Mystic Eyes of Sword Perception: Let's play Battle Moon Wars!
What is Battle Moon Wars?
Battle Moon Wars is a doujin game developed by Werk and released in four parts over the period of 2005-2008, with an updated rerelease containing all four parts and updated artwork in 2009. It takes the gameplay of the crossover SRPG series Super Robot Wars, except instead of Gundam and Mazinger, we have the Nasuverse (the body of works by Type-Moon, named after writer Kinoko Nasu.) It predominately focuses on Tsukihime and the Fate series (in particular Fate/Stay Night), although other characters show up here and there.
Being set after the aforementioned series, this game contains unavoidable spoilers, which is something to be aware of if you plan to read/watch them. I'll also be including character descriptions, although for the sake of making this not look like a government document, I'll be using spoiler boxes.
Anyway, with the obligatory intro spiel out of the way, let's get down to business.
This is the title screen. Not exactly much to look at, but it serves its purpose.
As is traditional for the SRW series, we're presented with two original characters to choose from. (SRW proper generally also provides a choice of mech, but there aren't many people piloting mechs in the Nasuverse, so there we go.)
Takumi Atsuta is the game's Super representative. Super units have huge HP and defense, and hit like trucks, but move slowly, and have all the dodging ability of a brick wall. They tend to fight at short range. Takumi's route focuses more on Tsukihime.
Haruna Mochizuki is the game's Real representative. Real units are fast and dodgy, but fragile, and don't hit as hard as Supers. To compensate, they generally have better accuracy than Supers, as well as better range on their attacks. Haruna's route focuses more on Fate.
So, vote time! Do we go with Takumi, or Haruna?
Battle Moon Wars is a doujin game developed by Werk and released in four parts over the period of 2005-2008, with an updated rerelease containing all four parts and updated artwork in 2009. It takes the gameplay of the crossover SRPG series Super Robot Wars, except instead of Gundam and Mazinger, we have the Nasuverse (the body of works by Type-Moon, named after writer Kinoko Nasu.) It predominately focuses on Tsukihime and the Fate series (in particular Fate/Stay Night), although other characters show up here and there.
Being set after the aforementioned series, this game contains unavoidable spoilers, which is something to be aware of if you plan to read/watch them. I'll also be including character descriptions, although for the sake of making this not look like a government document, I'll be using spoiler boxes.
Anyway, with the obligatory intro spiel out of the way, let's get down to business.
This is the title screen. Not exactly much to look at, but it serves its purpose.
As is traditional for the SRW series, we're presented with two original characters to choose from. (SRW proper generally also provides a choice of mech, but there aren't many people piloting mechs in the Nasuverse, so there we go.)
Takumi Atsuta is the game's Super representative. Super units have huge HP and defense, and hit like trucks, but move slowly, and have all the dodging ability of a brick wall. They tend to fight at short range. Takumi's route focuses more on Tsukihime.
Haruna Mochizuki is the game's Real representative. Real units are fast and dodgy, but fragile, and don't hit as hard as Supers. To compensate, they generally have better accuracy than Supers, as well as better range on their attacks. Haruna's route focuses more on Fate.
So, vote time! Do we go with Takumi, or Haruna?
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Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
ACT 1
Chapter 1: Nothing To Crow About
We start in Shin'i Headquarters, Shin'i being the organisation Haruna and Takumi work for.
Yes, their boss is a talking cat. No, I'm not sure why.
Misaki City is the setting of Tsukihime. It's kinda like the Sunnydale of Japan, except with less evil mayors.
You can bet we'll be hearing more about these guys later.
Haruna: This created stagnation, destroying the balance of the land and allowed evil spirits to rise up. They were expelled with the town guardian's help, but not before the city had suffered immensely.
Takumi: What's that?
Mike: That's pretty much correct.
Takumi: How could that be right?
Haruna: It's true! I heard it directly from Misaki's guardian.
Takumi: One of your friends?
I'll leave you to ponder how Haruna apparently both went to school in Misaki and only knows about it through her friend.
Takumi: I guess that makes sense then.
Mike: As Haruna said, Misaki City is in an unstable region. That area is so incredibly stagnant that it's no wonder evil spirits were born. And when they were expelled, the blessed power of the townspeople and the guardian threw the land into a precarious balance. The distress call from our agents in Misaki claims that there are signs that the balance has deteriorated.
Takumi: What signs?
Mike: Apparently the stagnation is beginning to spread.
Haruna: What makes them think that?
Misaki has really bad luck with the supernatural.
Mike: They could easily be attributed to the stagnation.
Haruna: ...
Takumi: And that's why the distress call came?
Mike: There's that, and one more thing.
Takumi: And that is?
It should be noted here that Hallowed Ground is a BMW concept, not a Nasuverse one. We'll be finding out more about this much later on.
Takumi: !
Haruna: An entire town becoming Hallowed Ground...
Mike: Yes, I can't believe it either. In all honesty, this could be a hoax.
Mike: Indeed, there have been cases. However, those incidents took much longer to develop. In the same month that Miaski City's stagnation has begun to spread so far, a series of murders have taken place there.
Haruna helpfully reminds us that murder is bad.
Mike: That's right. The local government is no longer able to control the situation. Your job is to locate the town guardian, Akiha Tohno, and confirm what's happening. Then you will settle whatever is disturbing the balance before it's too late.
And with that, we're whisked away to Misaki City.
Takumi: Definitely. The stagnation has had some time to spread.
Haruna: This is a first for me...
Takumi: Since this alley is so incredibly tainted, it must be the origin.
Haruna: That's true. This alley feels like it's the most stagnant part of the city.
Takumi: There definitely appears to be something incredible awakening here.
Haruna: Yes.
And suddenly we're in a Hitchcock movie.
Haruna: !
Cue battle.
The battle conditions. Battle Masteries are optional challenges, but getting all of them will give us a nice surprise. So naturally we're going to do that. This one is easy, since it's the first stage and all.
This screen lets us choose where to place our characters and which characters to use. Since we've only got two right now, we're going to leave it as is.
Anyway, let's take a look at our units.
So, time for a quick breakdown of stats:
Move: How many tiles a unit can... well, move. You may have noticed that Takumi actually has a higher Move than Haruna. There's a very good reason for this.
Jump: How well a unit can move onto higher ground.
Quick: Dodging ability.
Tough: Defensive ability.
Penalty: How much BP you lose if the unit is killed. BP is the main way of upgrading units, so letting them die is not the greatest of plans.
Strength: How a unit gains Will. (More on that a little later.)
Skills are various passive abilities, each with their own traits.
So, remember what I said about Supers and Reals? Yeah. Haruna is less than half as tough as Takumi, and will die in a stiff breeze. All is not lost, however.
This is why Takumi's Move is so high. To compensate for his huge power, his range is, to put it bluntly, awful.
Anyway: Attack explanation time. All attacks have several traits attached: Their hit and critical modifiers, what status effects they cause, their ammo or EN cost, their Will requirements, and their height limitations.
Will exists so that you can't just go spamming attacks from the get-go. What makes it go up depends on a character's specific Strength attribute, but is generally stuff like attacking enemies, taking hits, and dodging.
Each tile also has a specific height. For example, the bins in the above screenshot have a height of 2, whilst the fence has a height of 4. This means, for example, if Takumi were on a tile of height 0 and an enemy was on a tile of height 5, he couldn't attack it, even if he was in range. Of course, this also applies to the jump stat. Takumi can't go from ground level to the fence, but Haruna can.
Being a real, even Haruna's most powerful attack has only 400 power than Takumi's basic attack, but she is far more accurate than him, and can actually hit things that aren't right in front of her. The only problem being that if there's no distance between her and the enemy, she's going to do terrible damage.
Now, let's go back to Skills.
Basic skills come in levels and can be bought, whilst Special skills are character specific. Whilst all skills are passive, some require specific effects to trigger. In this case, both Haruna and Takumi have the always active skill Youkai, which increases their accuracy, evasion, and attack. Now to go over the other skills they have.
Basic Skills
Counter: Allows Haruna to sometimes go first when countering an attack, with the chance affected by her Skill stat.
Prevail: As Takumi's HP goes down, his accuracy, evasion, defense, and crit rate increase. So not only is he tough as nails, he only gets tougher as the battle goes on.
Swift: Increases Takumi's Move by 1 and Jump by 2 for every level of the skill.
Special Skills
Premonition: Once she hits 130 Will, Haruna has a 30% chance of dodging any attack for the cost of 5 EN. Needless to say, this is really really good.
Flight: At 130 Will, Haruna ignores height. Not that amazing, but it's still a nice extra.
And that's that. TO BATTLE!
This is our action menu. Movement, attack, stats, and one thing that's less obvious: Spirits.
Spirits are character specific utility abilities that drain SP. For example, Takumi has the spirits Strike, which ensures his next attack will always land, and Gain, which doubles the exp he gets from a single battle.
Anyway, we walk Takumi over to the nearest rabbit to stab it in the face. Note how Futsuno - Rupture requires 120 Will to use.
This is the pre-battle screen. Listed on the left is the enemy's chance to hit, whilst on the right is ours. Since the rabbit doesn't have any 1 range attacks, we're free to attack it without fear of retaliation.
Takumi Battle Theme
...And Takumi completely whiffs it. Good job there.
Units get exp from participating in battle, but the big bucks are actually from killing enemies.
Haruna's spirits are Luck, which doubles BP earned for one battle, and Focus. Focus is the quintessential real spirit, increasing accuracy and evasion by 30% for one whole round. Nearly every real has it, and for good reason.
Haruna doesn't have enough Move to actually reach a target, so we end the turn here.
The rabbit hops on over to Haruna and tries to eat her face.
Haruna Battle Theme
Neither of them actually hit each other.
Then the odd wooden robot decides to do the same thing. It doesn't go very well. (And yes, this is based on Getter Robo. And yes, there's 2 more of them to come.)
A second rabbit attacks Takumi from outside his range, but defending means it leaves little more than a scratch.
Control switches back, so we wander over to the Getter that didn't attack Haruna, and do a hefty chunk of damage.
Now to demonstrate what happens if you attack those yellow squares.
...Yeah, that's terrible.
We have Haruna shoot the rabbit after popping a Focus, since it dodged the last two attacks.
Don't manage to kill it, but good enough.
A reminder that 24% =/= 0%. Also, owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Yeah, Haruna is made of glass.
On the enemy turn, the rabbit attacks Haruna, getting itself killed.
...As do both Getters. One down, one to go.
Haruna has hit 120 Will, so time to demonstrate her second attack. I also used Luck first.
...Yeah.
And Haruna has her first level up!
After using Strike and Gain, Takumi walks over to the crow. Sadly, the Gain was pretty much wasted since the crow survived, but oh well.
And both the crow and the remaining Getter suicide themselves on Haruna, with the crow also dropping some beans. That's a wrap! Congratulations Takumi, you managed to... kill nothing. No, really, well done.
This means the Battle Mastery was achieved.
Woohoo!
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead