyria Revolution has a brand new battle system that mixes real-time combat and tactical strategy. Players can take control of the battlefield using brazen combos or cunning tactics and finding a balance between them is the key to excelling in skirmishes.
• The Ingenuity of War – Through adversity comes great engineering, and with a besieged homeland, players will have upgrade their existing weapons through branching customization paths.
• A New Painterly Look – Valkyria Revolution has a refined look thanks to the new Gouache rendering engine, giving the graphics a unique canvas texture.
• Classic Composer – Valkyria Revolution has a vibrant soundtrack brought to life by the incredibly talented composer Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger, Stella Glow)

Now it should be noted that in Japan the game was actually called Valkyria Chronicles Azure Revoltion, but the Azure title was dropped from the western release. SEGA explains this reason as follows:

1) The way the first Valkyria title was localized had a really nice ring to it: Senjou no Varukyuria (lit. Valkryia of the Battlefield) became Valkyria Chronicles. When faced with Aoki Kakumei no Varukyuria (lit. Valkyria of the Blue Revolution), a literal translation was unwieldy, and difficult from a graphic design standpoint as well, and adding in extra punctuation (e.g. Valkyria: Azure Revolution) didn’t help either. So we stuck to a similar cadence of the first Valkyria title and went with a two-word title. Plus:

2) Given how vastly different the two games are (Revolution drops the turn-based gameplay, takes place in a different time period, different world, different almost everything), the new name helps to ensure the two titles stood equal but apart from each other.

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