The Cutest World War! Let's Play SD Gundam G Generation World!

I'm curious about these pilots you mentioned as being G Generation staples. Do they actually have storylines and/or characterization in the same way that the Banpresto originals do in Super Robot Wars? Or are they just nameless, faceless grunts with both names and faces?

Doing a bit of research, they actually do not! They are named/faced pilots, but their only backstory is "They came from G Gen [Blah]".

Mark Glider is, I think, the only notable one, as he is canonically the original Phoenix Gundam's pilot. But other then that, I don't think there's actually all that much to them.

They've been in numerous games, but they don't really have a backstory. Personally, I don't like to use them. The whole point is to use your favorite pilots and units.

Hm... are the OC pilot guyses allowed to pilot units like the Phoenix Zero or is it out-of-bounds for them?

Either way, I'll reserve a future green helmet character for some ranged combat. Hopefully he'll actually live beyond one mission!

No pilot, including Create-a-Grunts, have any sort of limitation as to what they can pilot. There's only that they would be terrible in some units; like dudes with no Awakening in Newtype-oriented units.

Alright, I'm back and ready to get started for real!

It looks like Domon will indeed be the choice for the first Master, and I'm going to make a SPECIAL CHOICE for my first pilot hire.

The next update will likely be within a few days. Until then, comments about revealing evolution lines are still accepted, as well as suggestions for any future character hires!

The humble Flag is not only good to start, but will eventually unlock practically the entire 00 S2 Villain tree, including the Gadessa and Reborns Gundam (via the GN-X, if I recall correctly)

Leo Space Type -- > Leo Oz Type -- > Tallgeese, which is a classy dame

Protagonist Gundams are annoying to obtain at times. I'll often build something like the Tallgeese early, then try and flip it for the Wing Gundam or something in the exchange screen.

Oh yes, and the Phoenix Gundam can evolve into the basic versions of most of the "Master" Gundams

I just noticed that while most of the available Masters come in hero-rival pairs, Domon is the sole representative of G Gundam. That makes me sad! I wanted to have a Master Asia Master, and his Master Master Gundam. Master Master Master

Welcome back to Let's Play SD Gundam G Gen World!

Today we start the game proper, and play the first mission! The vote tally was pretty solidly in Domon's favour, so he will be our first Master Unit. With that taken care of, you may remember that we were only given 3 default pilots and mobile suits, but had space to take 4. I'm going to fix that before we start the first mission.

First, I need to pick a mobile suit. The first few missions are in Space, so that limits the choices I have a bit, but I've already decided who my first pilot purchase will be, so that means I should really get something very appropriate for him:



A Zaku II. Normally I'd have probably started with a GM or a GM Sniper, but when you see who my rental choice will be, I think you'll see that this is better. That said, though, the Zaku line isn't really... good, but eh. It's cheap, and it's a starter MS.

But wait, there's also something special about taking the Zaku II...!



As I mentioned in the last update, you can "combine" mobile suits in order to unlock new ones. The Zaku II and the Tornado Gundam both combine to unlock the MA-06K Zaku Cannon in my shop, so I could purchase it later if I want to.

Or, to be more accurate, if YOU want me to.



And here is the evolution list for the Zaku II. It's not much, really, but the Zaku II is also a first tier mobile suit, so it takes time to work up the chain. There's one in here I'm specifically going for, though, which you'll find out soon enough.

Now, so we have a fifth mobile suit now, but what about the pilot?



Meet Bernard Wiseman, aka Bernie, the... hero, I guess you could say, of Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket. A young member of the Principality of Zeon, Bernie was part of a task force to destroy a new prototype Gundam (the RX-78NT-1 Gundam "Alex") before it could be finished. Though the attack failed and the rest of the team was killed, Bernie was determined to complete the mission in order to protect the colony the Gundam was stored on from a nuclear attack that the team's commander, a vicious man appropriately named Colonel Killing was going to order as a last resort.

At the end of the OAV, the ship containing the nukes and Colonel Killing himself were destroyed by an EF patrol, however Bernie was not able to find out that fact in time, and he was killed in the process of destroying the Alex

0080 is one of the best Gundam OAVs, and the finale still brings tears to this day.

Though Bernie is just a junior member of the task force, and in fact never shot down an enemy mobile suit before being put on that mission, his representation in video games is generally one of pure badassery. Super Robot Wars generally has Bernie as a slow starter in the few games you get him in, and he sometimes doesn't even join until later (after the 0080 storyline finishes, as a secret), and he generally only comes with either a generic Zaku II or the MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai. However even with all that, Bernie actually progresses quickly, and becomes a powerful character later on. This trend continues even into G Gen World!

Bernie is considered a lower tier pilot, and as such he has much lower XP requirements per level. In fact, my L40 Bernie in my PSP game still needs less XP to get to the next level then even a L20 Seabook! This means that Bernie will unlock his skills much faster. And oh boy, did they give him a number of great ones. Bernie's starting skill is Potential, which gives a bonus to Unit Defense and Unit Attack when the mobile suit falls under 50% HP. This is generally not that useful of a bonus, especially since Bernie doesn't tend to pilot things that tank. His normal stat progression, though, does lend him to some units that this skill will work in, though. His starting skill is not what's amazing, however. No, it's the skills he picks up while leveling. Skills such as Mood Maker (+Accuracy to all pilots within the same group) and Sure Kill (chance for a normal attack to be Super Critical).

Anyway, with our first canon pilot acquired, I fill out the last slot in my squad, and prepare for the first mission!



In G Gen World, levels are grouped into 5 Stage Ranks (A through D and then Final), with 11 missions in each. However you cannot just choose any of the missions from the start, as there actually is a progression of difficulty within them. As you complete missions, new ones get unlocked, so you will always have 3 unbeaten missions available until you unlock all of the missions for a given rank.

There's no need to get ahead of myself, so I'll just start with the first one: Departure of the Trojan Horse!



In case the shot in the mission select menu didn't clue you in, once you choose a mission, you get a screen that shows you who your Guest is going to be, and gives another hint as to what the level is about. As well, it lets you know what the Clear Bonus of the stage will be. The Clear Bonus is an amount of money you get for clearing the stage, obviously. It's low because you're meant to earn the bulk of your cash by completing objectives and killing enemies. Which I'll show in a bit.



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam: Incandescent War (for a theme that I remember as being kind of iconic, I had a hard time finding this on any soundtrack)

This stage is meant to be based primarily around Mobile Suit Gundam: Episode 2, Destroy Gundam!, though it probably works off of the Movie version of events (since most games do), and starts off right after Amuro destroyed the remaining parts of the V Project and the White Base is attempting to escape Side 7.



The White Base leaves Side 7, and prepares to leave the area before more Zeonic forces can trap them. The captain, Paolo Cassius is badly injured and the only remaining officer on the ship is Ensign Bright Noa, who takes command in his place.



Much of the crew is injured, so civilians who managed to get on board the White Base fill in. As they get ready to launch, Bright deploys the Gundam in order to provide protection during the escape.



Amuro, who was in the Gundam, acknowledges the order.



However... he was not who Bright and Cassius was expecting to be in the pilot seat. Mirai Yashima, who is filling in as the navigator, recognizes Amuro, and lets them know that he's at least not a Zeon agent or something. Needless to say, though Cassius is not happy with this turn of events, there's not much else they can do at the moment.

Suddenly, an alarm rings!



Incoming missiles from a ship well outside of range strike the White Base as Mirai tries to navigate it out of the colony's dock.



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam: Gallant Char

And then the sensors pick up some mobile suits approaching fast. They appear to be Zakus, but they're moving three times faster then normal...



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam: Red Comet

OH SHIT, IT'S THE RED COMET, WE'RE SCREWED.

Char Aznable arrives in his signature Zaku, alongside two other Zakus.



Amuro is pretty worried about this turn of events, and hopes he can make it through.

How about we help him a bit with that?

In each mission, there are two locations that you can deploy ships into, even though you will get 4 ship slots over the course of the game. This means that the player will basically be focusing on two main ships, with the other two being loaded out for specialized thing if so desired. In this case, we only have the one ship, so we have no real choice.

The ship selection screen will show you both the ship and it's Captain and the Master Unit assigned to it. It will also show you if the ship or the Master is actually not able to be used in the terrain of the map; for example if your ship can only be used in Space and you're about to enter a mission that's on land. If any other unit inside the ship cannot be used in the terrain you're deploying to, then you will just get a warning window pop up when you select the ship.

After placing the ship, you can choose it's orientation before accepting the deployment. Ships and XXL-sized units are very tied to their orientation; their movement rate gives you max movement only when going in the direction the unit is facing, and has severe penalties if moving to the sides or to the rear. As well, weapons have very specific firing arcs that are generally only to the front of the unit; for example a mega beam cannon on the front of the ship can only hit enemies in front of it. Changing a unit's orientation uses up the unit's turn, as well, so you need to make sure that you set your orientation well in advance.



With the deployment out of the way, it's time to begin the stage!



Since we're in a normal level now, as well, we have actual objectives! All missions have "Destroy all enemy forces" as the overall level objective, however they all also have what are known as Break Triggers and Challenge Missions.

Break Triggers are the bread and butter of both World and the game before it, G Gen Wars. If you meet the Break Trigger, you activate a "Generation Break", which first off gives you a bunch of money, but more importantly expands the mission by adding in another episode that is related to the primary one. Usually these expansions are HILARIOUS if you consider the resulting plot, however.

Challenge Missions, on the other hand, are optional skill-testing objectives. If you can complete the Challenge, you will also get a bunch of money, but you will also cause a Secret unit to deploy. The Secret unit is worth extra money and XP when killed, but will more importantly be, generally, units that may be a bit harder to unlock through evolution, so they help fill out your profile. You get profile completion just for seeing a mobile suit, so you do not need to evolve to every single MS; in fact, there are a number of units where that's impossible. Evolution adds the unit to your store, though, so it's still often worthwhile to evolve to a unit even if you've seen it already.

For this mission, our Break Trigger is that Amuro needs to defeat Char, and the Challenge Mission is that Amuro needs to do it in the first turn. This... is not possible for my current strength, but that's ok. Each mission has 2 Challenge Missions; one for each of the 2 Break Triggers. If you fail the first one, you can trigger the second one. If you manage to get the first one, then the second one does not activate; you can only get one Secret!

If you manage to kill all the enemies before you activate a Break or Challenge, though, the mission ends right there. This can be annoying for some levels when you have a good team, since you need to NOT kill enemies until a timer finishes, or you reach a certain area!



You didn't need to do this in the intro stage, so here's the launching menu. If my ship supported two teams, there'd be another column of them next to Team 1. Launching is just a matter of selecting the mobile suit and then moving it to where you want to go. Helpfully, if you just move a mobile suit and then end it's turn, the game will bring you right back to the ship to select another MS, allowing you to quickly deploy everyone.

Right now I can't actually engage the enemy very well, so I just deploy my suits in a formation around the ship in preparation, as well as move Amuro and the White Base up a bit.



I don't think I showed this off before. When you get attacked, there are a number of options you can make use of.

The top one is Counterattack, which means that you try to dodge, and then respond with a chosen attack. However, the Shining Gundam doesn't have a weapon that hits where the Zaku is, so we can't make use of it.

The second one is Defend, which will only show up if the unit has a shield. Defending will have you try to dodge, but if you cannot, then you use your shield, reducing the damage by 30%. There are skills to increase this reduction, but generally you shouldn't be getting hit in a G Gen game. This option is the worst for enemy forces, though. If the enemy unit cannot counterattack and they have a shield, they will always use Defend unless even defending would cause them to die. Sure you won't get a counterattack, but your attack is also 30% weaker as a result.

Lastly is Evade, which has you put all effort into dodging, which reduces the enemy's accuracy by a percentage. It seems highly variable, so I'm not sure what it's based on.



On my next turn, I decide to teach that Zaku a lesson. As I had mentioned before, most ships have a dedicated support attack weapon they cannot use otherwise. This weapon is shown in a purple box on the weapon list. Domon, being a Master unit, can call upon ships to provide support fire as long as the enemy is within the firing range, like this Zaku is. And so the combined fire of the Carry Base and the Shining Gundam are enough to kill the Zaku!



... however the Zaku gives terrible XP.

I'm really not sure what the calculations for XP gains are, to be honest. I know that there is indeed some splitting between units if you have support attacks, but other then that I'm not sure how the base reward is calculated. The ship has more XP because ships get a bonus multiplier if they got the XP due to being part of a support attack, which is pretty nice.



You probably noticed in the previous pictures that there's a Score field in the corner. Each enemy unit in a mission is worth a certain Score, and HOW you kill the unit can also give you multipliers that improve the resulting score. An example is that if you kill a unit with a critical hit, you get I think a 10% bonus. This makes getting guys to High and Super High Tension pretty useful, since you get more points from it. Completing Break Triggers and Challenge Missions also give you a boatload of points.

And what are the points for? At the end of a level, your score is converted into money and awarded to you in addition to the clear bonus for the stage, so trying to get the top score is certainly worth your while.



Even though I left Domon there next to Char, he only has Amuro in mind. A number of missions will be like this; the named enemy forces will commonly only be focused on attacking the Guests, and will ignore your guys unless they're the only thing in range.

Nameless grunts, on the other hand? Don't have such limitations, and will attack whatever's in range.



In any case, I take down Char with a large support attack, and he retreats, impressed at the power of the Gundam. Which means...!



We triggered the first Generation Break!



Music: Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam A New Translation: MS Within The Flash

Explosions rock Side 7, and then suddenly some mobile suits escape. Except there's something strange about these ones...



Three RMS-099 Rick Dias and... the RX-178 Gundam MkII?!?!

Yep, Generation Breaks can be crazy like this. Oh, and this is only half of the story. Seems that the lead Rick Dias is piloted by Quattro Bajina... also known as Char Aznable. So the timeline of this mission has so far been that you caused Char to retreat... INTO Side 7, where he managed to change clothes and mobile suits, and make off with the Gundam MkII.

In any case, this Generation Break is meant to represent Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Episode 2, Departure, though like the first part of the mission likely instead works off of the A New Translation movies; especially since the theme they're using is MS Within The Flash.

Anyway, Quattro's escape is not without it's own troubles...



Music: Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam A New Translation: Winds of Reunion

A number of RGM-79Q GM Quels and a RMS-106 Hizack arrive, with the Hizack being piloted by Jerid Messa, main rival of Zeta Gundam. He is very much not happy that someone is trying to make off with the Titans' new prototype, and is here to put a stop to it. Quattro makes sure that Kamille and his wingmen are ready, and prepares for battle!



And with that, our objectives change! Our new Break Trigger is that Kamille needs to defeat Jerid, and the Challenge Mission is to do so within two turns, with this turn counting as the first one. This is much easier to do with our current strength.

With all of the forces to the top of the map clear, I dock my units for some repairs and start moving the Carry Base back towards the Titans, while also placing Quattro and his team in a formation to prepare for the next turn's attack.

Unlike most named opponents, Jerid actually will charge towards Kamille directly instead of waiting a few turns before moving. Unfortunately, though, the Carry Base can't move far enough to have my guys assist in defeating Jerid, so I will have to lose out on the XP from that. Darn. But I'll make it up later, I'm sure. I still deploy some guys to take care of the GM Quels once Jerid is taken care of, though.



Defeated, Jerid makes a hasty retreat. This causes an instant Generation Break!




Music: Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 1: Seizure

A number of MSJ-06II-E Tieren Space Types, a MSJ-06II-ET Tieren Space Commander Type, and a MSJ-06II-SP Tieren Taozi deploy alongside a ship from the HRL. The Tieren Space Commander Type is piloted by Sergei Smirnov... but you can't really tell because of the piloting helmet. The Taozi is piloted by Soma Peries, who gets a much more visible pilot suit.

I'm not entirely sure what episode this Break is referring to, but the fact that it's the HRL and they're looking for Gundams suggests to me that it's based on Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season One: Episode 9, The Honor of a Great Power, where the HRL sets up a plan to capture the Gundams of Celestial Being. In this case... they seem to have confused poor old RX-78 and Gundam MkII as some of the ones they need to steal.



Oh, and by defeating Jerid so quickly, I also unlock the Secret!



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories: Full Burner

Why, it's Gato and the GP-02A!

Secret units are ENTIRELY unrelated to the mission, so Gato showing up here should mean nothing to what was happening previously... though to be honest, Gato's Gundamjack showing up when we're already dealing with two other Gundamjacks isn't too strange.

Secret units are also considered to be their own "side" in the battle, and so take their turns after the enemy forces.

Anyway, I move my guests away from the nuclearbot and the GMs, and prepare to engage it with my forces. The GMs advance towards me, but the Tierens are content to stay on the whole other end of the map for a turn and see how things play out. Secret units also don't follow the normal rules of face characters waiting a few turns before engaging, and so Gato charges after me right away.

The next few turns are not really all that exciting. My guys wipe out the GM Quels and the Tierens start to advance towards my units.



The GP-02, while it's a fearsome nuclear machine, is actually not that bad for a starting level Secret. It's only weapons are a beam saber which is range 1, vulcans which are range 2, and the nuke which is a MAP and thus can't be used in a counterattack. However, as a result Gato does shield all your attacks, but he's really just a large piggy bank waiting to be broken open. An interesting thing about Secret units is that they also explode when defeated, and use the fancy explosions, unlike normally where they would just retreat.



When the Tierens finally reach my forces, I decided to try having the Guests fight the named enemies and see if there were any events. And lo and behold, there was! Amusingly, it looks like the dialogs with Soma reference the fact that she is what Gundam 00 calls a "Super Soldier" and has quantum brainwaves. This basically just means she's the 00 universe's equivalent to a Newtype. Amuro and Quattro seem to sense something; Quattro mentions a feeling like Amuro, and against Amuro she mentions being a "Designed Baby"... which also makes her a Coordinator. So really, Soma just combines aspects from all over Gundam.

Kamille/Soma just seems to be him being angry at her, because Kamille is an angry dude.



After weakening Soma, I set up some of my guys to finish her off and share XP. While doing so, my own Zaku II levels up. When a mobile suit levels up, you get a number of points determined by the level to place in one of the 5 stats: HP, EN, Unit Attack, Unit Defense, and Unit Mobility. After you put so many points in a stat, it goes up by the stated number. After it goes up by a certain amount, it starts costing more points to level, but by then you're also earning more points per level. Basically you will always have enough points when a unit levels up to raise one stat, and at some levels you will have extra points left over. Increased stats do not carry over to evolved forms, though.

Pumping UA is always the right answer, as well.



Anyway, after weakening her enough, I finish Soma off and she retreats.



Sergei, on the other hand, is all about the Gundams; in fact, he seems a bit surprised about the Gundams he's facing.



When defeated, he talks about "Gundam 1", which either means he was looking for Exia, or he really WAS here to get the RX-78... because it looks just like the GN-000 0 Gundam.

After taking care of Sergei, the HRL ship makes it into range of my units and deploys some more Tierens. Which means it's time to show off a feature!



But first, Bernie levels up! It seems that for the most part, pilots will increase in random values when leveling, but based mostly on their personality. Bernie is generally taken to be a melee and defensive pilot, so he'll gain mostly in Melee and Defense, but can still get points in anything else except Awakening. You can only get points in Awakening when leveling up if you already HAVE points in it.



When attacking a ship, most of them have a highlighted square on them. This is, for all intents and purposes, the "weakpoint" of the ship. Generally it's the bridge. Attacking here causes a "Pinpoint Attack", which is basically a mini-critical, causing more damage. You can even critical when doing a Pinpoint Attack, for even more damage. The only downside to a Pinpoint Attack is that unlike a normal attack, only units that have weapons whose range falls within the Pinpoint Attack square can join in on a support attack; in a normal attack, the supporting units just need to be able to hit any square the ship is sitting in.



If a unit that deployed from a warship has it's warship destroyed, the unit will "surrender", and then be able to be captured. There's not really a limit to the number of units you can capture in a mission from what I can tell, but it basically ends up being a matter of whether you prefer the XP or the unit. Capturing can be an easy way to break into some evolution lines that may be hard to obtain.



And with that unit captured, I defeat the last Tieren, finishing the level!

When you clear a stage, you get this screen that tallies up your rewards. First, as you can see, it adds the Score Bonus to the Clear Bonus, and awards us that much money. Yay!

After that, we unlock a new Option Part in the store. We'll unlock a new one after every mission we beat, until all of them are unlocked. In this case, I actually unlocked a Learning Machine I, which can be installed onto a MS to increase the Pilot XP earned by that pilot by 10%.



Next, it gives you the kill counts for your pilots. The top 3 aces in a level gain a bonus amount of Ace Points based on the Stage Rank; in the A Rank's case, first place gets 50, second gets 40, and third gets 30. And there can be ties, too, in which case all of the tied pilots get the same amount.

A-1 is actually one of the best levels to grind out Ace Points once you get two ships. This is because before the first Generation Break, there are only 3 enemy units; thus, if you load up your Warship pilot slots with dudes you want to level, then have each ship kill one of the Zakus and have a mobile suit kill Char, everyone gets 51 AP (1 for the kill, and 50 for tying for 1st).

That is INCREDIBLY DULL, however. I'll be making use of it later, but it's so boring.



Well, at the end of that level, my Zaku II managed to get to level 3, but that's not quite enough to get the evolution I wanted. Instead, we do have the option of evolving to the MS-06R-2 Zaku II High Mobility Test Type. I could do that, actually, since it would still end up evolving to the unit I want to, PLUS the Hi-Mob type is better then the base Zaku. Still usable in space, as well, which is important. So maybe I'll do that to get ready for the next level.

Of my other units, they only made it to level 2, so they're still shy of what they need to evolve. After the next mission, though, we should be able to see what they will evolve into...!



Lastly for this update, we have the captured Tieren Space Type. When you have a captured unit, it shows up in here until you decide what to do with it. The options are: Keep it, Sell it, Keep All, and Sell All. If you sell a captured unit, you get the unit's normal resale value, which is FAR more then the Score value it's worth in a mission. Keeping it just adds it to your MS pool.

For this, I decide to keep it. I could have gotten one easily through evolving a normal Tieren, but this is also a free unit in case I hire someone else and get more deploy slots. The Tieren Space Type is only usable in Space, though, so it'll be harder to make use of.



For the record, this is what the Space Type will evolve into. You can see that we can now see the Taozi in the list, because we have the Taozi in our profile since it showed up in a mission. The Anf, which is the first one, is one of our normally purchasable units. So we just don't know what the middle one is at this moment.



And with that we're done for the first level! The 9% is indicating our current profile completion; we've seen and/or owned 9% of all of the mobile suits in the game so far. Not bad, but we have a long way to go still!

Until next time, however, keep making suggestions for pilots or units to purchase, or asking me any questions you may have!

Good job so far, but I would love to see a more in-depth description of the battles themselves. What combo attacks are you using? Are you missing at all? Who are you using most of all?

Oh, and screen caps of actual attacks are welcome too = )

No GuttedWrenStudios references? Aww.

(I kid, I kid. Probably not that popular anyway. Still... "Oh, Haro's just going through robot puberty.", for starters.)

Yeah, I'm more interested in combat mechanics and tactics than lots of screenshots of dialog.

Though I must say that the triple-Gundamjack is hilarious.

She's more a Cyber Newtype than anything else, since Coordinators weren't "psychic" per se

(No, that's not REALLY true. We think.)

But yes, she is basically a Cyber-Newtype.

I'm certainly not going to have much more for basic systems to talk about very soon, so if people want to see more of the battles themselves I can slot that in.

Nice work but you can cut down on the characters talking and just recap the story for us.

Will you be showing how to make an already easy game easier?(Skill that reduces defence)
Looking forward to Love-Love Tenkyoken!

Is... Is there a character requirement for that? Or can anyone in the appropriate Gundams use it?

Welcome back to Let's Play SD Gundam G Gen World!

Since you guys asked for it, I've decided to put the longer dialog segments in video form as well as the voiced ones, since it's actually a lot less work for me then processing the images!

Before I begin the next level, though, I have something to take care of.



The Zaku II served me well enough, but I want to fill out my store and profile, so I'll just evolve it to the Hi-Mobility Zaku II on the way to the next stage.

When you evolve a unit, it gets added to the store for later purchase. In case, for example, you lose one, or need to purchase another for a different evolution chain.



With my team now prepped, it's time to begin the next level: The Collapsing Land!



This stage is based on episode 3 of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (which is not streamed as easily as the others, sorry!), which is actually VERY similar to the last mission!

Really, Gundam SEED was designed to be a retelling of the original Gundam show and the One Year War, and for the most part actually does a very good job at it! The characters are better written and generally more interesting, the battles are better animated (though also featuring a lot of lazy animation reuse; there's even scenes where it's reusing animation from a whole other show!), and the mobile suits are not as retarded.



The episode that this mission is based on is another one where the hero just happened to fall into the mobile suit while his colony was attacked, and gets sucked into the war. Unlike the same scenes in the original Gundam, in this one when the main character, Kira Yamato, destroys one of the mobile suits, he doesn't just damage the colony; he actually destroys it's support pillar, destroying the entire colony in the process (though ZAFT speeds the process along fast after this point). Whoops.




Music: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Impatience

Now that the immediate enemy threat inside the colony has been taken care of, and considering the structural collapse of the place in general, Kira and the Strike, as well as the Earth Alliance ship that was managing it (the LCAM-01XA Archangel) escape and try to withdraw from the area. Before they're able to do so, however, suddenly a number of mobile suits show up to stop them!



It turns out to be a pack of ZGMF-1017 GINNs lead by the GAT-X303 Aegis, one of the other mobile suits developed alongside the Strike.

The pilot of the Aegis, Athrun Zala recognizes Kira as the pilot of the Strike. The two of them were childhood friends, and he is surprised at this turn of events. Kira also recognizes Athrun, and is shocked that he is a member of ZAFT and part of this attack on his home colony.



But we are a neutral third party, and are instead interested in making sure that the events that actually occured here today did in mostly the right order.



The first Break Trigger is to have Kira fight Athrun (no need to defeat him). The Challenge Mission is to do this in 2 turns. This will be a piece of cake.



First things first, we need to thin out the enemy forces a bit. I start off by sending out the Phoenix Zero to weaken the center GINN. With the squad's leader deployed, this means that I can start making use of support attacks to clear out this squad.

Mark takes a chunk out of the GINN, and then Bernie follows up to finish it off, placing himself in position to provide support.



And just like that the remaining GINNs in this group go down, pushing the Tornado Gundam to level 3. I shove the Tornado and the Hi-Mob Zaku back into the Carry Base to recharge before the next turn.



The Strike moves forward towards the Aegis. Not close enough to attack it, but close enough to be able to do so next turn.

With that I end my turn. The bottom squad of 3 GINNs starts moving up towards the Archangel, and one even fires off a potshot that does very insignificant damage. Athrun, on the other hand, is content to remain where he is and have Kira move to him.



Which he certainly does. They both express their disbelief that their friend could in fact be their enemy, but Athrun has too much faith in his beliefs to surrender so easily.



And with that, I trigger the first Generation Break. The Archangel detects another squad of 6 GINNs approaching from the rear side of the colony, before more explosions rock it and another mobile suit appears!



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray: A Red Strike

What falls out is the MBF-P02 Astray Red Frame, piloted by Lowe Gear, a member of an organization that scavenges wrecks for anything of value. And boy, did he find something in this wreck!

This Generation Break actually makes a lot of sense, as these events actually do happen in sequence. The only difference is that Lowe actually shows up well after the Archangel departs.



And with that, the second Break Trigger is revealed: Lowe needs to defeat 2 GINNS. And hey, there isn't a Challenge Mission listed.

Music: Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories: Full Burner

Yep, by having Kira attack Athrun within two turns, I met the secret requirement and so there isn't a second one. In this mission, it causes the MA-06 Val Varo to deploy, piloted by Kelly Layzner.

Unlike the GP-02A in the first mission, this secret unit is actually very dangerous. Sporting a number of ranged weapons, it's only weakness is that the Val Varo is considered an XL unit, and thus can only hit things in front of it... unfortunately that doesn't really help you any, as he starts behind the second GINN pack, and begins to advance towards you, and can freely rotate around like a normal unit when attacked. It even comes with an anti-beam coating that reduces the damage of beam weapons; and at this point, most of your best weapons are going to be beam!



First things first, I need to pull the Red Frame back so that it can be protected by my own forces, and make the GINNs and Val Varo spend time to approach me. I also dock my Phoenix Zero back in the Carry Base and move the ship down towards the center.



I send Domon and Bernie down to greet the last set of GINNs from the first batch, and send the Tornados to act as a rear guard. With all my guys having moved, I end my turn.



In the enemy's turn, the first batch of GINNs charge the Archangel and get weakened for my squad to finish them off. Meanwhile, Athrun charges Kira and has another conversation, trying to convince him to turn his back on the Earth Alliance and join with the Coordinators. But Kira refuses to join a group so willing to go to war, and even destroy a colony (though it was technically Kira that did that...).



Meanwhile, Domon is cleaning house with Bernie, bringing the Hi-Mob Zaku to level 2.



This one's for you guys.

On the enemy's next turn, Athrun slams himself uselessly against Kira, and the reinforcements make it just about in range of my guys. So on my next turn I dock Kira back in the Archangel, and move it out of the way.



Uh, nope. I'm not going to do that.

After checking how the remaining enemy forces will move, I decide to end my turn without attacking any of the reinforcements, and will just let them have one more turn to advance on me.



Athrun decides to try and attack Domon, and gets a face full of beam saber instead. Defeated, he retreats from the battlefield. This brings the Shining Gundam to level 3! Only two more to go!



You can even do support attacks in a counterattack, by the way. Thankfully Kelly just does one of his weaker attacks here, and I manage to counterattack him for half his life. Yep, all three of my dudes there beamed him in the face with their best attacks for only 7000ish HP.



On my turn, though, I pull Bernie out of the ship to finish off the Val Varo with another team attack. This one only does about 8000, so as you can see the Val Varo is a really buff unit at this stage in the game.



And with that, the Val Varo falls, awarding me with a bunch of points and XP, leveling Bernie up to 3.



And since I weakened two GINNs during counterattacks last turn, this looks like a great place to finish up that second Break Trigger.

And interesting thing about Red Frame here as well, which is also technically true of ANY Guest unit that shows up in World, is that he has a lot of weapons he actually wouldn't have had at this point. Namely, he has the Gerbera Straight, which is a physical sword Lowe gets from an old swordsman later on in the manga series. This was really useful to Lowe because mobile suits in SEED run on basically very large batteries, and using the beam sword or beam rifle use up more of this battery power. The katana, on the other hand, only uses the energy required to move the mobile suit, which is still less then the requirements to use the beam saber.



It also hurts a lot.



Music: Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam A New Translation: Winds of Reunion

With Lowe having defeated two of the GINNs, we trigger the second Generation Break, this time bringing back Jerid and someone new. Lila Milla Rira is an Earth Federation ace pilot who never did join the Titans, however Jerid managed to convince her to give him some training on how to battle in space. I'm not sure if this Generation Break is meant to reference any specific episode from Zeta Gundam, but it likely does occur during the training.

Lila pilots a RMS-117 Gabaldy Beta, and has a few of them as wingmen. Jerid is still in his Hizack, and the Titans forces brought along a pair of Salamis Kais, each carrying two GM Quels.

With my forces still hanging out around the center of Heliopolis, the Titans are too far away to bother me right now, and the last of the GINNs are still too far away to bother chasing, so I dock my suits away to recharge, and move the guests out of the way of attack, and then wait two turns for the enemy units to get close enough to engage.



With them now close enough to prepare for, I deploy Domon and Bernie for the north pack of GINNs, and everyone else to the south for the other pack. This way, when they advance again in their next turn, they'll be slammed against the pain walls.

Meanwhile, Kira and Lowe both have events when they attack Lila.

Elsewhere, Domon kills a GINN and gets to level 2.

The Titans forces then slam themselves against the ships uselessly, weakening themselves for my counterattack.



Jerid also has events with Kira and Lowe. With that, I don't need the guests anymore, so I start moving them away from the battle zone, both for their protection, but also so that they aren't blocking my way.



After killing a Gabaldy, the other Tornado manages to reach level 3 as well. One of the two of them will need to be level 4, and the other only needs to be level 3, though, for the after-mission evolutions I'll need.



Conveniently, the other Tornado reaches level 4 by defeating Lila and Jerid, causing them to retreat. Elsewhere, Domon and Bernie kill the last of the GINNs, pushing Bernie's Zaku to level 3, where I'll need it to be for it's evolution, so I dock the Zaku and the Tornados for now. Domon moves himself closer to the northern Salamis Kai and gets ready to engage some GMs.

On my next turn, Mark kills one of the GM Quels, advancing the Phoenix Zero to level 3, but that's not quite where I want it to be yet. This just leaves 3 more GMs and the two Salamis left on the map. I weaken the first one with help from Kira and the Archangel, and have Domon fight the GM Quels from the top ship.



One of them gets a lucky hit in on Bernie who deployed to help soften the GMs up, knocking him down to critical health, but the other ignores him and instead concentrates on Domon. To his misfortune, as Domon kills him in the counterattack. On my next turn, the two Tornados finish off the bottom Salamis, causing the remaining GM Quel to surrender. This is a good unit to capture, as it's actually pretty good for early levels, and opens up some evolution trees. I then send the Phoenix Zero up to support Domon.



This one's for you guys.

Amusingly, even though Domon goes into Super Mode, the Basic Shining Gundam doesn't have that ability, and so it remains unchanged. Killing that GM brings the Shining up to level 4, which is close but not close enough to getting the full Shining Gundam.



Bernie and Mark then finish off the Salamis, bringing the Phoenix Zero up to level 4, just where I wanted it.



And that ends the level! This time, I unlocked the First Generation Learning AI, which increases the Unit XP earned by the unit it's equipped on by 10%. This line of Option Parts is VERY handy when you are wanting to evolution grind!



And as an added bonus, I unlocked my first bonus character! Starting at 10% profile completion, at 5% increments you unlock special characters that you can only get through this process. Many of them are alternate versions of characters you can purchase normally, but a number are characters you simply cannot get.

The first one you unlock is Audrey Burne, from Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn. She has fairly poor stats as a PILOT, but actually shines as the Guest on one of your ships, where she can very quickly get a LOT of Charm, and thus improve XP gains. I'll likely be using her in the Carry Base, but I'll start that once I do a bunch of Ace Point grinding in A-1 later on.



Ok, here is where I'm looking for some input from you guys. The big benefit from evolving the G Gen Originals (Phoenix line and Tornado) is that they evolve into the various Basic form mobile suits.

In this case, Phoenix Zero can evolve into the Basic versions of MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam, LM312V04 Victory Gundam, and GF13-017NJ Shining Gundam. There's no NEED to evolve to the Shining since we already have one, but doing so would unlock it in the store just in case.

On the other side, Tornado will evolve into the basic versions of RX-78-2 Gundam, SYSTEM ∀-99 (WD-M01) ∀ Gundam, and GAT-X105+AQM/E-X01 Aile Strike.

So, let me know which of these Basics you'd like me to pursue!



On the other hand, the second Tornado evolves to Phoenix Zero in order to add it to the store. THIS Phoenix Zero, on the other hand, is going to be evolved to the GGF-001 Phoenix Gundam, both to unlock that in the store and to reveal another set of 3 Basics that we can evolve to.



The Hi-Mobility Zaku evolves to the MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai, which was Bernie's unit in War in the Pocket. It gives up the bazooka, but gains in some better weapon selection.



Here's what the Zaku Kai can evolve to. We can see that it has the Hizack on the list because we've been seeing Jerid piloting one, but there's also two other unknown suits in the list. Anyone have a preference about what to go for?

The Shining Gundam is still too low level to evolve to the full Shining Gundam, however it CAN evolve to the JMF1366R Rising Gundam, if people want to go to that one instead!

And with that, this update is over! Hopefully you found this style a bit more interesting then previously. Once again, let me know if you have any questions about the game, or suggestions about units or pilots you'd like to see. Until next time!

I would love to see Aile Strike possibly headed towards an eventual Strike Noir - Alliance vs. ZAFT II+ may be a totally different genre of game from the G Gen series but it gave me a huge soft spot for that suit, it kind of just tears things up there. It doesn't look from what I found that that's too nasty a chain to go through, but there was a lot of confusing interconversion among the Strike variants.

Keep in mind that the easiest way by far to get the Freedom/Justice lines is actually through the Strike Rouge to Akatsuki. As I recall, the vanilla Strike evolves to the Strike Dagger, the Strike Rouge, Strike Noir, and the Duel Gundam. I think it and the Justice are about the only two cases where you can't get their canon pilot's best suits just by following what they pilot. It's pretty obvious why since the Seed Destiny endseries units (the Strike Freedom, Infinite Justice and Akatsuki [although less so here]) are stupidly overpowered. The only thing balancing the METEOR equipped XL variants is their XL size--If you stick them on a Master unit, you've pretty much got gigantic win buttons.

Well, that's another point in favor of Aile Strike for now I guess. Just not for using that to get to my pet MS. (I am totally in favor of a Freedom or Justice, though.)

Go get a Victory Gundam. We need more Wings of Light in this Let's Play.

Yeah, if you pick Usso as a master, the final upgrade to the V line is the V2 AB Gundam which isn't quite as nice as previous versions (or so I've been told) but you can also get it way earlier than most of the other Master choices with a minimum of grinding. Beam Shields + I-Fields are nothing to scoff at, especially when it comes packed with piercing Beam weapons. So you can end up getting a very solid unit that'll last you for 2/3rd's of the game or so most of the way through A rank.

On my playthrough I went with Setsuna as my initial master and Zechs as my second and ended up spending a long ass time grinding my way through the 00 Gundam unit list. Having the Quanta in B rank makes a huge difference.

And this is where this series comes up!

So we have Audrey, huh? Can we at least get to see her as a pilot for one mission and then never again, with a competent Mobile Suit?

What's even better is the evolution requirements for Impulse Gundam and Destiny Gundam. Strike doesn't go to Impulse in ANY kind of manner; you need to somehow get to one of the ZAKUs, which is... very obtuse.

And in order to evolve to Providence Gundam, you actually need to go to Legend first, which was the mobile suit developed FROM Providence!

Really, SEED's evolution chains are really screwed up because of the limit of 4 evolutions per unit. The majority of major mobile suits in the show can derive themselves directly from Strike, especially when you consider the way that World considers an evolution "link". As a result, it needs to jump through some annoying hoops in order to make sure that all the evolutions work.

It's a far cry better then it was in G Gen F. Because of the strict "4 weapons maximum" policy of the older G Gen games, V2 AB was 3 MAPs and a beam saber.

V2 AB looks classy, has a good long range weapon, and still sports the Wings of Lights (via the beam saber attack). I always upgrade fully.