Started with Emma's story. I knew from reading the manual that there was a branch point in the story but I never noticed where it could be. I let the protagonist keep his shotgun + fist setup. I liked the versatility and he could do massive damage with double assault. I opted for the fist over other melee weapons because it did the most damage; accuracy was not really a concern at melee range. The shotgun was good for a bit of range, especially against melee enemies. I often found myself using it to finish off enemies who had bodies or weapon arms almost destroyed, due to the way the shotgun did guaranteed damage to all parts. He took way too much damage early on, until I figured out how to control the turn order during pre battle setup; the melee needs to attack after the range! This also meant he got the most kills and xp. Ryogo was set up as a mobile close range tank, using a machine gun and item pack. The protagonist also used the item pack until I needed to switch to a power pack to carry both upgraded weapons. Ryogo had to switch to a power pack late game for the final gun, but that gave him enough weight to carry a shield instead of the empty hand he had for the majority of the game. The default bare hand attack was good for making enemies surrender though. I mostly had him fight at melee or close range for the best accuracy, but snipe shotgunners. Emma and Dennis were both sniper artillery. I gave them a rifle and missile launcher on the same high accuracy arm (both left but probably would have been more efficient to alternate so they could both scavenge parts from the same enemy mech). This was a big risk because they could be rendered useless if that arm was destroyed, but their damage potential was amazing. Hanging back and sniping, with both weapons being high damage single target. Sometimes I would be lucky and kill or disarm an enemy in a single turn. Other times they would keep hitting the parts I did not want to damage. They were very vulnerable to attacks, so I tried to block enemies with my 2 tanks. I gave Emma decent legs while Dennis used a hover. Emma's legs were better with great mobility that allowed her to get up high to great sniping positions. The hover was good in 1 or 2 stages to go over water that the enemies could not. I would have been better off using legs and loading the save if there was water to exploit, but I avoided any save scumming. I did not use battle saves and only had to restart a few battles; usually because I chose the wrong elemental defense or divided attacks too much. I most often found it was best to focus 1 target down at a time even if they were strong vs the attack.
When I had to split the team and use the back benchers I purchased and upgraded another set of 4 mechs for them. That was a waste though because I discovered the 8 people can use the same 4 mechs; an unrealistic but understandable game mechanic. There was 1 stage on a boat where I kicked the protagonist out in favor of another sniper. I had Yun and Linny be the snipers, Li use the machine gun and Marcus the fist + shotgun. But their weapon skills and AP were bad because I never ever used the simulator to train. Never needed to. When Emma was out for a few stages, I replaced her with Linny because he had better weapon skills than Yun. Damnit, he was my least liked character. Why was he even on the team? I used penetration defense for most of the game and just ignored it. There were a few big difficulty spikes, usually when the enemy had a lot of melee or missiles. By the late game I was trying to guess what the enemies were using from the cutscenes, and even deliberately ejecting to change the defense element. Impact defense was more important later on, especially with melee + shield enemies. At the end fire defense was the most important due to the large number of missiles. Some stages were incredibly close fights where I just barely scraped by, while others were a complete cakewalk. A lot of it came down to luck with which parts got damaged and the random status effects. There was even 1 late game battle where I constantly got lucky ejections and captured every enemy mech. The final boss was one of the easier fights. I stayed out of his range while burning down the giant missile mechs. When there was only 1 left I got a lucky ejection and had Ryogo rush up and eject into it. Yoink! Unfortunately it was too big to be out of range of the boss's nasty beam so I had the hero charge into melee. The boss seemed to be scripted to waste his turns trying to melee with his worthless bare hand instead of using that terrifying beam. Or maybe a counterattack did not leave enough AP to use the beam. If he had any sense he could have easily wiped my team. A lot of battles seemed to rely on the enemies being too dumb to work together in order for the player to win; so many enemies would just hang back and wait for me to kill their allies.
I ended with 26 platinum, 30 gold, 10 silver and 5 bronze.
Hero: zenislev body, tiandong arms, lenghe legs, 90 power pack, fatal buster fist, desoto shotgun, starting computer, 2 double assault.
I never even thought to check the shop for better computers!
Ryogo: zenislev body, tiandong 3 L arm, kasel R arm, tiandong legs, 90 power pack, arc barrel machine gun, SN 107G shield, starting computer, zoom1 X3, avoid20.
Emma: mingtian body, shangdi L arm, grapple R arm, zenislev legs, 90 power pack, mk11 sniper rifle, bjariger missile, starting computer, pilot damage 1 X4.
Dennis: mingtian body, shangdi L arm, tiandong R arm, prov hover leg, 90 power pack, mk11 sniper rifle, bjariger missile, starting computer, def C max, guard B.
Then I did Alisa's story and played much better. I actually upgraded computers this time and paid attention to the skills taught by equipment pieces rather than only going for the best stats. I kept the hero and Ryogo the same as before while Alisa and Liu were the sniper artillery. I did not need items and upgraded to power packs early on. I also gave the snipers crappy low weight low move legs, which meant everyone except the hero had good shields for the entire game. Shields were amazing, but the only drawback was the lack of basic melee attacks made it more difficult to capture enemy mechs. Not that it mattered because I got plenty anyway. The snipers did not learn good skills until I got the acquire+ computer late game. I was surprised that this campaign did not let the characters use the same mechs when the party had to split, so I actually had to make a couple other good ones. But there were far fewer missions like that. I never even used Lan or Mayer. Miho was only used for the couple missions I had to; the first time using her default mech and the second being given a rifle. Pham used melee and the weakest missile until I had to use her in the main party to replace Liu. Then I upgraded her more and dropped the missile for a shield to make her pure melee tank. There was a really cool mission where they could not bring their mechs so had to procure vehicles on site. Too bad that was only a one off mission because that was an awesome concept. One of my favorite parts of the game was being able to take enemy vehicles. What was not cool were the escort missions, where it was game over if a stupid AI npc died. I had to restart a few of those missions.
I paid more attention to elemental defense but still mostly used anti penetration. The final battle had the hero anti impact, Ryogo anti penetration and the snipers anti fire. This was a tough fight that I was not sure I would win. I blitzed down Lukav in 2 turns but the hero and Ryogo eventually went down from fighting so many enemies at once. Near the end I had both snipers behind a bottle neck where only 1 enemy could attack in melee. Had 2 disarmed enemies, a near death melee and 2 undamaged gunners that foolishly hung back to not attack. 1 gunner was just in range of rifles so I killed him while taking the basic melee hits without countering. Then I wiped out the damaged mechs and it came down to 2 vs 1. The characters were much more powerful with better computers and more frequent skill activations. The snipers used random smash, which got me some very lucky 1 hit kills or disarms. Would have been better to have body smash but I did not find it. The hero used double assault more often than not, but only once did it combo. Ryogo was an absolute beast with 4 to 6 skills comboing fairly frequently. I used the simulator a few times early on and did not concern myself too much with skill optimization.
Ended with 34 platinum, 14 gold, 8 silver, 3 bronze.
Hero: zenislav body, lenghe arms and legs, high activate computer, 3X double assault
Ryogo: zenislav body, lenghe L arm with gun, kasel R arm with shield, lenghe legs, low activate up computer, 3X zoom1, 3X rate of fire1
Alisa: mingtian body, kasel L arm with shield, shunyo R arm with rifle and missile, genie legs, high activate computer, random smash, panic shot, enemy def down.
Liu: meledyne body, shunyo L arm with rifle and missile, kasel R arm with shield, enyo legs, high activate computer with same skills as Alisa.
I named their mechs this time to make it easier to tell them apart, using appropriate names for the characters. X for the hero, Ass for Ryogo, Lady for Alisa, and Sniper for Liu. I think I liked Emma's story better because of the more plausible sequence of events and more drama. I was very impressed with how much was different in Alisa's story. Though the overall plot was the same, there was a lot of new information from experiencing the story from the other side. The story itself was excellent and far more believable than most rpgs; no dark gods or other kind of all powerful nonsense. The characters and their interactions were great even if it was hard to see some of them being better warriors/pilots than actual soldiers. Though there were times where the dialogue or cutscenes totally did not match the actual battles; like when they remarked how they barely won a battle that I actually steamrolled, or completely over or underpowered performance in cutscenes. Each character only had 2 portraits; calm and extremely angry, with no middle ground. It made them come off as manic. The main character was so chaotic good and hot headed, almost making him into a hypocrite. He was so concerned about saving innocents and failing to understand the big picture, while also being very quick to anger and spoiling for fights. And then Ryogo the chaotic neutral comic relief. I especially liked how most of the characters were portrayed as shades of grey, and how there were both good and bad people on all sides with their own values and agenda; even among the party members.
I loved the tactical map display between missions, giving context to the action. Excellent cutscenes and FMVs. I was enthralled by the combat and the way the camera showed the action; the way the view jumps around, the angles, the mini window shots, the bit of shaking, and the sound and animations. It all combined to make the combat feel brutal and epic, like really watching giant mechs fight on the news. I loved the map design, with the incredible variety and unique interactions; every battle felt fresh. I loved the tactical combat with the many decisions to be made on movement, who to attack with what, and managing AP. I wish there were bonuses from flanking. Not a big fan of the randomness, which could vastly affect the outcome of battles, but that does help replayability a bit. I did not like how often surrendering enemies were destroyed, robbing me of that sweet loot. I think the leg and body parts should have a basic low damage melee attack, or some other convenient way to get surrenders without destroying the enemy. I did find it odd how they could lug around looted mechs despite almost always lacking support crew and being on commando missions in enemy territory, and how supplies and damage were fully recovered between missions, even when it was multiple missions inside an enemy base. It would have made more sense if weapons could be looted and item stock had to be used to top up health and ammo between most missions. The game internet had a lot of interesting information but I was annoyed with keeping track of passwords and trying to figure out what they were for. So I missed a fair bit of content and would really need a walkthrough to put up with it.
It is shocking that I missed this game back in the day because it rivals Final Fantasy Tactics as the best playstation game. Will have to play again to get the secrets and optimize equipment and skills.
9.5/10
