In the last post I had finished the first two of the five chapters, which are essentially the introduction. Now in the third chapter the two teams come together, and you can choose who to send out on each stage (or at least most of them). You will have to use every character at some point so I tended to send out my lowest level people.

The third chapter is essentially about getting into Tokyo, which has been sealed off by the enemies. Here we’re hoping to find the last of the seven dragon areas so that the seven dragons can be awakened. We get help from Jin Hitomi, a member of Egubado who has turned against them. The leader of Egubado is Ryuukihi, who is trying to crash a floating fortress into Japan to destroy it.

By the end of the chapter we’ve reached the area where the last dragon shrine is, but it is blocked by barriers that will require the party to defeat the 4 Egubado guardians. This is where the party splits into four teams. You can use the last stage of the third chapter to level a bit by retreating from the battle and trying again.

After beating the 4 guardians and entering the last area, the dragons awake and seven of the characters get upgraded guardians.

Now we can move on to the final stage — entering Ryuukihi’s palace and defeating her before she can crash it into Tokyo.

First we have to defeat the 4 enemy generals again, and then they combine to form the Nue.

The Nue has multiple parts that have to be defeated, but it’s not too bad. Unfortunately it seems that Nue can regenerate itself, so the seven dragon holders go into the palace to defeat Ryukihi while the rest of the team stays outside to hold off Nue.

In the last chapter, you have to alternate between the dragon people fighting grunt battles and repeated fights against Nue. As you progress, more and more dragon people get left behind to deal with enemies until you have only the two main characters — however, this stock anime trope is pretty pointless because the rest of the girls all show up for the last battle.

Outside, the last battle against Nue features stronger stats and also the ability to regenerate the parts — however, it doesn’t do this all the time, so you can just defeat each part as you go. There’s a hidden “master” at the back that has to be defeated to win the battle.

Finally it’s time to fight Ryukihi. She shows up first with a bunch of guardians, only one of which is the true one. When that’s done, the final form shows up. She also reveals her biggest cliche surprise — that she has to kill everyone in Japan to save Japan (sigh).

In the final battle you have to beat parts again, and then send some units to climb up the arms to reach the top. Only close attackers can handle it so it’s best to send your two strongest melee fights up each side. The rest of the girls can support from below (their spells can reach the top).

Once Ryuhiki is beaten she gives the usual “you’ll regret this some day” speech and then the game is over. The epilogue says what happens to all the girls, and even contains some canonical lesbian pairups.

Overall the game isn’t bad. I’m still not a huge fan of AI battles but for the most part, once you learn how everything works, you can predict the majority of what your guardians will do. The various stats and compatibilities with enemies mean that you can’t just march everyone forward and do whatever you want. The story is not the best, and there are probably too many characters to develop well (it might have been stronger if the only party characters had been the 7 dragon users so that each one could get more development).

Probably the biggest downside of the game is how slow it plays, but this can be alleviated with a speedup key on an emulator if that is how you are playing.