Off-site Screenshot test poster

PROLOGUE: The Last Day of the Earth

Our guys.

The bad guys. Plus some more offscreen. This map is pretty cool, since it takes place on "The Dark Continent", an original landmass where Gurren Lagann's plot in Z2 largely takes place. Incidentally, Gurren Lagann's Z2 plot is neither the series nor the movie plot, but an original plot written specifically for the game by the original scenario creator. Which is awesome, since it means we get to see some stuff we otherwise didn't, like the Cathedral Lazengann.

An ongoing problem with the Gurren Lagann units - actually, flight-capable units in this game in general - is that even though they can fly they have Bs in the air. The Dai-Gurren at least has the excuse of being a legged battleship that just happens to be flight-adaptable, but I'm still reminded of games like Super Robot Wars R where flight can be a honey trap (i.e. with the G Gundam crowd). In a few stages what I'm going to be doing more often than not as my first action is making everyone land because flying costs 1 EN per square and you don't get terrain modifiers.

BGM - Sorairo Days (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann OP)

ANOHORI SIMON DA

And riding shotgun with him is Rossiu, because this takes place after the analogue of GL Episode 8.

Will neglected to say a DAMN thing about this, and he doesn't contribute that much Spiral Power (the Ganmen pilot-exclusive +hitrate and +defense passive) but I won't pass up that kind of sub-pilot Spirit pool.

NOTE: the Guts shown here is actually Vigor. Rather than go with the Atlus USA OG1/OG2/EF convention of Vigor/Guts for HP recovery Spirits, the menu patch uses Guts/SGuts (archaic latter: XGuts), hemming to a more direct transliteration. That's still 30% pinch HP recovery for Gurren Lagann's base pool of just under 7000.

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Gurren Lagann's animations in this game are so great, I swear. Actually this game in general had a lot of love put into it despite being a once-a-year release, unlike Z3, which is uh... not as good on that front. (It does introduce some really great mechanics though.) These enemies are called Invaders, and they're a hell of a far cry from the Dinosaur Empire you probably grew up watching the Getter Team fight. Z2.1 mainly had Getter as a hanger-on to other super robot plot, but (as the name of this stage implies) Z2.2 more closely follows the plot of the OVA Getter Robo Armageddon/Shin Getter Robo (not to be confused with New Getter Robo).

SPEAKING OF GETTER

This is Shin Getter's gimmick. It has 3 pilots and 3 forms. In more vicious games, like A/Portable, Getter-1 is only capable of fighting air targets; Getter-2 fights ground targets; Getter-3 is relegated to underwater targets. In saner games like this, Getter-1 can fight air and ground targets, Getter-2 is really powerful against ground targets, and Getter-3 is worthless as an attacker but rocks Support Defense and enough Armor to competently play escort to something squishier and landbound. Usually, you use Getter-2 for traveling long-distance, because it has higher movement than Getter-1, and use Getter-1 for attacking. The specific bonus for fully-upgrading the Getter is that it can transform both before and after moving, letting you get the most out of it.

I've transformed it into Getter-2, and Will's casting both Accel (+3 movement this turn) and Spirit (+10 morale for all pilots of that mech). This is basically Step 1 for any Getter deployment for the forseeable future.

See the red panels? That's where Getter-2 can move to.

The boulder I've moved it onto gives minor defensive bonuses. Unlike previous maps, this one is centered on "super robots", which tend to be tanky instead of dodgy. Getter-2 is very evasive but has pretty poor armor, and is often reliant on its signature Getter Vision ability (which is the classic Double Image coinflip to instantly dodge at 130+ Will) to not die. It's really stupid in SRW D because every Getter form also has the Open Get ability, which is also like Double Image, which means that Getter-2 flips two coins and if either is heads it totally negates an attack. And in R, Open Get procs at 10 fewer Will, making Neo Getter and Shin Getter (the Shin vs. Neo one) obscenely dodgy for Super Robots no matter what form they're in.

32% might look bad compared to the last couple of maps but most super robots don't even dream of dodging attacks. Good thing Getter-2 is a badass.

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It's actually pretty hard to capture Getter-2's animations in stills, because it moves extremely quickly and at very high speed. At least when Will tried it, he got a good sample of Hayato's EXTREMELY MANLY pink shirt.

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Simon's HISSATSU! SKULL BREAKER!! on a counterattack. This attack is pretty cool because it combines two separate bits of anime choreography into one attack: the death of the pillbug guys that have the combining mech early on, and that time Simon punches the head/body of a Ganmen out of its arms when he's in full Shinji mode after Kamina dies (huge spoilers btw. But not Dai-spoilers. More like Gai Daigouji-spoilers). You get to see the "skull blown out of body" animation if you get a Dynamic Kill but sadly it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it affair. Equally sadly, it's gone in Z3...

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Gurren Lagann's B&B is the kick they performed against Viral the first time the Dai-Gurren showed up (as the Beastman-helmed Dai-Gunzan). This is actually one of my favorite attacks in the game, because one of the possible battle cries Simon can give is "SUPER!" "INAZUMA!" "KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICK!"

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring

"Let's go, Kiyal! Combine!"

"KING KITTAN DELUXE!"

Kittan is kind of not that great, basically being a weaker Gurren Lagann with no ranged capability whatsoever, but his King Kittan DX finisher is really powerful for its range. This game is kind of like Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones, it's full of great units you don't use simply because there are even more great units.

Hayato has Counter, which means that sometimes when he's attacked during the enemy phase, he attacks first. This is kind of a sneaky way of making Getter-2 more survivable than it really is, since it means he can potentially defeat the enemy before they get to attack him. This Drill Missile is the only decent anti-air attack he has, but it's not enough to defeat even the more-fragile aerial Invader.

Oh yeah, Invaders are disgusting. Will's little sister can't even watch Armageddon because of how much body horror is in it. (Getter, disregarding the original two anime series - Getter Robo and Getter Robo G - is very much not a franchise for children.) The Invaders are heavily based on lovecraftian description, and you literally have to be at least somewhat insane to be able to pilot the Getter (which is presented as an unknowable evil type thing), or else it kills you by degrees.

BANANAPHONE!
Sadly this isn't even enough for Kittan to take down a flier... the Gurren Lagann units in general just feel like there's too big a gap between their expensive finishers, and their next move down.

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GURREN BOOOOMERANG! Something that's fun is that Simon (rarely) actually uses Ryoma's iconic pronunciation ("boome-rung") in this, as Gurren Boomerang is never actually named in the series, so presumably it's something he and Kamina picked up from Ryoma. This is pretty common in SRW. For example, in Gunbuster, the titular mech has a pair of huge axes (based on Getter Dragon's melee weapons from Getter Robo G), which go unused in the anime. In SRW Alpha, Ryoma teaches Noriko how to use them, resulting in her calling them her BUSTER TOMAHOOOKS like Ryoma mispronounces "Tomahawk". The Alpha series also includes the original Gaiking, whose pilot was a softball star; from him, Noriko picks up on how she should perform one of her long-distance attacks, the Buster Home-Run ("TO THE GALAXY'S BACK SCREEN, GO FLYING!"). A lot of the newer games sadly haven't done this very much.

When you've defeated enough enemies, a shitload of Getter Robo Gs spawn in...

... and form Shin Dragon at the command of this mysterious person. (You should definitely go and check out the anime version of this, in about episode 2, I believe. The scream is absolutely incredible.)

This is Professor Saotome, who created the Getter Robo using Getter Rays, a form of energy which induces rapid evolution. Unfortunately, when actually combined with a physical form, that form can do some pretty incredible things... in Getter Robo Ankh, for example, the final manga, the villains actually come from a future where Shin Getter reached a final form, Getter Emperor, and is actually outgrowing the universe and absorbing everything within it; their aim is to prevent it from reaching that form to begin with. An ongoing theme is that the weak will become enslaved by Getter Rays, destroying everything around them in a selfish quest to evolve further, but the strong can tame the Getter Rays and stand alongside them.

Oh, and for some reason Saotome is evil at the start of Armageddon. Except maybe he isn't. Armageddon has some... problems. The first three episodes make almost no sense and are a sort of surreal horror, then the writer/director got fired for coming in very late and over budget, and they introduced a new project lead who ran it closer to the manga but threw out lots of stuff from the first arc, which means it's pretty disjointed... still really good, though. Saotome is like I'M GONNA END THE WORLD and begins killing everything in the area, then he suddenly goes good and teams up with the Getter pilots, then dies and turns up again after the end of the world as the infected avatar of the Invaders... yeah, it's complicated.

Ow.

Hayato counterattacks with Plasma Drill Hurricane but as you can see, the damage isn't really up to snuff.

Also, across the course of this enemy phase, most of the Invaders died. You didn't see it because it's really not that interesting to talk about enemies getting counterattacked and dying in droves.

The Dai-Gurren is SO GREAT. It has an actual post-movement attack, three pilots (main Dayakka and Leeron and Nia as spirit pools), can fly if it needs to, and has a very powerful combo attack with Gurren Lagann (the Super Giga Drill Breaker from the first movie).

As you might expect, Yoko's custom M-Tank is basically a dedicated sniper. This is after she's cast Snipe, which increases the range of all her attacks by 2 panels. The only exceptions are attacks with a range of "1" (not like 1~3, just 1), and MAPW - attacks which hit a slice of the map instead of a single target. Most things that increase attack range have this caveat in SRW, but not always.

Yoko's post-Snipe hit range is actually so big I cannot capture the full vertical range when zoomed all the way out.

Yoko has Hit & Away, which lets her snipe from 10 panels away and then move up to snipe some more. Because the Shin Dragon has so much HP, does tons of damage, etc. then instead of taking it on with one guy like I have on the previous prologue maps, I'm moving all my units up while cleaning up the Invaders so I can then alpha strike the Shin Dragon.

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It's only there for a split-second margin but if you perform King Kittan's weak basic melee on an air unit, it gets this "oh crap" look on its face before it starts falling back to earth...

I've turned Shin Getter back to its Getter-1 form, so it's now in its flying glass cannon mode. What makes Getter so great is that all of its pilots have great spells, and they have two different pilots who can regenerate HP, which helps stop it from dying really fast. Getter-1 is also pretty evasive in this game, and Ryoma is pretty tanky. There have been previous SRW games where that... wasn't the case. Those are a lot harder. In this case, I cast Alert, so it will auto-dodge the next attack, and Ryoma uses Vigor, regaining 30% of the Getter's max HP.

Ryoma doesn't really believe in a ranged stat. (From top: Battle Wing, Getter Tomahawk, Head Getter Beam, regular Getter Beam...and a Very Special Surprise)

This was his weakest attack. Getter-1 is ridiculously powerful, but all its attacks chew energy really quickly.

"I'm grateful that you came! You damn traitor!"

"I'll use the Getter Beam!"

"Hey, geezer! Did you forget our power!?"

Kittan has access to Guts, which completely restores your HP. It also costs just about all of his SP but I wasn't using that anyway because his other Spirit is Yell and we already get event Will. I'm actually intentionally going a bit slow here because I want to use the Gurren Lagann combo attack... speaking of which, each Getter form has like a one-man combo attack where they do a continuous attack while changing forms!

"You call that evolution? Quit fucking around!"

"Hayato, Musashi! Don't mess it up!"
BGM - HEATS (Shin (Change!) Getter Robo - The Last Days of Earth OP2)

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Did I mention Getter-1 is really strong? Wait until it gets acccess to Stoner Sunshine or its Shin Shine Spark combination attack.

"You bastards, did you forget about that time with Michiru!?" Yeah a huge part of the backstory here is that Michiru ends up infested by Invaders and intentionally botches a combination exercise for Getter Robo G where she was flying one of the units to kill herself and prevent them gaining a foothold on earth. Saotome and the rest of the Getter Team never really got over it.

Then again I don't think the rest of US got over Armageddon in general.

"Oh hey a new Getter Robo thing, I remember these guys from SRW3-holy shit this isn't the Getter I know, this is Ninja Scroll with giant robots"

"Come forth! Dragon, Liger, Poseidon!" Remember how lots of Getter Robo G's made up Shin Dragon? So many of them combined it can make whole Getters without compromising its form.

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Yoko looks to be in for a bad time, but Getter-3 was adjacent to Support Defend on this take. That purple dialogue indicates that a status effect (Will Down, easily remedied with some Yelling afterward) was applied. We've seen statuses before on the Wing map of Prologue 2, where Deathscythe's finisher inflicts Hitrate Down just in case it didn't kill its target (and all 5 Wing Gundams can inflict Mobility Down with their trash head vulcans). At this point in the map it's not really relevant, though.

Status Effects in SRW haven't always been as varied as in the Z games, but there's a really nasty map in Alpha 3 where you fight Protodeviln from Macross 7, who can reduce the morale of the unit they hit. Lots of game overs have been had due to people taking Shinji/EVA-01 and being surprised at how squishy he is when his morale is low enough that his AT Field stops working. By the way, if Shinji is shot down in @3, he respawns as THE BEAST and gets his own double-action where he butchers the nearest unit...not to be confused with "the nearest ENEMY".

On a different take, despite supposedly more conservative gameplay, we now have a problem. If this hits Getter-1 will die and Will will game over and have to redo the map.

Miss, miss, miss...

YES! Okay, crisis averted.

I love this attack. It did like 4000 damage too which is really good for a capital ship bullrushing a boss. The animation for the other Gurren-dan mechs isn't great and they have no dialogue but it's cool that they're there at all.

It's about here that Will realises his error: Gurren Lagann used up too much energy so we can't show off the combo attack...

oh wait, that's Will's error, not mine

Since events unfolded such that I didn't have to resort to the Dai-Gurren-dan Summon Attack, I just have the Dai-Gurren waddle within 3 tiles of Shin Dragon, have Simon cast Gain so that he gets double EXP from the next fight and put him in Giga Drill Breaker range adjacent to Dai-Gurren...

GIGA! DRILL! BREAKERRRRR...

DAI-GURREN-DAN SPECIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!

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On the A-take, the plain old Giga Drill Breaker failed to kill him, so Will'll give it to Musashi/Getter-3 because otherwise he'll literally never use them.

"That monster is supposed to be a Getter!?"

"OPEN GET!"

Another Getter Change Attack ensues. Unlike each Getter form's individual finishers, the Getter Change Attack is ammo-based and you only get one shot of it.

Per Getter form.

DAI SETSU ZAN OROSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!

"Too soon! The amount of Getter Rays isn't enough yet!"

And then nothing was left...

Meet Cohen and Stinger. They're some sort of Invader that actually pass for human... somehow. They're very, very creepy, and probably best known for their memetastic dialogue. Most of what they do makes uh... no sense at all. In Armageddon, they ride a proton missile destined for Shin Dragon into space and fight Shin Getter unarmed/on foot. They literally block its huge Getter Tomahawk with their bare(?) hands. I don't even know how to explain it. Armageddon has to be experienced.

Since this is merely the first couple of episodes of Armageddon, the aforementioned missile is oncoming. It's not lost on the guy who woke up Shin Dragon. His name is Go, and he's an opposite sex clone of Saotome's daughter, Michiru. ... yeah. Armageddon is pretty freaky. He's the "Ryoma" equivalent. There were meant to be a Hayato and Musashi equivalent, one which was super tanky and one which was telekinetic, but Hayato and Ryoma killed them while they were on foot inside of Shin Dragon.

... I should mention that Armageddon is also totally awesome.

"Let's do this! GETTER ROBO, LAUNCH!"

As Shin Getter zips back and forth to deal with Shin Dragon getting bonked with a nuke, the monstrosity shines with a golden light, and then...

... the prologue ends. Here's the text stream that follows, taken verbatim from Akurasu:

It has been one year since the "Break the World" Incident (Events of Z2.1: Hakai-Hen)... One month has passed since the formation of the Earth Federation.

Thus the Gundams and the Black Knights fell before an overwhelming military might. Peace was kept, but only superficially. Issues like sealing of the mysterious Dark Continent and local disputes have been forgotten by people due the long awaited peace. Unnoticed behind all this, lie people whose plans are going accordingly and an event which will repeat itself.

Meanwhile, the intensity of Dimensional Beasts attacks have increased. Since the fall of the Imperium, the Dimensional Beasts have gone out of control, and has been recognized as a calamity once more. As their attacks increased, the people decided to hire private firms know as Dimensional Beast Busters to deal with this situation.

So now, due to the arrival of a certain DBB, the curtain will be raised on a new battle....

For some reason, top banana Innovade "FUCKING RIBBONS" Almark can just walk into Holy Emperor ~~Norio Wakamoto~~Charles zi Britannia's Sword of Akasha imaginary space Reality Marble chateau thing.

Also, for some reason, Emperor Charles has some kind of imaginary space Reality Marble chateau that, for the few times we see him in the present day in Code Geass S1, evidently doubles as his primary residence.

At any rate, they do some plotting together, and that finally ends the prologues.

NEXT WORLD: The traditional "shoot up some grunts while the bad guys cackle elsewhere" SRW opener...almost.