Game 53 - Masou Kishin: Lord of Elementals

Masou Kishin: Lord of Elemental (スーパーロボット大戦外伝 魔装機神 THE LORD OF ELEMENTAL)

Released 3/22/1996, developed by Banpresto

 

When I get to the Super Robot Wars games I usually post old message board posts; in this case I really don't have much -- I was doing a story summary instead, which is obsolete now that there is a full translation patch. I'll add a bit more to what I wrote. In the main SRW games up to this point, in addition to the licensed franchises like Gundam and Getter Robo, they had original characters who came from another world La Gias. The third game, EX, takes place in La Gias, mixing up the licensed characters and the originals.

This game divides into two parts -- one that takes place before SRW 2, showing the origin of Masaki and the other Masou Kishin characters. The second part takes place after SRW 4 and continues the stories begun in EX and the first part of Masou Kishin. The series then lay dormant for a long time, before a sequel finally came out in 2012, followed by two more games to finish the series.

Now on to the old posts.

-----

Despite 4S, the Super Famicom was not yet dead!  Almost two years after the release of 4, SRW Gaiden came out.  This was a huge advance on 4 in many ways -- graphically, musically, gameplay, everything.  Although it is labeled Gaiden, it introduced a number of significant improvements that carried over to future SRWs.

Some of the changes that did carry over:
- For the first time, the map has a 3/4 view and full robots instead of just faces.  This would not be introduced into main SRWs until Alpha.
- Units now gain EXP for repairing and refueling.
- The Masou Kishin characters now get their own themes -- this is the first appearance of Flapper Girl, Dark Prison, etc.
- Character faces now have multiple versions that show different emotions.
- The character designs for the Masou Kishin characters were all redone into the form that they have had ever since (even down to OGs).  As a comparison, here are Masaki, Shu, and Ryune in their EX and MK incarnations:

System things that did not carry over:
- The robots are full sized instead of SD (this is used in the next game, but then never again)
- Height and facing matters
- There is a "zone of control" system (Banpresto used this later in the Summon Night and Black Matrix series)
- Units have Prana in addition to EN

This is also the first game that Kono Sachiko, the character designer for many of the original characters, worked on.  She still does original character designs now.

My final verdict on SRW:LoE is "so-so".  In general I don't like the all-originals games as much as the regular ones.  LoE's high point is the characterization and the dialogue between them.  The story is kind of weak; like I said, a lot of the plot points are retreads of EX and the plot sort of jerks around from one story to another.  There are a lot of places where the story writers don't really seem to know what they're doing (i.e. when Jogg and Rasetsu show up to take the Duraxylls and Tudy just lets them do it).  The battle system is OK.  You get attacked from behind a lot because everyone has such a high move rate and there's hardly any terrain to block them.  The double-attack ability is the worst ability ever in a SRW game [2020 note: This is a system where people can sometimes get two attacks in a round, and this game still has the double move from the old SRW games. So you get situations where someone can take 4 attacks in a round, which can be an auto kill even for overlevelled units.]

--

Now that this game has a translation patch it's easy to play it, so give it a try if you like SRW -- although there's a later DS remake that might be more fun.

Game 52 - Bahamut Lagoon (rest of game)

I didn't say much about the story last time. This game has a much more RPG-like storyline (and overall feel) than some of the other SRPGs that lean more towards the strategy side of things. The basic story is that Emperor Sauther of the Granvelos Empire takes over the Kingdom of Kahna, where Bahamut dwells. Sauther's goal is to talk to the Divine Dragons in order to open the path to a new world. Princess Yoyo, the daughter of the King of Kahna, can also speak to the Divine Dragons. After being driven out of Kahna, the main character gathers a band of fighters around him to try to defeat Granvelos. 

 There are more twists and turns to the story, but since there's an excellent translation patch out I won't give away the whole thing (there are walkthroughs on gamefaqs that have the whole story anyway). Overall I enjoyed the story with two caveats. The first was that I felt too many of the characters were joke characters, even some of the characters that were important to the main storyline (Matelite, for instance). The second is that the conclusion was kind of abrupt and vague, but that's typical of RPGs.

Between missions you can walk around your ship and talk to people. This game does a better job than most of the other games in giving each of the characters a personality and making them memorable (even though as I said, a lot of them are just played for laughs).

It is annoying that you can only save at the beginning of each chapter. Typically the start of the chapter is a story sequence, then you can explore the ship and talk, buy equipment, feed dragons, and then finally change your formations and assign dragons to each party. This can easily take 15-30 minutes just for the pre-battle stuff, and to not be able to save before the fight actually starts is an odd design decision. Of course on an emulator, save states easily deal with the problem.

 

I don't have much to say about the stages until Chapter 22 when they begin to get more difficult. By this time I had Salamander in Master Dragon form, which is a bit broken because he can't take damage from anything. In theory you could win every stage just by ending the turn and letting Salamander do everything, but this would be incredibly tedious and take hours for each fight even with speedup keys. However, my Salamander was also very timid and would often heal instead of fighting -- I actually preferred when he ran out of MP because then he had no choice but to fight.

My groups tended to keep similar units together, although I put Light Armors in some squads for greater mobility. By far the most powerful group was the Yoyo-Sendak summoner squad, who could often clean up whole areas of the battlefield just by themselves. I notice the Gamefaqs walkthrough writer is one of those people who overlevels and he claims he hardly used the spellcasters. But he also recommends all Master Dragons by stage 8 or something, which is completely absurd. This is a pet peeve of mine in walkthroughs; it's annoying to struggle with a boss or stage, look up a walkthrough, and find no real advice because the walkthrough writer has overlevelled to the point where they don't need any strategy.

Anyway, Chapter 22 is a large chapter that is difficult primarily because of all the cannons. They have high HP and can attack from pretty far away, damaging entire parties. Some of them are on HP regen terrain, and there are also healing units that can support them.

The Siegfried is the chief difficulty among them. What I eventually did was hug the left side of the screen and advance slowly, being careful to watch for the Siegfried's range. Lightning can destroy both the walls and the regeneration spots, and you can ice freeze the moat to cross on the left. Sending out the dragons to "go" helped soften up the cannons.

For the Siegfried itself, by having the Dragons "go" to it and then moving Yoyo/Sendak up towards the middle, I was able to target Leviathan summon on the spots and take out the healing units, and then the dragons were able to destroy the Siegfried. From there the rest of the mission was not so bad -- the remaining units (a dragon and two bosses) aren't pushovers but they're nowhere near as hard as the cannons. With Magic Gins to keep up the MP of the Sendak/Yoyo party it wasn't too bad from there.

Chapter 23 is just finishing off the Granvelos soldiers but since there are no cannons it's not especially hard.

Now we head into the other world. I actually got a game over on the chapter 24 battle (above) because I got hit with too many area attacks in a row. Advancing slowly from the bottom left was a better strategy and I won the second time. Game overs aren't that bad since you can keep all your XP, money, and items.

Stage 25 is interesting because there are only a few enemies, and only two boss units you have to beat. But they constantly summon more monsters, who have over 9999 HP each. What I did was just rush the main character's unit and the summoners up to the boss and use area spells over and over again until they died, and I defended whenever my guys were attacked by the summoned monsters. Not too bad.

Stage 26 has a bunch of enemies but the boss Alexander. Although these bosses look impressive, it's annoying to keep track of where the single block is that you actually attack. But I did this by basically another rush/defend strategy.

The final boss is Alexander again. He's huge and has 4 different parts. You have to beat the healing and spellcasting parts to hurt the main head, but you do not have to beat the status effects head. My basic strategy for this was to keep most of my units away from the action so they couldn't get hit with the devastating area effect spells. I used a lot of summoning with a lot of Magic Gins, and also main character sword techniques when I could. Fortunately the attacks frequently were directed at the dragons, especially Salamander, so there wasn't too much trouble surviving them.

Once you beat the game, you can start a New Game+ where you keep all your levels and can even summon Alexander:

But I don't know if there's much purpose to this mode; there aren't any alternate paths or endings. I guess there are one or two places in the game where enemies appear but then leave before you can beat them, and you could do it here. Or if you just want to experience the story again.

A good game overall -- impressive graphics, nice music, an enjoyable story and characters, and pretty fun gameplay.

Game 52 - Bahamut Lagoon (Stages 1-13)

Bahamut Lagoon (バハムートラグーン)

Released 2/9/1996, developed and published by Square 

 

  

1996 begins! This is the twilight of the Super Famicom; Playstation and Saturn were starting to rev up their production starting this year, and by 1997 the SFC was in decline. I have five more SFC games on the list -- four this year, and then the bizarrely late Fire Emblem 5 in 1999. Bahamut Lagoon is one of those games that I've heard about ever since I first discovered emulation in the late 90s, but I never played it. I usually play these games in Japanese, but for this one I decided to use the new patch recently released by Near (the developer of BSNES and other emulators). It's a model of a good translation patch. 

The basic idea behind this game is that you have several parties, and each party has an associated dragon. The dragons affect what spells and moves the party members can use. The party can issue a general command to the dragon (Come! Go! or Wait!) but the dragons act on their own, and have stats like Timidity and Affection that affect how well they follow your orders.

The dragons' stats are affected by feeding them items -- they will eat everything from potions to plate mail to fire rods. The dragons have various elemental stats, which enable them to use different kinds of breath (and affect the elemental skills their associated party can use). They also have strength and defense for basic attacks. Dragons will evolve form when they gain levels in various stats, and there are unusual dragons and secret transformations as well.

I like the late-SNES era graphics.

Battles are done on a player/enemy phase system. You move a party, then the associated dragon will take its action. Units can either use a "field attack" which has a direct effect, or attack an enemy party. If that happens you go into a separate battle screen and enter commands for each party member individually. This slows the game down a bit but on the whole I don't find the tempo to be all that bad.

 

Player characters have a class that determines their skills and what equipment they can use. There aren't any class promotions although I think one character changes class from the story.

Using spells and techniques of certain elementals causes changes on the board -- you can destroy things with thunder, set trees on fire with fire, freeze water with ice to cross, and remove poison fields with heal spells.

The first few stages are basically just to get you used to the system and aren't very hard. After the first one you get a "ship" (which is an island, that's what the "lagoons" of the title are).

Chapter 3 introduces catapult enemies, which are nasty, as they can attack from a pretty far away range and have an AoE attack. I did manage to beat all the enemies but it was rough and I lost a few dragons. Death is not permanent and you can revive the human characters on your team (if you can revive dragons I don't know how to do it).

Chapter 4 has a ton of enemies, and healing enemies that are annoying but you can take care of by attacking with the human parties and just focusing on them. 

Chapter 5 has monster enemies, but they're not hard.

After this chapter I found a "Princess ???" item in Yoyo's bed; apparently if you collect 5 of these and feed them to a dragon it evolves into Bahamut. Getting them all without a walkthrough is hard.

Also after this chapter you can start doing "side quests" which are really just repeatable battles to build levels and get money. There are only 2 to choose from now. I didn't bother.

Chapter 6 has some surprise reinforcements but nothing I couldn't handle.

Chapter 7 introduces artillery things on the board that shoot at you if you stop in front of them. But they can be destroyed with thunder magic.

Chapter 8 is against dragons fought from outside the ship.

Chapter 9 has a floodgate you can release to hurt the enemies, although they immediately start healing themselves so it's only useful if you can rush them.

Chapter 10 introduces treasure chests, which have either treasures or traps.

Chapter 11 has us going to a lake to find the next Divine Dragon (which all become summons for two of the characters).

 

Chapter 12 has some passages that close on you if you are in them, but that just stops your move for a turn.

Chapter 13 was the hardest one yet for me -- there are "generators" that open up to make enemies, or you can lightning them to have them appear. I lost several characters but in the end I still won.

 

I will try to take more detailed notes for the rest of the battles (although I often say this and then don't!)

As for my dragon feeding, I've been doing it rather randomly. I suppose it's probably better to have one really powerful dragon but I've been spreading around the food. One thing I noticed is that the item drops you get from enemies depend on the elements you use to defeat them. So that can create a feedback loop where you're getting nothing but fire equipment unless you make an effort to spread around what you're using. There's an ultimate form of the dragon you can get if you max all of a dragon's stats but that seems hard to do. I especially have a hard time increasing life and poison.

1995 wrap-up

1995 was the longest year yet. Here were the games, which I'll categorize in three sections -- good, average, and bad.

Good: Majin Tensei II, Super Robot Taisen 4, Riglord Saga, Tactics Ogre

Average: Front Mission, Royal Stone, Another Bible, Shin SD Sengokuden, Arc the Lad, Little Master 3, Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict, Bounty Sword, Heian Fuunden, Tenchi Muyo, Sangokushi Eiketsuden

Bad: Gundam Cross Dimension 0079, Farland Story, Super Robot Taisen 2G, Battle Robot Retsuden, Sengoku Cyber, Farland Story II

This year was mostly Super Famicom games, but Playstation and Saturn both had their first offerings. Of course graphics and presentation are improving. Front Mission and Tactics Ogre introduced height and the isometric perspective, and Arc the Lad continued the trend of SRPGs with far more RPG elements than previously.

Which of the 4 good games should be the Game of the Year? For me it's between Riglord Saga and Tactics Ogre. Both have flaws. But Tactics Ogre's story writing is far beyond anything else, and it emphasized the role of class changes and job systems. Riglord Saga has an open world, non-linear style, and a neat skill system.

I think I am going to go with Riglord Saga because Tactics Ogre has some pretty serious balance problems, and the permanent death is too severe given the lack of in-battle saves and the frequent places where you have to fight two or more battles in a row. I think the designers realized they messed up there because in the PSX remake the following year you can do in battle saves (I used save states myself). But it's very close.

Games of the year:

• 1990: Fire Emblem
• 1991: Langrisser 
• 1992: Just Breed 
• 1993: Super Robot Taisen 3 
• 1994: Langrisser II
• 1995: Riglord Saga