A whole lot going on

Played a lot of VC today and finished chapters 12, 13, and 14, and also several side quests.

Chapter 12 was about the taking back of Welkin's home town, which was overrun by the invading force at the start of the game. It was a straight forward mission, literally since it was going straight down the main street, but the tricky part was all the snipers and anti tank encampments. With excessive use of my mechanic I was able to win by keeping my own snipers stocked up on bullets and constantly repairing the tank.

In chapter 13 the battle took place on a large muddy plane filled with trenches. The first half of the fight was getting a group of scouts over to the other side and take over the enemy based that was calling in air strikes. The second half was more chaotic, since the enemy valkyria showed up and started blasting everything in sight. I hid my tank in a hole and popped it out every now and then to shoot a stunning blast at her. While doing that I lead my scouts and some anti-tank guys further into the enemy base and took it over to win the round.

At the end of the chapter Alicia is shot by a sniper, in a clear ploy to awaken her valkyria powers (it was explained earlier they they manifest when close to death). The plan works and chapter 14 starts with her kicking the butt of the enemy valkyria, all the while in a trance and looking like Kanade Tachibana from Angel Beats. Then during game play she effortlessly takes out all the enemy tanks and gun encampments, making it an easy run to take over the base. With the objective complete Alicia returns to normal and passes out.

At first I thought that the mission was meant to be short and simple to keep the story moving, but it turns out the whole thing was a trap to power down Alicia, and then 2 huge tanks that shoot flame mortars moved in from either side along with an endless stream of troops. The first time I played the mission I was caught completely unprepared, and the enemy scouts quickly took back the base since it only had 1 scout defending it. After that I changed my strategy, before claiming the base I moved most of my forces to around the base, leaving 2 anti-tank gunners to take out the tank on the south end when it showed up. Then it was a matter of blowing up the south tank and thinning out the endless line of troopers as my other anti-tank gunner slowly made his way to the northern tank.

The side missions were rather easy, or I was just over powered at that point, but they did shed some interesting light on the side characters. One neat part is that they take place out side of the normal chronological order, so one mission took place before Welkin's sister was killed and it was nice to see her again (most likely for the last time).