Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Super Robot Wars Masoukishin III: Pride of Justice


First of all i will apologize for bad quality pictures in advance since i am unable to take screenshots from my Vita for this game since it has protected lock for taking screenshots which is a dumb idea by Winkysoft/Bandai and it is a waste of those beautiful CGs. By far Pride of Justice is probably the weakest entry of Masoukishin series that i played mainly due to the gameplay issue and the storyline did not really progress anywhere and did not have the same appeal from the first game. Though as follower of Masoukishin fans i suppose the story is still passable.




There are couple of new additions from the previous series. The most noticeable changes from the previous game are that Fang and Rosary gets new attire to make them look less retro and in addition Antillas team got two new members joining their team. One is Remia who is Zash older sister and the other one is Treis a reverse trap who Gido rescued early in the first route split. Also each character now got their unique theme song which are mixed bag but some of them are quite decent. Finally each route got their own secrets and one combination attack for specific pair of characters which are really cool.

As always there are 3 routes in this game which are quite simple as you branch off early in the game when you got the first choice. Each route covers totally different story and focused on different characters. Pride of Justice route are divided into Fang, Eran and Tyutti which are ordered from easiest to hardest. The reason why Tyutti is the hardest one is because at the last stage you will fight around 20 Gatswo+ which got 40k HP each, a really hard stage by Masoukishin standard

The main issue of the gameplay is that the difficulty in Pride of Justice is much harder than any previous Masoukishin in a bad way. Probably this is one of the few game that the Grunt units are actually more threatening than the Boss unit itself. As you progress through the game the Grunt unit obviously gets stronger but that's not it, around middle of the game they can one shot your unupgraded units even if you block and around last 10 chapters some of them are able to kill your fully upgraded unit in 1-2 hits. To make it worse, the AI in this game is badly programmed since the enemy will only aim at your weakest unit non stop until they are dead and probably you will soft reset lots of times if you make silly mistakes. The most dangerous grunts in this game are the Nimbus which looks like FA Gundam and the Radat kingdom grunts and also the Pink Volkruss grunts. The difficulty spike is mainly due to Winky soft trying to push DLC mission which will gives you upgrade parts when you finish the games.

My suggestions if you are going to get this game is the same rule like previous series, always upgrade your Masoukishins since they will be your primary attacker especially Yanlong who can hit a whopping 100k damage with his Seiden Kafuu Seiun ken when it is fully upgraded along with Soul seishin. For each specific route you need to invest certain characters as they get quite powerful with their combination attacks. Lastly never invest on more than 10 units because by the end of the game non FUBd units are easily one shotted by the grunts.

I suppose the absurd difficulty along with bad DLC approach makes this niche SRW series even more unpopular which makes the preowned copy of the game are sold for dirt cheap in Japan. I think with Pride of Justice, Winkysoft need to reevaluate the direction they should go in particular the balance of their game. Personally i still find the game worth my money as i still clocked about 40 hours though i can't be bothered to get the Platinum trophy.

From this point on i will cover the story of each routes based from what i can comprehend and since it will be spoilerific by nature so tread on your own discretion.






So the first route i did is Fang's route which is probably the easiest one to go, in this route Masaki mainly travels around Bagonia and Fang obviously play a huge role where the story uncover more about his past especially about his grandfather, Wassha who is a very skilled alchemist. In the past Fang lost all of his family members save for his grandfather and now Wassha attempted to cross the line of Alchemist, resurrection. In order to resurrect his family, Wassha needs the power of the Third God of Volkruss, Gragios which is definitely a bad thing. And so Fang decided to defeat Wassha and at the end they managed to reconcile before Wassha's machine exploded. Also apparently in this route, the relationship between Senia and Fang is more fleshed out and there seems to be some hints of Romance. 

In Fang's route, Masaki will encounter El Padrel alot which are the elite knights from Bagonia which seems to bear some grudge with Jino the lolicon guy for some reason.






The second route i did is Tyutti's route which is probably the hardest for me due to Gatswo+ everywhere. The route starts around Shutedonia where part of Antillas team fought renegade faction of Shutedonia then Tyutti met a guy called Dzubolva which become her romantic interest for some reason which is a sad thing for that Rodney's friend. Then when story got fast forward, Dzubolva got caught with the plot of Mad Scientist called Zeurando who appear to follow the path of Zets to create a strong mecha with Alchemy by sacrificing human of course. In this route the Aerial Samurais lent a hand as well since they are chasing another mad scientist from their nation who serves under Seurando. At the end of the route Dzubolva is used as power source of Gatswo Sigma but Tyutti with her love managed to rescue him.







So in Eran's route which started at Langran, during the defense against terrorist a mass produced version of Zelvoid started to pop up on the terrorist side and Eran chasing down the man who is responsible for it. In this route the background of Treis is also revealed. Apparently the guy who leaked the Zelvoid blueprint is someone who Eran's know and later in the story it is revealed that guy is Son who is actually another member of Zenosakis clan but different with Presia's and Eran's. Long story short Son is seeking revenge against Eran as Eran's father is responsible for murdering Son's family and they contested who is the worthy of the successor Zenosakis swordmanship. Then the imposter of Elshine relationship with Son is further explained.











 While each route have different storyline to cover, there are couple of the plots that all routes share. Most notably is that Shu managed to get his Granzon become Neo Granzon without making himself a slave of Volkruss and Yanlong got his possession form which is really awesome. As i predicted from the Masoukishin 2, the 4 Masoukishin got their possession form but Zamzeed and Goddess are exclusive on their own routes. Eran also managed to have his Zelvoid reach true possession form even without the blessing of Major Spirits.




 As a closing for this post i am sharing some of my prediction again. Probably at Masoukishin 4 we will see all 4 Masoukishin got their Possesion form together and the main bad guy should be appearing in the game around that time. It is likely 4 will be the last installment of Masoukishin but i guess Winkysoft can make it to the 5th one if they can overstretch the plot.

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