Super Robot Taisen Compact 2 Part 2 (スーパーロボット大戦COMPACT 2), released 9/14/2000, developed and published by Banpresto

Midweek post because this is another SRT post. Man Compact 2 was a hard game, especially parts 2 and 3. I don’t think they have released another game this difficult (at least on the standard difficulty). Anyway, here are the old message board posts.

There’s nothing much to say in introduction here; the system and everything is exactly the same as Part 1.

SCENE 1 – Invasion

Stage 1 – Sortie

After playing Alpha I had forgotten how much more difficult the older games were; I could only beat this stage in 7 turns and I lost two characters. You start with a pretty small force that can’t do a whole lot; Duke doesn’t have any hit increase seishin which means a lot of resets to defeat Mashmyre, and the enemies are so far away. I think the only possibility for doing it faster would be to take everyone down as fast as they can go, and let the enemies to the right and left of the start chase you down there; you might be able to do it faster in that case, although I’m not sure.

Of course the heroine of this part is the lovely Excellen Browning and the mech, the Weissritter, which you can see here in all their black and white glory:

Maria is here as a pilot but you have no mech to put her in (you can’t even switch her into the Grendizer), which may be a SRW first.

Stage 2 – Terror of the Destroyers

Still didn’t get any extra mechs; I picked this stage second because there’s no reinforcements, but it took me 8 turns.

Stage 3 – The Swirling Storm and the Punch of Justice

Here comes the Machine Robo team; I don’t know anything about Machine Robo but I gather that they’re pretty popular, at least among Japanese fans. Rom doesn’t feel like he has to give his name:

I got a good amount of money from this stage, but an 8 turn clear. I still have only 5 units so it’s tough to do things any faster than that. I was able to defeat Devil Satan rather than have him flee, thanks to Grendizer’s final attack:

Stage 4 – Warrior from the Moon

This is a 6 turn stage. The “warrior” is Elle..not much of a warrior.

Stage 5 – Blue-Hearted Visitors

The story is kind of odd in this game because it’s the same time frame as part 1, so you’re seeing some stuff that happens before part 1 stages, some after. Anyway, this is more Machine Robo stuff.

SCENE 2 – Invaders

Stage 6 – Angry Devil

I did this one in 6 turns; now that I have a few more units and I’ve sunk money into upgrades it seems a bit easier. This is one of the only SRW where it seems good to even upgrade stuff like the GP-01.

Stage 7 – The Blue Planet Targetted

I was able to do this in 6 turns and defeat Bloody I — I used a Hot Blood Psychic Zan from the Dangaioh.

Stage 8 – Boundary

HOLY CRAP this is a hard stage. It’s the first fight against the Einst in part 2; it took me 12 turns and half my team got wiped out. The stupid Einsts sit on asteroids and don’t move, and even though you can exploit the Einst’s range-2 weakness, they are spaced so that they can always attack your other guys as well. Then even after you beat the first wave there are reinforcements, although they appear in the middle and you have higher morale so that part of the stage isn’t so bad. Now I can go get my V Unit UP reward for beating Butcher in part 1. Unfortunately I doubt there’s anything as broken as NT-1 Alex; Boss is the only unit with 4 slots so I may just have to stick it on a 3 slot unit instead.

Stage 9 – The Endless Road of Fighting

Butcher reappears here, with a V-Up Unit for me. I also killed him in this mission using Grendizer, who is quickly becoming my best unit for boss kills.

Stage 10 – The Heartbeat of Zeta, Again

Zeta’s pretty strong on this stage; Roux took out a good number of the enemies before the rest of my guys showed up. This is an unusual game in that Zeta appears, but not Kamille (I guess it’s following ZZ in that regard).

SCENE 3 – Darkness

Stage 11 – The Drifting Seeds

This is where you get Dancougar, which is helpful for my fighting power. Now I have enough units that I can try to go for 6 turn clears more often although they’re still pretty hard to get. I think I remembered to upgrade Dancougar so I get Agressive Beast at the end of the next scene, but we’ll see.

Stage 12 – Two Projects

AAARGH. I had this one in 6 turns, but I forgot about the Apsalus’ MAP weapon and so I didn’t get a counterattack against it on EP 6. Anyway, this is Crossbone Vanguard — the Gundam stuff really is underemphasized in this game, but I guess Gundam gets so much coverage in many other SRWs that’s OK.

Stage 13 – Spiral Knuckle of Tears

Here’s the chance to get Shazara, who is pretty good. Her mech has a post-move attack with a 6 range and pretty high attack power, plus she has Hot Blood. (In Impact you have to choose between Shazara and the skill point but here there is no choice of course.)

Stage 14 – The Empress’ Trap

Campbellians + Einst. 7 turns…almost 6. This is a huge money maker; there are three Branbulls that are worth 30,000 gold each with Luck.

Stage 15 – The Return of the Nightmare

I didn’t defeat Gato in part 1, so that means he shows up here and fires his atomic bazooka. As long as you keep away from Solomon you won’t get hurt. Unfortunately I couldn’t beat Gato (without restarting the stage and setting everything up differently).

Weiss Ritter is a lot better than Alt Eisen. None of the moves have Will requirements and they have great range.

Incidentally, what is the 0083 theme in this game (and Compact 1)? It doesn’t seem to be Winners or Men of Destiny.

SCENE 4 – Operation Stardust

Stage 16 – The Female Ninja, Red Shadow

An easy 6 turn stage; the enemies rush you pretty quickly so as long as you use the counterattack phases well it shouldn’t be a problem. Both bosses run but I killed one with a hot blood Grendizer and the other with a hot blood Dankuuhou + Z Gundam support. Another V-UP Unit for onee-chan after this map.

Stage 17 – The Collector Again

You can get a Zeong here if you’re willing to wait until turn 12, but this is a 6 turn clear stage so I didn’t try for it. I had to let Benmel run away, but it’s not so bad in this game since you don’t get items from defeating enemies.

Stage 18 – [2026 Chris: I guess I forgot to take notes for these, this sometimes happened]

Stage 19

Stage 20 – Burning Moon City

Stage 21 – Return to Paradise

This stage has the usual difficulty with Gato’s atomic bazooka, and I have nobody with Exhaust. Actually it worked out well; after I did the persuade stuff Gato fired the bazooka and took out Quattro and Kou, and about 7 of the enemies. After that this wasn’t too bad.

Machine Robo team keeps popping up and leaving; they’d be a lot better if they stayed around so I could upgrade them (although they’re pretty good as is).

SCENE 5 – Colony Pursuit

Stage 22 – The Children Who Forgot Their Dream

The team has been cut by half, although you can’t pick a route — it’s determined by your route in part 1. I had Kou in a 3 V-Up Unit GP-01 but he gets automatically put in the GP-03 here and your V-Up Units stay on the 01, which isn’t in the route. orz

There’s a convince here with Rom->Kina but you can’t get her quite yet.

Stage 23 –

This was a rough stage even though the only boss-class unit is Shapiro; the grunts are strong enough and my guys were weak enough that I had to use a bunch of Hot Bloods on the grunts. The ZZ Map attack helped also. Here is yet another group of aliens for Shapiro to shack up with (the Machine Robo aliens).

Stage 24 – Intrigue Space

Here comes the GP-03 Dendrobium. You have to do some protecting of Anaheim but other than that it’s not too bad of a mission. The ninja team isn’t great but Mike was able to take out all the ninja enemies except for Irubora.

Stage 25 – Men of Destiny

I guess we stopped the colony from falling although the dialogue doesn’t really explain how. Cima’s in the GP-02 here but this time I had some Exhausters so it wasn’t so bad.

SCENE 6 – Chaos in the Earth Sphere

Stage 26 – Analysis

A 6-turn stage, yay. Bunch of Einst; they’re not too bad.

Stage 27 – Attack on Skull Moon!

Surprisingly this is the final fight against King Vega. They didn’t do much with the Grendizer storyline, although all the storylines are a little thin in this game.

Stage 28 –

I finally figured out that you can change Rom into Vikingfu once you get 130 morale, so I could do some SEIBAI! with God Hand Smash.

Stage 29 –

Got Puru II here since I didn’t get Puru earlier.

Stage 30 – Symphony of Destruction

A 6 turn stage, surprisingly. It’s fairly small and the enemies aren’t too strong.

Next, final stage.

Stage 31 – In the Quaking Space

This was a difficult stage. You have 20 turns to complete the stage and there are a lot of strong enemies and reinforcements. One important point to realize is that the initial enemies are the strongest enemies in the stage (not counting Einst Regisseur), so you should use a fair amount of seishin up on them. They regenerate HP also so don’t waste your EN or bullets on the counterattack phase or the like. ZZ’s MAP attack can help a lot.

The second wave of Machine Robo enemies is fairly easy, although the bosses will take a few hits. At this point it’s very helpful to have an energy restorer on the map (I used Leina since she can also repair, and cast Love twice). Now if you start moving your guys down towards the bottom while you take out the Einsts that come up and the Machine Robo enemies, it should be around turn 14 or 15 once you reach the bottom.

The Einst Regisseur is extremely strong. He has two actions per turn and was able to kill my 6300 HP Zambot 3 in one hit, even though Zambot 3 was guarding. The Kakuran seishin (which Excellen can cast twice, at least) helps a lot since it actually lets you dodge things. Once you get a player phase in his range it’s not so bad; Einst Regisseur suffers from the same problem as most bosses from the early SRWs in that he has fairly low HP and can be defeated by a few hits. Also you can load up the Exhausts — if you persuade Kina in this map, then the drill Machine Robo guy, Zambot 3, and Kina can all cast multiple Exhausts. For me it took a Hot Blood Agressive Beast, Hot Blood Fin Funnels, and a Soul’ed God Hand Smash. After that the remaining Einsts shouldn’t pose any problem.

Evil Excellen appears briefly in the end part:

Now it’s on to part 3.

My turn count is 472, so I have 305 turns to do the 30 stages in part 3 — that should be more than enough.

I’m posting the SRPG 2001 preview now, even though I have a few 2000 games left, to see if there are any opinions on these, especially the potential rejects. The bolded games are ones I will actually play, and I have some question marks on ones I’m not sure about.

Quite a variety of consoles — the first games for the Game Boy Advance, plus Playstation, PS2, Wonderswan Color, and Dreamcast. I think this may be the first year for a long time where Playstation is not the dominant console.

SRPGs

1. Super Robot Taisen Compact 2-3 (minor game, will do the usual post midweek)
2. Volfoss (Playstation)
3. Battle Gate Dark Eyes (Wonderswan Color)
4. Monster Guardians (GBA)
5. Sakura Taisen 3 (DC)
6. Super Robot Taisen Alpha Gaiden (great game, see above)
7. Tearring Saga (PS) – Kaga’s attempt to make a Fire Emblem game for the PS that got sued for trademark infringement, I think?
8. SD Gundam G Generation Gather Beat 2 (WSC)
9. Tactics Ogre Gaiden: Knight of Lodis (GBA)
10. Blue Wing Blitz (WSC)
11. Lunar Wing (PS) – A “love sim SRPG”.
12. Growlanser II (PS2)
13. Summon Night 2 (PS) – I will not replay this.
14. ?? Generations of Chaos (PS2) – This might be a Dragon Force-style game that I won’t play, but it was such a successful(?) series that I’d like to at least try it.
15. Super Robot Taisen Alpha DC (DC) – I have not played this version and I at least want to try it because it’s the first SRT game to use 3D assets. So I will probably make a small post on this.
16. RUN=DIM as Black Soul (DC)
17. Super Tokusatsu Wars (PS)
18. Super Robot Taisen A (GBA) – The usual.
19. Zone of the Enders: 2173 Testament (GBA)
20. Growlanser III (PS2) – Two Growlanser games in one year?
21. Dia Droid World (GBA)
22. Super Robot Taisen Compact Color (WSC) – I’m not even going to make a post about this; I didn’t play it because it’s just a color remake of a bad original game.

Atelier

• A3 – Atelier Lilie (PS2) – I will play the Plus version
• Atelier Marie and Elie – Futari no Atelier (WSC) – Another sequel to Marie and Elie
• Atelier Marie & Elie (DC/PS2) – Next gen console remakes.

(Potentially) Rejected games

• Pocket King (GBC) — This looks to me like one of those “summon nameless grunts to fight for you” strategy games that I have not been playing.
• Eithia (PS) – Seems like a regular RPG.
• Global Folktale (PS2) – Seems like a strategy game
• Hoshigami (PS) – The English version apparently came out in 2001 and the JP in 2002. Should I be playing the English one?

Velvet File (ヴェルベットファイル), released 8/10/2000, “plus” version 3/29/2001, developed and published by DaZZ

I have at last arrived at the PS2 era. This is a major console for SRPGs, with 77 games on my list (although that includes a number of remakes/ports and questionable games). As I said in my previous post, I have also reached the point where my faithful Acer Spin 3 no longer has the power necessary to run the emulators — while it is OK with Game Boy Advance, PSP, and some other consoles that will come up later, the PS2 is too much. I am hoping to get a new laptop around Christmastime that will be better, but for now I have to play the PS2 games on my actual console (which runs quite well given that it is 24 years old). I got a few screenshots of this game before I switched.

This game has been described as a ripoff of Front Mission and Armored Core, and I can see why. The Armored Core influence is mostly the setting and visuals, but the “parts” system that I dislike so much in Front Mission is here as well. I played the “plus” version which was released a year later — it has some rebalancing and bug fixes, as well as a “print” feature where you could use an accessory printer to make paper foldable models of the mechs. The game was released in English as “Robot Warlords” but I don’t think the Plus version came out. (The Japanese title refers to the code name of the mission the mercenaries are on)

The dialogue is fully voiced for the story, but the sound quality is pretty bad. The game was originally released on CD (some early PS2 games were), which may account for the issue. The story involves a group of mercenaries (your characters) hired by the government to put down a rebel military faction in Japan within 7 days, before they can successfully pull off a coup. The 7 days is just for storyline purposes and has no gameplay effect. The game is a relatively short 11 stages.

You have a set of characters. Each mech can be customized very similar to the Front Mission series. You choose the parts that will serve as the armor/HP of each part, subject to an overall weight limit. You can also equip various types of ammo and guns, as well as melee weapons. On the whole, FM did it better.

When you are in battle, you can move around up to your movement points, and then attack. You can also use “special attack” or “special defense” for a TP cost. You regenerate TP every turn. The map looks dark on that screenshot and it also looks dark on the actual console, which makes it tough.

Attacks have very low hit rates and it can be tricky to get your guys into the proper spots. You also have to be turned the correct way to be able to aim at people, which costs movement (the game does show you when you have a unit in your target range though). You also can set a reaction type, which applies not only for counterattacks but you can even attack the enemies as they move through your range.

As in the Front Mission series, damage to various parts seems to be basically random. This introduces the element of luck I never liked in FM — you might take out a unit in two hits, or waste time chipping away damage at various parts. A unit’s primary weapon can be quickly taken out, or maybe not.

In the first few missions you only have to defeat some of the enemies, not all of them. Even so I found the game fairly challenging, and by the time I reached stage 4, I was getting tired of “we have Front Mission at home.” The game didn’t get great reviews either, which I suppose is typical of an early game on a new console.

Ningyo no Rakuin (人魚の烙印), released 8/3/2000, developed by Highway Star and published by NEC

This is a short (20 stage) game that takes place on a creepy island and is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. It does not actually take place in the world of HP Lovecraft’s stories, although the plot is inspired by The Shadow over Innsmouth, and there are a few nods to his mythos (like one of the characters coming from Miskatonic University).

The title means “Brand of the Merfolk” — the ningyo of the title is more like a monster than the more Disney-fied association of Mermaids. There is an English translation patch in the works, but unfortunately the people doing the project are the “we know better than the original writers” type. They changed the title to something that sounds more Lovecraftian, making the bizarre claim that the original title has no relevance to the game. They have also rewritten a lot of the prose to make it sound more like Lovecraft’s prose. I suppose it’s not that big of a deal but I think this was unnecessary; the Lovecraft themes are inspiration, not a direct attempt to place this in Lovecraft’s mythos.

The game begins with a plane crash on an island. The main character and his girlfriend are there, along with Reiji (a machine gun fighter) and Howard (a medic), who have crashed on this island once before. Later your party is expanded by Stacy, a researcher who has come to the island (despite it not appearing on any map or GPS), and several people from the natives of the island. They seem to be divided into two groups, one of whom is opposed to you.

The “Mermaid brand” of the title refers to the ability of some of the people on the island to turn into fish-monster type people, and when MC’s girlfriend gets infected by something that starts turning her into a merperson, the goal changes from escaping the island to curing the girlfriend.

The atmosphere is creepy; the decision not to use the usual anime-style characters fits the setting. Unfortunately none of the dialogue is voiced.

The story takes place over 20 stages, with no free battles. There are a few places where you can choose one of two stages (I think there are 25 total stages?) This does mean that you have to make my least favorite decision in SRPGs — is the game going to punish me for not levelling everyone, or punish me for not focusing on a few characters? In this game I’m not sure it matters too much. There are some forced deploys here and there but I don’t think there are any places where you are completely screwed if you didn’t level a particular person. On balance I would say it’s better to not let anyone lag too far behind but it’s OK if you focus mostly on one party.

Since we are on an island there is no money or shops, so all the equipment you get comes from treasure chests on the stage, stage-end bonuses, or (ugh) hidden items on tiles. I don’t know who started this game feature or why it’s lasted this long, but it has to be one of the dumbest things that designers include in games. It’s one thing if there is some ability that lets you figure out where they are, or maybe even if the hidden items only appear in conspicuous spots. But when it’s a game like this where there is absolutely no way to tell where the items are on the board, it’s just annoying. I think that you could get enough decent equipment to beat the game without the hidden items, though.

The system is pretty typical SRPG. There are two main things peculiar to this game. The first is that every move costs MP. Characters learn additional moves as they level up, but even a basic attack takes MP. But you can restore either MP or HP with a command. This also gives XP to the user, so this is a good way to gain extra levels — if you are ever in a situation where the enemies are not moving and you have no reason to hurry, you should use this until everyone is healed to full.

The characters have different attack types; the MC uses a handgun that has a long range but cannot fire close. Reiji has a machine gun, which attacks multiple squares but doesn’t have a great hit rate. Howard punches, so his punches can’t kill the enemies, only bring them to 1 HP (although some monster enemies were able to be killed). In addition to the attacks, everyone has techniques they can use as well, which tend to be buffs or heals.

Overall the game is relatively easy. Defeated characters just leave the battle. The final boss can be defeated by shooting it from outside its range with the main character so it never gets an attack.

When you win the game you can play New Game+, which allows you to find everyone’s strongest weapons…..as hidden items on the map.

In the end this game is perfectly playable and a nice change from the usual setting and atmosphere of SRPGs. It’s a bit amateurish in its design in places, but if the translation patch ever comes out it’s worth a play despite the translator’s questionable localization decisions.

SDガンダム GGENERATION GATHER BEAT, released 7/13/2000, developed by Vanguard, released by Bandai

This is a game in the long-running “SD Gundam G Generation” series. The series started on the Super Famicom in 1996 with six short games that went from “SD Gundam A generation” to “F generation”. Each game focused on a different Gundam series (original, Z, ZZ, Char’s Counterattack/F91, V, and G), and a peripheral called the “Sufami Turbo” let you insert two games at once so that you could transfer mechs from one game to another. These games could be considered strategy RPGs if your definition is very broad, but they failed to meet my personal criteria.

Next, on the Playstation, they went to the next letter G but decided that this would be the franchise name from here on out and that it would combine all the series into one game. The 1998 game was 42 stages, and covered the story from Gundam 0079 to Char’s Counterattack, including several side stories (08th MS Team, 0080, 0083, and Blue Destiny). In addition, there were characters and mechs drawn from a bunch of other Gundam series (including even Wing and G, although I have a feeling these were just cameos or mechs you could build).

This was followed in 1999 by SDDG Zero, which added additional series and storylines and had 50 stages, although these were now separated by series rather than being played continuously. This was where the series had reached when Gather Beat came out, although a month later the flagship entry for the series (at least from this era) came out — SDDG F. This had 101 stages drawn from 38 series (including manga, novel, and video game series) from both Universal Century and the alternate timelines. There were over 1000 mechs in the series. I played this game a while back but I found it too slow moving to really get into.

Without getting into a full description of the SDDG series, here are some features of the franchise (not necessarily every game):

• “Guest” units that are the characters from the shows (Amuro, etc) and then generic characters that pilot your mechs and ships (in some games you can get the Guest units on your team as well)
• The ability to capture enemy mechs
• Create new mechs by combining enemy mechs, or mechs with parts
• “ACE” units by levelling them up, which can transform them into new units
• Bonus money/xp/etc for activating events from the series (like attacking Char with Amuro in the first stage)
• Later entries introduce other stuff like “heat”, additional move if you kill things, and other such elements.

SDGGG, Zero, and F are considered by some people to be strategy RPGs. To me they are borderline, and the main reason I didn’t play them is that they are very long games and there is a great deal of repetition between the three. In general I do not plan to play the SDDG games of this type (which includes games like Spirits, Wars, and Genesis).

However there were other games in the franchise that fall more under my definition of SRPGs; they have a Super Robot Wars style crossover storyline and give you named characters with identities that you can develop throughout the game. The first game of this type is Gather Beat for the Wonderswan. Although released in the SDDG name, it is more indebted to Emotional Jam, an earlier SD Gundam strategy game for Wonderswan.

The storyline is centered primarily around the One Year War, beginning with Amuro’s first battle in the Gundam and ending with A Baoa Qu. But there are characters and storyline elements drawn from a number of other Gundam series (including Z, ZZ, Char’s Counterattack, G, W, X, Blue Destiny, 08th MS Team, 0083, and 0080). The game is 20 stages plus 6 optional stages that can be activated by fulfilling certain conditions in the stage. The optional stages mostly involve the side stories, and get you additional characters like Judau (from ZZ) or the Blue Destiny events.

One feature that Gather Beat has is “ID” skills. They are sort of like Super Robot Wars seishin, but they are named after famous quotes the characters say in the series. This one increases Amuro’s hit rate.

There is no equipment or items in the game; you can give mechs weapons by using the mech combine (develop) feature but that’s permanent.

Before each stage you assign mechs to the battleships you have. This screen is very annoying because there is no way to view any information about the mechs on this screen. You just have to remember what the different mechs look like and who you assigned to the mechs. It is very frustrating when you want to send a new unit you just got into the ship because I often found myself guessing who to sub them in for because I couldn’t figure out who was who.

Once you are on the map, you send out your units from the ships. Thankfully this game did not carry over the Emotional Jam system where ships fight each other on separate maps, sending out units. They kept the “three person squad” system from EJ but somewhat differently. You can send out units together in a squad (up to 3 units), or you can make squads on the map by moving units on top of other units (if you do this, you have to immediately attack or the turn ends for all the units in the squad).

There are two kinds of attacks. You can do a direct attack where the squads fight each other. One interesting system element is that all the distance attack (beam/rifle/etc) happen first for both sides, then the melee attacks. I did see occasional exceptions to this but I was never quite sure how they operated. I think also if the squads are unbalanced (like a single unit attacking 3 people) there are some additional modifications to the attacks or defense but I am not sure about this and I never looked it up.

The other form of attack is an “indirect attack”. Battleships have these, but some units do as well. When this kind of attack is used against a squad, they have two options. The first is to maintain formation and just take the hit (I don’t know if defend is applied). The second is to break formation, which halves the attack chance of the attacker but it causes the squad to break up into separate units on the map. Using this against enemy formations, especially boss class units, makes the stages considerably easier to beat because the enemy nearly always uses the formation break in response and only sometimes tries to reform the squad. If you can use your ships to break up the formations and then pick off the enemies individually, they are a lot easier to deal with.

If one of your units is destroyed on the map, you permanently lose the mech, but the pilot survives. This applies even to unique mechs that cannot be recreated through the Develop feature (such as Shining Gundam). It also applies to cases where units are NPCs during the stage but join up after the stage is over. You can send your units back into ships to heal, though. If a battleship is destroyed it just retreats from the map, although whatever battleship Bright is commanding is usually a game over if it’s destroyed. (I assume any units on a battleship that retreats are unavailable until the next stage but this never happened so I’m not sure.)

One system that I do like is that you get a lump sum of XP at the end of a battle which is then (I think?) divided up against your surviving units. So you don’t have to make sure certain units get kills to avoid falling behind.

You get new mechs in a few ways. Characters will join with a mech, and a few story events give you new mechs. You can capture enemy grunt mechs by surrounding them and then using the “capture” command, but I never found this very useful. You can also buy mechs, or develop them by combining mechs with items that you get either by buying them, or by some story events. This is the main way to get new units. Unfortunately there is no database that tracks your completion of getting all available mechs (this is available at least in F, I don’t know about the previous ones).

Overall I enjoyed the story. It was a good decision given the short length of the game to focus on the OYW and include the other series as seasoning — in some cases I think they overdid it (like the brief appearance of the Turn A moonrace) but overall it was well done. We get some story elements that are rare in these games (like Char appearing as Casval and a younger pre-Zeta Haman). The story ends with an original mech.

The gameplay is OK. I mentioned the interface issue previously with the battleships, but there are other annoying elements of the interface as well — I’ve said this many times, but can be unfair to criticize these handheld games too much until you get to the point where they could do as well as the consoles (which is the PSP or maybe the Game Boy Advance).

I sometimes felt like the individual mechs were not distinguished very clearly. Some of this is the interface not allowing you to get as much information as you might want before dispatching the units, but that’s not all.

The stages are fine, they have some varying goals and events, and you can have some of your characters talk with the enemies or allies to activate events that give you additional XP. I didn’t think it was especially difficult either (if you use indirect attacks).

Gather Beat 2 is for the Wonderswan color, and Advance is basically a remake of this game. I believe that this is the last monochrome game I will play (SRW Compact 2 parts 2 and 3 are still ahead but I already played them). I won’t be sorry to see the end of monochrome games…