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Stage 23 - Storm of Jaburo
Vigaj appears for two turns in this stage. I could swear that in the CB version he had double move, but here he doesn't, and he can't do much. Not a very hard stage; the Dais both give 36000 each with Luck.
Great Mazinger joins here and there's a 4th-wall break. In SRW 2, Tetsuya was not there, and Great Mazinger became an upgrade for Kouji. Kouji refers to players complaining about that in this level.
Stage 24 - Decoy Plan
This level is fairly short; there are so few enemies that you can just launch all your most powerful attacks and ALL attacks and finish everyone off. Grendizer joins here.
Should I go to Bermuda and get God Voice? I'm only at 213 turns so I think that's a lot of leeway for Ragnarok with only 13 stages (not counding Bermuda Triangle) left. God Voice might be helpful...
Stage 25 - Bermuda Triangle
This stage is not hard, and it's very good to do because each Pigdrone is worth 50,000 (with Luck) and you get a new weapon for Raideen.
Stage 26 - Female Spy Infiltration
This stage uses another First Gundam plot point; it seems like a lot of the Gundam plot elements in this game were taken from FG. Although this stage has a Zeta plot point with Scirocco -- this is yet another example of the shaky continuity the original games have; Scirocco basically plays exactly the same role in this game as he did in the first one with no real explanation other than "oh geez, he's alive again!"
MAP weapons are really good in this game but I'm probably overusing them; most of the XP goes to the pilots of the four MAP weapon-enabled mechs. I don't think it's a big deal, though, the way XP works in the SRW games it's really easy to catch up just by beating up grunts in the later levels.
Stage 27 - Brocken's Shadow
Scirocco and Reccoa are both suffering from an unfortunate memory loss; they don't know each other despite Reccoa serving alongside Scirocco in SRW 2.
Stage 28 - Odessa Day
This is the first stage where you are required to defeat one of the Inspectors. Vigaj isn't too bad, though; he doesn't have double move and he's easy to hit. Mekiboz is more problematic because he uses his ALL attack when you get him down to 80%.
This stage is funny in the CB version because of Taunt -- what you can do is Taunt Vigaj, then one turn later taunt Mekiboz. Vigaj will reach your guys and Mekiboz will be in the middle of the enemies (but out of your range). Take down Vigaj in one turn, then Mekiboz uses his MAP attack, damaging a good chunk of the enemy force and none of your guys before retreating. It's kind of cheap, though; the original version seems like a more epic battle.
One thing I have noticed about the stats in this game is that even though you cannot upgrade your weapons, your pilot attack value is very high compared to other games (i.e. right now a lot of my pilots have 1500-1700 attack) and rises a lot with each level. So levels are probably more meaningful than in other games.
Stage 29 - Operation to Save Matilda
Cecily appears; she's once again been hoodwinked to DC but Seabook can save her. The enemies in this stage were too low-leveled to bother with so I just used MAP attacks to take them all out quickly.
Stage 30 - Sister!
They're including non-Gundam stuff in the story (finally) as well; here's something from Grendizer. You also get Sazabi after this if you convince Naida (after fighting her); I put Quattro in that, Amuro is in the Nu Gundam, Judau is in the Hyaku Shiki, and Kamille in the ZZ Gundam. Cecily is in the Methuss (she has Love and double-move, better than Fa).
Stage 31 - The Limit of Sadness
After this battle you get the Musashi death scene from Getter Robo; this is the longest story sequence so far. The story writing doesn't have many lengthy in-depth sequences like this (later games have many, of course). Benkei joins the Getter Team after this.
My turn count is 271 after this stage, so I have 149 turns to finish 7 stages. I think I should be able to do that without too many problems.
Stage 32 - Countdown
Phew, this is a huge battle. 41 enemies total, including five major ones (if Reccoa appears). Getter G comes along to help, though. The annoying Dragonasaurus enemy gives you max money (65535) if you use Luck when you kill it.
Stage 33 - Puru and Puru II
Once again the shaky continuity rears its ugly head; Puru and Puru II seem to be meeting for the first time, despite the same thing happening in SRW 2. At least this time Puru doesn't have to be defeated for you to get Puru II.
Stage 34 - La Vie En Rose
The enemy forces are getting larger and more fierce, but MAP attacks cut them down to size. Kamille used the Hyaku Shiki's MAP attack with Hot Blood and gained 12 levels. When Shuu finally came out the dialogue is supposed to indicate that your guys are having trouble, but I had already taken out over half the enemy force.
So here comes Granzon, this time on your side. It's odd to have Shuu with Neppu! Shippu! Cybuster as his music (Dark Prison did not come along until Masou Kishin:LoE)
Stage 35 - Space Swirl
This is Haman's last hurrah for SRW 3. Kind of a tough stage in the end when you've got all the Geymalks and Quin Manthas up at the top with Haman and you have to move into their range. Since I have a surplus of turns to take, I focused on trying to get people double move.
Stage 36 - Gate of Zedan
DC makes its last stand here, at A Baoa Qu. This is a tough stage; there are all kinds of strong enemies (multiple Big Zams, Psycho Gundams, Lafressias, Quin Manthas, Doros, etc) But that also means it's worth a lot of money; I made over 600,000.
I finally got to use God Voice, which isn't that impressive:
Stage 37 - Axis Burning
Wow, this was a tough stage; definitely the hardest stage yet. Every enemy is strong -- you know you're in trouble when the weakest enemies are double-move Doven Wolfs. Even though there aren't that many enemies compared to some other stages, they all rush you so you don't have much time to wait around and heal.
I played this stage kind of desperately, trying to kill as many enemies as I could each round, and using my three Love seishin (from Cecily, Puru, and Duke Freed) when I needed to -- often I had to save and then see if the enemies would kill one of my guys; their AI tends to be kind of odd, and sometimes they will pick a different target instead of killing someone.
The Inspectors are not that bad alone, but fighting three of them at once plus the "grunt" enemies is not very nice. I went for Vigaj first, then Sikalog, then Agiha. In retrospect I should have done Sikalog last because he has the most HP, but it was fine. I only lost Great Mazinger.
After all that, the Gilgilgan is a wimp. Even though he's sitting on Axis, by the time you get down there with fully healed and EN regenerated robots, he can't do anything.
So that's it for the Inspectors. Mekiboz never got killed; he was waiting in Axis with Wendolo and they both left.
So here are the last inspectors:
And here's a full tableau of all the SRW 3 originals:
Stage 38 - Last Battle
I wasn't able to play yesterday so I gave this mission some thought, and was agonizing over it a bit, but it turned out not to be that bad (certainly easier than stage 37). I was worried about the lack of a ship for repair.
I started out by funneling the two Gelmarks that can hit you off the bat, and then killed the Yagd Doga near them with beams. Then I waited a couple of turns until everyone came into range and was lined up well. I then used the following:
- Hot Blooded Mega Graviton Wave (Granzon)
- Hot Blooded Hyper Mega Cannon (ZZ Gundam)
- Two Cyflash (Cybuster)
This killed almost all the enemies and took the Big O down pretty low. A few more attacks defeated Big O; for some reason Scirocco kept attacking Daitarn 3 even though Raideen had 300 HP and was standing right next to him.
Now, the true boss comes out:
He starts in the upper left and three Quin Manthas appear near you. I used Hyaku Shiki's ALL attack (Hot blooded) and then killed the QMs with some additional attacks, then the next turn the Valsion Kai was there. Despite what the "secrets FAQ" says on GameFAQs, the Valsion Kai cannot kill a max upgraded Super Robot with one attack. The Valsion Kai was actually surprisingly easy. All I used were two hot blooded Sun Attacks, two hot blooded Shine Sparks, a God Voice, and a God Bird. Here's the killing strike:
Yes! I beat SRW 3!
Wait...
What are you talking about, Shu?
Hey, what are you doing...
OH MY GOD IT'S NEO GRANZON!!!!!
(Kind of a silly transformation there with the Granzon vs. Granzon battle animation)
Stage 39 - Ragnarok
This is the infamous battle against Shu in the Neo Granzon, and two Valsions. It's often touted as one of the hardest battles in SRW history, but I honestly didn't think it was as hard as stage 37. You have four big advantages:
1. Shu cannot use his most powerful attack until he reaches 110 Will.
2. Shu will not use his ALL (MAP) attacks until the enemy phase after he gets down to a certain level of HP.
3. Shu will not move from his starting position. [2019: Actually I have seen in other videos that it's possible to get him to move, but I'm not sure how it happens.]
4. Neo Granzon is not very hard to hit, even by your Super Robots.
I don't like the strategy outlined in the Final Scenario FAQ on GameFAQs. Wasting all of Shu's ammo before you do anything gets Shu up to around 150 Will, which IMO is too big of a price to pay. Instead, I like Sunset Kid's approach of killing the Valsions the safe way (i.e. through wasting ammo + funnels) and then defeating Neo Granzon in one round.
These were my people, all with double move, and all fully upgraded:
I defeated the Valsions by wasting their ammo. Set the Geymalk up at the maximum range with the Methuss behind it:
Once the shots are all gone, funnel it to death; do the same with the other one. At this point, Shu is still at 100 morale, so he cannot use any attack with over a range of 5. Then I set up my guys like this:
First, I used the ALL attacks of the Hyaku Shiki, ZZ Gundam, Valsione, and one Cyflash (I saved the other turn for Cosmo Nova). I used Hot Blood and then as many Kiai (will up) seishin as possible. The total damage from all of this was around 12,000 of NG's 65,000. After this, I just went through my super robots one by one, using as many hot blooded finishing attacks as possible. Soon his HP were below 10,000:
As you can see, most of my characters still have turns. From this point is was pretty simple to finish him off; I did use a Love seishin in the middle so that he wasn't able to kill anyone.
Kyara got the final shot:
So that's it for SRW 3. Overall it was a lot better than 2, but still kind of primitive. The story is simple; for the most part it's just "go to this place and fight another DC or alien army" -- the interweaving of different anime plots that is such a staple of the series is still missing. The system is still too primitive to really allow for a lot of strategy, although certainly more so than 2. I also think the battles can get pretty tedious at times, with giant 20 vs 40 battles. The enemies are unmemorable because everyone is just mixed together into DC or Aliens, and the only different is the color of the units.
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2019 again: In comparison with these other games that came around at the same time, this is actually a pretty impressive SRPG in a lot of ways. It's hard if you don't know what you're doing, and certainly far from the best SRW game, but it has a chance to be game of the year for 1993 depending on how the other titles fare.
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