You don't need to do that in this game, there's a item (gain maker or something?) You can equip it to a team that can move 10+ tiles. Get SR for a strage that doesn't end with it, leave one enemy alive, and keep on moving your unit and end turn over and over.
I guess they counted on custom soundtrack to make up for that?
That feature doesn't work well on Vita BTW: I have mp3s that work on the PS3 version and that the Vita player has no trouble reading but that won't work at all in Z3 Vita for some reason.
Yeah, I was worried scamco was putting in custom bgm option so they could get away with less money spent on music licensing as they could just tell the fans "put it in yourself".
Or they would leave out music and then sell it separately as DLC. As a sucker I would prefer this option and spend an extra $30 to get more music or in an LE like Gundam v Gundam Extreme Full Boost.
I don't think the music is terrible, but I knew I'd be underwhelmed because they were including so many movies/oavs as new entries and movies never have good OP/ED-type bgms since they're always instrumental. Plus this is just another side effect of having very few "new entry series" in Z3-1, so not much new music and just cutting down music options of older entries.
Pretty much the only new entry shows that have OP/EDs were FMP, Gunbuster, Aquarion Evol and they gave FMP, Aquarion & Gunbuster their OPs. Eva/CCA/OO Movie/EW are all movies, Unicorn is an OAV without an OP.
They also gave us a new BGM for SEED Destiny and at least we still have Lion for Mac F since the default instrumental BGM is pretty dull, but we lost some of the older ones.
At least they gave us a version of the old Aquarion song that's used a couple of times in the TV show.
Pretty much the only new entry shows that have OP/EDs were FMP, Gunbuster, Aquarion Evol and they gave FMP, Aquarion & Gunbuster their OPs. Eva/CCA/OO Movie/EW are all movies, Unicorn is an OAV without an OP
Oh, my bad. I haven't seen FMP in forever and thought the Fummoffu song was the OP and the other song was like S1 OP or something. I use the Fummoffu song personally.
Yeah, it does seem that SRW is slowly cutting down on doing OP/EDs because of the licensing fees for the artists...which sucks >_<
Ohhhh, are you going for SR point? If not, just heal units and wait it out to 5th turn. If going for SR, since the boss regens HP, get everyone to maximum break as much as possible, then on turn 4 unleashes everyone's best attacks. Support attacks help too and the OG unit has support attack. Also you don't need maxium break to beat barriers, really strong attacks still do decent damage and certain attack's like Mazinger's best attack ignores barriers.
Ohhhh, are you going for SR point? If not, just heal units and wait it out to 5th turn. If going for SR, since the boss regens HP, get everyone to maximum break as much as possible, then on turn 4 unleashes everyone's best attacks. Support attacks help too and the OG unit has support attack. Also you don't need maxium break to beat barriers, really strong attacks still do decent damage and certain attack's like Mazinger's best attack ignores barriers.
I don't care about SR points, so I guess I'll just wait it out and use my ships for healing. Should I swarm around the Eva's and Aquarion waiting for the other boss to show up?
yup, that's how I play srw. Each time I hit a split I make 2-3 saves (one for each choice), then play through them all and then go with my favorite and continue on with it when they merge again. Then repeat next split.
At the end of the game you have full scenario chart and any bonuses from it and you get to see all the stories play out chronologically. Takes a while though, my full play though of z3-1 with all routes and all dlc is looking like it'll be about 130-140 hours.
Oh, my bad. I haven't seen FMP in forever and thought the Fummoffu song was the OP and the other song was like S1 OP or something. I use the Fummoffu song personally.
Yeah, it does seem that SRW is slowly cutting down on doing OP/EDs because of the licensing fees for the artists...which sucks >_<
Yeah, they kinda go out of there way to avoid using FMP's OPs. What's odd is that up to where I am, Shissou is absent. It's also funny that Fumoffu's A-Team Theme gets past stuff, haha.
E7 was bad like this last game, too, though. What I wouldn't have given for songs from the show instead of that filthy movie.
So now that the game is out for a while, what pilot skills are universally worth the pp spent?
Multi target seems very useful in all situation, resolve for sr rushing, will limit break for boss, support attack and dash for support unit. Prevail e-save and will plus for super robot. Kind of on the fence on attack again since it need lots of skills investment plus it doesnt work with All attack? Am i missing anything?
Btw, really liking the Chirico/scopedog, how should i take full advantage of abnormal suvivor and precise attack? Invest in lots of skill point, take attack again to make use of the point, ignore size due to scopedog being S, predict to boost critials... What else to do?
So now that the game is out for a while, what pilot skills are universally worth the pp spent?
Multi target seems very useful in all situation, resolve for sr rushing, will limit break for boss, support attack and dash for support unit. Prevail e-save and will plus for super robot. Kind of on the fence on attack again since it need lots of skills investment plus it doesnt work with All attack? Am i missing anything?
Btw, really liking the Chirico/scopedog, how should i take full advantage of abnormal suvivor and precise attack? Invest in lots of skill point, take attack again to make use of the point, ignore size due to scopedog being S, predict to boost critials... What else to do?
Will Limit Break and Dash are my first priority for everyone. Going past 150 will in the mid and end game is really easy even with Kallen, Heero, and Kira eating up most of the enemies with map attacks. Then E-save/B-save/Hit & Away/Guard for whoever needs it. Then support attack if I have enough PP left over.
Prevail costs way too much and does too little. Only pilot I bothered giving it to was Akagi so I could make it easier to activate his ace bonus . Multi target is only good for battleships. You're better off just having both units in a team attack most of the time. I gave Attack Again to was Amata since it's easy to get his skill up due to Aquarion's element system. Not really worth it for anyone else.
For Chirico, Scopedog's custom upgrade bonus plus a Sniper Kit is enough to take advantage of precise attack. I honestly just ignore abnormal survivor. There's too many good units in this game to worry about babying him and activating Abnormal Survivor.
闘争心
気力限界突破
ガード
底力 +9 (mostly on supers)
精神耐性 (countermeasure against some annoying endgame bosses/enemies)
Put 見切り on a few units at first but it was mostly pointless because if a 10% difference affects whether or not you succeed you're probably better off just using a 100% hit/dodge spirit command in the first place. Also quite a few enemies/bosses have accuracy rates so high it's pointless to raw dodge. If you want to up Chirico's critical you're probably better off just spending any extra PP on his skill parameter.
Didn't get any of the will+ skills either because Basara using 熱血 on the first turn lets him use a big ass map song that boosts (usually 9 units') will by about 16-20 each on the first turn. Used along with 闘争心 pretty much activates all special will threshold skill right off the bat.
Also changing my opinion for strongest unit from Gunbuster to Shin Getter. With 200 will, d extractor s, ace bonus, and ace'd Karen as a teammate, Ryouma ended up hitting 92k on one of the later bosses with a maximum break stoner sunshine (not including Guren's damage).
That's true. In the end though even some of my best dodgy low health units got hit by ridiculous accuracy bosses so I still preferred it to the small offensive increases ┐('～`；┌
Supply/repair units also got surprisingly tanky with guard + upgrading too
闘争心
気力限界突破
ガード
底力 +9 (mostly on supers)
精神耐性 (countermeasure against some annoying endgame bosses/enemies)
Put 見切り on a few units at first but it was mostly pointless because if a 10% difference affects whether or not you succeed you're probably better off just using a 100% hit/dodge spirit command in the first place. Also quite a few enemies/bosses have accuracy rates so high it's pointless to raw dodge. If you want to up Chirico's critical you're probably better off just spending any extra PP on his skill parameter.
Didn't get any of the will+ skills either because Basara using 熱血 on the first turn lets him use a big ass map song that boosts (usually 9 units') will by about 16-20 each on the first turn. Used along with 闘争心 pretty much activates all special will threshold skill right off the bat.
Also changing my opinion for strongest unit from Gunbuster to Shin Getter. With 200 will, d extractor s, ace bonus, and ace'd Karen as a teammate, Ryouma ended up hitting 92k on one of the later bosses with a maximum break stoner sunshine (not including Guren's damage).
気力限界突破 - morale limit break, most important for attackers, obviously.
気力+（壊滅）- doubles morale increases w/kills (aka the way most units get their morale up). You don't need it if you spam Basara, but if you're going for low turn counts you don't really spam Basara more than the first morale+ song or two. I've never bought these in previous SRW games, but I feel like morale builds slowly in Z3-1 for some reason, so it's helpful.
マルチターゲット - for units where the best attack (or one of the best) is an ALL attack because it drops the damage reduction from 25%->10%. Put it on Hibiki, Chirico, STONER SUNSHINE, Arbelest for more damage.
ヒット&アウェイ - for units that need it with good map attacks like Zechs
ダッシュ - When I have extra PP left
援護攻撃 - support attack for some of my best units so I can destroy bosses using their support attacks and they get to attack the boss 2-4 times per turn.
I think that's about all I use. Normally in a SRW I'd give サイズ差補正無視 (Size damage reduction ignore) for all the smaller units, but they nerfed it so hard in this one and all small units have a ignore size on their strongest attack.
After the attack power ones, movement ones and support ones like those I just start spending PP on stats. Whatever their best attacks use (fist or gun).
I don't care about SR points, so I guess I'll just wait it out and use my ships for healing. Should I swarm around the Eva's and Aquarion waiting for the other boss to show up?
気力限界突破 - morale limit break, most important for attackers, obviously.
気力+（壊滅）- doubles morale increases w/kills (aka the way most units get their morale up). You don't need it if you spam Basara, but if you're going for low turn counts you don't really spam Basara more than the first morale+ song or two. I've never bought these in previous SRW games, but I feel like morale builds slowly in Z3-1 for some reason, so it's helpful.
マルチターゲット - for units where the best attack (or one of the best) is an ALL attack because it drops the damage reduction from 25%->10%. Put it on Hibiki, Chirico, STONER SUNSHINE, Arbelest for more damage.
ヒット&アウェイ - for units that need it with good map attacks like Zechs
ダッシュ - When I have extra PP left
援護攻撃 - support attack for some of my best units so I can destroy bosses using their support attacks and they get to attack the boss 2-4 times per turn.
I think that's about all I use. Normally in a SRW I'd give サイズ差補正無視 (Size damage reduction ignore) for all the smaller units, but they nerfed it so hard in this one and all small units have a ignore size on their strongest attack.
After the attack power ones, movement ones and support ones like those I just start spending PP on stats. Whatever their best attacks use (fist or gun).
Size ignore has different levels now. I wonder if it levels up... like S->M->L->LL
so a S unit only gets to M level with level 1? I hate how they don't have mechanics in detailed explaination ;o
Man, after seeing the villians and the power-ups I don't think FMP's attacks are bad in choreography. The attacks are pretty cool on both sides, it's just that they're all so choppy. They feel like handheld animations where it's just the keyframes and no inbetween animation
FMP, Aquarion, Endless Waltz animations all come across as handheld team style. Key frames, some cut-ins, with very little animation between them. Most of the other series, even if their attacks are kind of boring (Eva I'm looking at you) still feel like they have motion and are console quality animations.
I'm wondering if in order to pump these mainline games out faster on 2 year cycles instead of 3 year ones, they absorbed animators from the handheld teams and gave them a couple of the series to do on a bit over handheld level of budget.
So there are two Z3-1 strategy guides coming out on May 30th. The Perfect Bible and a Complete Guide. Anyone have a clue if one is worth picking up over the other? The only info I could find contrasting the two books is that the Complete Guide is 400 yen more and has more pages.
The 34-39 3-way 5 map split really drags. So little happens in each and if you're doing all 3 concurrently that's like 20 hours of minor plot movement. The Gundam/Aquarion route is the worst. Aquarion Evol was not a great show, and was definitely mediocre, but it's worse than mediocre here. It gets a lot of maps and the plot is so boring :\ 1 map away from finishing this split yayyy.
Does the game pick up from 40-60? I felt like 1-15 or so was pretty dull/slow and then it got a little better at 16-30 and then it started getting good at 31-33 but then it split and not much happened up until 40. Kind of hoping the pacing picks up since it's the last 3rd now and there's not as many splits.
Shit, my usual problem showed up. Got up to 50 last week and I'm barely playing anymore, can't be bothered... Might have to put the game away for a bit before finishing it...
Shit, my usual problem showed up. Got up to 50 last week and I'm barely playing anymore, can't be bothered... Might have to put the game away for a bit before finishing it...
Yeah, I'm thinking about putting this on the shelf for a while and playing some other games. Z3-1 really should've been 50 maps like Z2-1 and not 60. There's soooo much filler. You keep fighting the same group of enemies over and over again and they just show up and leave and nothing happens.
It doesn't help the entries that the game focuses on are some of the most dull series in a mainline SRW. Compared to Gundam 00 S1, Gurren Lagann earth arc, Geass S1, Shin Mazinger, Wing TV, Votoms TV, Godmars or Z1's Eureka 7, SEED Destiny, Gainer, Big O, Aquarion, Turn A, Gundam X, Xabungle, Zeta Movies...Z3 is a bore. So far it's about on par with UX, which was a very average-as-it-gets SRW.
If you are looking it at from the "I don't like these things therefore they are boring" then sure. Otherwise it is hardly comparable at all since UX does far more with its main series than Z3.
In this game Aquarion EVOL is just there and it poisons the whole thing with blandness and boredom as they follow the plot all the way to its end.
If you are looking it at from the "I don't like these things therefore they are boring" then sure. Otherwise it is hardly comparable at all since UX does far more with its main series than Z3.
In this game Aquarion EVOL is just there and it poisons the whole thing with blandness and boredom as they follow the plot all the way to its end.
Almost all of the DS/3DS SRWs are butt when it comes to how it's integrated into the story and the effort they put into using the events. It boggles my mind how bad they are.
Honestly, I don't even know what you guys are expecting half the time. The Super Robot route was fine and whatever I got from the other series on the unified routes were great too.
You should really stop playing all of the routes at the same time Bebpo. It's ruining the entire flow of the story. It's not meant to be played like that. The only game that has significant movements in branches is like Alpha 3 and that game was a ridiculous mess in regards to its overall plot.
Almost all of the DS/3DS SRWs are butt when it comes to how it's integrated into the story and the effort they put into using the events. It boggles my mind how bad they are.
Honestly, I don't even know what you guys are expecting half the time. The Super Robot route was fine and whatever I got from the other series on the unified routes were great too.
You should really stop playing all of the routes at the same time Bebpo. It's ruining the entire flow of the story. It's not meant to be played like that. The only game that has significant movements in branches is like Alpha 3 and that game was a ridiculous mess in regards to its overall plot.
Agree to disagree. W/K were great and on par with Z1 in terms of how they use the licensed series. That was the best era of SRW.
Now the games are incredibly bloated with non-stop filler because they don't have the sprite budget but feel they have to push "longest srw yet" selling point each game so it's filler map after filler map where nothing much happens besides one of the 5 groups of enemies shows up, you fight them and they run away until the last 10 stages.
There's nothing wrong with the way SRW used to work where it'd hit all the key events in each series so exciting stuff was always happening. Dragging it out to cover every episode of every show now just makes it slow and boring since in most mecha shows not a lot happens every single ep. Better to combine a bunch and keep things moving.
Playing all the routes just makes it worse, but that's because the pacing is already bad
I'm 80 hours in right now, 2/3rds through the entire game and almost nothing has happened so far in the OG plots or even licensed series besides EW movie, Votoms 2 map big battle and crappy short oav, and most of FMP.
So far Mazinger has done nothing besides filler maps, Aquarion has done nothing besides Jin arc, Tetsujin has done nothing besides introductions, Unicorn has done little to nothing, Eva has done nothing outside the cool 6th angel map, Gunbuster has nothing, OO movie has nothing, Gurren Lagann has nothing. It's just been a really slog SRW. Probably the worst one I've ever played tbh.
Now since I'm sure a lot of stuff will actually start happening in the last 1/3rd I know it won't be the worst srw when all is said and done, but fuck man, 80 hours over a month of playing only this game and nothing and hardly anything has happened. I could've played through multiple other highly eventful full srpgs or jrpgs or wrpgs in that same time. Kirby's Air Ride it gets good after 80 hours is not really acceptable. Srw needs to ditch the bloat, I bet it's hurting the sales as people are getting bored. Just look at the Japanese reviews.
W was the only one that was OK. K and L were really junk, due in part to the originals and their story setting really bogging it all down. Cross-overs weren't that interesting and they felt fuller because they retread the entire story over again in two games for some of the series without changing anything for some of the units, lol. They did the Godannar story twice and didn't add anything in it. Heck, I think L ended up just shortening it.
I have problems with Z3 but story isn't very high or on that list at all. Most of the complaints I've read from Japanese reviews have mostly been complaining about the quality of everything else like the music/graphics. A few folks had personal complaints in regards to series. and most of the folks that did real reviews ended up not minding the story at least or enjoying many of the ways they set it up and the explanations.
I keep saying for you to abandon doing "all routes at the same time" because you're only magnifying the grind you go through. It's the same with any other SRW. The early stages don't have much development or have very little and to go through them all the same time is just going through the motions. it looks like filler because you've gone through it once already and don't have anything new to see. The games aren't built to do that at all. It's a single story meant with a path so you can follow all the developments. It doesn't make any sense to me to dredge through all of that.
I mean really, you started doing all the routes so you wouldn't miss the story in a separate route right? But why do that when there's no story differences to experience there? There are a couple of splits in the game that are just variations that change the way you experience some of the maps and some details but are largely the same. Why even bother going through the other route at the time? lol
You'll get to enjoy the real stuff faster and not be grinding the shit out of the setup stuff.
W was the only one that was OK. K and L were really junk, due in part to the originals and their story setting really bogging it all down. Cross-overs weren't that interesting and they felt fuller because they retread the entire story over again in two games for some of the series without changing anything for some of the units, lol. They did the Godannar story twice and didn't add anything in it. Heck, I think L ended up just shortening it.
I have problems with Z3 but story isn't very high or on that list at all. Most of the complaints I've read from Japanese reviews have mostly been complaining about the quality of everything else like the music/graphics. A few folks had personal complaints in regards to series. and most of the folks that did real reviews ended up not minding the story at least or enjoying many of the ways they set it up and the explanations.
I keep saying for you to abandon doing "all routes at the same time" because you're only magnifying the grind you go through. It's the same with any other SRW. The early stages don't have much development or have very little and to go through them all the same time is just going through the motions. it looks like filler because you've gone through it once already and don't have anything new to see. The games aren't built to do that at all. It's a single story meant with a path so you can follow all the developments. It doesn't make any sense to me to dredge through all of that.
I mean really, you started doing all the routes so you wouldn't miss the story in a separate route right? But why do that when there's no story differences to experience there? There are a couple of splits in the game that are just variations that change the way you experience some of the maps and some details but are largely the same. Why even bother going through the other route at the time? lol
You'll get to enjoy the real stuff faster and not be grinding the shit out of the setup stuff.
Errr, what? Yes, I do seperate saves at route splits to do all routes because I don't like it when I put 80 hours into a single playthrough and missed out on a whole bunch of major event scenes from my favorite animes because they happened on routes that I wasn't on.
Here at the true route splits, it's the same. If you do super robot route you miss the eps of Unicorn/Aquarion and FMP/Votoms being covered and vice-versa. Having a group re-join you and be like "oh, this stuff happened these characters died, these units joined in and these new attacks were made" is far less satisfying than actually seeing that stuff happen in front of you.
Yeah, the stuff you're talking about with the fake route splits like 21-27 are kind of pointless and you can skip them, but the real splits are just like any srw.
But there aren't even many splits in Z3-1 so that really doesn't change the faults of the game itself, which is the slow, slow pacing with tons of filler, the terrible series included, the generally bad animation and inconsistent everything in animations, the lack of BGMs, the lack of gattai attacks, the unbalanced gameplay (first 1/3rd is tough, then game is a joke), etc...
I think a lot of the reason Z3 is a weak entry is the series just aren't very interesting. Look at the series plots you get to play out:
FMP
Unicorn first half
Eva 1.11 and half of 2.22 before Rebuild even gets interesting
Endless Waltz for 2 maps
Aquarion Evol zzz
CCA for like 2 maps zzz
Votoms big battle for 2 maps
Votoms post-TV OAV1 zzz
Tetsujin 28 part 2
GL stuff that doesn't happen until the last 1/3rd
Compared to the series plots in Z1, Hakai-hen, Saisei-hen...that's really dull stuff with hardly any standout material. Even @3 at least had 2nd half of GGG TV, GGG Final, SEED, Ideon, EoE, Gunbuster Final, Dancougar Final, etc.... that's a lot more interesting than what we've got here.
Z3-2 doesn't look like it'll be much better tbh:
00 Movie zzz
2nd half of Unicorn
Rebuild 2.22 second half, 3.33 non-ending
Votoms post-TV OAV2
Diebuster
E7 Ao
I'll admit that's a little more interesting material + combined with the final OG plot to the sphere story means it's should be decent. Maybe with a few interesting add-ins like Star Driver, FMP sequel novels, ZZ Gundam (although would ZZ even be interesting at this point?), and something out of left field it'll be even better, but that's still just not a great group of material. Combine that with the "Bigger & Longer" marketing push that's going to mean Z3-2 will have to be even longer than Z3-1, meaning we're going to see the first 65-70 single route SRW stretching out that material (which isn't even that much since it's mainly OAVs and movies [00 movie has like 2 maps of plot in UX and rest is ELS spam])...Z3-2 is not looking pretty.
Z3's problem is that it just got weighed down by too much baggage from Z1/Z2. They were forced to do Endless Waltz, 00 Movie, CCA, Votoms post-TV OAV Sequels, Aquarion Evol because they'd included the prior stuff and this was a continuation. That doesn't leave a lot of room for adding series they actually wanted to add in Z3.
It'll be nice to have a fresh SRW w/o the baggage so they can just include a bunch of shows they want to do and make a good game out of it. I'm actually looking forward to the next 3DS/Mobile srw than Z3-2 at this point simply because it has the chance to have the more interesting lineup between the two. If UX had visuals on the quality of Z3-1, I'd take UX's lineup over Z3-1's anyday. Demonbane, Linebarrel Manga are way better plot anchors than Aquarion Evol.
Errr, what? Yes, I do seperate saves at route splits to do all routes because I don't like it when I put 80 hours into a single playthrough and missed out on a whole bunch of major event scenes from my favorite animes because they happened on routes that I wasn't on.
Here at the true route splits, it's the same. If you do super robot route you miss the eps of Unicorn/Aquarion and FMP/Votoms being covered and vice-versa. Having a group re-join you and be like "oh, this stuff happened these characters died, these units joined in and these new attacks were made" is far less satisfying than actually seeing that stuff happen in front of you.
Yeah, the stuff you're talking about with the fake route splits like 21-27 are kind of pointless and you can skip them, but the real splits are just like any srw.
It's exactly like i said, you're doing all the route (splits) to experience the story in those at the same time but why do it? You're not experiencing anything worthwhile overall and you've said that before about other SRWs. You even said that these early splits are doing nothing and most don't in SRW.
I mean, is the trade off from doing it like any normal person would, worth it? Doesn't seem like it because you're hating everything right now and you haven't gotten to the awesome material in the story. Besides, if you've seen most of these animes, then you're not spoiling anything for yourself. You already know what's going to be happening. If it's how the stories intersect there, then you can still enjoy that on a second playthrough. That's what I don't get about your reason for playing in this style.
Your favorite animes = you've seen it before. That implies you know the story for them. So you aren't spoiling yourself on them by going ahead in the story. If you care about the cross-over related stuff, then that has to be experienced itself. So the only scenario so that it makes sense to play all of the route splits at the time they happen is if you're not familiar with an anime and don't know what happened. But then it can't be your favorite show. It just is so illogical to me and you're just letting playing the build-up to nothing over and over again until it just whittles you away.
But there aren't even many splits in Z3-1 so that really doesn't change the faults of the game itself, which is the slow, slow pacing with tons of filler, the terrible series included, the generally bad animation and inconsistent everything in animations, the lack of BGMs, the lack of gattai attacks, the unbalanced gameplay (first 1/3rd is tough, then game is a joke), etc...
So then why even bother doing the splits then if you think the series that were included are terrible? The filler is the same as any SRW, maybe a little more noticeable since they aren't jamming random new series that doesn't make any sense in the plot or retreading story yet again. I mean agree with the mechanical aspects of it being bad and that's about it. All SRWs are easy too.
I think a lot of the reason Z3 is a weak entry is the series just aren't very interesting. Look at the series plots you get to play out:
FMP
Unicorn first half
Eva 1.11 and half of 2.22 before Rebuild even gets interesting
Endless Waltz for 2 maps
Aquarion Evol zzz
CCA for like 2 maps zzz
Votoms big battle for 2 maps
Votoms post-TV OAV1 zzz
Tetsujin 28 part 2
GL stuff that doesn't happen until the last 1/3rd
Compared to the series plots in Z1, Hakai-hen, Saisei-hen...that's really dull stuff with hardly any standout material. Even @3 at least had 2nd half of GGG TV, GGG Final, SEED, Ideon, EoE, Gunbuster Final, Dancougar Final, etc.... that's a lot more interesting than what we've got here.
Z3-2 doesn't look like it'll be much better tbh:
00 Movie zzz
2nd half of Unicorn
Rebuild 2.22 second half, 3.33 non-ending
Votoms post-TV OAV2
Diebuster
E7 Ao
I'll admit that's a little more interesting material + combined with the final OG plot to the sphere story means it's should be decent. Maybe with a few interesting add-ins like Star Driver, FMP sequel novels, ZZ Gundam (although would ZZ even be interesting at this point?), and something out of left field it'll be even better, but that's still just not a great group of material. Combine that with the "Bigger & Longer" marketing push that's going to mean Z3-2 will have to be even longer than Z3-1, meaning we're going to see the first 65-70 single route SRW stretching out that material (which isn't even that much since it's mainly OAVs and movies [00 movie has like 2 maps of plot in UX and rest is ELS spam])...Z3-2 is not looking pretty.
I was going to make continue on about how you're wrong about some of this stuff but you haven't even finished the last part of the plot so it'd be spoilers. -_-
I'm just going to have to remember that you're there for the big animations and playing the individual parts out.. It makes so much more sense why you don't enjoy OGs at all when I remember that. Z3 does a helluva lot of great universe work and is very similar to how OGs puts efforts into the bigger picture instead of just the parts.
Not sure what you're talking about with OGs, I love OGs. The only thing I didn't like about 2nd OGs was the 17 stage sluggish start in Masaki world (should've been like 10 maps max). Once 2nd OGs picked up in the 20s it was a great game through and through. Was quite happy with it overall in the end.
Loved OG Gaiden, perfect length and good difficulty challenge. OG1 was boring cause OG1 is boring, OG2 was pretty good.
I like the OG story in Z for sure, but OG story is only 1/10th of the story of any SRW games, so if the licensed stories are suck or done poorly it doesn't make a big difference. Also Gaiou, Crowe, Estelle, Carlos, Shione >>>> Gadlight, Hibiki and Professor.
And with the route split thing. I do it instead of multiple playthroughs because it's more efficient. If there are 20 unique maps in a 60 game route, why replay 40 freaking maps that are the exact same and you've already played them? Especially if you need three runs to see all the maps, so that's replaying 80 maps over again whereas you can just use multiple saves and then only have maybe 10-20 maps repeated to see the full scenario? Ok, there is a reason, I agree you get better pacing for the first playthrough, but it makes the follow up playthroughs way more of a drain then they should be if you want to see all the plot happen on screen.
Your big thing seems to be how they're realistically layering this all together so it fits perfectly instead of just having series warp into the plot and have their plots. Seems like a really minor thing and I'd rather have the warping if it means more interesting plots going on. I mean dropping Eva universe Tokyo 3 and LCL sea straight into NEW UNIFIED WORLD with its angels and everything doesn't really strike me as writing the plot together any better then these handheld games you're talking about. The whole beginning of Z3-1's dimensional merge thing was a lame cop out in the first place to make all these different universes fit.
Not sure what you're talking about with OGs, I love OGs. The only thing I didn't like about 2nd OGs was the 17 stage sluggish start in Masaki world (should've been like 10 maps max). Once 2nd OGs picked up in the 20s it was a great game through and through. Was quite happy with it overall in the end.
Loved OG Gaiden, perfect length and good difficulty challenge. OG1 was boring cause OG1 is boring, OG2 was pretty good.
I like the OG story in Z for sure, but OG story is only 1/10th of the story of any SRW games, so if the licensed stories are suck or done poorly it doesn't make a big difference.
You said you didn't like the story in OGs before! Don't deny it >=O
Look, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. You're so focused on the minutia of events that you're missing out on the big picture of the story. The fact you think CCA is only 2 maps and boring is exactly what I mean. From the start the CCA is integral to the overall story of the game and how it all works together. It's a huge part throughout the game and it pays off at the end of the game in spades. Evol isn't all that great itself but it works so well with the greater universe of Z1-3 and how everything pieces together. Mazinger doesn't have many major maps early on but there are threads in the first half and it pays off big time. etc etc
Don't get caught up in seeing little parts from each series, you should know most of it already if you've seen the anime. Focus on the whole. The reduced cast and the carried over cast work out amazingly well for this. It allows them to create a strong, well-written overarching plot and that's easy to understand and incorporates their series well. The returning cast aid that and help fill the cross-over out well despite not getting additional story. It makes @3 look like a messy fanfic with how well pieced together and interesting it is.
Your big thing seems to be how they're realistically layering this all together so it fits perfectly instead of just having series warp into the plot and have their plots. Seems like a really minor thing and I'd rather have the warping if it means more interesting plots going on. I mean dropping Eva universe Tokyo 3 and LCL sea straight into NEW UNIFIED WORLD with its angels and everything doesn't really strike me as writing the plot together any better then these handheld games you're talking about. The whole beginning of Z3-1's dimensional merge thing was a lame cop out in the first place to make all these different universes fit.
That's exactly what my problem with your approach is. You don't even see all of the cool shit they're doing when zoomed out. It's fine if you enjoy the insanity that's going on during events but calling it boring/bad is hella short-sighted
Look, I get what you're saying, like with CCA being plot-integral and effecting everything around it. That's fine and it's a good thing, sure. But honestly, would Z3-1 be a much worse game if it had half the map count? So many stages have nothing really of value happen. It's just grossly bloated. Why did it have to be 61 stages for a Part 1? Even Hakai-hen felt overly long at 50 stages. I can't imagine they made it 60 for any reason other than "Z2-2 was 60 stages so we can't go back now to smaller map counts" and why I feel like Z3-2 is going to be 70 maps. Not because it needs 70 maps, but because before they even write the storyline, producers are telling them it has to be bigger than Z3-1 which has to be bigger than Z2-2 which has to be bigger than Z2-1 and etc...even UX had to be 50 maps instead of the usual handheld 40 because "it had to be bigger" and UX felt stretched out and would've been a better game at 40 maps easily.
mainline SRW structure should be something like this:
Maps 1-20 -> Introduce the stories, introduce the OG plotlines
20-35 -> Mid-season events for all stories, mid-season unit upgrades, OG plot major events
35-50 -> Last plots -> Finales
That's how it used to be before Z2 and now Z3. The splitting it up has stretched out everything and really just added unnecessary filler.
Look, I get what you're saying, like with CCA being plot-integral and effecting everything around it. That's fine and it's a good thing, sure. But honestly, would Z3-1 be a much worse game if it had half the map count? So many stages have nothing really of value happen. It's just grossly bloated. Why did it have to be 61 stages for a Part 1? Even Hakai-hen felt overly long at 50 stages. I can't imagine they made it 60 for any reason other than "Z2-2 was 60 stages so we can't go back now to smaller map counts" and why I feel like Z3-2 is going to be 70 maps. Not because it needs 70 maps, but because before they even write the storyline, producers are telling them it has to be bigger than Z3-1 which has to be bigger than Z2-2 which has to be bigger than Z2-1 and etc...even UX had to be 50 maps instead of the usual handheld 40 because "it had to be bigger" and UX felt stretched out and would've been a better game at 40 maps easily.
mainline SRW structure should be something like this:
Maps 1-20 -> Introduce the stories, introduce the OG plotlines
20-35 -> Mid-season events for all stories, mid-season unit upgrades, OG plot major events
35-50 -> Last plots -> Finales
That's how it used to be before Z2 and now Z3. The splitting it up has stretched out everything and really just added unnecessary filler.
It'd be the much less of a real game with half the maps. It'd basically be stuff shows up, stuff happens, and then end of the game. You could probably shave a few maps off a single run through but too many and it's basically just a bunch of small scenes from series that are struggling to connect to each other. There'd be a lot less time for the increased character interactions that Z2 and Z3 has compared to the older games. That's been so amazing in the Z games because they've had time to really explore it. They've also done some original things for the various series too because of the extra time. So if one is enjoying what's going on with the characters and all that, then the extended length is worth it.
K and L had a lower map count and that ended up contributing to the horrible story. Lots of shows started part of the way through, they didn't bother going into the story in-depth, the way the world was created was horrible. For example, they didn't even bother including any of the other Godannar pilots in the story but included the G-Gunner and Kouji? Who barely did anything in the actual anime? They totally rewrote Seed D in, I think K instead of just tinkering with it and etc.
I don't really like that we're forced to pick up two games. I'll agree with that but that's separate from the fact that it has had some serious benefits to the story. More time to build up which ends up allowing them to make things clearer and include cross-over interactions that make the story even better. If the game had a 30 map run time, It'd be so strange to introduce like FMP at the start and have it finished like 20 maps later. It'd certainly mean we'd lose a lot of events from that series.
That's the problem I had with @3. So many series going on and because of that, they had to split or try to get all of it done while getting an overall story going in a limited number of maps. The result is that they do the events OK because they focused on each but the overall story was incredibly weak and uninteresting. Half of the cast is there just to be there for the most part and even some of the protagonists were really divorced from the main story.
More time means more room to work and that means less of a chance that it becomes a 10-car pile-up. Reducing a 100 page novel into 50 pages is at the expense of the story, characters, and quality. It really isn't different for SRW. You could probably reduce it but it'd just be main plot points and characters wouldn't get to interact as much, and then the quality would go down.
Man, after seeing the villians and the power-ups I don't think FMP's attacks are bad in choreography. The attacks are pretty cool on both sides, it's just that they're all so choppy. They feel like handheld animations where it's just the keyframes and no inbetween animation
FMP, Aquarion, Endless Waltz animations all come across as handheld team style. Key frames, some cut-ins, with very little animation between them. Most of the other series, even if their attacks are kind of boring (Eva I'm looking at you) still feel like they have motion and are console quality animations.
I'm wondering if in order to pump these mainline games out faster on 2 year cycles instead of 3 year ones, they absorbed animators from the handheld teams and gave them a couple of the series to do on a bit over handheld level of budget.
Something minor that I find infuriating about the Arbalest's animations, (aside from the fact that the fins are now limited to one attack, as opposed to every attack in J and W) is that after dealing his Shining Finger/Build Knuckle/Super Lambda Fire Punch or whatever it's called, in the DS game he'd then turn and face the camera, eyes lighting up, like they do at one point in the show. It's sorta not huge but it bugs me that they skipped out on that. I feel like they did the bare minimum required for these attacks.
Also I guess by opting to do the Second Raid arc I completely missed out on doing CCA? Cuz now Haman Khan is on my team?
Haman Khan teaming up with the good guys without having ever met Judau Ashta is so ridiculous.
Stage 41's nice. And yeah I feel like the last 1/3rd should be good. My main complaint is really that it took far too long to get to this point. Even with my single route save game runtime I'm at 53 hours now and the game is finally getting to the meat of it with everything beforehand being setting up. I mean when we're talking about pacing it out
they did the whole Nia propose scene map but didn't go to anti-spiral stuff after it? Stretchiiiiiing GL out for 4 games is pretty crazy, especially when they do the earth arc in 1 game (which was fine) and then stretch the space arc for 3 games (assuming it doesn't end in Z3-1) which is not really fine. I'm looking forward to the eventual handheld SRW or SRW spinoff that does all of GL in a single game. Or all of Gundam OO->Movie in one game.
I think the only thing I really, really enjoyed up to this point was
the FMP S1 finale on the ship and Eva 1.11's finale with the 6th Angel
STAGE57 SO FUCKING 燃え
THIS IS WHAT SRW IS ABOUT
they really did a good job in putting all series together for a common goal here.
EDIT1:
AAAAND That stage 58...
2 more (and half?) will try to finish tomorrow.
I can totally see where the story is going in z3.2 now
Not sure I want to start on second run, maybe one day when z3.2 is annouced and see what kind of bonus you get form completeing scenario chart or whatever...
EDIT2:
AAAAND
Stage 59 and 60
Man, I no longer care the shitiness of the earlier part of the game, the last 4 stages definitly made up for it. The animation for TTGL is awesome. Too bad you gonna save/load to see all of it's animation. Epilogue left...
EDIT3:
AAAAAND I'm done.
While the heaven chapter preview was playing, I was literally reading out all the lines and acting out the character with the flow. My wife thought I went crazy for a moment. Really looking forward to 3.2 now.
Just got the platinum trophy at the end of my 2nd playthrough. The trophy to collect 30 million credits by far took the most effort to get. Had Ryoma equipped with DEC charger and Gold Emblem spamming Stoner Sunshine everywhere, and using Luck/Bless against all the bosses in the later half of the game and I still never got it til the end of Stage 60 of my 2nd run.
Just got the platinum trophy at the end of my 2nd playthrough. The trophy to collect 30 million credits by far took the most effort to get. Had Ryoma equipped with DEC charger and Gold Emblem spamming Stoner Sunshine everywhere, and using Luck/Bless against all the bosses in the later half of the game and I still never got it til the end of Stage 60 of my 2nd run.
My first run ended with about 20m, checked second run and saw >10m. I can totally see the second run end up with 30+m, especially i never used luck/bless. I'd imagine completeing scenario chart will be the most annoyin one since I already got 60 SR first run
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