Valkyria Chronicles 4

Rockstar games are put on consoles first because console makers basically force 2K to make it that way.

As soon as those games hit PC all the mods make the console versions look completely unplayable.

Which means that a Rockstar game hitting PC is very likely to damage console sales, and the hardware.

It is very smart to put them on console first, not only you sell more copies of the game on consoles, you also sell more consoles.

By the time it hits PC where all the pirates are, they already had to buy the console version because they couldn't wait. So they end up having two copies.

Yet, there are decent people on PC that actually buys a game, so you can make some extra sales that way too.

Valkyria is not as big, so it is a complete different case. I'm sure Sega had their reasons to wait, but like Cervantes said, it is very suspicious they took that route.

There won't be a demo for PC (at least for now), maybe they are still giving the final touches to the port. Ah well, pc players will have to trust gameplay videos and reviews - no problem, as nowadays most games don't have demos anyway.

Big difference and an important one:  the tanks only use 1 CP.  So you can actually use them and get a good rank.

Oh, another kind of random thing I like is some of the different design choices with Federation equipment. Like the Lancers weapons look more like oversized rifles, than the actual lance-shaped weapons the Empire and Gallia use.

I had also kind of wondered about mortars being treated as a totally new thing, since Gallia clearly had both tanks and lancers using mortars. But the setup the Riley and the other Grenadiers use are clearly of a whole different type.

On that note, since Riley presents this as very cutting edge tech that she's brought with her, it does kind of frustrate me from a lore perspective that you almost immediate start encountering Imperial grenadiers. Clearly this tech would have been helpful to them on the Gallian front, etc. I can see why they're there from a game-balance perspective, as they'd be a pretty big advantage if only the player side had them though. 

As a difference, it might have been interesting if the empire didn't have grenadiers, but the had a different advantage. Like if they had tank and lancer mounted mortars and the Federation didn't. Not impacting my enjoyment though.

I'm really enjoying the Squad Stories as well.

For those who haven't played VC4 yet, or haven't unlocked any of these yet, these are bonus missions each starring 3 non-main-cast-members of Squad E. Think of it kind of like the Edy Detachment DLC in VC1, except these are part of the main game, and you can earn money and experience. The 3 Squad members have a story featuring a bit of their backstory, and can trade in one of their negative potentials for a positive one. They're unlocked by using at least one of the three featured characters repeatedly in battle. It gives you a good reason try out the different people in your squad.

I do kind of wish these were unlocked automatically like the skirmishes as you progress though. They're first available in chapter 3, and there are quite a few of them, but I didn't encounter any of them until chapter 4, and now I'm going back and replaying levels just do use these various folks and unlock the side stories.

Apparently a lot of them don't unlock until later chapters even if you've been using the right combination of people.

I got the one with Miles, Dan and Aulard first, right after Dan joined up. I think that's because using the tank (and therefore Miles) counted towards unlocking it, so I got it as soon as Dan was there too.

Since then I've got ones with:
Nico, Rosetta and Godwin
Connor, Jester and Teresa
Rebecca Fleuret and Mabel
Curtis, Laurent and Eileen