We continue where we left off from last time with all Titans repulsed, and the Preventers have finally arrived, in the persons of Robert Gomez, pilot of the Reinforce/Lean Horse (either one works, both are used at different times) from Victory Gundam, and Henken Bekenner, pilot of the Argamma from Zeta Gundam.
At any rate, Henken tells you guys it's time for a powwow to figure out your next moves.
First though, we have a little mourning at the Nanbara Connection as Yotsuya breaks the news of Nanbara's death to the team. They don't mope long though as Yotsuya tells them that Professor Nanbara will live on through them and that they need to see Project Aegis through and stop the Titans instead of being overcome by their grief.
The team agrees that's a better way to honor their fallen and the Titans must pay for this.
We then cut to the Argama where Henken is laying out what they know:
And then Gomez informs us despite that, it won't be that simple:
And that when former OZ member and now Preventer Lieutenant Lucrezia Noin explains the situation:
According to her, they plan to seize the microwave transmitter on the Moon, and then Banjou asks if they are connected to a group called the Barton Foundation.
Seems Noin has also been in touch with Banjou's information Issac, who confirmed that yes, they are.
The name rings an ominous bell for the team, and Banjou fills in the clueless with the following:
They were the eminence gris behind the Romafeller Foundation (the villains manipulating shit behind the plot of the Gundam Wing TV series from the last game) and have apparently been funneling money towards the Titans, helping them solidify their control over the Earth Sphere.
Worse, they have their own forces as well as the gear and men they loaned the Titans, and they are in effect the space based branch of the Titans, so while the ones on Earth are trying to capture all the super robots and power sources in the Far East on Earth, the space based goons are trying to seize the lunar surface, thus giving the Titans total control over the assets of Project Aegis.
The plan on Earth, as Banjou puts it, is to drive back the Titans in the Far East, meaning half the energy they need will be in good guy hands for Aegis, so the Titans will be missing critical parts of Aegis. Unfortunately, the Titans still have the Macross, South Atalia Island, and the SDF forces under their lock and key, so that doesn't mean instant victory regardless.
We also find out other information from Alan (Alan Igor from Dancougar to be exact) via Noin that Dakar City, the Titan stronghold in Africa, it's being turned into a fortress town with the Macross as it's centerpiece, and as Akira grimly notes, you'd have to fight the loaded for bear Macross in an attempt to take the Macross back from their control.
And, as Ryouma realizes, that means the SDF forces detached to the Macross likely also have guns to the heads of people they care about to force them to comply with the Titans like Quattro.
Henken then proposes dividing their current forces into two groups to head off the Far East and space based hotspots, after which they'll link up for an eventual assault on Dakar.
Judau asks if this means the Londo Bell guys under house arrest are being hung out to dry, but Noin assures him they have that taken care of. Banjou plays coy with who is going to do that part, and everyone decides to take his word for it.
We find from Banjou Haran that Roux Luka from Gundam ZZ (Judau's girlfriend) and Four Murasame (one of the girls in a love triangle with Kamille Bidan from Zeta Gundam) are Preventers members, and the reason they told no one was to keep it from getting out to the wrong ears till now.
It's at this point Henken decides to quiz Judau on how the teams will split up, and this doesn't really affect anything except Henken getting a little exasperated if Judau draws a blank like he wasn't paying attention.
After this, we get our first route split choice:
At this point, I leave it to the Kiwis should they wish to decide with route I'll do first, though I will cover both, with one caveat.
Each route has two unique levels, and the last level is the same one, just with different skill point goals, and I prefer the Moon route one because it's less of a pain in the ass, so I'll just use two different save files to do the first two stages of each route, then go with the Moon one because you can get some characters earlier doing that one.
So Kiwis, let me know your preferred route I do first.
Okay time for the Moon Route. This route will allow us to recruit a Gundam Wing character earlier then he usually joins us, and has two skill points, both of which require some planning.
To that end, your roster is full of various Gundams and related units, and for the next skill point, you'll want to slap some movement parts like boosters on some of your speedier units like Noin's Taurus.
Also, save your money, we'll spend it on certain units later to make our lives easier.
We now cut all the way to the Luna 2 Base enroute to the Moon.
There are Hilde Schiekeber and Relena Peacecraft, both of the Preventers, and Relena is asking for a status report on how many former machines from the last war are being decommissioned so they can't be used as tools of war anymore.
(Relena left, Hilde right)
Hilde reports only 3 Geara Dogas (Char's Counterattack units) 2 Gedlavs (Victory Gundam) and a Zechariah (a Balmarian machine from the last war, transliterated phonetically ingame as Zakeria) are left, and while Hilde is , so is Relena, pleased the dismantling of the Jupiterian (Victory Gundam), Neo Zeon, and Aerogater (Earth Federation codename for the Balmarians) is hurrying right along so the Titans can't use them.
Hilde then changes the subject and asks if Relena kept in touch with Wing Zero pilot Heero Yuy, but she says she hasn't, and Hilde says she lost touch with Deathscythe Hell pilot Duo Maxwell herself, and she's rather annoyed that after inviting her to help Relena, Duo up and disappeared.
(FYI, both guys are these ladies respective boyfriends more or less)
They then change the subject and Hilde thanks Relena for using her pull as the Earth Federation Vice Foreign Minister to make sure they could get this crap done to begin, but Relena remarks to herself as things stand, she's basically a figurehead at best, especially now the Titans have the EF by the balls.
And that's when shit goes pear shaped as explosions rock Luna 2.
Sally Po of the Preventers runs in and tells Relena they need to leave ASAP.
She adds that mobile suits are assaulting the place, which, given Luna 2 is a weapons storage facility (which includes nuclear weapons), is NOT good, but the machines aren't Titans models.
But that plan to split dies as soldier burst in and hold them at gunpoint.
Relena demands to know on whose authority people are waving guns in her face, asking why they would disturb the peace, prompting this old dude to make this pithy retort:
He then adds her wish for peace can be repeated as much as she likes, but whether the rest of the world will listen is another story, and then this little girl shows up next to him and concurs:
We find the old guy is Dekim, she's Lady Mariemeia, and the latter wants to deliver her Father's "Christmas presents" to the world.
And then the little girl drops a bombshell. She's Mariemeia Khushrenada, daughter of Treize Khushrenada, the now late former leader of the Organization of the Zodiac from Gundam Wing (the military wing of the villains in that series), and when Relena finds that hard to believe, Mariemeia says DNA tests confirmed their relation if she has doubts, and that she's simply picking up her father's baton now.
Relena calls bull on a child assuming control of a standing army, prompting Dekim to snark that's rich coming from someone barely out of her teens who the Jupiterians once made their queen briefly.
Note; In the Gundam Wing TV show, she was briefly made the same role by the villains in an attempt to use her as a figurehead, while the first Alpha game simply changed which faction tried that crap.
And that's when Dekim drops a second bombshell on her.
Trowa Barton and Chang Wufei, former Gundam pilots of the Heavyarms and Sheng Long/Altron, are now working for Mariemeia's forces:
(Trowa left, Wufei right)
Sally is really shocked to see Wufei on the villain team (they had a slight thing for each other during the TV show), and Relena tries to confirm Dekim's assertion they serve Mariemeia of their own will, to which Trowa just glares and Wufei tells Relena to can her objections.
Mariemeia sympathizes with Relena's shock since it's known they were all allies during the Balmar War, but tells Relena she might as well get used to reality and plays coy with her intentions for Relena.
We then cut to Preventer HQ, where Lady Une is not pleased to hear the Barton Foundation (Mariemeia's forces) have appeared:
Before we go on, some facts about her.
She used to be the right hand woman to Treize when he ran OZ in the TV show, and she was a villain at one point, but has now taken charge of the Preventers and is on the other side now. She had quite a thing for her boss but has largely moved on since his death, and she no longer has the asshole split personality she had in the series where when she donned a pair of specs and did her hair up in a bun she was a hardassed military bitch.
Anyway, the news the Barton Foundation has shown it's strength is disturbing, and she's currently in a conference call with Ring Mao on the Moon, who confirms mobile suit activity near the moon on a mining asteroid (Luna II)
Hayato Kobayashi, former original Gundam alumni (as well as being ex-EF Army and leader of anti-Titan group Karaba), is present and concurs this is not good:
According to Hayato, their forces likely are fielding 13th Constellation units.
Note: OZ in the Gundam Wing TV series fielded units named after star constellations, hence their name, and 12 types were know to be built or designed during their tenure, leaving the 13th unbuilt and undeployed till now.
Ring can already guess they plan to seize the lunar microwave station, where she currently is, and Lady Une tries to cheer her up with the news the Far East Base has been liberated from Titans control (we'll cover that route after the Moon levels), and offers that they'll try to haul ass for the Moon Cradle (the site of the lunar station) next.
Hayato then adds the Lean Horse is also heading over to provide support, and Ring curtly acknowledges and cuts the calls.
Back with Hayato and Une, the former mentions the connection between the two organizations is bizarre, but Une's more immediate concern is their military strength.
And that's when a mysterious figure offers his assistance.
We then cut to a small vessel enroute to Luna 2.
Inside are Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell, former Gundam pilots in Londo Bell, now freelancing, albeit keeping tabs on their friends to be safe, and Duo states the obvious:
Heero concurs, and points out Luna 2 was a cornocupia of arms even before the Balmar War, and the crap the Barton goons likely wanted was the Federation nuclear warheads.
Due then objects, saying it makes no sense for the Barton goons to rip off the Earth Federation when they are supposed to be buddy buddy with the Titans, who are running it like a puppet on strings.
Heero admits this doesn't make a lot of sense, but the possibility the plan to stab the Titans in the back cannot be discounted, and they switch gears to discuss the 13th Constellation.
During the Balmar War period OZ fielded or had designed twelve different weapons named after star patterns, like Leo, Taurus, and Cancer, but the new models the Barton Foundation built must be the one they haven't seen or heard of yet, and when Duo points out that they probably should have gotten their mobile suits from Ring Mao (who is keeping them in storage) just in case, Heero points out they can't double back and still make it for Luna II in time.
Duo then makes a crack about how Heero is worried about his girlfriend, which Heero does his best to ignore, then we cut to the actual battle map.
Both have to deploy in some Leos since they don't have their Gundams yet, and Duo notices some enemy Tauruses as well as the new unit, which he recognizes from some OZ blueprints he saw in the TV series.
What Duo is calling the Serpent is short for "Serpentarius", the 13th constellation an OZ designed mobile suit was named after, and the Barton goons apparently snatched up the blueprints Duo saw and mass produced it by present day as their mainstay assault unit.
They try radioing Luna II, but get nothing, and it's obvious they have to fight their way to Luna II.
Here's the tactical overview.
The blue is your starting position, where Heero and Duo sit in their Leos, the red are a bunch of black OZ model Taurus Mobile Doll (AI controlled) units and behind them the new Serpents, and behind them, Luna 2, which you need to reach.
However, I'll be blunt, those Leos SUCK. They make the Zaku from the original Gundam look more durable, which is hilarious, since they are the Gundam Wing equivalent.
With that in mind, here's what you need to do:
Play smart and haul Heero and Duo over to the nearest colony (one is near Luna II) for a nice defense and recovery bonus and use it to stay alive as you pop open a hole to get to Luna II.
Both Heero and Duo have the Focus Spirit skill, but conserve it till later.
After a turn goes by, more Serpents will pop out of Luna II, as well as Wufei in the Altron Gundam.
He's more than happy to take on the shocked Heero and Duo, and Heero also realizes Trowa is alongside Wufei in one of the Serpents.
As the enemies move, pay careful attention to their movement patterns, you'll notice they are heading for the northern edge of the map. Keep that in mind for later.
Anyway for now, focus on moving your guys into position and if you want to get Wufei to join your team earlier than he usually does later, have Heero fight him twice and be the one to shoot Wufei down. He'll still join you later, but doing this makes him join somewhat earlier.
After another turn, Dekim appears from Luna II in an Adreastea battleship from Victory Gundam with Relena in tow. some Gedlavs, Contios, and a few more Serpents riding shotgun.
He then makes clear they plan to eventually stab the Titans in the back and relocate to a base in Japan with their new cargo of nukes to make sure the Titans don't try anything stupid.
Duo confirms he's Dekim Barton, leader of the Barton Foundation, and Dekim plans to haul ass while Wufei and Trowa keep you busy.
Now, the odds look really lopsided, as Duo gripes about, but you guys aren't totally boned as Dekim's forces notice a Mobile Suit is incoming from Earth for their position, and they shit themselves when they realize it's the Tallgeese (Tallgeese III to be exact).
Dekim wonders if Trieze somehow survived the Balmar War (since he piloted the Tallgeese II then), but it turns out the pilot is Treize's former right hand subordinate Zechs Merquise (also known as Millardo Peacecraft, Relena's older and somewhat estranged brother).
Zechs calls himself Wind, with the Preventers, and Duo is relieved to see Zechs on their side.
Dekim is not happy with this, as you guys can see here:
(Tallgeese is the white and blue unit)
Note: Dekim's confusion is understandable, as both Treize and Zechs appeared to fall in battle in both the TV show and the source in the final arc of the story, with both guys appearing to take each other out in the show and both being taken down by Londo Bell in the first Alpha game.
Zechs replies that as long as Treize's ghost is wandering around, he can't remain dead himself, then tells Dekim to disarm, to which Dekim dares him to open fire, snapping he's got Relena as a hostage, and that he's got another trump card besides the Serpents.
Dekim then asks Zechs if he remembers hearing of Operation Meteor from Zeta Gundam's Paptimus Scirroco, which definitely gets Zechs attention.
Operation Meteor sperging in the spoiler.
In the Gundam Wing TV show, the space colonies were really pissed at how the Earth Federation was exerting pressure on them to join or die, so much so they planned a blitzkrieg assault where five specialized designed Gundams would make orbital drop at key Earth military bases while the colonial forces took advantage of the chaos and tore Earth a new asshole, hoping to scare the Feddies into backing down and fucking off.
Slightly before the beginning of the show, the Gundam pilots involved got something resembling a conscience attack, so their handlers basically gave them leave to do their own thing, and they executed a modified version of their plan instead, intended to limit the amount of bloodshed the original plan entailed.
OZ got wind of this and tricked the Gundam pilots into killing all the Feddie diplomats willing to play ball and declare peace on colonial terms by putting them on an OZ aircraft and tricking the Gundams into killing them, then used that as an excuse to even more brutally crack down on the colonies with the surviving Federation members support.
In the first Alpha, Operation Meteor got aborted when the Gundam pilots got folded into Londo Bell to fight the alien threat, but that didn't stop portions of the original plot from being used by villains like Scirroco to achieve their own objectives.
Basically, Dekim informs Zechs he was the guy who helped draft the original idea, but he had even better ideas for making Earth his bitch, and Zechs nearly shits a brick when he asks if Dekim is considering dropping Luna II as a planet killing rock stuffed with nukes on Earth, as part of Operation Meteor had at one point entailed in the original plans.
Dekim is like "you think I WOULDN'T?" and dares Zechs to stand in his way.
He then offers Zechs a chance to join his forces, but says Zechs would have accept his place as junior to people like Dekim and Mariemeia, and as the fight resumes, while Zechs is not going to accept, he realizes that if he pushes Dekim too far, Earth gets hit with a rock even before a gravitational wave does the job.
Anyway, you job should be to break out those Focus skills with Heero and Duo and park on the colony ASAP, taking out Mariemeia forces and trying to get that condition with Wufei above fulfilled. You can shoot down Trowa too, but it's the Wufei one that is the important one.
The Tauruses aren't too nasty, but the Serpents can hit pretty hard, and the Altron Gundam is a definite pain. As for Zechs, have him stay ahead of Dekim's Adrastea and help out Heero and Duo, making sure to do what you can to inflict damage on the Adrastea whenever possible, because the skill point involves destroying it or making it retreat BEFORE it leaves the map on its own.
Also, you'll get help soon, so hold out for a few turns.
If Zechs takes a potshot at Dekim, he tell Zechs to keep pushing, he'll regret it, and Zechs suspects Dekim has already taken the nukes from Luna II.
Also, bit of an aside, THIS is what Dekim is riding in from Victory Gundam
No, your eyes do not deceive you, that IS a ship that looks like a motorcycle, but I swear it makes sense.
In Victory Gundam, the designer was a gigantic motorcycle sperg who wanted a ship that could be good on land and in space, and in space, the wheels are supposed to flip horizontional on each side and turn into boosters, but the guys at Banpresto apparently thought it would be more hilarious if the ship still looked like this in space.
One of it's attacks is to basically attempt to run your ass over, which looks HILARIOUS given it's driving on thin air.
Good news is that Dekim's aim is dogshit, especially if you have Focus used during your turn.
Also, don;t waste too much energy trying to kill Dekim yourself until reinforcements arrive, but do try to do some to make their job easier.
The turn after Dekim does his dickwaving with Zechs, he announces his plans to leave the area, which means it's now skill point time, and you lose it if Dekim manages to flee before you either destroy the Adrastea or it takes so much damage it has to emergency retreat.
In short, if Dekim leaves via the north part of the map, kiss the skill point good bye.
Wufei will gun for Heero by default, making the first early recruit checkpoint easier, but be warned his aim is pretty good, so be ready to reload a save if he gets lucky a few too many times.
Despite what Zechs advises don't have Heero and Duo worry too much about the Adrastea, you want them to kill Wufei, Trowa, and as many of Dekim's guard units to make the reinforcements job easier.
If Wufei fights Heero once, he rant about whether your justice is correct. Twice will have Heero tell him to blow up his damn unit and stop this retarded bullshit. Use that to keep track of how many times they fight, because it must be at least twice as well as Heero getting the kill shot on the Altron Gundam.
Also, while most enemies won't try to take potshots at you, they will try to prevent damage to the Adrastea and will support defend it if they are Serpents adjacent, keep that in mind.
Thankfully, as it looks like Dekim will succeed in running like a coward, the Lean Horse team appears just slightly below the enemy forces on the east side of the map. Quatre is glad to see Duo, but Duo tells him they'll talk later, but the Adrastea must be stopped.
With that you get chance to sortie your units, but before confirming their deployment, check their positions and switch the longer range moving ones to the front, you'll want them to catch up the Adrastea.
Once you do that, sortie your units and take that asshole out, surrounding it with your team if possible to prevent it's escape. If other enemies escape, don't worry about them, just kill that Adrastea or force it's HP so low it emergency runs, either one is good enough for the Skill Point.
You'll get some special dialogue with Dekim if Noin or most of your other units exchange blows with him, FYI.
Once Dekim escapes free and clear or you get the skill point, the other enemies will retreat and the stage will end.
Afterwards, you all meet up in the Lean Horse as it speeds for the Moon to compare notes.
Four Murasame (Zeta Gundam) reports Dekim was bullshitting about dropping Luna II on Earth.
In fact, Dekim just took the nukes and some mobile suit generators, he didn't give a shit about anything else in Luna II, meaning he has another use in mind for them.
Roux Luka (Gundam ZZ) then asks what they want those nukes for if not to stuff them into an asteroid sized impact bomb:
Noin figures the mobile suit engines were for the lunar shield generator, and apparently plan to seize the lunar shield then use the nukes to backstab the Titans and scare them into submission.
Quatre then realizes what the real plan is:
The Titans only want the lunar shield to protect the Earth, fuck the space colonies. The Mariameia Army has a similar goal in mind, and you have to screw both over if the shield is going to cover all concerned parties.
Zechs and Noin then meet up (they have a bit of a low key thing for each other), but Duo kills the mood by pointing out it looks like the Preventer membership is a lot smaller than the old Londo Bell forces.
Roux explains the other half of the team is down on Earth, and we find out Trowa decided to surrender himself instead continuing to follow Dekim around and now on the ship with you guys, as he was apparently doing a double agent act, though Wufei apparently has less straightforward motivations.
Note: This was the game that started the infamous franchise gag that whenever Wufei shows up with his Endless Waltz era unit, he will randomly join some enemy team temporarily for some bizarre reason until you punch some sense back into him in later games.
Quatre then says their Gundams are on the Moon under Mao Industries lock and key, so if they get them, they can be used to help out, and since that's where you need to go next, that works out great.
Captain Gomez signs off on this idea as Judau obliquely lampshades how the Gundams got a redesign since they were last seen in the TV series.
Some sperging concerning this:
The designs of the Gundam Wing units in the movie were intended to be their upgraded look in the second half of the TV series, but they screwed up and used earlier drafts of the designs instead, so we're supposed to pretend their Endless Waltz designs were always like that in the TV show.
With that, we cut to the hangar, where Heero is compiling the info on the Mariemeia Army, going over it's young leader.
Her mother was named Leia, but birth records for dad are a huge blank, and Kamille thinks the last name Barton means Trowa is related to the Barton Foundation.
He isn't, though, though his name does come from someone who was related (it's a codename, his real name is never revealed) at one point. Trowa then confirms Mariemeia is little more than a puppet for Dekim's ambitions, he's just using her like he intends to use Relena.
And, to no one's surprise, the Mariemeia Army wants to screw everyone over, seize Project Aegis, and save who they give a shit about, fuck everyone else.
Heero then realizes Dekim is bringing back a variant of the original Operation Meteor plan described in the above spoiler concerning it back, and Trowa explains the idea was, on top on paradropping Gundams to fuck up the Feddies, they were going to use an asteroid drop on the planet as insurance, a plan Dekim came up with based on Operation British, a plan the forces of Zeon intended to use during the Balmar War (and the One Year War between the Federation and Zeon that preceded the Balmar War) to force Earth to surrender, only their plan was going to use a space colony as the planet bomb.
Given how far back the plan goes, this means the Gundams designed by the colonies for Operation Meteor are actually even OLDER than most of the Gundams the Federation developed, which would mean the Gundams from Gundam Wing were the first ones and the Universal Century Gundams are based on them.
Heero gets Kamille off this tangent and says Operation Meteor now is meaningless, and that Dekim is using the ploy of doing that to shield his real goal: shield the colonies from the upcoming gravitational wave, Earth can go screw itself. All their former cooperation with the Titans was just to gain their confidence so they could eventually backstab them.
The nukes the Mariameia Army stole were to keep the Titans from guessing this was their true goal until it was too late, and as the stage ends, Heero grimly notes the time to pilot Wing Zero again has come for him.
I remember the first time I played Alpha Gaiden and having to constantly restart because fucking Wufei kept killing me on that stage. It's almost luck based since you both have about equal chances to hit each other and Altron Gundam's weapons have pretty high crit rates. The other route where you have Skull Squadron and fight the Titans is definitely a simpler affair.
I remember the first time I played Alpha Gaiden and having to constantly restart because fucking Wufei kept killing me on that stage. It's almost luck based since you both have about equal chances to hit each other and Altron Gundam's weapons have pretty high crit rates. The other route where you have Skull Squadron and fight the Titans is definitely a simpler affair.
It's one of the reasons that, if you really want to, you can mostly ignore Wufei on that level. Doing so can force you to have to wait until slightly later to get him on the team, but if you want to ensure Dekim doesn't escape better, you can easily do that.
It's possible to get both accomplished in the same level, but it requires a lot of saving/reloading because of what you mentioned.
Gonna do the next level soon, but before I do, a bit of sperg posting to get some stuff out of the way so I don't have to add a ton of footnotes for the rest of the Gundam content.
First, the reference to the Gundams from Gundam Wing being older than most of the other Gundams depicted was in the first Alpha game. In that game, they had the One Year War from the original Gundam interrupted before it's proper conclusion in the backstory by the SDF-1 Macross crashing through the final battle in space between Zeon and the Federation, along with a lot of meteors and other space crap.
Both fleets got severely damaged, and the damage was so severe both sides were forced to limp back to their own turf and observed what amounted to an informal ceasefire while they licked their wounds.
This allowed the guys who made the first Alpha game to basically blend most of the Universal Gundam plot to together and age most characters to their Zeta Gundam era ages so they could start with that as the main plot line.
The idea for the Gundams was actually a merger of the origins of the Gundams in Wing and the Universal Century, with the original designer of the Tallgeese, the prototype for the rest of the Wing Gundams, sharing notes with Earth Federation designers, who then used that as a base for the Gundam and Gundam MK-II as depicted during the UC canon, with the original Gundam being built during the cease fire mentioned above.
They used the original novelization of the original series so Amuro Ray would be an Earth Federation officer from the get go. Meanwhile, the Gundam 0083 Gundams were built as a side project of this Feddie weapons program as a countermeasure for when Zeon inevitably broke the ceasefire. The Antarctic Treaty from the original series was considered a joke measure at best and neither side really expected the other to honor it anymore than in the original source canon.
Meanwhile, during the ceasefire, the colonies were getting more and more pissed Earth was showing it's ass (even despite the informal truce) that Operation Meteor was put on the drawing board and the other Gundams from Gundam Wing were built.
The Gundams from Victory Gundam are more recent, and were an attempt to build smaller, more maneuverable versions of their larger and bulkier predecessors (with the UC Gundam technology gap of 70 or so years handwaved away by it being an experimental program) and were deployed during the Balmar War by the League Militaire, basically semi-civilian EF members serving as an auxiliary military force because the main army had it's hands full dealing with other threats, and the League basically was supposed to handle the Jupiterians (AKA the villains from Victory Gundam, with Paptimus Scirroco defecting to them after moonlighting with the Titans since he was originally from Jupiter), but they had to join forces with Londo Bell during the Balmar War when the Jupiterians allied with the Balmarians to turn the screws on Earth.
Zeon and Neo-Zeon were handled slightly differently than in canon. Zeon immediately set about pissing all over the ceasefire by the time the first game began and was a threat for most of the game until the Balmar War had gotten bad enough that Kycilla Zabi offered a formal ceasefire to the Federation in light of the more pressing concerns of the alien threat. Her brother Gihren was a bit put out over this and continued fighting the Federation under Neo-Zeon, which he had secretly jumpstarted during the ceasefire, even creating his younger clone Glemmy Toto from Gundam ZZ, essentially as a just in case plan for that eventuality.
Canonically, Londo Bell agreed to the cease fire on behalf of the Federation.
Haman Khan would succeed Gihren as Neo-Zeon's leader and was convinced by Char to get the remaining NZ forces to stand down during the Balmar War.
Char's Counterattack characters and some events played out in the original game, but most of them were persuaded by Char to ally with Londo Bell temporarily due to the mutual threat of the Balmar invasion.
The actual story of Char's Counterattack will actually play out in Alpha 2, but Alpha Gaiden will show where Char's reasoning for carrying the plot out came from.
The Titans were initially formed during the ceasefire period should Zeon attack again, and OZ was formed to deal with possible colonial terrorists pissed off at Earth around the same time, and since both organizations hated each other, the first Alpha game had a hilarious pissing contest between OZ and the Titans, and Treize was so happy to tweak their noses he even blatantly ran interference for the heroes just to piss the Titans off at one point.
The Mobile Doll AI program from Gundam Wing was initially developed for the same reasons as in canon, and when OZ became defunct the Titans picked up the pieces and incorporated that technology into their own forces.
Both Operation British and Operation Meteor never got off the ground past their initial stages in the first Alpha game, with the first one being foiled by the SDF-1 inspired cease fire, and the second by the Wing Gundam pilots being incorporated into Londo Bell to deal with mutual threats to the whole solar system.
The Anti-Earth Union Group (AEUG) and Karaba from Zeta Gundam joined forces under Londo Bell's banner to deal with the Balmarian threat, aided and abetted by Earth Federation military officers who were willing to give them a measure of legal protection despite their opposition to the Titans because they really needed the extra help to fight off the Balmar threat. They were given the collective title of the "13th Autonomous Corps Londo Bell" in order to give them EF sanction and they were seconded off to assist the Space Defense Force from Macross to deal not only with the Balmarians, but also the Zentradi from Macross.
However, despite all this ass coverage, how the Balmar War ended allowed the Titans to blame Londo Bell for bringing the gravitational wave from that WMD they cooked off to end the war, and they convinced most of the Earth Federation Forces to see their side of things so by the end of the first Alpha game the Titans gained considerable control over the Earth Federation like they did at the end of Gundam 0083, thus allowing them to place most EF personnel under Londo Bell command under arrest like happened in the end of the 0083 plot.
I've always wanted to jump into Super Robot Wars. I've dabbled with OG, and I always get a kick of using Sanger in Project X Zone. Speaking of Project X Zone, do you have any plans on doing a let's sperg of that game, considering it is the sequel to Namco x Capcom.
I've always wanted to jump into Super Robot Wars. I've dabbled with OG, and I always get a kick of using Sanger in Project X Zone. Speaking of Project X Zone, do you have any plans on doing a let's sperg of that game, considering it is the sequel to Namco x Capcom.
I'm considering it, but let's see how well this one goes.
While much shorter than the first Super Robot Wars Alpha, this game is still going to be extremely story heavy and it's going to be very time consuming LSing the whole thing.
We start this level with Gomez confirming the Wing Gundam cast area heading for the Moon and Zechs confirms they'll beat the Mariemeia Army there by attaching a space booster to a shuttle.
Judau then objects, bringing up how the final battle with the Zentradi in the last war left a TON of debris lying around in space, and Duo casually replies his flying will handle that.
Gomez then tells them to stay safe, but Judau inwardly snarks that's pretty pointless.
Kamille and the League Militaire guys want to join them, but Gomez says no, they need to stay behind on the ship,
We then cut to the hangar, where Four pulls Kamille aside for a brief chat, and romantic tension spark when Kamille admits Fa Yuiry (the other girl he's in a love triangle with) is on the Moon.
We then cut away from cheesy melodrama to serious shit at Mao Industries, where Fa Yuiry is warning Ring shit's about to go pear shaped:
Ring is not thrilled to discover they have only 109 minutes before the assault begins, and why Nina Purpleton from Gundam 0083 is aghast, Viletta Vadim/Badim/Prisken (Original character) accepts it for what it is.
(Nina left, Viletta right)
Note: Viletta is the female counterpart to Ingram Prisken, an EFA officer turned traitor for the Balmarians, actually a mole they planted from the get go. Viletta was supposed to be his female clone and support for his infiltration, but she shared his desire to break free of their original masters control, and he charged her with doing that since they literally had a mental shackle on him preventing him from backstabbing his own bosses, while she didn't)
Ringe wishes Ryune/Lune (Zoldark, Bian's daughter) was here, but Viletta points out they need to focus on the here and now, then offers to launch in the R-Gun. Fa is surprised they still have, since the titans confiscated all the other units in the R series, but Viletta let the Titans think it got destroyed in the final stages of the Balmar War and had Ring keep it in secret.
We also find out GW gundams are ready to launch as soon as the pilots show up, but Ring really doesn't want this place to become a battlefield.
Two reasons:
1. Mao Industries has the lunar transmitter,and if gets destroyed, they won't have the resources to build another in time.
2. Below Mao Industries in the Moon Cradle, where, in the event the transmitter fails, a fair proportion of the remnant of humanity can ride out the apocalypse.
Viletta then points out that if they keep the enemy away from said targets, problem solved.
Nina then points out their limited numbers, but Viletta's mind is made up, but calms Ring down by saying she's just buying time for reinforcements.
Nina goes to make the GW units ready for their owners, and Fa decides to join Viletta.
We cut to the battle maps, where Zechs and Quatre deploy so Viletta's R-Gun and Fa's Methuss won't feel so alone, and the other guys run to board their Gundams. A few moments later, the Heavy Arms Kai (Custom in JP), Deathscythe Hell, and Wing Zero deploy.
A few minutes left to go before combat, Duo asks if they can trust Viletta to not flip flop her allegiance, and Viletta, having decided to stick with the good guys, merely tells him to shoot her in the back if he even thinks she's turning again.
Duo figures that's good enough, and that's when a force of OZ model Leos, Tauruses,and Serpents shows up with Dekim's Adrastea. The good news is that they won't be using nukes so as to not destroy the transmitter, but you still have to keep them from getting it.
Here's a tactical overview of the battle:
See that square around where the blue units are? If even ONE enemy breaches it, GAME OVER.
That's right, this is a siege level.
It'll be easy enough keeping the Leos, Serpents, and even the Adrastea away, they are pretty slow, but the Tauruses can switch to Mobile Armor (flight) mode and gain some movement because they are much faster when flying, so prioritize them for destruction.
Good news is the square area is a massive recovery hotspot, so go nuts using energy weapons, you will need to. Also, while you cannot completely cover all sides, make sure to simply shoot down any units closest to gain ingress to any one side, and make liberal use of artillery and long range attacks.
tl;dr: Make sure to target any land units about to breach the central crater or any Taurus in flight distance.
Final notes: Fa's Methuss is a ho-hum healing unit with a flight mode, have her support the others with healing and laser potshots at enemies. Viletta's R-Gun, as the name implies, is an artillery unit with a lot of guns, including some twin laser cannons usable when her will is high, and they do a crapload of damage but use a lot of energy. Last, place Heero towards the northwestern side of the square, reinforcements will show up from that side and his attacks are very useful there.
After two or so initial rounds of defense that aren't too hard so long as the flying Tauruses are murdered first, the Lean Horse arrives from the northeast, whereupon you can deploy it's forces, all of which, including the ship itself, should help firm up the square against enemy ingress. You can't cover it completely, but you can plug trouble spots and shift units as need be depending on how the battle goes.
We get a bit of cheesy melodrama with the Zeta love triangle, but Judau tells everyone to cut the crap, we have a lunar station to defend.
However, Dekim planned for this, and thus Wufei and some reinforcements appear from the west.
To fulfill getting Wufei early, Part 2, simply have him and Heero fight and have Heero get the kill shot. Be warned, Wufei is a bastard to shoot down because he has the Prevail skill, which raises his stats the lower his HP gets.
As for the skill point, that requires taking out the Adrastea, as in, destroying it. However, even if you cheated and buffed everyone to max weapon power, keep in mind at 3/4 health down it will retreat, so you'll want one powerful unit to be supported by another when you hope to kill it, so the combination of attacks will be enough overkill to prevent leaving the Adrastea alive to flee.
Marbet, Fa, or anyone else with the Support skill is a good choice when paired with a unit with a power attack like Heero, Zechs, Uso, Viletta, etc.
As an aside, you'd better remember this battle map, we will fight the True Final Boss here.
Also, you'll get more battle banter between named characters, including Heero telling Wufei to quit being retarded. If Viletta fights Dekim, she point out his ship is silly, and he'll remark to himself that the Titans info he got on the SRX project (the project that produced the R series mechs) was inaccurate.
Aside from following the above, this battle requires not much thought at all, but do grab the Solar Panel in the Box sooner or later, they help restore energy per turn to a unit.
After it's all said and done, Dekim runs, heading for Earth since he can't get the transmitter by force, and Viletta tells Fa to head for Earth with the rest of the team.
Back on the Lean Horse, as it speeds for Earth, they find out they are heading for the Titans stronghold at Dakar, with Zechs guessing they'll use the nukes to threaten the Titans into handing over the Macross, still giving Dekim another trump card.
Gomez pops in at this point to report on the Earth team's success in liberating the Far East from Titans Control, and the Skull Squadron from Macross and the Gundam 0083 good guys helped the Earth based Preventers liberate South Atalia.
However, the bad news is that they now know where Bright Noah and the remaining Earth Federation members of the Preventers are being detained. Specifically, Aleg Base, not far from Dakar.
This is still considered good news since that rescue will free Quattro and Emma from doing the Titans bidding, thus all they'll have to take back are the Macross and Relena.
I'll cover the Earth based levels next before we go with the Moon Route version of Stage 6.
Before I cover the Earth levels, I'm gonna sperg a bit about the series covered on that route to spare me a ton of footnotes later.
Mazinger Z: The grandaddy of Super Robot anime. Invented the idea of robots shooting their fists at enemies as weapons (aka Rocket Punches). It was done by Go Nagai, intended as a more kid friendly work than some of his more adult stuff.
It's hero is Kouji Kabuto (a bit of a pun, as his last name means "helmet", appropriate given how the cockpit for his machine is located on it's head), who also coined the idea of dramatic screaming being standard for piloting mecha and had sideburns so pronounced you could cut yourself on the edges.
The main villain was Dr. Hell, a guy who looked like an evil version of Santa with purple skin who was once a trusted scientist until he tried to steal Photon Power, a power source discovered by Kouji's grandfather, and when that failed, he decided to try his hand at building overly complex mecha and going for taking it by force, only for Kouji to constantly ruin his shit.
Great Mazinger: Sequel to the original. It's hero was Tetsuya Tsurugi, Kouji's adoptive older brother, and the enemy was basically a genie Dr. Hell's death let out of the bottle. The enemy was the Mycenae Empire, a bunch of Grecian themed freaks loosely based on the civilization that preceded the original Greeks. This was the show that introduced a somewhat darker plot that the original Mazinger, had liberal use of swords by the title mech, and rather courageously, handled the topic of racism, as the girlfriend of the hero was half black, half Japanese and got some shit for it.
Voltes V: The somewhat more serious counterpart to Combattler. Also handled themes of racism and a somewhat darker plot.
It was BIG in the Philippines, where it was very popular as a symbol of rebellion against Ferdinand Marcos, who banned it allegedly for excessive violence, but the real reasons were obvious and fooled no one.
Dancougar: Before Masami Obari would go on to do ridiculous titty anime and the porno Angel Blade, Dancougar was his first work. Despite being a Super Robot show, the plot was very serious and military oriented, had a high body count, and basically served to deconstruct all the cliches of Super Robot anime.
Interestingly enough, Super Robot Wars introduced a change to the original canon sponsored by Obari himself. He let a character die in the original series whose machine could have been used as a flight mode expansion pack for Dancougar, so the plot was modified in Alpha 3 to give Dancougar an upgrade, and all future games would default to this as canon, allowing the pilot of said flight pack to live.
Obari was a big SRW fanboy and would later gain rights to direct one of the SRW based anime. I personally wasn't a huge fan of it myself.
Macross: Macross originally was a parody of Gundam, hoping to deconstruct the idea of a conventionally understood enemy and that you could win a war simply by punching people in the face. It also had a huge thing about music and culture.
It was brought to the US originally in a modified form by Carl Macek as Robotech, which used most of the original plot and grafted some barely related series onto the end and it did it's own thing, and while SRW uses the original Macross, some of the name changes from Robotech did get adopted by the Japanese in later revisions of Macross.
The original wanted the Zentradi from the original to have extremely unconventional names, which proved almost impossible to pronounce, so some of Robotech's easier to say names were used in later versions because they were easier to say.
The fan translation defaults to this to maintain continuity with later re-releases of the original Macross.
Macross also introduced the idea of jets that turn into robots. The original creator was a huge fan of airplanes, so he decided to expand his sperging to fuse the idea of planes turning into mecha and back again.
SRW kicks ass.
Even though the nintendo DS endless frontier sucked a lot due to the plot being based only on titty jokes and that cheap shit called "Forced Evasion".
We start this stage at the Far East Base, where the Cyber Beast Force from Dancougar is locked up and not happy about it in the slightest.
Team leader Shinobu Fujiwara is pissed, but wingman Masato reminds him their bosses, General Oka (Voltes V) and Igor (Dancougar) will pay if they try to escape.
CBF member Sarah is a bit annoyed Oka just let the Titans have the run of the place, and Hiyoshi, the Voltes V counterpart to Kosuke from Combattler, he's just as annoyed.
Like the Combattler team, at least one member of the team is directly related to the guy in charge, in this case, Megumi, Oka's daughter, she's sure dad is just biding his time, but Daijirou (Daisaku's Voltes counterpart) isn't so sure.
Shinobu gripes they didn't win a war just to be cucks for the Titans, and the most leveled head CBF member Ryo wisely reminds all of them Project Aegis is likely why their bosses are playing nice, they don't want it jeopardized.
Shinobu snaps it would then be better to beat the shit out of the Titans and do Aegis themselves, to which Ryo has no comeback, and Voltes team leader Kenichi doesn't have a good remark for that.
They then discuss how Char was apparently a bitch of the Titans now, and Kenichi points out neither Amuro Ray nor Quattro/Char would suck Titans dick for no reason, and when Shinobu wants to know why anyone would cuck themselves to the Titans willingly, Kenichi points out a gun may be heads to make them obey.
Ippei of the Voltes team then adds South Atalia and the SDF are all under Titans control, and Ryo points out, at present, they'd just be begging for a hole in the head given their current situation.
Megumi then points out their surviving friends are sure to bust them out, and Kenichi concurs.
We then cut to the control center of the Far East, where Mauer Pharoah (Jerid's girlfriend) is checking off the list of places under Titan control, and her boss Jamaican Daninghan wants a report on the others.
Mauer reports all the other places on the list have been holding out, and Jerid's fuckup is cursed out again. And, upon getting wind the Preventers are gathering allies, Jamaican pointedly asks Oka if he was hoping for this.
Oka merely repeats the party line:
Despite that, Oka is not entirely convincing, so Ross Igor, commander of the CBF, backs Oka up on how they can't control everyone:
Jamaican still isn't buying it, pointing out the only reason they folded so easily was to lower the Titans guard for a counteroffensive. Igor again repeats Oka's reasons, and Jamaican says it doesn't matter, the Titans plan to run all aspects of Aegis in-house to make sure no loyalty questions come up.
Despite pointing out the Titans are fucking morons who can't decide what to do if one of the machines they captured fucks up and that the shield is still short of energy, Jamaican make clear they only care if there is enough to protect Earth itself, fuck anyone else.
He then smugly adds another force is enroute to the Moon (which just backstabbed the Titans and got their asses beat) to seize the lunar station, then he changes subjects to welcome Yazan Gable and Quattro in.
Yazan has good news:
Yazan then asks what to do with the Cyber Beast Force machines, and Jamaican doesn't give a shit, saying they can use them as human shields. When Yazan says they'll likely revolt, Jamaican gives him free reign to take care of things if that happens.
And that's when Jamaican decides to twist the knife because he's a smug dick:
Keep in mind this is utter bullshit, he's just being an asshole because he can be, not to mention the Titans aren't happy Londo Bell managed to make them look bad during the Balmar War (when the Dakar speech from Zeta Gundam happened, in which Char on the Londo Bell's behalf denounced how the Titans were assholes and how they were doing a piss-poor job defending the planet before the Earth Federation government)
Yazan then tries to twist the knife to Char how he's now their bitch, but Jamaican wisely warns Yazan not to encourage him contact with his former allies more than need be.
He then mentions it would be good to have the Great Mazinger added to their pile of mecha, and Lyla comes in bearing good news:
Both Tetsuya and his and Kouji's dad are obviously not thrilled about this:
Oka's quietly shocked they've been captured, and Lyla informs Jamaican the machine is enroute as she speaks. While Oka tries to keep himself in check, Tetsuya is eyeing the guards in the room and is planning how to kick their ass when the time comes, noting that his dad is no wuss and that Oka (a former ninjitsu master before he entered military service) will be useful for when the time to strike back happens.
He then remarks things are in the hands of Boss and Jun Honou (his girlfirend) now.
Jamaican doesn't catch on as he says he plans to use this as bait to get Kouji Kabuto and the Mazinger as well, and to Kenzou's shock, Jamaican confirms he got Professor Yumi (father of Kouji's girlfriend) to spill his guts about Kouji being at the Tesla-Leicht Labs in the States.
While Tetsuya sees Jamaican's arrogance as a chance to strike back, Kenzou hopes he'll survive this to see his sons again (they are somewhat estranged save Tetsuya per Great Mazinger canon, as Kouji was raised by his grandfather).
We then cut to the battle map outside the Big Falcom, Far East HQ, where the Titans are escorting the Great Mazinger:
Jamaican asks about the Venus A (Jun Honou's unit), and they admit it's AWOL, which Jamaican writes off as no big deal.
And that's when Great Mazinger's theme plays as the armor falls off the Great, revealing a shell with the Venus A underneath as Jamaican realizes they've been had, which Jun trolls him over:
Jamaican is about to ask Kenzou what the hell is going on, but that's when the Venus A blitz attacks the Big Falcon, and Tetsuya uses the distraction to punch out the guards and make a break for it. Unfortunately, Kenzou takes a hit, but it's not grave as Oka tells Tetsuya to haul ass as he and Igor use the chaos to get the CBF and Voltes out, Tetsuya and Jun just need to buy them time.
Jun brought the Brain Condor (Great Mazinger's core head unit) and Tetsuya hops in it, hoping Boss shows up with the real Great so he can thrash Titans with it.
Speaking them, they aren't happy, as some Bylarants, Contios, and GM Quels show up to interdict your little counter-hijacking. Thankfully, Boss (he has no last name) shows up in his Boss Borot (the silliest fucking thing in the entire Mazinger franchise, and long considered a joke unit of the series, though it's got less and less useless as time has gone on), where he has the rest of the real Great Mazinger with him, Tetsuya just needs to grab it.
Boss has it partially submerged to hide it from the Titans, so Tetsuya needs to fly over to the tile where the Great is to board it while not getting killed by Titans forces.
Jamaican is really pissed, but before he can say anything, another machine is detected inbound for the Far East HQ. They can't figure out what it is, and Jamaican can see which way the wind is blowing and says prep the Sudori in case he has to run.
Alright, it's time to fight, here's the battle overview:
Part one of the fight is simple; Tetsuya must not die before he reaches the Great Mazinger.
Your objective is immediately one tile east of the farthest blue dot, the Boss Borot, with the Venus A and Brain Condor being the other two dots. Ignore anything else but this objective for now.
The Brain Condor is not that durable, and the Venus A is not much more than a support unit with moderate combat skills, and it will be overwhelmed, so don't even think of fighting a set piece battle, just make it to the objective. Boss' Borot is an easily destroyed joke, don't even think can do shit for now except sit there.
Just skirt past the Asshimars, dodge hits where possible, and don't let anyone die. Most units will gun for Boss, so have him defend.
Thankfully, after two turns, an old friend (in a different unit than Tetsuya was expecting) shows up:
Sure enough, it's Masaki Andoh from the Balmar War days (Banpresto Original character), and he's not the slightest bit surprised the Titans are being faggots, mentioning La Gias (the place where his machine is from) and Earth aren't too different then.
Masaki's two talking cats Kuro and Shiro (Black and white, after their colors) comment Masaki's legendarily shitty directional sense didn't screw him this time, and Masaki confirms he's riding in a machine called Jaohm, his Cybuster is currently in the body and fender shop.
Anyway, by the time this happens, we find out the Voltes and Dacougar teams are out, but their machines are not, and as Tetsuya nears Great, he hopes they don't get captured again.
As the fight resumes, park Tetsuya over the tile next to Boss to start part 2 of this fight.
We have Great Mazinger now, bitches:
Now that Boss can move, use his Guts spirit spell to heal him and plant his ass underwater, beam weapons can't do shit there, and that's what the Titans love. Meanwhile, work Tetsuya and the others over to the Big Falcon base, Jamaican about to run like a bitch, and you will have to destroy his Sudori if you want a skill point.
After a turn, the CBF is running into trouble:
The Voltes team isn't much better off, trying to avoid getting shot but not being in mech boarding distance. Oka tells everyone to not worry about him, he'll be a distraction, and when Shinobu and Megumi don't want to let their bosses die, both guys tell their subordinates to quit being idiots, and Ross literally pulls rank on Shinobu and tells him it's a order.
Thankfully, more help arrives, in form of Alan Igor, Ross Igor's son.
Alan doesn't waste time in hosing Titan ground forces from his Black Wing, then flies off, telling them the Argamma will be there very soon to be their relief, having bought the needed time for the Voltes and Dancougar guys.
Meanwhile, Jamaican has realized everything has gone completely down the shitter and is gonna cut his losses. Yazan tells his boss he was a bit dumb for letting this happen, and while Jamaican doesn't take Yazan's comment well, Yazan reminds his butthurt superior they should split with what they have, and when Jamaican is all to happy to do that, Yazan is utterly disgusted with how much of a weeping vagina Jamaican is.
With that, some Gaplants, Taurus Mobile Armors, a Recarl, three Hambrabi (MA mode), Quattro in the Hyaku Shiki and Emma in her Gundam Mk-II serve to prevent your team from getting close to the Sudori Jamaican is flying until he runs like a pussy.
FYI, this is your target:
This thing is actually fairly weak, but it doesn't have far to flee before the map edge.
Good news is that as it looks like it will run, the Voltes and Dancougar show up on one side, and the other guys from Stage 3 on the other, and they need to drop everything and kill that Sudori.
Before though, Banjou tells Jamaican that he thinks justice is on his side, right? He says yes, and that's when Banjou tells Jamaican he's about to find out just whose side it's REALLY on.
Once you kill the Sudori or it flees, battle is over.
Banjou then gets a call from Oka that Professor Kabuto and Professor Hamaguchi (Voltes designer) are safe.
We cut back to Far East HQ, where Yotsuya is happy to see his colleague Hamaguchi is alive:
They discuss Nanbara's death, but Voltes' other designer, Kentarou, he says they need to honor his death by making Aegis succeed.
That's when Kentarou's wife and fellow scientist Mitsuyo asks what their next step is:
We get assurances they are heading for the Macross eventually, and that's when Garrison pops in and tells Banjou DC Japan branch was leveled by the Titans.
Thankfully, all people were evacuated, but anything else of value inside is now gone. However, Banjou suspects another player may have been involved:
We cut to outside where Akira is saying his to his girlfriend Mari.
While Mari is here to help Akira, some of Akira's Mutropolis buddies are helping a Dr. Eri Anzai, a researcher into Extra Over technology that Reidden wingman Sarumaru has the hots for.
Mari gets a bit jealous as Akira appears to be grinning at this, so he quickly changes the subject, as they are investigating underground movements, specifically, that of enemy factions that got whipped hard enough they fled underground to lick their wounds since the last war, and the Dinosaur Empire of Getter Robo and the Myceanan head the list of guys that likely survived.
We then cut to a brief reunion with Kenzou, Tetsuya, and Jun.
Tetsuya wants to make sure Kenzou's fine, but since the only thing that got clipped was one of his artifical limbs (he's part cyborg), it's fine, and Jun is relieved to hear this too:
Tetsuya then asks if his dad is going to see Kouji or the youngest of the family, Shiro, but Kenzou isn't ready yet (he gave up most of his time as a father for his career and never forgave himself for it, now he's too ashamed to face his youngest biological children).
Before we go on, bit of a sperg post, just to explain some more about Masoukisin: The Lord of Elemental.
It was a Banpresto original property invented around the time of Super Robot Wars 2 for the NES. They wanted to include the series Aura Battle Dunbine, but were unable to secure the rights for it at the time.
They later got them by Super Robot Wars 4, but by then the Masoukishin stuff had taken off.
The Masoukisin stuff is about a world inside the Earth called La Gias, where machines that are half powered by magic kick ass, and four separate countries all give each other a wary eye.
The Elemental Lords are the most powerful of the machines fielded by the side Masaki Andoh would wind up on in that game, and he originally piloted the Jaohm, but later became the pilot of the Elemental Lord Cybuster/Psybuster.
The plot of Masoukishin, Part 1 is as follows:
1. Masaki winds up in La Gias, gets told he's a pilot, meets a bunch of people from around the Earth who were also summoned there, and initially, he's not all that crazy about it.
2. He changes his mind when he realizes just how fucked up things are and gets the Cybuster to recognize him as it's master.
3. Discovers a 2edgy4u death cult to a god named Shiva Volkruss is starting shit, and around the same time meets a smug jackass named Shu Shirakawa when he briefly teleports back to the Earth during a freak accident, doesn't think much of the guy at the time.
4. Shit gets worse in La Gias, the Volkruss cult discovered to be balls deep in pitting the nations against each other.
5. Finally comes to a head when Shu is revealed to be a leading member of said cult, murders Masaki's adoptive dad in La Gias, and Masaki gives chase back to Earth to hunt Shu down.
6. The plots of SRW 2, Alpha, or Original Generation 1 all start at this point.
In all the games I mentioned, until the end of Super Robot Wars 3, Alpha Gaiden, or Original Generations Gaiden, Shu pings pongs between powerful yet uncertain ally of the good guys and having his own agenda, and Masaki keeps insisting the bastard is a snake but has to work with him despite hating it because circumstances force them to ally temporarily, until Shu drops any reason to be a good guy and tries to kill everyone.
His death at the end of any of the above games begins Masoukishin Part 2.
Alpha Gaiden is when Shu, who had been mostly good in Alpha 1, drops the act and goes full evil.
Anyway, as an aside, the original Masoukishin (a full standalone game in it's own right) had a pretty universal cast from Earth, including a Chinese guy, a Norwegian woman, and even a Muslim dude from what was implied to be Egypt. We get to meet some of them in this game.
Gonna do another sperg post, because next level drops a shitload of references that doing this will keep me from having to do footnotes for.
The Macross and SRX team cast debut in next episode, as well as some Gundam 0083 alumni, so I'll get a few things out of the way regarding them.
Gundam 0083: We get to meet Bernard Monsha from this show next level, and Super Robot Wars did something very important for his character. In the actual show, he was a fucking asshat. SRW tones him down and makes him less someone you want to strangle by quite a bit.
Macross: We get to meet the Skull Squadron from Macross next level, and their leader uses the Robotech last name for it's leader, Roy Fokker (after the German WWI plane). The original version was "Focker", which obscured the reference and sounded a tad closer to the F-bomb.
Max Jenius and his wife Milia (a Meltrandi, a female Zentradi) show up, and even though SRW Alpha 1 gave the option to have Max macronized (use Zentradi tech to be about their size, as they are like 50 feet tall normally) or not, they went with the canon option of Milia and Max both being human sized and piloting Valkyries (planes that can become robots).
Hikaru Ichijou could choose between one of two ladies from the original Macross as his love interest in the previous game (like he had to in the source canon), but this game leaves his choice ambiguous and a nonfactor.
SRX Team/Banpresto Original Characters:
Ryusei Date is the pilot of the R-1 unit of the team, and he was picked to pilot it based on his scores in a VR sim called "Burning PT", a military training sim disguised as a civilian video game.
Ryusei is a bit of a deconstruction of the "guy who plays games can do IRL military shit", as he learns especially in the Original Generation series real life involves death and other circumstances video games don't prepare you for, and he even got an evil counterpart in Original Generation who was a fat fuck who treated war like a game, something that horrified any remaining delusions about war out of Ryusei after seeing a dark parody of himself.
He even got his machine owned by a bunch of tanks in the anime adaptation of the first Original Generation game, just to hammer home that some smart guys in tanks can out maneuver an overconfident retard in a robot.
The pilot of the R-2 is Radiese F. "Rai" Branstein, a German blond prettyboy who is pretty much a no-nonsense hardass and a foil to Ryusei. He cameos briefly, but his machine will not.
The pilot of the R-3 is Aya Kobayashi, a green haired chick who serves as the senior team leader. In the last war and in Original Generation she had a big thing for the former team leader Ingram Prisken, and when he turned out to be a Balmarian mole, she didn't take it well. She eventually got over it in all canons though.
Her machine will show in this game briefly.
Another guy who will have a brief role is Irmgault "Irm" Kazahara, canon pilot of the Grungust, the Banpresto Original Super Robot from Super Robot Wars 4 that also shows up in this game (depending on what level difficulty you go for).
He and Ring Mao used to be an item but they aren't on dating terms anymore, though not for lack of trying on Irm's part to rekindle the flame every now and then. Ring broke up with him because he's a bit of a flirt, and while otherwise generally loyal to her, he pissed her off one too many times.
Note: For the purposes of covering multiple routes and better skill point acquisition, I have semi-cheated from this point, using a bit of hacking to full upgrade units, but all game strategy will still be given as if one were playing completely legitimately.
We begin stage five on the Argamma, where Garrison informs Banjou they will be ready to move soon.
That's when Reika, one of Banjou's TWO girlfriends (I said TWO, man is mecha James Bond, remember) fills him in on the events of Stage 4 Moon Route:
After Garrison explains Dekim's likely plan is to kill off everyone on Earth, Beauty (Banjou's other girlfriend) asks for a little clarification:
After getting this, Beauty then still points nukes are overkill if Dekim wants to create death by gravity wave, but accepts the "a distraction" explanation.
That's when Masaki pops in:
Masaki says he plans to head off and check the South Atalia branch of the DC on his own hook, and when pressed, he explains he's hunting down Shirakawa, who Banjou confirms has been AWOL since the end of the Balmar War.
Garrison's information that DC Japan has been leveled shocks Masaki, but the fact Shu is still missing puzzles him. We also get reports that few units disappeared shortly after the Balmar War, including Lune Zoldark and her Valsione/Valcione, right before Ring Mao's eyes.
Note: This is a reference to Super Robot Wars EX, a Gaiden game set between SRW3 and 4.
Masaki chews on that and realizes La Gias had a similar report of a girl named Mio disappeared to Earth briefly (she cameoed in the first Alpha), so they may be connected. He then says what Banjou already believes, Shu's alliance with the good guys was for mutual gain, that's over and done with now.
Masaki then heads off to South Atalia, but promises to keep in touch.
However, before he leaves Garrison asks Masaki to take a GPS with Atalia's coordinates with him, and without a trace of sarcasm asks Masaki to let Kuro and Shiro handle most of the driving. Masaki is a bit annoyed, but agrees to do so.
Note: Masaki's legendarily shit directional sense is a running gag of the franchise. When this dude gets lost, he gets LOST.
We then cut to the Tesla-Leicht Labs in Colorado, North America, where Robot 'Rob" Ohmiya (creator of Burning PT and chief SRX Project engineer) is thanking Kouji Kabuto for repulsing the Titans.
We then have Kouji's girlfriend Sakaya asking what word he got from Japan:
Rob explains the Titans got their shit pushed in, and we also find out the SRX team is on South Atalia Island, under Titans custody, and since the Balamar War the SRX project was frozen and the Titans snapped up most of the pieces, though Rob snuck off tolielow in Colorado and avoided the Titan dragnet.
Kouji thanks him for the information then asks the doc to work on (Mazin)kaiser's drive program issues in the meantime.
Note: Mazinkaiser is the originally SRW exclusive upgrade to Mazinger Z, later incorporated into the original source canon.
We then cut to South Atalia, where Bask/Basque Ohm of the Titans is asking Aya Kobayashi's adoptive dad if the conditioning of her and Levi Tolar/Mai Kobayashi (her real name, adopted younger sister of Aya) is done.
Kenzou has no intention of making them do the Titans bidding and is playing for time:
Bask doesn't like the excuses, and when Bask is realizing the SRX is off the table as an energy shield battery, Kenzou suggests some other mechs from the Balmar War fill the blanks:
Bask is not amused and points out all of them are AWOL now, and tells Kenzou to quit wasting his time, it will get him nowhere.
Alarm klaxons go off, and Irm Kazahara reports to Bask that the Skull Squadron got fed up with being bitches to the Titans are about to haul ass out of there:
Bask is pissed and tells Irm to help Titan commander Ben Wooder shoot their asses down. Irm says his machine got fucked up so he'll send some others to do it, and Bask reminds Irm he was not charged with being an enemy of the Earth Federation (aka, the Titans) so long as he cooperated, and Irm doesn't miss a beat as he replies he's well aware.
We then cut to over the Pacific, enroute to Atalia as Kouji gets a transmission from what appears to be the Cybuster, and they think that, based on it's trajectory, it's heading for Atalia as well. Kouji decides to head there as well, and the stage finally begins.
The Skull Squadron's jailbreak was quickly reacted to, as Skull commander Roy Fokker grimly notes:
Hikaru tells his boss it's not something to be happy about, and says he wants to go to Dakar and fuck up Titans. Fokker is all for this, and wingman Hayao Kazikaki loves this idea. Max asks his wife Miria/Milia if she's okay, and she's all "I'm good, thanks for asking".
Alright guys, you know the drill, tactical overview time:
Titans goons have most chokepoints covered, but your goal should be to kill them, not escape the map. The Valkyries are some of the speediest units in the game, so chances of dying here are low so long as you team doesn't do anything particularly stupid. Also, in a few turns some old friends forced to fight you will show up, so keep everyone alive until that changes.
Ben Wooder pilots the Sudori way over on the east side of the map, but he's not critical to kill, the Skill point will come out later.
All the Titans units you've seen before, so no need to go over them.
After a turn and probably a few Marasais nearby dead (try to conserve your best attacks), two Gespenst Mk-IIs and some GM Quels will come out, and Irm gives them their marching orders:
Monsha realizes Irm's formal speaking is out of character, so he tells Kou Uraki and fellow wingmate Chuck Keith (both from Gundam 0083) in the other two GMs to not go easy on the Skull Squadron, pointing out despite Kou's objections, Monsha's own boss Lt. South Burning and Bright Noah have guns to their their heads if they don't comply.
Ryusei and Rai don't like this either, but Aya and Levi/Mai both have guns to their heads too, so they have to do this.
And, as Irm's internal monologue reveals, the real goal is to bullshit the Titans:
Roy is in on Irm's plans and tells the other Squadron members to purposely avoid cockpit shots.
With this in mind, the next few turns are simple: If good guys have to fight, EVADE and don't return fire. As for the Titans, keep killing them.
Before we continue, though, I want to discuss the Leadership/Command skill.
If you hover over certain units, you'll see a yellow kanji symbol and around the unit certain tiles will be highlighted. This is the command aura, and all units in that radius gain increased stats. You can use this to your advantage, but beware, enemies can do so with their own command units.
After a few turns of this, you should be able to finish off most of the initial Titans, and Bask shows up with some Mobile Doll AI Tauruses while piloting his own Sudori.
Of course, Bask stupidly left his bargaining chips behind with Irm, and after another turn of playing along, that will backfire on him:
Bask's Taurus squad self destructs, and this (and I don't use this term lightly) slut pops out in her own machine.
Her name is Saphine Grace, and she's LOLing at how the Mobile Dolls were so easy to screw up.
To save myself some sperging later, this woman is one of Shu's loyalest goons. Not only would she do anything for him (and wants to do all sorts of things with him, if you know what I mean), she is one of the most PERVERSE characters in the entire series. Every other line sounds like a sex reference, and she's so crass her original machine in Masoukishin had a naked woman painted on it's design.
Anyway, Ben is shitting himself since the DC AI control is virus laden now, and Saphine is laughing at his frustration with her hacking. Anti-virus measures are tried, but it's too late, and Saphine explains to the pissed Bask Shu Shirakawa designed all the security and left her all the backdoors.
Bask wants to know what the hell Shu is planning, and that's when reinforcements appear, namely La Gias units piloted by Hwang Yang Long and Lune and her Valsione (R), and given she's a known member of Shu's bullshit in La Gias and Yang Long is one of the guys trying to bring her ass to justice, he's calling her ass out:
Saphine explains she doing what's she doing at Shu's bequest, and everyone on the battlefield wants more information. And, in between some barely veiled sexual come-ons to most of the guys, Lune wants to know why Shu had Saphine destroy what he worked so hard to create in the past:
Saphine realizes she's Dr. Bian Zoldark's daughter and explains Shu wanted everything wiped, including Project Aegis data, to which everyone freaks out. Lune wants to know why Shu would backstab her dad after working with him on the DC so long, but Saphine prepares to split.
Or she would, if Ran Shao (Yang Long's talking black panther, each La Gias machine has it's animal co-pilot) didn't detect reinforcements.
It's Masaki, and he's PISSED. Saphine snarks about how Masaki is piloting Jaohm and asks if Cyphis (the spirit that powers Cybuster) got sick of it. He ignores this and demands Shu's location. He then notices Yang Long and Lune, and they tell him they'll explain later, but Saphine cannot escape.
Saphine tells them if they DO let her go, she can tell them where the rest of the Londo Bell hostages are, but they lose out if they decide to reject the offer.
You are then given a choice to accept or reject her offer. If you accept, she tells you the truth and you can skip fighting her. If you don't accept, you have to fight her and don't get the info until later. Either way, the Titans still want you dead and Bask summons some Gedlavs, Shokews, and GM Quels to help out.
Either way, destroying Bask's Sudori is the Skill point for this stage. He tells Irm in his own Gespenst to cooperate, but Irm then decides to drop the act now he has the upper hand as his SRW4 theme "Time To Come" plays:
Note the dialogue changes here depending on accepting/rejecting Saphine's offer. Irm sent ahead the info on Aleg base to the other Preventers if you accept, but you have to wait till later if you choose to fight Saphine.
There is no real penalty either way, so if you want an extra target to beat on, reject the offer.
The Gundam 0083 and SRX team members now become allies, and Bask realizes the tables have turned, as even the La Gias guys are joining your side on this.
Anyway, your goal is to kill Bask's Sudori for the Skill point, which shouldn't be too hard to do.
However, before we continue, some important sperging.
The Valkyries piloted by the Skull Squadron have three modes: Fighter, which is airplane mode, when they are fastest by have the least weapon options. Gerwalk, or hover mode, good for giving them slightly more attack options but slightly less movement, and Battloid, their slowest and least mobile state, though they have the most attack options in this state.
The Gespenst's units are temporary units, Banpresto Original designed machines that look like this:
Their name means "ghost" in German, but despite that they are not very fast nor agile, but they are reasonably powerful and tough.
Also, an overview of the Masoukishin units:
This will be replaced by the Cybuster after a few stages, but for now it's not a bad unit that reasonably fast and powerful in the air.
The Granveil is an artillery unit, so it's a bit slow, but has great range.
The Valsione R is jack of all trades with a rather powerful MAP attack that can hit multiple foes (if expensive to use) and has great attack and movement range)
Anyway, time to kill Titans, so grab containers on your way to surround and destroy Bask's Sudori. And, if some units got banged up prior, there is a base for recovery and evasion next to Bask you can plant them on.
More good news, after a turn or two, Kouji and Sakaya show up in the Mazinger and Aphrodite A respectively.
Like Great Mazinger, regular Mazinger is nothing to be ashamed of, as it's a great damage dealing tank.
Sakaya Yumi's Aphrodite A is basically the ground based counterpart of Jun Honou's Venus A, and it too is a healing support unit with ho-hum fighting skills.
As an amusing aside, her machine's boobs double as missile launchers, so go ahead and make all the torpedo tits jokes you want, her machine kinda invented it.
Anyway, go ahead and murder all Titans on the map, but keep in mind Bask flees at less than 3/4's HP, so have a unit with Support next to the Unit that gets the kill shot (one paired with Mazinger doing it's Breast Fire is a good example)
Anyway, after the level, Kou is getting filled in on Irm's bullshitting scheme by Fokker;
Irm explains he came up with the idea and Keith is quite surprised:
And Monsha, who wasn't told but caught on fast, explains why he didn't tell Kou and Keith.
He explains Irm's extremely respectful tone was the tip-off, and when Irm takes a mild bit of offense to this, he gets ribbed a little about how his manners weren't much help making his ex-girlfriend reconsider their relationship, then they change the subject to how Shu SHirakawa and his henchwoman are now turning on the organization that Shu helped build up, and the consensus is a simple one.
He played good guy long enough until his other foes from the Balmar War were out of the way, now he's your enemy.
We then cut to Kouji and Sakaya, where the former wants to see what Masaki and Yang Long are talking about, and you are given a choice to see them or not. No real penalty for this, by the way, so go ahead and do so.
Ryusei explains how after the Balmar War the SRX project was canned and the R-1 and R-2 were apparently scrapped, both aren't happy with how Shu apparently used the SRX project for his own ends during the Balmar War and that's when Kouji asks about Aya and Levi/Mai.
The former apologizes for making Kouji worry.
And the latter referenced how she was rescued again from enemy forces wanting to use her for their own ends.
We find out Kenzou blatantly defied Bask and instead of doing anything to Aya and Levi (both of which are quite powerful psychics capable of controlling ass destroyingly powerful weapons), he just kept them asleep in stasis and made excuses the whole time.
Note: Kenzou used to be an amoral asshole who saw his own daughters as experimental subjects during the Balmar War, but his humanity kicked in and he eventually couldn't bring himself to do that to them anymore. They still need his services to be useful as weapons, but this time he does so with their express consent and full forgiveness for his former ways.
We then cut over to Masaki and Yang Long, and apparently shit went down in Lan Gran (La Gias's central city) and Yang Long worked with their General Kirkus to keep order for awhile after the capital fell:
Yang Long is surprised Masaki didn't get the memo, and Yang Long explains that they discovered proof the death cult of the god Shiva Volkruss was ass deep in the shit that went down, and their high priest and Shu Shirakawa were pretty tight at one point, so if Shu is fucking up shit here, he's doing something on Volkruss' behalf on Earth, and that is NOT good.
Both concur on that, and Lune shows up.
Note: Ryune/Lune has a MASSIVE ladyboner for Masaki, which he's kinda (though not completely) oblivious to. This is even true in the classic and Original Generation timelines, where Masaki took part in killing her dad, but at least then she does understand Masaki didn't have a choice and her dad started it.
Lune's annoyed Masaki barely said hi to her and Masaki again references the events of SRW EX, and Kouji shows up to needle Masaki about his love life, but before Masaki can get annoyed by this, Lune changes the subject, and they discuss the state of the SRX team at present. Masaki then handles introductions for Yang Long and Ran Long, and Ryusei nearly get in trouble with lawyers outside the game by name dropping talking animals from other mecha shows (Banpresto covered this by putting asterisks through the dialogue)
We then cut back to Roy, who discusses their next move. Irm and Rai plan to remain on Atalia for awhile.
The La Gias guys are heading with everyone save the SRX team to pursue Shirakawa and help the Preventers, and with that, the stage ends.
When I resume, I'm going with the Unified route following the Moon levels, it has an easier Stage 6 skill point condition.
Okay brief sperg post for some amusing/interesting information:
First off, here's a picture of Shu Shirakawa and his peeps from Masoukishin:
From the left to right: Terius Grania Bilsea, Shu Shirakawa, Monica Grania Bilsea, and Saphine Grace.
The blue haired dude is a member of the Lan Gran royal family who turned traitor to Lan Gran on Shu's say so, guy is practically gay for Shu, not that the latter gives a shit. We don't see him in this game, though.
Shu is the purple haired guy in the pimpin lab coat. We see him here is a rare moment when he DOESN'T have a smug look plastered on his face, and old man Bian Zoldark and him are genuine friends in all timelines. So much so, HALF the operating budget of the Divine Crusaders went into building Shu's personal machine, the DCAM (Divine Crusader Armored Module) 00 Granzon.
Shu is the resident super smug genius of ambiguous loyalties and motives, and while Masoukishin Part 2 finally explains them (and while he's still a dick, he doesn't turn out to be as much of an asshole as he initially appeared), even his closest allies generally find his ultimate motives hard to trust, but while he's on your team, he's an insanely valuable asset.
As an enemy, shit yourself.
Monica is another member of the Lan Gran royal family turned traitor because she went googly eyed for Shu, and she's basically the sweetness and light half of Shu's two girlfriends. Still will kick puppies on Shu's say so, but not innately an asshole on her own.
The red haired chick in the fetish gear is Saphine Grace, who is, put frankly, a raging sexpot, and she's the darker half of the ladies on Shu's arms, but like Monica, she wouldn't be half as bad if she didn't have Shu giving her orders to that effect, just really, really perverted.
Now, let's cover Bian Zoldark, Lune's daddy.
(picture is of him and Maier V. Branstein, Rai's dad, as depicted in the first SRW anime, Bian at right)
Bian Zoldark was one of the very first Original characters ever made by Banpresto,and set the plot of classic games in motion when he warned humanity aliens would come a knockin and they wouldn't be friendly, they didn't listen, so he founded his own invasion force to conquer Earth to shock them out of complacency, and in the Original Generation timeline, Raidiese F. Branstein's dad, pictured above left, he'd join his buddy Bian in making the lesson stick.
In the Alpha timeline, people took Bian seriously, so he just left the tools and plans for defending Earth largely up to humanity and decided to watch them defend themselves.
BTW, Bian's was the final boss of SRW2 and the mid-game boss of the first Original Generation, and he piloted the Valsion, this badass motherfucker:
Now we will cover his daughter, Lune/Ryune (she and Bian are of Norwegian descent, FYI)
Lune here is a huge tomboy, and she was met in the classic series getting pissed off at some assholes using the identity of the Divine Crusaders to use G-3 poison gas from Zeta Gundam to kill people (while led by Carozzo Ronah from Gundam F91) and joined the good guys to kill the bastards pissing on her father's legacy. She was slightly mad at Masaki but quickly got over it and developed a huge crush on him instead. Original Generation has similar events play out, just with original villains instead.
They meet under friendlier circumstances in SRW Alpha.
Also, her dad was gonna give her a Valsion of her own, but she didn't like how it looked so scary, so he made her the Valsione:
Still looks kinda scary, but you'll notice it's like 350% more girly looking, but no less deadly.
By SRW EX/after Alpha 1, she'd wind up in La Gias, where the Lan Gran engineers were impressed by the design and merely improved upon the look and function while leaving the basic idea intact, adding another 200% of girliness to the look, hence the Valsione R (Refit):
Before we begin, keep in mind going the Earth Route would also lead us to this stage by a slightly different name, only then the Skill Point would be to lure all enemies past a certain point without killing them in a few turns, which can be easily screwed up. I went with the Moon route version because it''s much easier, and you get no secret units or events like in the Earth route.
We resume with the Lean Horse making atmospheric re-entry, and Roux confirms the Mariemeia Army is encamped not too far from Dakar. This means the Argamma crew will be making the rescue, and Heero and Trowa offer to be part of it, but when Roux points out semi-sarcastically if they'd be better at a boimbing mission, Trowa considers that a good point.
Judau's amazement at Trowa's autismal ignorance of humor aside, Fa reports a coded transmission to them, and the code reads "J9". Noin asks to see the rest of the transmission, and Gomez has been clued in as well.
We then reform in the Lean Horse ready room to discuss strategy. According to Noin, it has two phases:
Phase 1: A skeleton crew of machines will infiltrate and rescue the hostages. The "J9" will assist with part of this.
Phase 2: The rest of troops will interdict Titans forces at Aleg base that try to screw things up.
As the discussion ends, Judau and Heero make some good points: Team 1 should have the fast moving high fliers, Team 2 the heavy weaponry.
We then cut to Aleg Base, where Jamaican has gotten wind of Preventer movement, but they will be lured into a trap using the captives as bait. Jerid is fine with that part, but he quietly muses to himself that Aleg Base is more heavily defended than Dakar at present, so the rumors about them developing so new gear may be true after all.
Jamaican then tells Jerid to confer with their spec ops team, and we cut to where he's meeting them.
Jerid is rightly suspicious of how they look so informal, but the resident woman of the team offers her ID card:
He then asks about the weird car they drove in with, but Kid explains it's their commander's personal ride. Jerid thinks it looks kinda tacky, but more important, he keeps thinking he's seen Kid somewhere before.
After Jerid leaves, telling to keep an eye on the prisoners, Isaac (the one mentioned by Banjou and Noin)
offers his two cents:
And their driver/commander is not too pleased his car was referred to as tacky:
Isaac tells them to can their bitching, time to work.
We cut to the battle map, where we can choose up to four units, told most of the units are driven by Mobile Doll AIs, and so long as they stay out of firing range, they can sneak a unit into Aleg's detention block to ambush and rescue.
Like always, tactical map below:
As you can see your goal should be the center of that base below the topmost red dot, a land deployed Taurus. You have four turns to get there, but the Skill point requires 3 turns only.
To do this, keep in mind the farthest any of the deployed enemy units can hit you with an attack, and stay at least one tile beyond that. As long as you do, they enemy reminds blind, but if you are seen, it will kill the mission immediately and Game Over for you.
I prefer Noin's white Taurus in flight mode with a Booster part attached for this mission, especially since Noin has the Accel spirit skill that adds extra movement, but a unit like the Zetas Gundam in flight mode works just as well.
Anyway, to get the skill point you'll have to swing up and east away from the nearby Xamel, staying just outside it's firing range, then do a dead run for the base while not getting caught on an enemy turn in firing range of one of them.
It's not too hard to figure out, so that's all the strategy I'm offering.
If you did it right, you'll see this:
Jamaican is wondering how the hell no one noticed FUCKING ROBOTS running around, and the soldier weakly offers sensor jamming as the reason. Jamaican accepts this and says to send out Buran and Quattro.
Quattro and Emma's units appear with some Asshimars, Tauruses, and GM Quels. Buran reminds Quattro his friends get a bullet to the head if he tries anything stupid, and Quattro says he gets it, figuring the invading Preventers are aware of this.
And that's when a goofy car breaks out of the base, and despite sending some Gatheblys, Bylarents and even some Baund Doc (the tall reddish units), the driver is not worried at all:
Kid remarks it's a good thing they are the target and not some girl, and the Preventers are just 0_0 as the Titans at what they are seeing.
Issac then asks Omachi if Bright and the others are secure, and that's when a orange looking Sudori (the Audhluma) shows up with Bright Noah in command.
Amuro confirms they did, and Isaac tells Bright they'll cover his escape, and while he and Amuro are skeptical, Bowie tells him it's covered. Meanwhile, Jerid and Kackrinon in two of the Baund Docs are planning to just crush that car and be done with this bullshit.
Isaac sees this, and he order Bowie to"'Bry-Synchro On!"
The game pauses to show a brief CGI sequence based on the original Braiger anime showing it transforming from car to jet to 60 foot tall robot, and it's size dramatically goes up with the last transformation in blatant defiance of the laws of physics.
Anyway, as the little movie (complete with narration from the original show) ends, Kid announces who they are:
Jerid can't believe it, but Puru thinks it looks cool, and Duo compares its size morphing to Getter Robo (close, but it remains the same amount of mass if not dimensions), and Issac informs the Preventers the J9 are their allies.
Jerid then tries to order Quattro/Char to open fire, but he has fucking HAD IT with being a Titans bitch, and tells Jerid to fuck off, and that he and Emma are going to fuck his ass up now.
You can deploy the rest of the team now, and your goal is very simple: Kill everyone and make sure the Audhluma escapes the map, which is not hard so long as you plant the Braiger over the base and have your team rush in to help.
Quattro and Emma are now on your side now, so take advantage of them.
You'll get some chatter if Jerid fights Braiger. It's pilot, Jotaro Kid, he was former member of the Red Rose Squadron, was talented scouted for the Titans once, but he turned them down, and Kid makes it clear he has no regrets over that.
If Buran fights Trowa, he references how Trowa once worked for him, which mirrors how Trowa lost his memory once and briefly worked for OZ in the original Gundam Wing. Trowa tells him that's in the past and he couldn't care less about shooting his former boss now.
Anyway, just murder everything and pick up any containers.
After you kill everyone, Jamaican shits himself and runs, and I'll cover the Stage aftermath and some other trivia I'm gonna get out of the way in the next update.
Before I do, though, keep in mind an IRL sized car supposedly transformed into this 60 something tall can of whoop-ass:
I'll cover how they defied the laws of physics in the next post, gonna go make sure I remember all my Braiger lore before then.
