SRPG Game 18 – Super Robot Taisen 3 (Part 2)

Part 2 of my 10+ year old posts on Super Robot Taisen 3.

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Stage 23 – Storm of Jaburo

Vigaj appears for two turns in this stage.  I could swear that in the CB version he had double move, but here he doesn’t, and he can’t do much.  Not a very hard stage; the Dais both give 36000 each with Luck.

Great Mazinger joins here and there’s a 4th-wall break.  In SRW 2, Tetsuya was not there, and Great Mazinger became an upgrade for Kouji.  Kouji refers to players complaining about that in this level.

Stage 24 – Decoy Plan

This level is fairly short; there are so few enemies that you can just launch all your most powerful attacks and ALL attacks and finish everyone off.  Grendizer joins here.

Should I go to Bermuda and get God Voice?  I’m only at 213 turns so I think that’s a lot of leeway for Ragnarok with only 13 stages (not counding Bermuda Triangle) left.  God Voice might be helpful…

Stage 25 – Bermuda Triangle

This stage is not hard, and it’s very good to do because each Pigdrone is worth 50,000 (with Luck) and you get a new weapon for Raideen.

Stage 26 – Female Spy Infiltration

This stage uses another First Gundam plot point; it seems like a lot of the Gundam plot elements in this game were taken from FG.  Although this stage has a Zeta plot point with Scirocco — this is yet another example of the shaky continuity the original games have; Scirocco basically plays exactly the same role in this game as he did in the first one with no real explanation other than “oh geez, he’s alive again!”

MAP weapons are really good in this game but I’m probably overusing them; most of the XP goes to the pilots of the four MAP weapon-enabled mechs.  I don’t think it’s a big deal, though, the way XP works in the SRW games it’s really easy to catch up just by beating up grunts in the later levels.

Stage 27 – Brocken’s Shadow

Scirocco and Reccoa are both suffering from an unfortunate memory loss; they don’t know each other despite Reccoa serving alongside Scirocco in SRW 2.

Stage 28 – Odessa Day

This is the first stage where you are required to defeat one of the Inspectors.  Vigaj isn’t too bad, though; he doesn’t have double move and he’s easy to hit.  Mekiboz is more problematic because he uses his ALL attack when you get him down to 80%.

This stage is funny in the CB version because of Taunt — what you can do is Taunt Vigaj, then one turn later taunt Mekiboz.  Vigaj will reach your guys and Mekiboz will be in the middle of the enemies (but out of your range).  Take down Vigaj in one turn, then Mekiboz uses his MAP attack, damaging a good chunk of the enemy force and none of your guys before retreating.  It’s kind of cheap, though; the original version seems like a more epic battle.

One thing I have noticed about the stats in this game is that even though you cannot upgrade your weapons, your pilot attack value is very high compared to other games (i.e. right now a lot of my pilots have 1500-1700 attack) and rises a lot with each level.  So levels are probably more meaningful than in other games.

Stage 29 – Operation to Save Matilda

Cecily appears; she’s once again been hoodwinked to DC but Seabook can save her.  The enemies in this stage were too low-leveled to bother with so I just used MAP attacks to take them all out quickly.

Stage 30 – Sister!

They’re including non-Gundam stuff in the story (finally) as well; here’s something from Grendizer.  You also get Sazabi after this if you convince Naida (after fighting her); I put Quattro in that, Amuro is in the Nu Gundam, Judau is in the Hyaku Shiki, and Kamille in the ZZ Gundam.  Cecily is in the Methuss (she has Love and double-move, better than Fa).

Stage 31 – The Limit of Sadness

After this battle you get the Musashi death scene from Getter Robo; this is the longest story sequence so far.  The story writing doesn’t have many lengthy in-depth sequences like this (later games have many, of course).  Benkei joins the Getter Team after this.

My turn count is 271 after this stage, so I have 149 turns to finish 7 stages.  I think I should be able to do that without too many problems.

Stage 32 – Countdown

Phew, this is a huge battle.  41 enemies total, including five major ones (if Reccoa appears).  Getter G comes along to help, though.  The annoying Dragonasaurus enemy gives you max money (65535) if you use Luck when you kill it.

Stage 33 – Puru and Puru II

Once again the shaky continuity rears its ugly head; Puru and Puru II seem to be meeting for the first time, despite the same thing happening in SRW 2.  At least this time Puru doesn’t have to be defeated for you to get Puru II.

Stage 34 – La Vie En Rose

The enemy forces are getting larger and more fierce, but MAP attacks cut them down to size.  Kamille used the Hyaku Shiki’s MAP attack with Hot Blood and gained 12 levels.  When Shuu finally came out the dialogue is supposed to indicate that your guys are having trouble, but I had already taken out over half the enemy force.

So here comes Granzon, this time on your side.  It’s odd to have Shuu with Neppu! Shippu! Cybuster as his music (Dark Prison did not come along until Masou Kishin:LoE)

Stage 35 – Space Swirl

This is Haman’s last hurrah for SRW 3.  Kind of a tough stage in the end when you’ve got all the Geymalks and Quin Manthas up at the top with Haman and you have to move into their range.  Since I have a surplus of turns to take, I focused on trying to get people double move.

Stage 36 – Gate of Zedan

DC makes its last stand here, at A Baoa Qu.  This is a tough stage; there are all kinds of strong enemies (multiple Big Zams, Psycho Gundams, Lafressias, Quin Manthas, Doros, etc)  But that also means it’s worth a lot of money; I made over 600,000.

I finally got to use God Voice, which isn’t that impressive:

Stage 37 – Axis Burning

Wow, this was a tough stage; definitely the hardest stage yet.  Every enemy is strong — you know you’re in trouble when the weakest enemies are double-move Doven Wolfs.  Even though there aren’t that many enemies compared to some other stages, they all rush you so you don’t have much time to wait around and heal.

I played this stage kind of desperately, trying to kill as many enemies as I could each round, and using my three Love seishin (from Cecily, Puru, and Duke Freed) when I needed to — often I had to save and then see if the enemies would kill one of my guys; their AI tends to be kind of odd, and sometimes they will pick a different target instead of killing someone.

The Inspectors are not that bad alone, but fighting three of them at once plus the “grunt” enemies is not very nice.  I went for Vigaj first, then Sikalog, then Agiha.  In retrospect I should have done Sikalog last because he has the most HP, but it was fine.  I only lost Great Mazinger.

After all that, the Gilgilgan is a wimp.  Even though he’s sitting on Axis, by the time you get down there with fully healed and EN regenerated robots, he can’t do anything.

So that’s it for the Inspectors.  Mekiboz never got killed; he was waiting in Axis with Wendolo and they both left.

So here are the last inspectors:

And here’s a full tableau of all the SRW 3 originals:

Stage 38 – Last Battle

I wasn’t able to play yesterday so I gave this mission some thought, and was agonizing over it a bit, but it turned out not to be that bad (certainly easier than stage 37).  I was worried about the lack of a ship for repair.

I started out by funneling the two Gelmarks that can hit you off the bat, and then killed the Yagd Doga near them with beams.  Then I waited a couple of turns until everyone came into range and was lined up well.  I then used the following:
– Hot Blooded Mega Graviton Wave (Granzon)
– Hot Blooded Hyper Mega Cannon (ZZ Gundam)
– Two Cyflash (Cybuster)
This killed almost all the enemies and took the Big O down pretty low.  A few more attacks defeated Big O; for some reason Scirocco kept attacking Daitarn 3 even though Raideen had 300 HP and was standing right next to him.

Now, the true boss comes out:

He starts in the upper left and three Quin Manthas appear near you.  I used Hyaku Shiki’s ALL attack (Hot blooded) and then killed the QMs with some additional attacks, then the next turn the Valsion Kai was there.  Despite what the “secrets FAQ” says on GameFAQs, the Valsion Kai cannot kill a max upgraded Super Robot with one attack.  The Valsion Kai was actually surprisingly easy.  All I used were two hot blooded Sun Attacks, two hot blooded Shine Sparks, a God Voice, and a God Bird.  Here’s the killing strike:

Yes!  I beat SRW 3!

Wait…

What are you talking about, Shu?
Hey, what are you doing…

OH MY GOD IT’S NEO GRANZON!!!!!

(Kind of a silly transformation there with the Granzon vs. Granzon battle animation)

Stage 39 – Ragnarok

This is the infamous battle against Shu in the Neo Granzon, and two Valsions.  It’s often touted as one of the hardest battles in SRW history, but I honestly didn’t think it was as hard as stage 37.  You have four big advantages:
1. Shu cannot use his most powerful attack until he reaches 110 Will.
2. Shu will not use his ALL (MAP) attacks until the enemy phase after he gets down to a certain level of HP.
3. Shu will not move from his starting position. [2019: Actually I have seen in other videos that it’s possible to get him to move, but I’m not sure how it happens.]
4. Neo Granzon is not very hard to hit, even by your Super Robots.

I don’t like the strategy outlined in the Final Scenario FAQ on GameFAQs.  Wasting all of Shu’s ammo before you do anything gets Shu up to around 150 Will, which IMO is too big of a price to pay.  Instead, I like Sunset Kid’s approach of killing the Valsions the safe way (i.e. through wasting ammo + funnels) and then defeating Neo Granzon in one round.

These were my people, all with double move, and all fully upgraded:

I defeated the Valsions by wasting their ammo.  Set the Geymalk up at the maximum range with the Methuss behind it:

Once the shots are all gone, funnel it to death; do the same with the other one.  At this point, Shu is still at 100 morale, so he cannot use any attack with over a range of 5.  Then I set up my guys like this:

First, I used the ALL attacks of the Hyaku Shiki, ZZ Gundam, Valsione, and one Cyflash (I saved the other turn for Cosmo Nova).  I used Hot Blood and then as many Kiai (will up) seishin as possible.  The total damage from all of this was around 12,000 of NG’s 65,000.  After this, I just went through my super robots one by one, using as many hot blooded finishing attacks as possible.  Soon his HP were below 10,000:

As you can see, most of my characters still have turns.  From this point is was pretty simple to finish him off; I did use a Love seishin in the middle so that he wasn’t able to kill anyone.

Kyara got the final shot:

So that’s it for SRW 3.  Overall it was a lot better than 2, but still kind of primitive.  The story is simple; for the most part it’s just “go to this place and fight another DC or alien army” — the interweaving of different anime plots that is such a staple of the series is still missing.  The system is still too primitive to really allow for a lot of strategy, although certainly more so than 2.  I also think the battles can get pretty tedious at times, with giant 20 vs 40 battles.  The enemies are unmemorable because everyone is just mixed together into DC or Aliens, and the only different is the color of the units.

2019 again: In comparison with these other games that came around at the same time, this is actually a pretty impressive SRPG in a lot of ways. It’s hard if you don’t know what you’re doing, and certainly far from the best SRW game, but it has a chance to be game of the year for 1993 depending on how the other titles fare.

PCE Game 25 – Aurora Quest Otaku no Seiza IN ANOTHER WORLD

Aurora Quest Otaku no Seiza IN ANOTHER WORLD
Released 12/10/1993, published by Pack In Video

This is a complete remake of a Famicom game. It was designed by two mangaka, one of them (Motomiya Hiroshi) is well known for Salaryman Kintaro, a popular series in Japan. From what I can tell, the original Famicom game was not well received or liked, partly because it came out in the waning days of the system. But somehow there was a pachinko machine based on it, and then an idol group (pop singers) as well, thus spurring the remake.

Unfortunately the remake also seems to have been poorly received. It looks to me that by the end of 1993, even hardcore Japanese RPG players had gotten tired of basic RPGs that offered the same battle system unchanged from Dragon Quest II.

The story is a little embarrassing for 2019 — the idea is that somehow five women have come to Earth, devastated by a world war, and taken control. They live in a floating city and are representatives of the goddess Maria. The world is ruled by women, and men have become marginalized and are all called “otaku”. The main character was found unconscious near a teleportation device between the Earth and the floating city, and his goal is to make the 5 goddesses recognize his strength as a man.

You start out on the Earth, and have to beat a monster to open up the transport area that can start transporting you to the floating cities where the five women are.

The battle system is completely standard AMID, with a high encounter rate. It even has the old “ineffective” thing from FF1 where if you attack a monster that then gets killed, your attack is wasted.

At least the monster graphics are detailed, although this aspect reminds me a lot of Maka Maka. As I said back then, I’ve never found Japanese gag manga particularly funny. Although the above bat might look good, the vast majority of enemies you fight are more along these lines:

Once you reach the floating platform, there’s a small overworld where you travel to several towns. The towns all have music themes, with the mayor being a “manager” and the city halls being discos or live music houses. The goddesses are all dancing at the top of disco buildings with followers, while the men (all named “otaku”) are wandering below.

To reach the first goddess helper, Yang, you have to clear some monsters out of a flower shop and an antique store, and get three entry tickets (one from each town). With those you can enter the disco. Yang herself wants you to show her your kindness, which involves bringing her a rose from the flower store you saved earlier. After that she says she’ll recognize you if you defeat her.

Once you defeat Yang, she regains her memory and tells you to “awaken” the other four women as well. She also gives Jonjon a plasma crystal that lets him use spells.

The second world is basically the same thing; this time I had to get three sets of armor to let me withstand the attacks of Rin’s bodyguards, then show Rin herself my “beauty” by bringing the right set of clothes.

Rin also regains her memory upon being defeated, and remembers that they came to Earth to find a man who would save the world by defeating the forces of darkness (sigh). She gives another crystal, so now Nekketsu can use spells.

I think this is where I will stop — it’s clear from looking at the walkthrough that after you save the five women the story changes to a more standard “save the world” plot.

This game is probably worth a try if you don’t mind the old gameplay. At least the world concept is different, and it has a retro vibe (maybe an out-of-date vibe?) The enemy graphics are detailed and colorful, albeit offputting sometimes. There’s a lot of equipment, and it looks like the story is OK. Apparently there’s a translation patch for the original Famicom game coming out soon.

Next up will be Romancing SaGa 2 — I put it back a bit because I wanted to get the instruction manual, but I still don’t have it. I’m playing Shining Force II on my other blog, but once I finish that I’ll start RS2 whether I have the instructions or not.

SRPG Game 18 – Super Robot Taisen 3 (SFC) (Part 1)

As I mentioned when I posted Super Robot Taisen 2, I played a large number of the SRT games over the last decade or so. The entries for these games will be reposts of the comments I made while playing the games, so they will have a different tone from the normal posts.

SRW 3 is notable in the history of SRPGs for being one of the first to have a branching storyline with very different endings (different final bosses even).

SRW 3 was the first of several SRW games for the Super Nintendo. From what I’ve seen on Japanese sites, this game is fondly remembered by long-time players, and considered one of the best of the games. People liked the difficulty, as well as the numerous branching story paths that can actually affect the storyline (i.e. appeasing Mekibos , getting Gato on your side, or making Scirocco the final villian instead of Wendolo). It’s also known fairly well among English-speaking players because of the full translation patch that was made for it (still the only SRW other than the odd-man-out SRW 1 to get a full translation patch).

All of the series from SRW 2 return, and five new series debut. Gundam 0080 and 0083 round out the standard UC Gundams (08th MS team did not yet exist, and V Gundam was still in progress when the game came out, and probably wasn’t even begun yet when development on SRW 3 started.) On the Super Robot side, Combattler V, Raideen, and Daitarn 3 all debut.

However, even within the series that already existed in SRW 2, a lot more material gets put in. There are over 60 possible playable characters in this game, as opposed to around 20 in SRW 2. There are also more named characters on the enemy side from each series.

As far as the system goes, SRW 3 takes a humongous step forward towards the “modern” SRW gameplay. These are some of the changes that were made from SRW 2’s system:
– Pilots and robots now have separate stats, and you can switch pilots on certain robots.
– The scale of the numbers is still low, but moves a long way towards how they are in recent games.
– Each robot could only have 2 attacks in NES (2 per transformation) but the number of attacks is now effectively unlimited; even the crap suits like the GMs have 4 attacks, and Combattler V has several pages.
– The item shop was removed (so there are no items at all in 3)
– Will, bullets, and energy have all been added to the game
– You can now indirectly affect the action of your units when they are attacked, by picking an overall strategy from a list
– Terrain compatibilities of units were added
– You can upgrade your mechs during the intermission
– You can sell old mechs
– The seishins are much more like the modern ones, although the list is much smaller than it later became
– You now have more characters than can be sortied each level, and you have to choose who you will send out (and the optional characters no longer leave soon after they join).

Things that are still lacking:
– You cannot upgrade weapons
– There are no items in the game
– You cannot pick evade/block/counter on a per-attack basis
– Repairing still does not grant EXP
– The skills (i.e. newtype, shield block) still do not exist
– The concept of a “post-move attack” still does not really exist; any range-1 (and only a range-1) attack can be used post-move.

I played the PSX version remake of this game, which is considerably easier, but I haven’t played the SNES version yet. Should be a barrel of laughs.

Stage 1 – Dark Clouds

The prologue brings in the Zabi Family resurrecting DC; the writers seem to be moving more towards using the anime plots, although they still aren’t really doing that.  They also had to explain why the heroes go back to their crap units after 2, the reason is that the Earth Federation distrusts them.  Char also appears again, and his role is a little unusual — in the anime series he never betrayed the Zabi family to the benefit of the allies (i.e. he only did it for his own purposes).  The G3 gas incident is coming in from Zeta Gundam.  This is also notable for being the only appearance of the Proto Getter in the series.

Stage 2 – Knight of the Rose

I took the side route, so you just have to fight a small force headed by Mashmyre — nothing much to say about this.

Stage 3 – G-3

This is a rough stage.  The Dogos Gear runs away, but it’s kind of tough to deal with Lila, Kakricon, and Jerid with your weak units.  I used Getter a lot because he has the Luck seishin…very happy to get the real Getter after this stage.

The plot is also developing; these “mysterious aliens” (bian’s prediction) are attacking Earth.  Now you also get Reccoa after this mission which is a contradiction to SRW 2; there’s no indication that anyone in Londo Bell remembers that she was an enemy in SRW 2.

Stage 4 – Entering the Atmosphere

First encounter with the Inspector troops.  On the one hand I feel like they kind of copped-out; they just used the same old Gundam and Mazinger/Getter enemies but with robot/faceless pilots instead.  But, it is kind of interesting to see this mysterious force using Earth robots.  Kamille also joins in this stage — the same Gundam theme is used for all Gundam units no matter what series they are from.

Something else that was added in this game is the ability for people to have conversations before they fight.  So when you attack Jerid with Kamille, they have a conversation — but in another instance of ignoring any continuity from SRW 2, they both act like they have never met before.  You can get Emma on your side here, unfortunately she has swapped out her Marasai for the Mk-II.

At the end of the stage Gihren Zabi gives a First Gundam-like speech about unifying Earth and space under the Zabi Family and DC, following the will of Bian Zoldark (instead of Degwin Zabi as in FG anime).

Stage 5 – Gundam Theft

0083 enters the SRW world, and they basically just copy the content of episodes 1 and 2.  Kou sucks as usual, but without Amuro and Kamille having the newtype abilities, he’s not quite as bad.

Stage 6 – Gato’s Raid

Not much going on here.  After this you get Christina McKenzie; there’s not much in the way of 0080 inclusion here, just Chris and Bernie.

Stage 7 – Seaside Panic

The part at the beginning where they go to the beach is an early example of a conversation that isn’t just “why are we fighting the next set of enemies”; the amount of these increases vastly as the series progresses.

Stage 8 – Combattler V

This is a notable, but odd stage.  This is the first time in SRW that some anime plot comes in completely separate from the Divine Crusaders storyline.  On the other hand, it’s odd because Garuda just shows up and gets killed in this mission.  I’m not sure why the designers did this; maybe they didn’t quite realize that they could keep multiple plots going in one game, but then why did they include this little bit at all?  Did they feel like some explanation was needed for why Combattler V would join Londo Bell?

Stage 9 – Crimson Wings

Ashura and Brocken make their first appearance in the SRW world.  My units are starting to get a little overpowered by the enemies, but the next two stages have powerful units for me.

Stage 10 – Hero Raideen

Like the Combattler stage, this pits you against the Raideen enemies which you finish off quickly, then the alien units come.

After this stage, Four gets captured — they kept continuity by having her on your side, but then they wanted to have the Kamille vs. Four battle again so they set this up.  Sort of cheap, but oh well.

Stage 11 – The Rumored Haran Banjo

Unlike the Raideen and Combattler intros, there are no Daitarn enemies in this stage, just the robot.  There’s a pretty big enemy force here although you can get some relief if you set up your guys right since the Inspector units will fight the DC units.

Stage 12 – To Space

Quattro Bajina makes his first appearance in SRW.  Sayla doesn’t get much chance to talk to him since she leaves after this mission, but the conversation with Bright from First Gundam does appear.

Steiner is from 0080; I didn’t remember any enemies from 0080 besides Bernie.  You can do the scene with Christina and Bernie fighting; Bernie sucks so there’s not really much point unless you want to get all the secrets.

Stage 13 – In the Midst of Sorrow

Oops, I forgot to sortie Chris, so no Bernie.  Huge loss.  This was a much easier level after the previous two, and you get a battleship to destroy for 40,000 coins (with Luck).  Towakun and Demitri are kind of random in weak suits; I have no idea who they are.

The missions in this game tend to get a little repetitive because it’s just the same DC or Alien units every battle, and they all rush you.

Stage 14 – Suspicion

There’s a huge enemy force in this mission but they’re pretty weak enemies so it’s not too bad.  I love the Dogos Gear — another 40,000 coins.

The “suspicion” in the title refers to DC possibly having some relationship to the aliens.

Stage 15 – Pursuit Battle

You get Roux and Judau here (of course the ZZ is a lot more useful than she is).  The ZZ means yet another ALL (MAP) attack.  The Hyaku Shiki’s MAP attack isn’t a straight line like later games, it’s a rectangle like everyone else.

Stage 16 – Fight at Side 1

Yay, another Dogos Gear stage. 🙂

Gato turns against DC here, although there are different factions — Gato works for Gihren Zabi while Bask is in Kycilia’s group.  Seems Bask is consorting with the aliens, though.

Stage 17 – Shangri-la

This is a really short stage, but kind of odd — Mashymre and Gotton help you out.  F91 also joins up here; finally I’m getting a full team of good units.

Stage 18 – Conscon’s Assault

Poor Conscon.  They only ever put him in SRW or Gundam games for one reason, [2019 me: To make fun of his surprise that you can beat his Rick Doms.]

This stage is fairly easy; I beat it in 5 turns so I didn’t have to face Lakan and the reinforcements.    The Nu Gundam is a welcome sight after this stage; I’m a little surprised they give it to you so early in the game.  Funnel units are really important in all the early SRW games, especially when the Newtype ability comes into the game (in 4?).

The other funnel users I can get are Puru’s Quebeley (stage 29), Sazabi (stage 30), and Puru II’s Jagd Doga (stage 32).  I’m not going the Kyara route, I don’t think.

Stage 19 – Nightmare of Solomon

This is a neat stage.  First of all, Masaki shows up in his Cybuster, and the Inspectors make their first appearance.  The only one that sticks around is Vigaj.

Gato also comes in and blows away 13 of the units, which is quite helpful, and is a neat story element.  I still think the designers were much more adventerous with their story elements in these early games.  They really nerfed this part in the Complete Box version; Gato only destroys *3* units.  After that, the most difficult part is the force around Bask.  Rosamia in particular has double move, is on good terrain, and the Baund Doc has high armor.  She took multiple finishing moves from SR’s to take down.

Vigaj leaves if you have Gato come in, but what if you don’t activate that event?

Oh yeah, Dogos Gear. 😀

Stage 20 – Prelude to a Hard Battle

This is an “inside the base” mission, which they seemed to use a lot in the early games but not so much later on.  Vigaj is here and you actually have to fight him this time, but as long as you can reduce his HP to 80% in one round it’s not so bad (I used God Bird, Breast Fire, and Sun Attack and that did it).

Kamille now has double move; I want to get more people to have it before I reach the Ryuune stage.

Stage 21 – Terror!  Big Zam

Haman makes her first appearance (in SRW 3) here, in the Dogos Gear.  This makes the Dogos Gear very hard to hit, and sadly you can’t kill it — maybe if you could do 6500 in one shot.  But if you do any damage to it, she runs away and Big Zam comes out.

Sleggar will take out the Big Zam for you like in FG, but it’s harder than Complete Box.  In Complete Box, as soon as the Big Zam appears, Sleggar goes over and kills it.  Here, Sleggar has to actually reach the Big Zam without getting killed.  This makes it a bit harder.

Also in this stage is the very frequently used device of “Persuade Four with Kamille, then destroy the Psycho Gundam to get her on your team”.

Cyflash is unbalanced as usual.

Stage 22 – Ryuune, and Valsione

This stage was reused, almost line-for-line (even down to her use of Psycho Flasher), in OG1, although the F91 bunch is replaced with OG-only DC enemies.

Ryuune is the new Banpresto Original hero(ine) for this game; they gave her the same music as Masaki (neppu! shippu! cybuster); I’m not exactly sure why, but maybe it was just so the designers wouldn’t have to make another music track.  In Complete Box she is a godly character because she has the supremely unbalanced Taunt seishin; even here she seems good with her 5-use 1800 power Cross Masher (which I assume is not a beam attack) and ALL attack that works like Cyflash.

(Some people apparently have trouble keeping Ryuune alive; the key both here and in the CB version is to leave an enemy at low HP for her to attack and kill each turn.  Do not leave the Laflacia as the only enemy unless you are sure you can kill it before the enemy turn.)

The Laflacia is even better than the Dogos Gear; 60000 gold with Luck.

Ryuune’s first appearance, with her oddly proportioned mech about which absolutely nothing is said in the game:

SRPG Game 17 – Shining Force Gaiden II (Chapters 3-5)

As I said in the last post, I’m going to make it a general rule from now on that I don’t do stage-by-stage commentary for games that don’t “deserve” it. That’s not to say SFG2 is a bad game, just that it tends to involve the same strategy on the maps.

Stage 13

This is when the game moves back to the other party, leaving you with only 5 guys. It’s kind of a tough stage because of that (with Bill the Monk as my only healer). I’m fortunate that I was trying to level everyone evenly so I didn’t end up with a worthless party here. Bill sucked at first but he’s pretty good now.

I also appreciate the creative stage design here — not that there’s any gameplay difference with these vines and cliffs, but it’s nice to see the design team attempt to change things up at least in the visuals.

Stage 15

This stage has darkness in it so you can’t see the whole layout. Monsters also appear as you move on — not a hugely difficult stage but at least interesting.


Stage 16

Lava! As you move, lava flows block off areas, but this doesn’t make the stage any harder.


Stage 18

This is one of the boss stages, as we head into the endgame. Solo puts his hopes on these “death balloons”. They appear as you advance through the stage, and blow up if you try to attack them, doing big damage.

I also accidentally got Hanzo (named “Higins” for some reason in the English version — I don’t understand why they think American gamers are OK with made up names like “Iom” or “Woldol”, but a Japanese name like “Hanzo” is no good. They also later change Musashi to “Rush”. This is not the only bizarre name change because Shu is “Deanna” for some reason in English. Did they think the character was female?)

I knew the secret characters were there but hadn’t been paying close attention, especially because there’s no display of the stage number. So this was a huge chunk of luck — I was just moving Shu back to get him out of Solo’s range.


Stage 20

The gimmick on this stage is a repeat from Shining Force 1, a weapon that takes many turns to charge up but hurts a huge range, enemies and allies.

I ate one blast but everyone survived. The stage is a little hairy after this because you have to get in range of the mages in order to take down the orb, but it’s not too bad.

Stage 21

This is the stage with the second boss, Barbara. In general I think the bosses here are easier than in regular Shining Force; usually you just have to eat one nasty spell and then you can take the boss down. Part of the problem is that their AI often doesn’t approach you when you’re involved with other enemies, which would make things a lot trickier.

Stage 22

Next up is “Death Woldol”, a revived version of the boss from the original SF Gaiden.

You’re supposed to get a Light Sword for beating him. But Shu, who had the final strike, had no space in his inventory so it just disappeared. Fortunately the shop then sold it in the “buried treasure” section so I could have it.

Stage 23

Wardola (or Waderer or however you want to romanize it) is basically the same as the previous bosses, just approach him slowly and beat him after he uses one spell. Now we save Kurisu from the first game, and he joins up with the Haja Sword for the last battle

Stage 24

This is a tough battle. Iom uses nasty spells, and you have to take out some other guys first. After a couple of failures I decided to begin by taking out the Iom Worms with archers so that they couldn’t attack, while the rest of the units took on the Iom Dolls that come from the top. I had the healers use heal every turn just to gain XP, because I thought I would have to exit from the battle again.


As it turns out I didn’t have to. I sent the two archers, the birdman, Kurisu, and my monk up to deal with Iom since that’s who can actually attack. I had no MP left at this point. You can set the characters up so that at most 2 can be hit at once — this allowed me to last for a long time even with no MP left for healing. By the time I had to send up reinforcements, he was already down to about 70 HP, and I finished him off with little trouble.

There’s a short ending sequence.

So that’s the end of SFG2, although Shining Force CD is not finished yet. As I said after SFG1, I’m going to hold off on the wrap-up post until I actually finish the entire Shining Force CD game; the only thing left is the short third scenario, and the bonus battle where you fight all the bosses at once.

Next up will be reposting of Super Robot Taisen 3, then the actual Shining Force II.

SFC Game 36 – Soul & Sword (wrap-up)

This game is another attempt at a “free mission” system where there is no set order to do the various events and quests. Obviously the closest comparison is going to be with the Romancing SaGa series. In comparison to RS1 I think this game wins in a number of aspects.

First of all, it’s much easier to find quests than it was in RS1. You don’t have to pay to travel around the world, and the quests don’t involve talking to random people in specific towns at specific times. If you just take good notes, you’ll probably find almost all of the events and quests in the game.

The scaling of the monster difficulty is done much better as well. RS1 had this problem where you would suddenly start fighting ridiculously hard monsters, whereas the S&S difficulty is much more graded. On the whole it’s a pretty easy game, with only a few parts that require special tactics or equipment.

One interesting decision the S&S designers made was not to have any sort of overarching story. There really is no final boss and certainly no “save the world” plot. There is one quest that does seem intended to be the last quest, but even that isn’t hugely epic. The use of multiple endings was an interesting choice as well, with the ability to leave the island any time you want to end the game.

The battle system is pretty boring, as is typical for games of this era. The random encounter rate is way too high, and you have to walk out of dungeons, which makes the quests more tedious than they should be. Even well-designed quests like the horror themed doll quest or the satirical fairyland quest are undermined by the constant heaps of random encounters that detract from the experience. This last part is why it took me so long to get through the game.

At least the magic users can make good use of their spells because MP restoring stuff is so cheap. The lack of healing spells is odd. I never made much use of the “waza” (tech) abilities.

Ultimately I would give this game a B rank — a game that’s not terrible, but I did have to force myself to finish it. I may need to re-evaluate the criteria for abandoning a game. I’m not sure it benefits anyone to have almost a month be taken up by posts about one game that’s only being stretched out that much because I have to force myself to play it.

Next up is a PCE game, “Aurora Quest”, which I’m not expecting good things from.

SRPG Game 17 – Shining Force Gaiden II (Mega CD) (Chapters 1 and 2)

Here’s another Shining Force game (with another coming up soon!) It’s the second game to be released on the Game Gear. As with Gaiden 1, I’m playing this on the Shining Force CD remake. I will withhold the final “wrap-up” post until I actually finish the entire SFCD game.

As with Shining Force Gaiden 1, there are no changes from the original to CD other than the quality of the graphics and sound.

The game is a direct sequel to SF Gaiden 1, taking places several years later. The hero from the first game goes off to fight a new enemy, leaving a mysterious boy (the new main character, Shuu), behind. When enemies attack to steal the Haja Sword from the first game, Shuu and the others go after him.

Stage 1

The first stage starts in familiar territory; by now we’re used to the starting party of the hero, a mage, a monk, two centaurs, and an axe user.

The stage presents no real challenges.

Stage 2

This one was a bit harder. There are spellcasting enemies that can gang up on you if you’re unprepared (I lost the Monk).

The spellcasting Dragon Newt

There do seem to be some new enemies in this game, at least.

Stage 3

I’m making a big effort not to let anyone fall behind in levels, because the centaurs tend to get all the XP.

Stage 4 

In this stage we’re still chasing after the guy that stole the Haja Sword. Not too tough, although the axe user keeps dying. The monk has gotten much more useful as he gains levels.

Stage 5

I actually had to retreat from this stage the first time; it works better to go around the left side. I made sure to search the well to get the Entrance Ticket, which lets you do the final “museum” fight after beating the game.
 
Stage 6 

Finally a new guy; the person we were chasing turned out to be trying to save his village by stealing the sword. But the sword is still gone, so we chase after it to the next stage. 

Stage 7

It’s hard to find things to write about for a lot of these stages because they’re small maps with fairly simple strategies — just move everyone forward, attack, and heal at times. I question whether I really should be doing stage-by-stage comments for games like this.

How about this picture of the sorcerer Gordon revealing himself:

Nightmare fuel

Stage 8

Now we chase gordon under the caves; he summons some extra Zombies but that’s not very tough. As usual you have to make sure not to bunch up your guys to avoid getting targeted by the area effect spells — this is still doable now because the enemies only have the 1 area effect.

Stage 9

The next two missions are about capturing a boat. This one has some new enemies that are tough, but I managed to get through with only one loss.

Stage 10

We need this boat because Kurisu has been captured by the enemy force and we need to go find him and destroy the I Om army. But after this stage, our force gets separated as a haunted ship takes off with half the party. The next set of missions split between the two parties.

I think for the next post on this game I will only comment if there’s actually something interesting to say about the map — if it has some interesting feature or if there’s more than just basic strategy to beating it. That should probably be a general rule for this blog; I did it for the Little Master games and it should make for quicker and more interesting reading than just going over the same thing again and again or describing in detail a “strategy” that’s just moving forward, attacking, and healing. 

SFC Game 36 – Soul & Sword (Finished)

Finally done!

Quest 30

This is not so much a quest as an event — a yearly festival in Sultan. It’s a pretty sad affair, with no visitors or patrons to enjoy it. Just a band, a few stores, and the “plate hunt” where you go in and fight monsters looking for plates of various metals that can be sold afterwards. Barely worth it.

Quest 31

I found a mask on an earlier quest; with this, I can go to one of the villages and revive a demon, who I then have to kill. Balmar is unusable because the mask took him over.

Quest 32

There’s a town with the winged guys in it called Lachwald; before they would refuse to talk to me, but now that I won the tournament they let me in. The king immediately dies when I arrive, and there’s a succession dispute between the son of the Minister and the son of the deceased king. I supported the King’s son, but in either case you just lead the guy down to the basement so he can recover a tablet proving he’s King.

Quest 33

This quest gives us the 4th bead. Around this point I discovered that the Tiara is the best equipment in the game because physical attacks heal you; I had already sold 2 of them by this point because I didn’t know what they did, but the last one helped. If you play this, don’t sell them!


Quest 34 

There is no real “final” quest but this is probably the closest thing. Once we get the 4th bead, a voice calls us to the mountain at the center of the map. This is a long stage with an outer area and then a cave. The monsters aren’t that hard except for this one and its palette swaps:


They can explode and do big damage to all your guys, which is tough if there are a bunch of them. I used the “flee battle” items for any fights with these guys. Other than that, it wasn’t that bad even though I still didn’t have the stats for a lot of people’s ultimate equipment.

There’s a boss, but as long as you have the lightning-absorb item and the resist confusion item, he can’t really do anything.

Kurisu gets the Hero Sword, making him a true hero!

Now I left the island. After a long scene where many of the people we helped come to say bye, Runna decides to go with Kurisu, and Balmar initially hangs back but decides he wants to go on his own journey and follows. Runna and Kurisu declare their love for each other and Balmar heads out on his own.

So that’s Soul&Sword. It’s OK; the high encounter rate is a big problem but that’s typical for games of this era. I’ll post a fuller wrap-up later.

SRPG Game 16 – Ogre Battle (SFC)

Ogre Battle (伝説のオウガバトル)
Release Date: 3/12/1993
System: Super Famicom
Developer: Quest
Publisher: Quest

DATA 

  1. Turn type: Real time
  2. Maps: Relatively large. As usual there is terrain that affects movement.
  3. Character customization: Most units are generic and can be promoted to various classes by getting certain stats.
  4. Character development: Standard XP/level system. XP is shared among members of a squad.
  5. Party: You have a large number of squads composed of several units each, one of whom is the leader.
  6. Equipment: Each character can equip one item.
  7. Game flow: There are multiple paths through the game, optional stages, and several endings based on your “chaos frame” score.
  8. Saving: Between levels.
  9. Death: Not permanent.

IMPRESSIONS 

As with Albert Odyssey, this is a game I already covered on my other blog, with two posts (Post 1 and Post 2).
I was looking forward to this game, having played Ogre Battle 64 back in the 90s and enjoying it quite a bit. Unfortunately I found this game to be lackluster in comparison and I didn’t finish it. There is definitely a lot of customization, and this is the first SRPG on my list to offer any multiple paths, optional stages, or different endings. The story is pretty weak, though, since there are no pre or post battle dialogues, just chats with the characters or bosses within the stage.
My biggest problem was the gameplay, though, and it really came down to two development choices. The first is that with few exceptions, the enemy AI is simply to move towards your units or towns at top speed. The enemies rarely set up any kind of defensive formation or wait. The second problem is that if a leader is killed, the rest of the troop moves back to the HQ at max speed, and the split second they touch the HQ they immediately reappear fully healed and revived. I found both of these aspects of the game frustrating because it felt like I had no choice but to sit in a defensive position and wait for enemies to come to me, and make sure to exterminate them completely. Otherwise I risked losing towns I had captured, or getting mobbed.
The game has a lot of fiddly stuff with alignment and the “chaos frame” value if you want some of the optional characters or endings, but I found this to be more annoying than fun.
As I said on the other post, I don’t necessarily think this is a bad game, I just personally did not like it. OB64 was far superior, for my tastes.

SFC Game 36 – Soul & Sword (Part 3)

Unfortunately I didn’t quite finish the game this week.

Quest 17

This was a convenient time to do another timed quest, where you have to go to a village between 2/1-2/10. They need sacrifices to give to a pirate gang, although it’s not really clear why they want them — just to sell into slavery or something like that, but that seems like a strange thing to ask for once a year. In any case, we agree to “get captured” and then break out and beat everyone up.

Once the thieves are beaten, we find their treasure as well as a map to their hidden treasure down south. I headed down to the town where I can get a ship to the island, but first I decided to take out the thieves in a nearby forest.

 

Quest 18

The thieves steal all our clothes, which makes Runna so mad that even when you beat the leader and he asks for forgiveness, you have to fight him 5 times (because Runna refuses to accept his apology) before you can move on. Coming back to the area reveals some new treasure, including something for the Collector quest and a “black box” which opens up a new quest with an upside-down castle that I had visited before but couldn’t enter.


Quest 19

Before going to the castle, I headed out for the pirate’s treasure. It turns out to be an Ocean Bead, which has no obvious function now. There was also a Fairy Doll in the cave, which the kids want to keep — it sounds like this will also be something important. But we do have to fight both pirates again:

This is actually kind of hard because the guy on the right uses high-damage spells and attacks that hit everyone, and he heals. I did finally get enough stats to use one of the healing weapons, so that attacking someone on our team with it heals them (there’s no healing spells or techs so this is quite helpful).

Now on to the upside down castle. I’m hoping to beat the fighting tournament in the next cycle (year 3).

Quest 20

This is a long dungeon with a bunch of strange levels; it turns out the “castle” is a spaceship and we help the guy by returning his black box so he can leave.

Quest 21

Now I headed up to the desert near the starting town. Here, the two kids find some ants that they think are in trouble — sounds silly but it turns out they are, and the magic of the queen turns us small so we can solve their problem with the Antlions.

Once we solve their problem, it’s back to the surface, and the Queen rewards us by telling us how to get the treasure in the nearby tomb.


Quest 22

This is a short dungeon, and after fighting some mummies I got the Air Bead — I now have two beads, presumably there’s a fire and earth one as well.

Quest 23

This is a quest I probably would not have found without a walkthrough. You have to borrow the maximum amount from the lender (50000 gp) and then return it with 10% interest. You get an Antique Doll as a reward. I read that I had to do this but didn’t know what the ultimate quest would be, so I was surprised when I rested at the Istray inn and woke up in a ghostly house.

This is a creepy, atmospheric quest that tells a ghost story — the main problem is the high encounter rate. It’s impossible to sustain the creepy mood when every 5 steps you’re thrown into another battle. This was a fun quest but I wish they had disabled encounters for here, at least.

Yeesh

Quest 24

This quest takes 50,000 gold to pay a guy to tell you the location of the Wyvern’s mountain. Once there you have to beat some enemies in a certain order, and then the path to the Wyvern itself opens.

The Wyvern’s treasure turns out to be the Rainbow Bead, the third of the four beads I need for what seems to be the “final” quest (in a sense).

The Wyvern’s dungeon had an Elixir DX in it so I was able to go back and finish the Collector quest, which gave me 300,000 gold! (Quest 25)

Quest 26

Like Quest 23, this one could have been really good. It’s a humorous parody of “beat the demon king” RPGs that actually is pretty funny in parts. The big problem is that it’s by far the longest quest, with relatively large dungeons that you have to walk out of after you do your task there. The very high encounter rate saps most of the humor that you feel in the quest itself.

But it’s still enjoyable in parts. There’s a lot of good equipment that you can only buy during this question, so I was happy for the 300K I got from the collector.

Quest 27

Finally I went back to do the fighting tournament, which is necessary to unlock several other quests. I don’t think they scaled the enemies in the tournament to your stats, because I completely demolished the fighters — maybe they didn’t do that because it’s an important quest. I forgot to even get any screenshots. The guy you beat in the last round gives you a treasure map, and also there was a person in Istory who wanted help but wouldn’t talk to anyone but the tournament winner. I’ll go there first.

Quest 28

The guy wanted me to train his son, which just involves fighting monsters in a tower until his strength gets to 25. Then he can open a door and please his father.


I realized that I forgot to include an earlier quest where you find a criminal in a random pub around the world, so that’s Quest 29.

There are five more quests left. I’m getting a little tired of the game but I just upgraded to bsnes 107.3 which has a faster speedup, so that will help with the random encounters at least. The game is much easier when you get a healing weapon.

SRPG Game 15 – Albert Odyssey (SFC)

Albert Odyssey (アルバートオデッセイ)
Release Date: 3/5/1993

System: Super Famicom
Developer: Tokai Engineering
Publisher: Sunsoft

DATA 

  1. Turn type: Player/enemy turn
  2. Maps: Very large — the entire world is one big map, with one additional map for underground.
  3. Character customization: None
  4. Character development: Standard XP/level system.
  5. Party: 4 characters. There is some freedom to choose which characters to take along.
  6. Equipment: Four slots
  7. Game flow: See comments below.
  8. Saving: In towns.
  9. Death: Not permanent (you need to restore in towns or with items/spells).

IMPRESSIONS

This is my first game of 1993, and the first game on the Super Famicom. I have already played and reviewed this game on my other blog, so I will only give a brief summary here.


The most unusual feature of this game is an attempt to even more fully integrate RPG elements into the SRPG genre by completely removing the idea of separate maps or stages, and making the entire world map into one big stage. This is an innovation, but there’s an obvious reason why few other game have gone this route — it takes forever to go anywhere since you have to move everyone individually even if there are no monsters in the area. Exploring is tedious and makes you want to use a walkthrough to make sure you’re heading in the right direction. Entering a town is needlessly complicated.


The other big problem I had with this game is that you never get any new powers or spells beyond your initial set, so the beginning and end of the game are basically the same.


As you can probably tell, I did not like this game very much. The story is also lackluster. I’m not looking forward to Albert Odyssey 2, because I’m not hopeful that they solved any of these issues with the first game.