In the latest Weekly Famitsu, the director of Valkyria: Azure Revolution Takeshi Ozawa talked about the changes they will be making to the game following the feedback received from the Battle Demo Ver. 1.0. The list of changes posted on Hachima Kikou was translated into English by both Gematsu and Siliconera, and credit goes to them for the information summarized in this article.
After releasing the game’s first demo, Takeshi mentions that they received three times as much feedback as they had anticipated, but also notes that there were many harsh opinions. As a result, the team has made significant changes to the game. First of all, they will be introducing an action gauge for both enemies and allies. Now, actions can only be taken after the gauge fills up.There will also be an option to stop time when using weapons or magic. Both of these changes should provide a more RPG-like, tactical experience that gives the player more time to think about their next course of action.
In addition, the party can now include up to four characters instead of just three, and it will be possible to issue commands directly to AI characters. The “field encounters” are said to be gone, which I imagine may be referring to the preemptive attack system that had you transitioning from long ranged to close combat.
We can expect to see all these changes in a second demo, scheduled for this summer. While the criticism for the first demo was indeed harsh, the amount of changes being made suggests that the development team is working hard to improve the game and meet fan expectations. Hopefully this means that we’ll see a considerably improved gameplay experience in the next demo!