AG just revealed his identity. Man, the plot has completely jumped the shark at this point :|

AG could have been someone/something interesting, especially with all those great conversations he has with god-like characters in certain intermissions...but no, he's....yeah :\

Ok, just finished this scenario complete w/all SR points + all DLC stages + Rengoku-hen. That was a ...long game.

I'll think up some thoughts later, but it wasn't bad, just it took a really interesting setting concept with the OG story (the zodiac spheres) and all the various interesting OG plot threads like Asakim and then it used them for a fairly mundane generic plot that works but kind of feels like the game should've been a hell of a lot more interesting than what it was.

Some nice attacks and units introduced at a constant pace, animation was constantly lacking, and Shin Shouraga being a dumb looking Dancougar Nova with crappy animation was pretty damning after Shouraga being amazingly awesome with crazy animations in Z1/Z2. At least his BGM still rocks.

Trying to connect every single little item together from Z1 to Z3.2 ended up making the plot pretty convoluted and ridiculous feeling by the end.

Surprisingly, even though they overexplained everything in this game, one of the few points I wanted to see come up was the images from Asakim's Egg attack in Z1 where you see glimpses of his past with 2 girls. It's almost like they forget they did that. They probably wanted to forget most of the Z1/Z2 animations by the end of Z3 because comparing them is usually sad.

Great job on the FMP novels and Diebuster was fun. Gargantia was solid but the unit was way too weak even maxed to be anything more than a sub unit. Needed a good map attack or something. Also the OG units needed 1 more super strong attack (Rand/Setsuna/Crowe). And Hibiki's final attack is good but the one part where you see all the people on earth is really badly choreographed and at first it looks like he's cutting the earth in half with his laser sword lol

Map attacks and continuous movement ruled the game. Pairing DX with Wing Zero and some SP and Cartridge parts let them basically fly around the entire map wiping out 70% of the grunts in the first turn or two. In the last 10 or so stages, tons of characters with revive seishin made all bosses die in a single turn (even killed the final boss in 1 turn), which is fine because SRW games have been easy for a while and I enjoy steamrolling in them.

You kill so many units in this game. Not only are you maxing upgrading a ton of units, but I was PP blasting stats and I hit the 400 stat barrier for attack/shoot on a bunch of my good units like 10 maps before the end of the game and I literally ran out of stuff to use PP on.

There were a couple of good DLC stages but most were filler. I won't be getting the DLC stages for future SRW games.

I really didn't like how the big bosses would only have like 1 attack + 1 no-animation map attack towards the end. Not only that but they would skimp on some stuff, like 4 kami-tsukai should have meant at LEAST 3 cool mechs (Helios + 2 more). Instead they combined 2 and didn't even make it a mech, just a lumpy monster rock with 1 crappy attack. Even the sphere users got like 2 attacks and hardly any good animation which was sad since sphere holders should be badass.

Overall I'd probably give Z3.1 like a 6.5, and Z3.2 a 7.5. It's a perfectly playable entertaining SRW, but it's just a very mundane OG plot with a lot of repetition (how many bases do you capture?), it's super long (has got to be the longest SRW in total scenario, especially if you count the DLC and Rengoku, that's like 130-140 stages), slow (faster paced than Jigoku for sure) and continues the budget issues and lack of good choreography attacks that Jigoku suffered from.

Probably my 2nd least favorite SRW I've ever played behind Jigoku, although Dark Prison was kind of pointless too but it was short. UX was better than all those but it still had its share of issues. They've been on a bit of a slump with the SRW series the last few years imo, I hope they get out of it soon with a really great exciting SRW. I think I'd rank the Z series,

Z2.1=Z2.2 (2 is a better game, but 1 has better anime plotlines) > Z1 > Z3.2 > Z3.1

You know, I think where Tengoku started losing the plot is when it started downplaying/trivializing Sphere Holders after 2 games of the SPHERES being the biggest badass powers in the galaxy and in Z1 and Z2 each Sphere Holder was a major force to be reckoned with. They had god-like powers and crazy attack animations.

They also each had cool defining mechs

Then Tengoku comes along and throws out 3 Sphere Holders all at once and you're thinking "oh man, this is going to be epic!", but in actuality these 3 Sphere Holders are underpowered generic anime henchmen crap. Hell, one is a fucking ship! It blasts some lasers with a cut-in, THAT'S ALL IT DOES. How the fuck have Sphere Holders gone from Aimu with his crazy blood crystal web mech attacks to a super generic ship that shoots lasers? The other one is a floating ship with teeth that just shoots a beam. And then they other one is a dumb looking character who is weak but at least Barbel gets a freaking mech and it actually has like two real attacks.

But yeah, suddenly in Tengoku Sphere Holders aren't a big deal, Sphere's are just another "item some baddies want" and suddenly the balance of power is way bigger and all these new bad guys are just on completely different levels making the spheres basically irrelevant.

There's one part in Tengoku when all 12 sphere's line up and that for a second you think "cool, this is the kind of power and big deal the spheres should be", but then they never really do anything with it. Even in the end the spheres are just sort of cast as aside in the final stage as . I mean that's pretty dumb. The whole point of the spheres is the pressure that at the end of the day a bad guy is either going to need to kill our OG characters and steal their spheres or all the cast with spheres will share a common desire and the spheres will act on that in some major moment. Also they could have done something cool with giving each OG character a 2nd sphere and a final ultimate powerup + attack for the endgame which would have been nice.

There's also a ton of plot holes, and unless I'm missing something the basis for the ENTIRE PLOTLINE is that , however uh, I didn't see them explain WHY he was exiled in the first place and you'd think that would be sort of an important point considering it started the whole thing.
And the reason why pulling all the stuff from Z1 and Z2 together at the end comes across as convoluted imo is that it feels like they didn't have any of this stuff in place when they wrote Z1 and even for most of Z2. Instead of feeling like a lot of story threads from Z1 and Z2 had been building up to all this, it feels like a writer came in for Z3 and basically looked at Z1/Z2's plotlines and just made something up on a spot and tried to make it all fit so it doesn't feel authentic and often borders on ridiculous connections where everyone and everything coincidentally is connected.

But yeah, de-powering the threat of the Sphere Holders is where the plot went wrong imo. The anime stuff is fine, but Tengoku is like 60-70% OG plot and the OG plot is just kind of meh.

Most of it was explained though it's a helluva lot of terminology and shit to wade through and gets easy to mix-up if you're playing the game too fast or slow, lol.

I think this should be how it breaks down but I need to check the facts a bit more, lol Gonna just spoiler this for everyone.


It makes sense. It actually gels pretty well with some of the stuff they had going on in the other games and which series they used like OO. I might be getting the details wrong though, it's been a bit since I played it.

I definitely think they could have used more budget to really make it nuts but from a story perspective, I'm fairly OK with it.

Was really burnt out on jigoku so I'm really LTTP for this.

Just finished rengoku hen and linked my data. Started the game and I have Mari in unit 02. I could've sworn I kept Asuka in it at the end of jigoku, but may have swapped to Mari during one of the last alternate saves I made for completing the scenario chart.

Did the game actually transfer that decision from my jigoku hen save or is Mari always in by default?

Yeah she is always default, along with a bunch of other things. The game mixes and matches several of the routes from the hell chapter.

Just loaded my save from 2016.

Stopped at stage 48, and man, it was a bit challenging. I game over'd once since the tech was to make 1 of the bosses appear first.

I had all 3 appear, and they all hit hard and attack 3 times.

Then theres 2 more boss fights after in the same stage where the last one hits 3 times.

Also, all of these bosses heal HP and have at least 100k HP