Ogre Battle: Prince of Zenobia (伝説のオウガバトル外伝 ゼノビアの皇子), released 6/22/2000, developed and published by SNK

After the release of Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre, the main development team for the Ogre games left Quest and joined Square, where they developed Final Fantasy Tactics. OB64 was released in 1999 without their involvement, and (as of 2026) is the last mainline game in the series. After that, there were two “gaiden” (side story) games and then two remakes of Tactics Ogre that are different enough they are almost like new games around the same story.

This game, developed by SNK, was almost like a fan release — it was developed in house by SNK consisting of a team of people who liked Ogre Battle. They licensed the IP from Quest to develop it. What they came up with was a game that is very faithful to Ogre Battle’s system.

As usual you begin with the tarot card questions that determine your initial army makeup and MC stats. The game itself is structured as 13 total stages with 4 secret extra stages, although there are two paths and so you will only play 11 (3 of the 4 extra stages are also route specific) in any one playthrough. The storyline is set during the original OB game, with one of the side characters (Tristan), who tries to take his land back from the enemies.

The gameplay is more or less identical to the original Ogre Battle, although there are some additional unit types, items, and such. But you still liberate towns (based on the alignment of the troops), find hidden areas and items, and fight battles.

The enemies still have very simplistic AI where they just rush you (especially your home base). You do not have to worry as much about your towns being retaken, though, and apparently the drawbacks to sitting on a map for a while to earn money aren’t in this version.

The battles work just like they did in OB; each unit does a set number of attacks depending on their class type and position. After those happen, the battle is over and the “loser” (who took more damage) gets pushed back.

So this game will be appealing for people who liked the original Ogre Battle, and not so much otherwise. As I said in my posts on Ogre Battle (especially the second post), I was not a fan of the original game, and I’m not all that excited about this one either. To me it has all the flaws of the original game plus you have to play it with the more awkward Neo Geo Pocket controls. But, if you liked the original OB it’s worth a play, and there is an English patch.

There is one more original game in the franchise — the Tactics Ogre gaiden game released for the GBA in 2001. After that, it’s just the TO remakes.

Super Robot Taisen Alpha (スーパーロボット大戦α), 5/25/2000, developed and published by Banpresto

[As usual, this is a compilation of message board posts I made years ago — this is much longer than usual]

Finally, we’ve reached the first “modern” SRW game. SRW Alpha represents a huge new development in the series that set the bar for future releases.

There are three huge, noticeable changes — the ability to skip attack animations, animated sprites in the attack sequences, and the use of full unit sprites on the map rather than heads. (The latter, along with the 3/4 view instead of top down, had already been used in Masou Kishin before this, but never in a main SRW game.)

Of course, by far the best change is that finally, 9 years after the series began, you can choose to skip attack animations. Unfortunately there are still 4 more games after this that do not allow you to do so (C2-2, C2-3, A, and C1 color). Also unfortunately, the speed increase is not completely realized because the game is kind of sluggish — the load times are long and the movement of the sprites on the screen is slow. Even so, it takes less time to play a stage than in any game perhaps since SRW 3.

The sprites during the attack sequences now have animation; i.e. the arms and legs and such actually move rather than the static sprite just sliding across the screen. It wasn’t really until Alpha Gaiden that the animated attacks were fully realized; in this game there are still a lot of attacks that are just sliding sprites (particularly beam saber attacks and the like), or non-moving sprites with bullets coming out.

Systemwise, the game does not really advance that much on the old games. Some of the recently introduced features like combination attack and support are absent, and in some aspects Alpha is still holding on to some old series features which will soon be discarded — the main ones being double move, the Limit stat, and individually upgrading weapons. Probably the most interesting addition is Skill Points. Alpha does skill points a little differently from the other games in that there isn’t necessarily one per level, and they often come from dialogue choices rather than challenges within the mission. One little tweak is that the further away you are from an enemy, the lower your hit rate is. Higher ground also increases your hit rate. I’m pretty sure future games use both of these as well. This game also has a one-off choice of “Defend Attack” as an option when you get attacked, which does a 50% damage counter and you take 75% damage from the enemy.

The series in Alpha are mostly old ones — the only new series are Macross, Macross Plus, and End of Evangelion. Other than that you get all of the usual UC Gundams plus Wing (with Victory making a repeat appearance), and Dunbine for the reals. The Super lineup is Mazinger, Great Mazinger, Getter, Dancougar, Raideen, Combattler V, Voltes V, Giant Robo, and Gunbuster. The Originals are sort of an OG-like mix; you get some Masou Kishin characters, the SRX characters from Shin, plus new ones.

In terms of storywriting, Alpha is head and shoulders above the previous games; 64 comes the closest but Alpha has even more dialogue and story interweaving than 64. The story setup at the start:

• Zeon declares independence, One Year War starts
• A mysterious large object falls to Earth, wiping out half of both fleets and stopping the war
• EOTI is formed to investigate (headed by Bian Zoldark) and finds out it’s a big ship
• Bian warns them that Earth is doomed, but the Federation doesn’t listen so Bian forms the Divine Crusaders to develop weapons to fight the coming aliens
• The SDF is also formed to fight aliens
• Because of the economic impact of that, the colonies get oppressed and spacenoids start revolting
• The Zeon remnants form at Axis under the name Neo Zeon
• The Titans and OZ are formed to deal with the Spacenoids and Neo Zeon
• The Dinosaur and Demon Empires attack in the Far East areas, but thanks to the efforts of Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, and Raideen, they are defeated. However, Prince Sharkin and Dr. Hell are rebuilding their forces.

[This post is going to be very long because I played all the stages of every route; before that I will put my conclusion first because that might be of more interest]

So, what can I say about this game? It’s definitely one of the best, if not the best, SRW in the entire series. Especially playing these games in order you can see what a huge improvement it was on the series. The story is a masterpiece; the writers did a great job of combining all the series into one storyline and adding the originals into the mix in a way that made the originals seem like part of the story. I especially think they did a good job of answering basic questions like why this super powerful galactic empire would care about the Earth, and why they wouldn’t just immediately crush the Earth with their huge armies or mechs. Shuu played an important role, thus making the Masou Kishin originals worthwhile as well.

As far as the individual series, Giant Robo once again didn’t do much — the appearance was sort of like 64 in that they’re always in the background and supposedly have some plan but you never find out what it is. In this case, Giant Robo was apparently planned for future games but then dropped (supposedly due to licensing costs), so perhaps we would have found out later what was going on. The only other disappointing seres is Dunbine — in the end, it just gets quickly disposed of in a route split without a final battle or anything like that. Perhaps it, too, was intended to be used again?

The system is still a little primitive since it lacks a lot of the later features like support and skill building, and it still has limit, double move, etc. But overall it’s fun to play, and the lower difficulty allows you to do a little more with your army building than before. Some people might think there are too many characters, though, which is understandable.

I’m a little surprised I played the entire game, including all the route splits, in less than a month. But I guess that’s a testament to just how fun this game is.

And now to the stage by stage comments:

Stage 1 – The Steel Cockpit

I don’t think I can fully communicate the sense of relief at finally being able to skip animation sequences after playing 11 games in a row where you are unable to do so. As I said before, not all the attacks are animated — for instance, the Grungust Wing form’s Spiral Attack is just a sliding sprite with some aura around it.

I chose Leona with Super Robot, and the 11/11 B birthday so I have super seishin — it is a bit problematic though because you lack basic seishin and can only cast Miracle (once) at the beginning of the game.

This mission also features a seldom-seen robot — the Hover Pilder from Mazinger.

(I’ve played Alpha before, but it was only the second SRW game I played — I had a hard time following the story because I really didn’t know anything outside of Gundam. This time should be better, and I’m considering the insane idea of playing all the route splits to see the whole story, since the Alpha story is so good. We’ll see.)

Stage 2 – Mazinger Z’s Ultimate Danger

This has a little joke at the beginning — after Boss says “Jan ja jan!” he comments that he said that first once before (a reference to SRW F). Professor Yumi mentions “Professor Shirakawa” who of course is our old friend Shuu.

Stage 3 – Getter Team, Move Out!

You get the very rare (unique?) chance to use the separated Getter Robo mechs; they’re not that special and I doubt anyone would use them past the required point, but it’s interesting to see them. Getter Robo, as usual, starts after its plot has ended — the GR enemies are under the control of Dr. Hell this time; I think both @G and @2 have actual Getter Robo enemies. (Mazinger Z also has the ability to separate into the Pilder; once again not something you would normally do but it’s kind of interesting to have around.)

Stage 4 – Zeon’s Reappearance

The skill point here is to defeat one of the Zeon named enemies before they retreat; it’s not very hard (I killed all three tri-stars; taking down M’Quve would be a bigger challenge.) The Gundam faction in this game is massive, containing all the enemies from FG, Z, ZZ, CCA, F91, V, and W. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the older games like 2 and 3 where the vast majority of the enemies were from Gundam. Some people have wondered why they had to cram so much Gundam stuff into the first game — according to Terada, the original plan was that @1 and 2 would finish everything on Earth and that @3 would take place entirely in space. So if @2 was going to be Char’s Counterattack that means that everything before that has to happen in @1.

Stage 5 – Secret Numbers

SRX makes the first appearance in Alpha. They had very little presence or story in Shin but here Ingram is added and there’s something secret about them. Ingram emerges immediately as a suspicious character because he knows all about Leona and her Grungust skills.

In Shin, all the SRX characters had Time To Go as their BGM; here the characters are given their individual themes.

Stage 6 – The Order to Shoot Down Argama

A few Gundams join your party here. The Gundam units have lost their eyes in the models. Also, the beam rifles are now post-move attacks, which helps a lot.

Stage 7 – Let’s! Combine!

Combattler V starts here — you don’t actually have to use the uncombined forms for very long, though. V is always a great unit because of the 5 pilots contributing seishin.

Stage 8 – Move Out — It’s Name Is Giant Robo

Giant Robo, in only its second appearance in SRW, and possibly (judging from rumor) its last. I hope the story is a little better developed than in 64; the GR appearance in 64 was kind of pointless and never really went anywhere.

Stage 9 – The One Who Calls the Wind

Shuu makes his first appearance here; this time he starts as a friend, although he seems to have ulterior motives. Robert mentions Shott Weapon (from Dunbine) as one of the SRX developers, or at least someone working with them — kind of an interesting crossover.

Masaki also appears in Cybuster. There’s a lot to assimilate here if you’re not familiar with any of the games before this. As usual you can’t use Cyflash right away because the jump from La Gias messed things up. Finally, this stage has the first Aerogaters, but they’re just the little megilots so they’re not very hard.

Stage 10J – Amuro, Again

Basically this is from Zeta, although here Amuro is developing mobile suits instead of just living in a mansion.

For some reason, Christina doesn’t get the 0080 theme here — she’s back to the FG theme like in F and previous games.

Stage 11J – The White Mobile Suit

This is basically the first couple of Victory episodes; we find out that the Zanscare Empire is cooperating with Neo Zeon (of course).

Stage 12J – Who Are You Fighting For?

Second Victory stage; not much to say about this one.

Stage 13J – The Winged Gundam

I’m not going to bother with this stage since it’s pretty much the same as 13N.

Stage 10N – Awaken, Hero

RAIDEEN, FADE IN!

Stage 11N – The Gundam Theft

0083’s starting stage. Beat up Gato, then some other Gundam units as normal.

Stage 12N – The Ambitious Man

Shapiro leaves for the alien side as usual — so far in SRW he’s cooperated with Guest, Muge, and now the Aerogaters. Who does he join in GC, I wonder?

The skill point in this map is kind of hard so I couldn’t only send out low level people; I took down Gato with a Miracled Maxi Blaster and some other shots. (I would have let it go if it were just a skill point but it’s also a necessary thing to get Gato and the Gundam)

They mention in this mission that the Campbellians are part of the Balmar Empire.

Stage 13N – The Shooting Star She Saw

This is the required “first episode of Gundam Wing” stage. As I said before, Alpha 1 has a very heavy leaning towards Gundam shows — not as much as the early games (i.e. SRW 2 and 3) but it seems like in general they’ve gradually reduced the Gundam emphasis the further along the series has gotten.

Stage 14 – I Promised My Father

Giant Robo officially joins the team here along with the Ginrin robot. Shougeki no Albert is here also; as far as I know, there are only three people in SRW history who appear as normal humans on the map and in battle scenes — Albert, Domon, and Master Asia.

Stage 15 – Angel Attack

Here comes Evangelion. This stage is unusual because you can control Shougeki no Albert at the beginning; you can’t do anything because of the Angel’s AT Field, but it’s kind of fun. I had to ignore my “low level characters” attempt here because the Rick Dias and such wouldn’t be able to actually pierce the AT Field of the Angel. Next, Shinji comes out!

Stage 16 – Howl, EVA 01

This is almost just a plot mission — you can’t really do anything except let EVA 01 go berserk. The way they’re dealing with the EVA plot so far is sort of like F; the Evas will (later) be going with Londo Bell to lure the Angels away from NERV. Although for some reason Gendo wants the Evas and the STMC to fight, although the conversations are too elliptical to know why.

Stage 17 – GR vs. GR2

BF-dan is after the Granzon, but Shuu refuses to leave and lets everyone else fight for him. There’s some internal intrigue with the BF-dan but IIRC this never gets really resolved in this game since GR was originally planned to appear again in Alpha.

Stage 18 – The Red Lighting, Mazinger Flying in the Sky

I don’t understand why Dr. Hell is so obsessed with Mazinger; there are so many other powerful super robots out there to kick his butt too. Anyway, this is a big Mazinger stage with the usual upgrades.

Stage 19 – Getter Robo vs. Getter Robo G

Oh no, Musashi’s dead! …well, not really. Just like in the last mission — Boss died!! …well, not really. Anyway, Getter Robo G appears, along with Texas Mack. Ryuusei joins the team for real, and you get the first look at the Ryukooh when Brocken tries to send them at you — silly Brocken.

Boss is at level 21 and still he hasn’t gained a single seishin. Apparently his last seishin is Miracle but I assume he gets that at some ridiculous level like 95 or 99 so I’ll probably never see it.

Stage 20 – Deciding Battle, New Tokyo City

This same basic stage is in F and is taken from episodes 5 and 6 of Evangelion. Here, though, rather than using a positronic rifle, Shinji uses a Tronium Engine Cannon supplied by Ingram, and various defense mechanisms from the Super Robot labs. You have to beat Sharkin’s forces but it’s not very hard. This stage has an enormous amount of story dialogue in it; the whole stage took me over an hour even though the fighting part is very short.

Route split time!

Stage 21A – Holy Warriors

Enter Dunbine — well, the Argama gets pulled into Byston Well at any rate. I think this game contains the fullest “version” of the Dunbine story in any SRW; Dunbine has been absent from recent games (after this, the only ones it shows up in are Impact and C3, neither of which have stories as expansive and detailed as Alpha). Ingram meets up with Shott Weapon; as I said earlier it seems that Shott was on the SRX team until he was pulled into Byston Well. Aura Power and Nendoryoku seem to have a similarity.

Stage 22A – Elle’s Spiritual Power

More Byston Well; this isn’t a very hard map since all you have to do is move everyone forward to the other side of the screen.

Stage 23A – The Queen of Na Country

Another easy stage; Shott and Musy appear in their mechs and Shou gets the Bilvine.

Stage 24A – Aura Road

Another easy stage — the Gran Gulan was able to shoot down almost everything that attacked it. Everyone is whisked back up to the surface for the usual “surfacing in Tokyo” scene with Galaria and Shou. Do Galaria and Shou meet in Tokyo in the anime? I couldn’t find it in summaries but it appears so often in SRW that it seems like they must have gotten it from somewhere.

Stage 25A – Flying Above Tokyo

Mio appears in this stage but just as a little cameo; she makes some comments to Ryuusei like the ones she makes in EX to Masaki and then leaves. Of course now that people are rejoining you get a long tedious explanation of what happened on the other route which I can skip since I’m about to play it. Looks like a lot of stuff happnes on that other route split.

Stage 21B – Surpassing Beast and Man, Come Forth, Warrior of God

Shapiro’s betrayal is revealed! Dancougar successfully forms! Shock!

YATTE YARU ZE

As usual, Dancougar is awesome in this game — I think 4 is the only game where they failed to make Dancougar one of the most powerful and useful units.

Stage 22B – To the Sea of Battle

BE TOGETHER! LET’S VOLT IN!

I don’t really see the point of having both Combattler V and Voltes V in the same game; they’re almost the same thing. Voltes was in Shin but I didn’t play the Earth route so I don’t know what they did there. Here, the Boazans are part of the Balmar Empire. The Campbellians and Boazans always seem to be part of some bigger empire or group in SRW (i.e. Muge, Vega, Balmar). The problem with that is that it creates sort of an odd situation — at least the Boazans have a reason to be connected to Voltes, but there’s no reason the Campbellians should go after Combattler any more than any other heroes.

I assume Hyoma getting his arm hurt is from the anime; in F they regenerated it with Guest cloning technology, here they’re going to use some sort of SRX related tech to fix it.

At the end the Great General of Darkness appears, so it’s time for more Mazinger stuff.

Stage 23B – Mazinger vs. Great General of Darkness

This is one of the most detailed Mazinger stages yet. Great Mazinger appears, but only for a short time. The Mikene Empire is revealed and you even fight the Great General of Darkness, although he’s not too hard (as usual). Unfortunately Great doesn’t stick around; I assume he joins later but I don’t remember clearly.

Gorgon had a unique death line with Great Mazinger but GGD didn’t seem to have any unique speaking lines which is too bad.

Stage 24B – The Revival of Voltes

Of course, this is a Voltes stage — the requisite “Voltes can’t combine”. However, you can lose some Voltes machines and not lose the stage so even when I defeated the enemy, Voltes still couldn’t combine. 🙂

After the mission, Rebi Torah makes her first appearance telling Hainel to return to the Helmoze, and “Ze Balmary” is mentioned as the name of the Empire for the first time. It seems that Hainel is being forced to cooperate with the Empire because they have the King of Boazan as a hostage.

Stage 25B – Fight Against the Demon Sharkin

Continuing the theme, here’s the end of Sharkin, although there’s not too much development in the overall Raideen plot — Sarumoji hopes to access the memory of Raideen to find out more about the Angels.

Stage 26AB – The Scarlet Evangelion

This stage looks similar enough to 26 on the Gundam route that I don’t think I’m going to bother.

Stage 21C – Hong Kong City

This is pretty much a straight Z Gundam stage, although the Shrike Team appears as well. I guess if I’m going to try to keep everyone at even levels I’m going to have to use them for the whole game — at least a few of them have Great Effort. Kou also does — I think he’s gained about 15 levels from 2 or 3 kills.

You can convince Four twice with Kamille in this stage but my resources are inconsistent about whether this is necessary or not to recruit her later. You do get some DVEs by doing it, though. (Alpha has a lot of DVEs — I missed them in OGs and I hear that Z doesn’t have many either; it’s too bad, that’s one of my favorite parts of the series.)

Stage 22C – Gundams, to the Sea of Stars

There’s a skill point here to defeat Cima, who runs at 50%, but since she only has 3300 HP it’s not that hard. The rest of the Shrike Team joins up, and Dellas gives the Gihren Zabi speech. Roux appears as well, so it looks like it’s time for the ZZ crew to join up soon.

One other recruitable character question — my resources are also inconsistent on whether the choice between routes coming up (between “stop with EVA” or “shoot it down”) matters. One site says you have to pick a certain one to get Rebi later.

Stage 23C – Double Zeta Moves

This stage shows one of the other unusual parts to Alpha’s skill points — you can’t gain any in this stage, but you lose 3 if you don’t get Judau to the Lienhorse Jr. by turn 3.

One thing I forgot to mention is that this is the first instance of the pilot cut-ins that was used in almost every game afterwards. Inset graphics were used since 3, and faces appeared in Shin, but this is the first time that the pilots upper body appears from the side of the screen when an attack occurs. In this game, it’s mostly the Gundam units that have them, though.

The development of the mobile suits is really fast in this timeline — Kamille just joined AEUG at the beginning of Alpha, and already the Double Zeta and Victory have both been built following Kamille’s plan for the Zeta.

Now unfortunately I somehow forgot to save after this map and I got myself into a situation where I can’t beat Gato in the next one, so I’m probably going to have to replay this. At least I don’t have to read the story again.

Stage 24C – The Nightmare of Solomon

This is, of course, the 0083 stage with Gato blowing away some fleets with the nuclear bazooka. The skill point is fairly hard to get, and it’s also a requirement for getting Gato later. You basically have 2 turns to kill Gato using only Kou in the GP-01, and possibly one attack from your main character. The only help the rest of your force provides is if they can use Encourage on Kou. Luckily my Kou was levelled enough to have Hot Blood, but even then it took two Hot Blood attacks from an upgraded beam weapon, plus a hot blood attack from the Grungust.

Stage 25C – Crossbone Vanguard

F91 enters the series, with Seabook jumping into the F91 to protect Cecily. The skill point is very easy; all you have to do is just attack Dorel when you get your first chance. Seabook is good enough to dodge almost everything. Zechs and Noin strangely show up as NPCs; it’s not clear from the dialogue why they’re attacking the Crossbone Vanguard, who (of course) is working with Neo Zeon, but when the Neo Zeon forces show up they leave.

Now it’s back to Earth for more Eva stuff.

Stage 26C – Visitor From the Sea

Asuka joins in the Eva 2 here; the skill point is pretty easy since the Angel doesn’t have many HP and you have 3 turns to defeat it. After that the rest of the stage is just some Gundam enemies that aren’t very difficult to defeat.

I was happy to see that when Boss rejoined he had Hot Blood. Finally a third seishin. 🙂

Now we’re back off the route splits until stage 42.

Stage 27 – Developing Machines

This stage has one of the hardest skill points in the game — defeating the Gear Garing, that runs at 50% HP (21600 HP). To make matters worse, if you choose “Go to South Atalia” (to get another skill point), you don’t get to choose your members. My main options for success were the main character using Sutemi and a fully upgraded Spiral Attack, or Shou with a fully upgraded Hyper Aura Giri. I went with Shou, and my first attempt produced a result that I’m sure is painfully familiar to most SRW players:

Thankfully, Shou was only at 142 Will and I still had Haro’s Encourage, so raising Shou to 150 Will did the trick:

So much for the Gear Garing.

After the stage there’s more plot development; finally we’re coming to EOT Island which has been mentioned portentiously since the beginning of the game. I like that Drake’s army attacks the Titans; I always like to see the enemy factions fighting each other since I think it makes the game’s story more realistic.

Stage 28 – EOT Island

Another Angel fight, against the splitting Angel. This stage has kind of a fun skill point; you get +1 for beating the Angel with Asuka, but +2 for beating it with Bright. The key to getting the skill point is to realize that AT Fields do not work if the unit has less than 100 morale, so you have to Exhaust the Angel with Rei and then shoot it down with Bright. Everyone is very impressed when Bright does it.

Of course the Angel comes back so it’s time to come up with a plan. Meanwhile, the Macross franchise is finally brought into the game — the rumored ASS-1 (heh) is actually going to be used as a ship, Bian Zoldark came up with the plan to take a vestige of humanity away from the Earth to settle somewhere else.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that each Eva in this game gets its own BGM, unlike F where they all had Shinji’s.

Does anyone have any comment on the upcoming route choices? I’m not going to do both of them since they’re pretty much the same thing, so if anyone has preference for one or the other, speak up now.

Stage 29 – The Unseen Blade of the Heart

This stage has the start of the “rival points”, which allow you to get Irm on your team — it’s kind of demanding because you need 6 (or more than 6?) to get him and there are only 8 points in the game, one of them being on a route split. You have to make a choice in this stage between a love point and a rival point, but since the rival points are so scarce, the best way to do things is to have the main character attack Irm, then attack your partner, then attack Irm again (do not Persuade your partner). This gets you 1 love point, and possibly 2 rival points (I’m not entirely clear on the conditions), but even if you just get 1 rival point it’s enough for now.

Irm is a character from 4/F, adding to the Original Generations-like mix of originals in this game.

Stage 30 – Combine Your Spirits Immediately

I chose to have the two Evas work together (since that’s like the show); this is basically Episode 9 of Evangelion, although the Evas don’t dance because there’s no combo attacks in this game. If you want the 2 skill points for killing both Angels on turn 1, you have to upgrade the Evas’ weapons about halfway, I think.

Stage 31 – The Value of a Miracle

The Macross plot starts here; it seems that the Macross was built by Aerogaters rather than the Protodeviln but we’ll see if that actually holds true. I chose to have the EVAs try to stop the Mass Driver launch with their AT Fields.

Stage 32 – Space Fold

This is roughly episodes 2-3 of Macross. It’s a big “protect the ship” mission where you have waves upon waves of reinforcements, plus a skill point for killing the mothership; this isn’t too hard if you just take a couple of super robots out there and hit it with some hot blooded finishers. There are so many enemies in the stage they’ll probably get close to 130 morale even if they don’t do anything.

Once again I want to point out that one great thing about Alpha is the relatively high amount of DVEs (i.e. where they voice key lines in the story sections).

Stage 33 – Armed Attack

This is more or less episode 5 of Macross. It’s another “protect the ship” mission but it’s hard to imagine losing this one. The Macross now has the Pinpoint Barrier that activates at 120 morale and only uses 5 en, which means it can be used 50 times before the Macross runs out of energy. It’s conceivable you could beat this mission just by ending your turn over and over again.

The real challenge is to get 3 skill points from defeating the Britai, the flagship that’s in the far right of the screen surrounded by other ships:

The Britai has 50,000 HP and uses full HP restore when it drops below 25,000. I think really your only choice for beating it is to take a number of super robots down there and just do the best you can; use a lot of Iron Wall and upgrade your finishing weapons if you need to. Most likely you’ll lose a few Super Robots but it’s worth it. I beat the Britai with a Dancougar Dankuuhou Formation:

Now we’re going to see what happened to the Excelion, which hasn’t been seen since the intro to the game.

Stage 34 – Encounter With a Natural Predator

Gunbuster was previously in F but it was just a random super robot; here they bring in the Space Monsters, who turn out to be a pretty major aspect of both this game and Alpha 3. Raideen has a connection to them; I’m not sure if this “Raideen predicting the coming of a great enemy” is in the anime, but here it seems to refer to the Space Monsters.

Isam also shows up (from Macross Plus).

Stage 35 – Ingram’s Malice

In Shin SRW, neither the SRX nor Balmar had any particular purpose or deep meaning. SRX was just another combining Super Robot (developed by Voltes’ Hamaguchi!) and the Balmar was just another Guest-like alien race that wanted to take over Earth; there was no connection between SRX and Balmar, nor was there any particular reason why Balmar was targeting Earth. In Alpha they expanded a lot on this and created the war between the Balmar and the Zentradi, a nice fusion of original and licensed series. It does seem now like the Aerogaters are standing in for the Protodeviln from the standpoint of Macross, but I don’t remember how they introduce the Protodeviln in Alpha 3.

After this stage there’s more original development as Yuuzes and Laodecia appear; it seems that the Aerogaters have two purposes for targetting Earth. One is to use the Earth weapons (and possibly Earthlings) in their fight against the Zentradi, the other is to get Tronium, which they need. I especially think the former motivation is a good idea because it explains why the vastly superior Aerogaters don’t just crush the Earth immediately.

Levi’s Judecca is also in this stage; last time I played this game I did not complete all the conditions to recruit Mai later, so maybe I can this time (I may not have taken the correct route later).

Somehow I don’t recall the OG explanation for Ingram and the Aerogater’s actions being as good, but maybe I’m just not remembering correctly.

Stage 36 – Miss Macross

I don’t understand the intent of the designers in some of the skill points where you choose a dialogue option. There’s usually no way to predict which one will get you the skill point; in this stage, the skill point option gives you a stage with only 5 enemies, whereas the non-skill point option has you facing 30. I suppose that the 5 enemies is just Quatre, Duo, and Hikaru as allies, but they’re more than enough to defeat the 5 Zentradi.

The first Endless Waltz suits show up here; this game doesn’t really seem to use the Gundam Wing plot all that much. In general, despite the relatively high number of appearances of Wing in the SRW series, the original Wing plot doesn’t seem to be developed all that much. Often it’s just Endless Waltz in the game.

Stage 37 – The Refugee From Jupiter

Ryuune Zoldark joins with her Valsione R. Since Bian isn’t dead, her backstory is a little different — she and Bian were going out to Pluto to establish an early warning radar network, but Bian got captured by the Jupitorians, leaving Ryuune to escape. Of course she immediately falls for Masaki.

I think the easiest way to do this stage is to choose “leave the area”, which gets you a skill point, and then have Ryuusei attack Levi twice, which gets you another skill point. But, if you want to try to kill all the enemies and get more money you should pick to protect Ryuune. You just have to make sure Ryuusei is in the general area where Levi will appear so that he can attack her twice before the stage ends. Guts is a broken ability; once Ryuusei got down to 500 HP or so everyone had 0% to hit him and he slaughtered the majority of the enemy force.

Stage 38 – The Ones Who Will Lead Humanity

More development on the V Gundam front; the Angel Halo in the Alphaverse was planned or built by Bian Zoldark although it’s not clear what purpose he intended it for. The V Gundam enemies (they haven’t used the name “Zanscare” yet so I don’t know if that exists) are trying for their ESP people but they’re going to have to borrow from Balmar because they apparently can’t get enough from Earth.

Kind of a hairy stage since you have to prevent any enemy from reaching the top of the map, but it’s not too bad.

I had my biggest level gain here as Voltes gained 11 levels with one kill — my highest levelled guys right now are Christina Mackenzie and the Voltes crew (it’s not a coincidence that Christina has Great Effort).

Stage 39 – First Contact

This is named after Episode 11 of Macross, although they’re not really slavishly following the plot. The concept of the race that fights between men and women and doesn’t understand culture is a little silly at first; I don’t remember if the ultimate explanation is satisfying. Misato wonders whether the Zentradi were created to fight the Space Monsters.

The stage itself is really simple; all you have to do is kill the main boss and everyone retreats and the stage ends (and you get a skill point)

Stage 40 – Big Escape

This is named after Episode 12 of Macross; it’s an easy stage. Milia makes her first appearance so you can shoot her down with Max for later. Almost back at Earth and then the Macross-heavy stuff will come to an end for a while.

Stage 41 – Bye-bye Mars

This is named after Episode 9 of Macross

Stage 42A – Jupiter Ghost

They seemed to have renamed the Zanscare Empire to the “Jupitorians”. Valsione R has gotten a lot more attention in its animations than many of the other units. It’s a fairly good unit. Cybuster, unfortunately, has been severely nerfed. 120 morale to use Cyflash is harsh.

Stage 43A – The Flower That Blooms in Space

More F91 stuff — Cecily joins here, and the silly Lafresia appears. Wufei also appears briefly; he has the Taunt seishin. This is the final apperance of Taunt in the SRW series and Wufei is the only character in the game to have it. It’s useful in the later stages once he joins for real.

Stage 44A – The Gundam Called Zero

Of course this is the Gundam Wing time for Quatre to go berserk in Zero. Heero also gets Epyon.

Stage 45A – Attack, Limit Point

This is the 0083 conclusion except it plays out a bit more quickly; Cima shows up on the third turn to blast away Delaz. She apparently wants to drop the colony on a Jupitorian base on Earth; she’s afraid of the Angel Halo that’s coming towards Earth. Afterwards, Shuu uses a black hole from the Granzon to make the colony vanish so it doesn’t hit the Earth. Of course Masaki takes off towards Beijing, where Shuu is.

Stage 42B – Father, Earth is Close

Now switching to the Earth group; it seems that the Titans and Aura Battlers have been fighting it out on Earth, but first there’s a Voltes stage. It’s not very long, although Ken’ichi’s father appears. Usually the heroes’ fathers are dead so it’s interesting to see someone who is actually alive.

Stage 43B – In the Still Darkness

This is Episode 11 of Eva, except that of course you don’t need the Evas to defeat the Angel since a couple of finishing attacks from Super Robots will take it out before they even appear. They’re not strictly following Eva’s story, though, because Kaji shows Adam to Misato in this stage; I think that doesn’t happen until later in the anime, if it happens at all. Stage 45 is going to jump ahead to episode 17 or 18, also.

Stage 44B – The Red-Haired Woman

Ah, good old Hyper Jerill. There are a lot of DVEs in this stage — you get one for attacking Allen with Shou, and for killing Allen with Shou. Wakamoto Norio should get as many DVEs as possible.

Stage 45B – Angel, or Devil…

Basically Episode 18 of EVA, except that Shin Getter Robo appears to save Touji rather than Shinji defeating the Angel.

Now it’s back to my real route path.

Stage 42C – The Messenger from Axis

Now we’re back to Zeta Gundam stuff, with Londo Bell and Scirocco trying to ally with Neo Zeon. However, Scirocco tells Haman to surrender or they’ll all be killed by the Jupitorians’ “Earth clean” plan.

The skill point in this stage is one of the hardest in the game; you have to defeat the Jupitoris, with over 50,000 HP, by the 4th enemy phase. I believe that I might have been able to do it if I spent all my money upgrading the Grungust and the Zeta Gundam, but even then it might not be enough. Most units aren’t even going to be able to make it within attacking distance by the 4th EP.

Stage 43C – Puru and Axis

Quattro and the others are stuck in Axis, so it’s time to save them. You can win by moving some people to Axis, but killing all the enemies isn’t very hard and you get a skill point. It looks like Haman is planning on betraying the Zabi family, but Gremy is planning on betraying Haman. Silly evil organizations.

Stage 44C – Lina’s Blood

I don’t remember how Lina “dies” in ZZ, but here Puru accidentally “kills” her by blowing up Iria’s mech. You have to escape in 16 turns for 2 skill points but that’s easy; it’s more than enough time to persuade Haman with Quattro and get everyone out. Christina also gets to persuade Bernie, but I don’t understand why the developers decided to make Bernie not only join at stage 60, but in a route split. Who wants Bernie at that point?

Stage 45C – The Coming of the Black Angel

Haman Karn mentions her father “Maharajah Karn” in this episode; I don’t remember that being mentioned in Z or ZZ so I guess that’s from an outside source. Ingram shows up in the Astranagun and starts slaughtering Gremy’s forces. Fun.

Now it seems that the Aerogaters want Neo Zeon’s Enhanced Human technology, so Haman teams up with the Aerogaters.

Stage 46 – Dragon and Tiger

Time for the main character mech upgrade; of course it’s ridiculously powerful, even not upgraded. There’s also more Giant Robo stuff in this stage but not a whole lot of development — the BF-dan wanted the Ryuukooh to awaken, supposedly so they can use it to protect the Earth. Really?

Also, Cybuster really blows in this game. It’s kind of sad.

Stage 47 – A Man’s Fight

This is essentially a plot mission, covering episodes 19-20 of Eva. Although in this game rather than wait 30 days for Shinji to emerge from the LCL, the Psycho Drivers use their T-LINK system to get him back earlier, and he sees people like Kouji and Elle rather than just the Eva characters.

Like in F, you can choose whether or not to have Shinji absorbed by the Angel. It costs 40,000 to repair plus you get 50,000 if you defeat the Angel, so you’re losing 90,000 for the S2 Engine — I went for it anyway since it follows the original storyline, but it’s probably not too important.

Banjou has a connection to the Evangelion storyline which is kind of neat, I guess because his father developed the Meganoids which they seem to consider to be along the same lines as the Human Instrumentality Project (or at least for the same purpose).

Stage 48 – For Whom the Bell Tolls

This is a fun stage; you get to use all the little plane-like mechs; the macross units, the uncombined Super Robots, the Pilders, etc. You don’t get much opportunity to use them so it’s nice to watch them kick some butt for a change.

Stage 49 – Forward Lies Glory, Backwards Lies Hopelessness

Here comes Gunbuster.

UOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
SUUUUUUUUUPAAAAAAAAAAAA INAZUUUUUUUUUUUUMAAAAAAAAAAA KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stage 50 – Variable Formation

The SRX finally forms here; this time you’re limited to 10 formations and only one formation every other stage — but as far as I can see that means you can’t actually get to 10 times?

Anyway, the main aspect of this stage is the skill point. You get 3 for Astranagan and 1 for Will Wipps. The Astranagan has 40000 HP and flees at 70%, so you need to be able to do 28000 HP of damage in one hit — I used a 150 Will Shin Getter’s strongest attack fully upgraded. Of course the first try never goes well:

But I did have enough damage so all I had to do was do a little more to Ingram before I used the Stoner Sunshine; a bit of tweaking and it worked out:

The result was well worth it for the Getter Team:

Unfortunately I didn’t have enough power left to defeat the Will Wipps, but that’s OK. Now it’s another three-way route split to deal with some more problems on Earth. The Space Monsters have now been introduced as a major adversary, maybe even one that would be superior to the Zentradi and Aerogaters.

Stage 51A – The Glass Kingdom

Back to Gundam Wing, and we’re protecting the Cinq Kingdom yet again. Of course the inevitable will happen; here Treize kidnaps Relena and Heero appears in the Epyon, but he’ll soon switch to the Wing Zero. The Titans make an appearance as enemies after a long absence; they’re not in this game all that much, it seems.

Stage 52A – The Kingdom Destroyed

Of course the Cinq Kingdom is easily destroyed, this time by beams from orbit. This mission seems hard at first — you have to get the Gran Gulan down to the bottom of the map, and you have crappy units and really strong enemies. Actually it’s not that bad; many of the enemies attack with beam weapons and the GG can easily deal with those via Aura Barrier. You just have to kill a couple of enemies to forge a path for the GG and it should go OK. Although if you were trying for the skill points you have to do it in 4 turns, which is a little tough.

Stage 53A – Cross Fight

Cross Fight, Cross Fight…CROSS FIGHT! Here comes Danga…er no, Cross Fight is the name of a Dunbine episode, apparently.

This is just a fight vs. Bishott, and the Wing boys get their Endless Waltz suits. Now it’s time for the final showdown with Drake.

Stage 54A – The Departure of the Otherworlders

Although this is the final Dunbine stage, it’s kind of an odd one. You don’t actually fight anybody — Shuu just shows up in the Granzon, notifies you that the Angel Halo is coming so it’s time to send the Aura Battlers away. Then he activates a gate and they all disappear. (I guess if you pick not to listen to Drake you can fight them for a bit, but the end result is the same).

I wonder if they originally planned to use Dunbine in @2 but dropped the idea later. I guess they covered a lot of the usual stuff that happens in Dunbine’s SRW appearances, but all of the enemies are still alive and (apparently) back in Byston Well.

Stage 55A – Queen Relena

Into space to rendevous at Solomon. This stage is actually kind of rough; you have to fight a lot of guys with a small force and protect the Excellion. Luckily the Excellion is really good and can survive for a long time until someone gets there.

Masaki gets Ranbu no Tachi on this route; in SRW 3 this wasn’t a special move, he just said “Ranbu no Tachi!!” sometimes when doing Dis Cutter. They made it a special final attack in Masou Kishin, and it’s a route-specific attack here, but I think he automatically gets it in Gaiden. What about OG?

Now onto the Mazinger/Voltes-heavy route.

Stage 51B – The Death of Baron Ashura

As the name indicates, this is Ashura’s last fight. You get to fight the Dragonasaurus and Pikdrone, enemies that are used a lot in the original SRW games but less and less as time goes on (I think?) The Gilgilgan is also coming soon, apparently. Asuka also has her mental problems like in Episodes 22 and 23 of EVA, but she doesn’t go catatonic (yet?)

Stage 52B – Demon Emperor

Here comes Majinkaiser, and the mass produced GMs.

Stage 53B – Betting the Earth on One Strike

Hainel vs. Ken’ichi one on one, and you have to move everyone around to combine them. The V machines get particularly confusing. Garuda also appears here — I’m surprised he’s survived so long. Usually poor Garuda gets swept away pretty early in the game; Alpha doesn’t have a “Garuda’s tragedy” stage so I don’t know what ultimately happens to him.

Stage 54B – Memories, To the Future

This is a little Gunbuster past history stage, plus the return (and maybe final appearance in SRW?) of the Gilgilgan and Mecha Gilgilgan. The Mecha one isn’t very hard because Leona uses her Psycho Driver power to give everyone 150 morale and full HP/EN.

Stage 55B – Cry in Your Father’s Breast!

This has a funny scene at the beginning where Ryouma teaches Noriko to use the Buster Tomahawk, and then Benkei talks about teaching her to use Buster Home Run. Noriko practices yelling her lines.

Then there’s a lot of Voltes stuff; here’s where you find out that Hainel and Ken’ichi are brothers and such. If you take this route for real you can get Hainel as a special character in the Scirocco battle, but I’m going the other route to get Haman and Gato (and Mai).

Stage 51C – The Day of Dakar

Zeta Gundam stuff, of course. A good opportunity to level up some lower people since (without explanation) all your guys get 150 morale at turn 4. Now the Titans have been messed up — the Titans are much less a threat in this game than they were in F.

Stage 52C – Vibration

Fight vs. a lot of Neo Zeon guys — this was another good chance to level up; as usual the Great Effort people gained over 10 levels per boss kill. My top 5 levelled guys are Kou, Christina, Robert, Aya, and Emma (Robert is there because he was in the Super Gundam with Kou and thus got the benefit of the Great Effort). Kayla just got Raid, which surprised me.

Stage 53C – The Attack on Solomon

This is a First Gundam stage. First you get to defeat 12 Rick Doms to make Conscon do his famous speech. You have 12 turns to move the Macross to Solomon, or kill all enemies — I killed all enemies, even the Big Zam and the Alpha Aziels, although only on the last turn.

This also has the Sleggar/Big Zam event except this time Sleggar survives.

Afterwards we see that Leena has been saved by Haman, and Haman seems just as disturbed by the appearance of the Angel Halo as the heroes are.

Stage 54C – The Women’s Battlefield

All the insane Gundam girls attack you here — Lupe, Katejina, Cima, Farah, Sara, and Reccoa, plus Rebi for fun. Brohho is the lone male, but I bet he’s not too happy with that crowd. He may find himself without some important parts of his anatomy if he hangs around them for too long. (Incidentally, after watching Victory Gundam my reaction was that it proves that you can’t defeat the forces of good if your evil organization is composed entirely of insane people. Chronicle was about the only halfway normal one in the whole Zanscare Empire.)

Anyway, the skill point is to defeat Rebi — a Miracled finisher from Ryuukooh does over 45,000 so that’s not too hard.

My first characters are starting to get double move now; only Max and Fokker so far. Considering I use the lesser guys so often, I doubt many people will be getting double move by the end.

Stage 55C – The Running Storm

This is the “stop the solar ray” mission, although I was able to kill all the units as usual. There’s a reused element from F, where Gato and Kerry get used as pawns by Gihren and left to die. Does this resemble something in 0083? I don’t remember it from G Generation, but I’ve never seen 0083 itself.

Now everyone is rejoined so it’s time to level up some of the people who are behind; by this stage even my lowest level people were above the levels of the enemies. I’m not playing strict “must dispatch low levels” characters so I’ll probably avoid some of the harder people to level like the Bluegars. I am running out of stages, though.

Stage 56 – Idol of Zeon

At the beginning of this stage, Ken’ichi’s dad does the big reveal about the Balmar Empire, that it’s a huge space empire that’s been at war with the Zentradi for 1000 years and that it seeks to take over Earth to use its fighting power. The Angel Halo is being used because Earth isn’t controlled by a king like Boazan or some of the other planets the Balmar Empire has incorporated. They also need Tronium, and the Psychodrivers, for whatever reason.

In any case, this is the final stage for the Zabi-led Zeons; Kycilia kills Gihren and then you get 5 skill points(!) for accepting her cease fire. Does Kycilia ever show up in the Alpha series again? I don’t remember her being in any other games. This is also the final stage in Alpha for Dr. Hell; he’ll be back in Alpha 2, but Brocken seems to survive too and I’m not sure if he appears again.

Using the Angel Halo as a plot of the Balmar was a good idea; it makes more sense than the original Victory plot.

Stage 57 – Above the Angel’s Ring

These stages are getting pretty challenging; this time my team included Texas Mack, Boss, Noin, and Keen (from Dunbine) — fortunately there were a bunch of required strong characters (Shuu, main character, Raideen, Heero, Usso) so it wasn’t so bad. Boss actually helped quite a bit because all the warships kept targetting the Goraon; they couldn’t hurt the ship because of the Aura Barrier but it needed an energy recharge every couple of turns to keep that going. Boss also has Exhaust now.

Anyway, this is the final stage for many of the V Gundam enemies — the goal is just to get someone to the Angel Halo’s center but that’s no fun; you get a lot of money and stuff if you kill all the enemies so I went ahead and did that. Scirocco was left alone at the end:

You get a skill point for beating him, but he runs at 90% and has 55400 HP. What am I to do? No problem; I exhausted his Will down to 100 and then used Sutemi (x3 damage) on the main character, then pulled out the big guns:

Was it enough, though?

EAT SHIT SCIROCCO. That may be the most damage I’ve ever done in SRW with one hit. If Rei hadn’t died earlier I could have exhausted him down even more and the damage would have been increased.

Now it’s on to the last route split.

Stage 58A – Blessing for the Defeated and the Victorious

This is the final stand of the Jupitorians and OZ; Chronicle, Treize, and Dorothy all die. (Katejina lives to Alpha Gaiden and Zechs, of course, is there until the end of the Alpha series).

Stage 59A – Humanlike, at least

This stage incorporates parts of Eva episodes 22 and 23, although Yuuzes’ Antenora stands in for the Angel (and the Lance of Longinus isn’t used at all). The title is episode 22 of Evangelion, although Usso also says it in reference to the fact that the Aerogaters populated the Angel Halo with just brains instead of people.

Stage 60A – The Last Angel

This is mostly episode 24 of Eva, which pretty much ends the Eva stuff in Alpha 1. The Human Instrumentality Project stuff is left for Alpha 3, when (AFAIremember) the End of Evangelion plot is covered. In this game they mention a few times that Balmar has thier own Human Instrumentality Plan but I don’t remember this ever coming up in Alpha 3 — maybe I just didn’t pay enough attention, though. Now for the other route — Rebi and Haman await (and Bernie…I can’t believe he’s route specific)

Stage 58B – Lured to the Kingdom of God

Shapiro captures a few dudes here. There are four skill points in the stage — you get one each for attacking Viletta with Masaki, Ryuusei, and the main character, and one for attacking Shapiro with Shinobu. The problematic one is the Shinobu point — he has no defensive seishin and he’s in the uncombined mech. I didn’t try to do it, but probably you would have to either load his mech up with mobility items and hope to dodge Shapiro’s hit, or load him up with defensive items and hope to survive the hit. I didn’t bother since I already have 69 skill points which is enough to get every skill point-required thing in the game.

Stage 59B – Cross Target

More Aerogaters stuff; they deal with Shuu and the Black Box in this stage. In the original continuity, Guest used the Black Box to draw trouble to the Earth to accelerate the weapons production of the Earthlings. Here, it’s sort of the same thing except that it was Balmar rather than Guest/Inspector that did it. Shuu figured out what was going on but let the thing blow up anyway because if he fixed it, he knew that Balmar would realize Earth’s technology level was higher than they thought and would immediately come and attack instead of sending scouts.

You can finally save Rebi here; I didn’t do this last time I played the game so it will be interesting to see what happens (she’s not awake yet; I know that she’s Mai Kobayashi from the other Alpha games, of course). The skill point is defeating Yuuzes, who runs at 70% — not too bad; a fully upgraded Sun Attack was just barely enough to beat him, probably a fully upgraded Gunbuster hit would have done better.

Stage 60B – Warriors, Again

The title, of course, is the title of the final episode of ZZ; this is the last fight against Neo Zeon. If you’ve followed all the Haman recruiting stuff up to here you can do the last stuff to get her — convince her with Quattro, fight her with Judau and Kamille, then destroy her with Judau. This results in a lot of spoken lines and unique battle dialogue and I was going to record the whole thing, but it proved too difficult to get everything to work out reliably. Haman is too hard to hit (I had to reset on several <35% chances), the Mercy seishin apparently doesn’t work on her, and she has Potential which makes her hard to damage at lower HP. I would highly recommend upgrading the ZZ Gundam’s double beam rifle and mobility, and giving Judau as many mobility increasing items as you can — it will make your life a lot easier.

That’s it for the route splits; now on to the last 7 stages to deal with the Zentradi, the Space Monsters, the Aerogaters, and Scirocco.

Stage 61 – The Arrow of Destiny

You vs. many Meltrandi ships. I was able to use this opportunity to move up a whole bunch of levels and I still beat it in 9 turns for the skill points. Most of my guys are now in the 50’s, with the exception of one of the Bluegar pilots and a few stragglers in the upper 40’s.

Afterwards, you find out that the Protoculture from Macross also is connected to the Aerogaters. Also, the music to Minmei’s song comes from the plate Kaoru gave to Shinji — apparently the Central Dogma area below NERV is a Protoculture deposit of some sort.

I got an S-Video cable for my gamebridge so now things look sharper, if a bit pixelly. Some comparisons:

Also, I did succeed in getting Rebi. Aya suspects she’s Mai but they haven’t confirmed it yet. She lost all her memories of being with the Aerogaters although Minmei’s song brought her out of her coma. She wants to pilot the R-GUN Powered to make up for all the times she fought the heroes.

Stage 62 – Do You Remember Love?

This is the conclusion to the Macross story.

This is a two-part stage. The first part is somewhat difficult; you have to prevent any unit from reaching the far side of the map. You basically have to move your people forward otherwise you don’t have enough time to destroy all the units. You also need some powerful attacks to take out some of the ships (I don’t think you have to take out any of the large ships, only the small ones). But I was able to do it even using all my lower levelled non-ace pilots, so it’s not so bad.

The second part is fun because all the enemies have 50 morale (except the main boss); they’re all annoying high-HP ships but it’s not too bad.

Because I sent Londo Bell out in episode 61, I got Macronized Max instead of Micronized Milia here — this is the continuity of Do You Remember Love rather than the TV series (and Macross 7).

Stage 63 – The Beginning of the End

This is a rare instance of a stage with only dialogue; as far as I know, only EX and Alpha have these. So only 4 stages left — Titan remnants + MP Evas, Voltes enemies, Scirocco and his group, and STMC/Aerogaters/Campbellians.

I don’t understand why this stage has no battle — it seems like they could have combined the story parts with the next stage.

Stage 64 – Air

The title is taken from the first “episode” of End of Evangelion and it follows a lot of the events of that pretty closely except that nobody dies, and the Titans are substituted for the JSDF in the first part. In the end Instrumentality Project is stopped although it’s not entirely clear how that happened — maybe there will be some further dialogue later to explain it. The last we saw of Gendo was him confronting Rei in Central Dogma; but the stuff from the second part of End of Evangelion doesn’t happen until Alpha 3 so I’m not sure exactly what Gendo is doing or where he went. Incidentally, Shuu says that 500,000 years ago, the Protoculture used Instrumentality to create humanity.

Asuka gets her super-powerful AT Field attack:

Stage 65 – Gear of Destiny

This is (more or less) it for Combattler and Voltes, at least for Alpha. I hadn’t taken the Hainel path so Hainel seemingly dies — he’s still in the other games so I don’t know if this isn’t canon or whether the game shows him surviving later. This is the “tragedy of General Garuda” episode; he’s done for good (although some MP Garudas show up in the final stage).

Lowest level character is now 53; I have two ships at 53 so that’s going to be hard to deal with before the end of the game. Only two more stages.

Stage 66 – The Banquet of Hopelessness Begins Now

This is vs. Scirocco. Scirocco is used a lot as an antagonist in the early SRW games but he seems to drop out after that — after Alpha, which games is he in other than Z? Is he in GC/XO? Here’s a video of the Scirocco/Kamille event:

You also get Haman, Gato, or Hainel as allies depending on if you did all their recruitment conditions, but just for this battle.

This is also the stage where Yuuzes mentions the Zovorg:

This is the only time Zovorg is mentioned in the entire Alpha series, so it’s not clear what the intent was here — it seems that after Alpha Gaiden they decided to stop mixing original continuities outside OG, so it’s possible they might have planned to use the Inspectors/Guest later and dropped it, or this could have been intended as just a throwaway random reference from the beginning (I would tend to suspect the latter).

I was pretty successful at levelling my characters evenly; my highest levelled guys were the Dancougar team at 69, and the lowest level was Burning at 53. The top 10 levelled units are Dancougar, Ino, Jung, the main characters, Daisaku (Giant Robo), Monshia, Seabook, Cecily, Trowa, and the Voltes team.

Next up, final stage!

Stage 67 – For the Future of This Planet

Final stage! It’s in three parts, but none of them are very hard if you play cheap. The first two parts just require you to move the Excelion to certain places on the map — you can easily do this by using Wufei’s Taunt to lure the blocking ships away and then use Move Again as many times as you need to in order to get the Excelion there.

The third map has you first fighting the Helmoze. You can taunt the Helmoze over to your guys, kill it with a few Soul’ed funnels, then the Zfield comes out. I killed the Zfield in one hit with a soul’ed final attack from the SRX (Just barely — it’s hard to see the damage on that shot but it’s just a little over 65,000).

Then Yuuzes comes out with 4 more Zfields and the Astranagan. Once again I used Taunt to get Yuuzes and the Zfield over to me. Folka asked for a video of Final Hell Judecca, here it is:

Now, I have not one but two one-hit kill videos of the final boss, the first one using the Ryuukooh and the second one using SRX.

Leona wins, 90031 to 77499.

I wonder about this plan they used to kill the STMC — this shock wave that’s going to do so much damage to the Earth, what about all the other planets it contacts on its way to Earth, and in the other directions? I guess they’re left to protect themselves.

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?