Brave Saga 2 (ブレイブサーガ2), released 5/2/2000, developed by Pandora Box, released by Takara

This is the sequel to 1998’s Brave Saga, which I played before. It’s closely related to that game so please read the previous posts on that if you haven’t yet.

In the year and a half since the first game, the only Yuusha series was GaoGaiGear, which was running when the first game was released and by now was finished. Since all of the other series had their storylines in the first game, this game focuses heavily on GaoGaiGear and a new original villain group. In addition, the three series that were only cameos last time (Votoms, Galient, and Dagram) are brought back for somewhat more in-depth story. I believe that they also used some characters and episodes from the other Yuusha series that had not been used in the first game.

You can transfer your save data from the first game. This allows you to get a few hidden units, and I think some of the dialogue changes as well but I’m not sure of all the details.

Overall the game is similar to the first one. On the story side, the biggest change is that all of the dialogue is voiced, even the side scenarios and just random optional dialogue sequences. If you actually let all the dialogue play out the game is quite long; my timer was near 70 hours when I finished, and I could have taken longer if I had actually visited all the places to get every optional conversation.

The new original characters are servants of Maou Baldo. They apparently ruled Earth at one time, and now they have returned to retake it. They split the world into 7 parts, which restores it to the “Beltanu” that they ruled before. This has scattered the yuusha units across the different parts, as well as some of them being disabled or destroyed in space from the first assault. The main character of the previous game, Baan Gaan, is one of the missing units.

To step into Baan Gaan’s place, we have a new main character Shizuma. He is the last descendant of the clan that formerly sealed away Maou Baldo, but they are able to steal his 6 “affeta” which give him his power. Before he dies, his mother uses the last of her strength to put him in a temporary body. The overall story develops as Shizuma tries to retake the 6 affeta from the generals of Baldo, while also dealing with the Zondarians (GaoGaiGear) and finding the various heroes.

At first you can only visit Japan, but every time you beat one of the generals, a new area of the world opens up. Between missions you can visit other places; some will just have conversations, but some have side missions that can unlock additional characters.

The upgrade system has been streamlined a bit. The items are gone (along with the developing new items). As in the previous game, you often have separate units that can combine. In this game you still have to upgrade the units individually from the combined form, but fortunately the levels carry over. Upgrading the weapons can unlock new weapons, or give new “guts” powers, which is a new part of the system.

The battle system is quite similar to the previous game. Unfortunately you still can’t skip animations. There are a few new system components:

• Guts – every time you get hit, you gain a “guts” point and when the gauge fills you can use a unit’s “guts” powers, or with some units it lets you transform into a more powerful version. The guts powers include buffs, heals, and special attacks.
• Fire extinguisher – This is more of a gimmick than anything else. A few stages have the goal to put out fires on the map, and you have to use a subset of your units that have this fire extinguisher power. Outside of that it has no use.
• Combo attacks – I don’t remember if this was in the first game, but some units have combination attacks with other units.

The game is quite easy; I sent out my lowest level units on every stage except for the final boss stage and I had almost no trouble. Even the final boss was only slightly difficult. This is probably welcome for people who are Yuusha series fans because it lets them use whatever units they want.

Overall this is a mid-rank game, I think. Unless you are already a fan of the Yuusha series, the story isn’t really anything special. The gameplay is too easy for serious strategy fans, and the length of the game might also be an issue. There’s nothing that makes it unplayable, but also not much that would make it a top recommendation.

By the time this game came out, the Yuusha series was over: declining sales had led the creators to make GaoGaiGear the final entry in the franchise. There were still a few OVAs and such that came out later, but not much. As for Brave Saga, there was a 2001 Game Boy Color game that was a regular RPG, and then a 2005 SRPG for PS2, so we’ll be seeing the series one more time.

Super Robot Taisen Compact 2 (スーパーロボット大戦COMPACT 2), released 3/3/2000, developed and published by Banpresto

(As usual, this is just a dump of my message board posts from years ago so they may not be of much interest. One thing I didn’t point out in the original posts is that the game was later remade as Impact for the PS2.)

SRW 64 straddles the fence between major phases of Super Robot Wars, but the portable systems always lagged behind what was being done in the main systems for the most part. Two months before the bombshell of Alpha, the second entry in the Wonderswan lineup came out. Compact 2 is very similar to Compact 1; there are some interface upgrades and minor graphical upgrades, but the stage select system is retained, as is the clear bonus for finishing stages in a short time.

Of course the most notable thing about the game is that it is divided into three parts across three cartridges, with a total of 92 stages in a complete playthrough of all three (including bonus stage), making it one of the longest Super Robot Wars games to date. The game uses the Wonderswan’s internal memory to transfer small things from one part to the next, although you can play them separately if you want.

Unlike Compact 1, Compact 2 features original characters. It follows the system introduced in 64 of non-customizable main characters integrated into the plot — in this case the first appearance of Kyosuke Nanbu and Excellen Browning.

Series-wise, the game contains all the UC Gundams (minus Victory), and no AU series. Dunbine appears as well for the reals. The Super Robot contains the usual lineup of Mazinger, Getter, Grendizer, Raideen, Combattler, Dancougar, and Daitarn 3, with Zambot 3 making its first appearance since 4. New series are Dangaioh, Machine Robo, and Ninja Senshi Tobikage. Dangaioh and Tobikage appear only in Compact 2 (and Impact), but Machine Robo will reappear in MX. (Although Machine Robo does not actually appear until Part 2).

The major system addition is support attack and defense. It’s still in a primitive state here — you can’t choose to support or not; it’s automatic if there’s a unit in range to do the support, and you can’t choose the attack to support with.

Anyway, away we go. I’m not going to be obsessive about getting 6 turn clears on every stage, although I am going to try for the 7-8 turns average necessary to get the secret stage at the end.

SCENE 1

Stage 1 – Dragon on the Clouds

The game starts after OYW and Gryps War, and a whole bunch of other stuff as well, so it’s the usual situation where the Federation doesn’t trust the heroes and they have crap units, plus a whole new set of enemies is attacking.

The first stage is much, much easier than Impact’s — there are fewer enemies and you have 6 turns instead of 5 to get Concentrate (plus there’s no skill point). One interesting thing I like about Compact is that they start you with people like Chris and Bernie, and not Amuro and Kamille, so that you actually have to use the “lesser” people to start with.

Stage 2 – Castle of Steel

A couple of additional things about the game:

• I think this is the first game to do away with the old “double move” system — Alpha will still have it but then after that it never reappears again.
• Bernie and Chris finally get their own 0080 theme. Unusually, the Z units have Sign of Zeta as their theme.

This is the Mazinger stage; Dr. Hell and Ashura are back, of course. I was trying to take Ashura down more than finish quickly so I got 8 turns for this stage. The story writing is clearly better than the travesty of Compact 1, but it’s not quite at the level of 64.

Stage 3 – The Face of Justice, a Giant Robot

This stage does not exist in Impact; here you get Zambot 3 for a few stages. Butcher is pretty tough; a 25,000 HP enemy with a MAP weapon at this stage of the game takes a lot of hits, so I got another 8 turn clear. BTW, if I did the math right, you need an average of 8.5 turns a stage to get the bonus CCA stage at the end of Part 3.

Another thing to note about the stage select is that it preserves Compact 1’s system of changing the items you get based on the stage. I’m choosing the order of stages based both on the items and some of the secrets unlocked by doing so. You do not get items for defeating enemies, so it’s not as important to take them down before they flee, although you do generally get a lot of extra money.

Stage 4 – The Power of Justice, Fire On

This stage can be completed in 6 turns but it took me 7. Not much to say here; Great General of Darkness appears so all the old enemies are coming back. Why might this be?

Stage 5 – If Three Hearts Become One

Another stage that can be completed in 6 turns, but it took 7. I really wish the Seishin+20 was the 7 turn bonus instead of the 8; it’s much better than the Morale+5 skill but I don’t want to waste too many turns if I don’t have to. Now the major super robots are gathered here; I sent Kouji to space for no very good reason since you don’t really need GM to get the skill points like in Impact.

Stage 6 – Rising Wings, Falling Wings

This is the last stage of the scene so it can’t be finished very quickly — took me 10 turns. Of course the big challenge is to take down Butcher so you can get the V-Up Unit in part 2. I personally think it’s a lot easier than in Impact. Tetsuya and Ryou both have Hot Blood right off the bat, whereas in Impact it’s unlikely that either of them will have it on this stage. A Hot Blood, Critical great booster plus a few random shots, plus a Hot Blood upgraded Getter Beam was all it took.

This is a pretty tough stage otherwise, though — a lot of water enemies and your paltry Gundam weaklings to take them out. The Tobikage characters show up here and help a little bit, although they have their own The Boom aliens to deal with.

SCENE 2

Stage 7 – Awaken, Hero

RAIDEEEN FADE IN!

I think this stage can be beaten in 6 turns but it took me 7 again. I’ve only gotten one Concentrate so far but I haven’t been playing obsessively for them. Incidentally, the only voiced game Raideen has been in so far is the Complete Box version of 3, and 4S. Raideen is a pretty major series in the Alpha games, though.

Stage 8 – Holy Warriors

I managed to do 6 turns on this one; Shou is a lot better in C2 than in Impact so he can take down most of the Aura Battlers by himself. Some sites indicate that Compact 2 is a sequel to Compact 1, but this stage is clear proof that it is not — nobody knows who Shou is despite Dunbine being in Compact 1.

The Einst make their first appearance here:

One other note — Impact allows you to use the Tobikage ship (you can choose between it and Gandol) but in C2 they put the Tobikage ship in a warehouse instead and you can’t use it, at least not for now. I don’t know if they let you use it later.

Stage 9 – Cross Fight

KUROSU FAITO!

Dangai-Oh enters the SRW franchise for the first and last time. I managed 6 turns on this stage, just barely — I had to led Bloody II retreat but that’s OK; Concentrate is better than some money. Here’s some images of Dangai-Oh’s finishing attack, complete with cut-in image:

Stage 10 – Legend of the Lost Ninjas

This stage is really easy to do in a low number of turns because defeating Ilbora makes all the enemies retreat. I did it on turn 4, which is basically the earliest possible.

Stage 11 – Two Newtypes

8 turns is pretty good for a scene-closing stage. Aina is much, much easier to take down in this stage than in the Impact version.

This stage gives you the first V-Up Unit, which are way overpowered in this game. As in Compact 1, I gave it to the NT-1 Alex and then stuck Amuro in there. Some people like the Ez-8 but I think that the NT-1’s post-move ranged weapon with 12 shots is much better than anything the Ez-8 has.

SCENE 3

Stage 12 – The Electromagnetic Robot that Shakes the Earth

This is another easy stage to 6 turn because when you defeat Garuda, all the Campbellians leave — so as long as you have some people in place to defeat the Einst enemies, it can be done fairly easily.

Stage 13 – I am Me, You are Mileene

For some reason Puru didn’t appear even though I convinced the three assistants and then defeated them with Mileene still alive. In any case, I can still get Puru II.

Daitarn 3 appears in a lot of games but it seems like the Meganoids don’t appear so often; in this one they actually do.

Stage 14 – Assault

I played this stage third, so no Gato — I tried beating him earlier but he’s much harder than in Impact and you don’t really get anything for it (no V-Up Unit) so I decided to skip that. I also wasn’t able to activate the Snow Mountain event since Shiro was too weak to kill Aina and I didn’t feel like restarting the stage. If I understand the FAQs correctly, though, unlike in Impact you don’t need to activate the event to get Aina later. (Even if you do, I don’t care that much.)

Stage 15 – From the Hometown of the Soul

Another 6 turn stage. Not much to report here.

Stage 16 – The Incident

This one can’t be beaten in 6 turns (probably); there are too many scattered Einsts. The Einst Grits have the weakness of no range 1 air attack, and no range 2 attack at all. Tobikage comes in, but I didn’t have any of the Tobikage units out so he slaughtered a number of enemies on his own.

I went for the Aura Road path, so it’s off to Byston Well.

SCENE 4

Stage 17 – Queen of the Red Storm

An easy 6 turn stage, even with the reduced people. Going to Byston Well, AFAIK, only happens in C1, C2, and Alpha 1.

Stage 18 – The Silent Fortress

This is a tough stage; you have to protect the fortresses at the top and bottom, which means you need to send some fast units down to the bottom since the weaklings down there can’t really take care of it on their own.

Stage 19 – The Black, Scary One

Very easy stage; all you have to do is defeat Drake and you win; I did it on turn 3 with Getter Robo and Bilvine.

Stage 20 – The Aura Road Again

This stage isn’t too bad; most of the enemies rush you so it’s easy to beat in 6 turns. Afterwards you get Marvel and two additional fairies, which make the Dunbine enemies more useful (especially since you’re about to lose Raideen, Daitarn 3, and all the Tobikage units).

I’ve left Christina in the NT-1 Alex for now; she’s not as good as Amuro in there but it’s kind of fun to use weaker pilots to see how they do. I wonder what her 6th seishin is.

Stage 21 – Shining in the Midst of the Storm

Things are a bit hectic for the first 5 turns but then the Elshank takes off so you can take your time with everyone else. Getter 3 is helpful since a lot of enemies go in the water. You can get Aina and Norris here — they’re both pretty good; Aina has a nice Methuss-oriented seishin set (although the Apsalus is relatively good in this game where you don’t have a whole lot of overpowered units).

SCENE 5

Stage 22 – Great General Garuda’s Tragedy

This probably isn’t the best map to do first — it’s the toughest one yet. All kinds of high HP enemies and bosses. I did manage to beat it without too much trouble in the end, although it did take me 12 turns. Hyper Aura Giri rocks as usual; the Dunbine dominance is really apparent in the early games, although I don’t remember Dunbine being so good in Impact from the little I played of it.

Things are getting a little harder so Amuro may go back in the NT-1.

Stage 23 – Commander’s Inheritance

This stage isn’t too bad although I don’t like those high-HP Banker enemies; when you get these stages with no low-HP grunts it takes a while to build up your Will enough to use big attacks. I usually start out with things like Breast Burn and Getter Beam; you don’t need to save all your EN for bosses like you do in later games.

Stage 24 – Four Warriors, Ignite!

Despite there being 5 Bloody I units plus Bloody II, I managed to do this in 6 turns just by splitting the team and using all my powerful attacks.

For the most part the enemy factions in this game stay separate, barely even acknowledging each other’s existence — but at least the Banker and Meganoids have teamed up, maybe because both their anime have to do with Mars.

Stage 25 – Combine Now! Getter Robo

Finally, Getter G! Not a hard stage, but a lot of high HP units again.

Stage 26 – Fireworks Scattering in the Big Sky

A much easier stage than it might seem at first; I even did it in 6 turns. Amuro’s back in the NT-1 and he handled the right side with ease.

Now after this I get another V-Up Unit so NT-1 gets even more powerful.

SCENE 6

Stage 27 – Ghosts of Gryps

I played this one first so that Gremy would run away in stage 28 — it’s not very hard.

Stage 28 – The Messenger from Axis

This is a 6 turn stage easy since there are no boss class units. The Quebelys might have some power but I just sent NT-1 to deal with them.

Stage 29 – The Controlled Ones

This is kind of a long stage because of the high HP annoying super robot enemies, but overall not too bad.

Stage 30 – An Overhead Demon

Not a bad stage — I actually beat the enemies in 5 turns before the reinforcements could show up so it was even easier.

Stage 31 – The One Who Controls the Surface’s Crisis

Whew, this is a long stage — it took me 18 turns. Here’s the boss, the Einst Regisseur:

He doesn’t get his own music, which is kind of odd. Anyway, you have to fight him twice but it’s not too bad. Dangaioh couldn’t do anything because it had a 0% chance to hit and nobody has any hit seishin. But two Chodenji Spins and an NT-1 attack took him out. The second version went down to two Stoner Sunshines and a Hyper Aura Giri from Bilvine.

Not too much overall plot development; I still don’t know what the Einst are up to or why Kyosuke can hear them, but we’ll see later (no spoilers, please?)

So that’s Compact 2 part 1! I’m going to withhold judgment and review until I finish the other two parts.

Seireiki Rayblade (聖霊機ライブレード), released 3/23/2000 (PS), 9/28/2000 (DC), developed and published by Winkysoft

This game was on both the Playstation and Dreamcast. After some research it seemed like the two versions were mostly the same; the DC version is probably a bit better but taking into account the emulator performance, I went with the Playstation version.

After Winkysoft and Banpresto parted ways (I’m still not sure why), both companies tried to make new games based on the Masou Kishin franchise. Banpresto’s version was Panzer Warfare, which I played earlier. Winkysoft’s attempt was even less connected to the original franchise, with no shared mechs, world, stories, characters, etc. That being said, many of the Rayblade characters are clearly based on Masou Kishin characters. To use one example, here is Serika (on the right):

She’s a shadow of Xenia; they’re both royalty who work on mechs and have purple hair. They’re not complete carbon copies of each other, though. This is true of the majority of the characters — for a good number of them, you can see the Masou Kishin character that they parallel, but they’re never exactly the same.

The story begins similar to MK with someone from Earth being transported to Agartia (the world with the Seireiki mechs), although the explanation is less coherent. It involves parallel worlds and being “out of sync” with the world or something like that — I couldn’t really make sense of the explanation and in the end it turned out to be functionally equivalent to the magic summoning of Masou Kishin. As usual Touya (the person who gets transported) becomes a pilot of a Seireiki along with other people from Earth.

The story involves the usual feuding kingdoms, but also a group of powerful mechs called Ze Olde, which caused a huge catastrophe 109 years ago and have reappeared recently.

The character profiles are large and detailed, but there is no voicing (even in the battle scenes). Overall the story is fine — I believe there is at least one branching path although I wasn’t able to find any walkthrough site for this game so I’m not sure how different the story is or whether there are any more branches beyond that.

The story sequences tend to be quite long, so there’s a lot of reading to do.

In addition to the story sequences, there are times between stages when you can walk around the ship and talk to people. You can also set “topics” that can trigger additional events, although it only works when the characters are in specific places. For instance, if the topic is “Ai’s hidden past” it may only trigger when Ai is in her room. These talks can raise or lower friendship values, as well as love values with the women. The love value changes the ending and also affects the partner system with Touya’s strongest mech. I’m less clear on what the friendship does. The instruction booklet mentions that it can unlock new seishin, increase prana, and maybe other things, but I never was able to tell exactly how that worked. Seishin for me were always unlocked on level up, but maybe some of them required both a certain level and a friendship value?

The battles occur in sequence; there is no option to go back to a previous battle or do any kind of free battle. You can, however, retreat from any battle and you’ll start from the beginning of the battle with any XP and money you gained intact (the only thing you can’t do is upgrade or change who is sortied). Because of this, you essentially can’t get stuck because you can just keep repeating the battle as long as you need to. Upgrades to the mechs only affect armor and HP, so the majority of your battle effectiveness is from levelling up.

At first I thought there was one exception to this — there are a few battles that seem to be multipart battles, where everyone’s HP/Prana/etc stay the same and anyone who got defeated in the first part cannot be sortied. However, I found out near the end of the game that if you just retreat from the “second part” of the battle you’ll start at the beginning of that second part with everyone revived and back to full HP.

The battles are very similar to Masou Kishin. The biggest difference is that seishin never affect the user but can only be used on other units. After many years of SRW I found this hard to get used to and probably underused seishin on the whole.

I believe the other main difference is that attacking a unit directly from behind means they cannot counterattack or even block, they can only try to dodge (which usually doesn’t work).

The difficulty of the game is not especially high. I was often sending out my lowest levelled units in each battle and I only ran into 2 battles in the whole game that I had to retreat and try again.

On the whole I would say this is not a bad game. It’s certainly better than I expected it to be, and it’s better than the Panzer Warfare game that Banpresto released. Apparently there were plans in the works for one (and maybe two) additional games in the franchise, but for whatever reason they never came out. It wasn’t because Winkysoft stopped producing games; they made Zone of the Enders in 2001 and a PS2 SRPG in 2005. Maybe this game didn’t sell well?