Command Room - Who to Recruit

Learn how to recruit the best units in Valkyria Chronicles. Discover tips on random recruitment, understanding potentials, and which characters are personal favorites for each class.

The new recruits you gain after each chapter are randomly selected. Every time you finish a chapter you'll have a new chance for more troops to show up. However, you can also save right after you start a new chapter, then go to your headquarters and look to see who has joined and if you don't like the offerings, you can reload for a new random selection. This might be worth it if you're low on snipers or engineers, but eventually (about halfway through) you will have access to almost all units in the game.

Who to Recruit

This is entirely based on your play style and personal preference. There are no "wrong" choices, so feel free to pick who you like. That said, I always tried to recruit those who have minimal "negative" potentials (Darcsen Hater, Chatty Cathy, etc.), although you won't know until you've used the unit a lot whether or not their hidden potentials are very good or very bad. Some decent rules of thumb: potentials that lower accuracy, evasion, or damage are really bad; likewise things that raise them are really good. Things that don't get triggered often (like when a unit has a single digit of health) are easy to avoid. Potentials that complement the unit's role (like being a loner for a sniper) are great. Here are a few of my personal favorites, but again this is entirely subjective:

• Scout
  • Aika: She has mostly good positive potentials - and who doesn't like sky pirates from an old Dreamcast game? :)
  • Ted: He's an oddball, but he has good potentials - including Undodgable Shot, which is a nice one to have late game when everything is evading you.
• Shocktrooper
  • Jane: I love Jane: she's crazy, but also crazy good at dishing out the damage. Her potentials make her extra deadly and she has little drawbacks. Give her your most damage-dealing weapon and watch her chew through anyone.
  • Vyse: Love his voice, plus he's a good troop with good potentials (also: sky pirates).
  • Salinas: Just a solid, all-around unit with decent potentials.
• Lancer
  • Jann: His potentials are awesome plus he is hilarious! Always team with Largo for maximum effect.
• Engineer
  • Nadine: ALL engineers have SEVERE personality defects for some reason - except for her. So I used her. Plus, she's a solid troop.
• Sniper
  • Catherine: She has a couple bad ones but she's mostly positive - good for non-nested activities, especially with Roof Hunter. Plus I love her accent.
  • Marina: Ok, you know how I said there are no wrong choices? I lied. Marina is just about the perfect sniper; she's great in a nest with Nest Master and Lone Wolf / My Way. And best of all, her Ultimate Accuracy potential means she'll never miss after level 16. Definitely use her.