Yay suborders! Now all those Aquarion pilots are useful for something!
Original-story centric as Esther becomes good friends with Setsuko, but after the latter takes her leave, she meets up with Marylin Kat, who introduces herself as a Gothic Loli cosplayer, but more importantly, the leader of Fire Bug, Crowe’s old group!
– JL Lee
第15話： マン・アズ・ビフォー
Stage 15: Man as Before
It’s Esther vs the Firebug, who wants to kidnap her and act as bait to draw Crowe out from his Salaryman days. She also reveals everything about the Firebug, an undercover unit for the Britannia Union. Their job would be to spark flames of rebellion from minor countries, which would lead to civil war before the Union would step in and crush the rebellions.
In Esther’s case, it was actually a DEC (Dimensional Energy Crystal, the stuff from the first half which led to Gaioh being summoned) experiment failure which led to her town being destroyed, and they were supposed to do clean up. However, Crowe saved Esther and decided to leave the group instead, breaking his prior conditioning.
– JL Lee
We start with just Esther against the Firebug unit, with no SR point condition yet. Time to go kick some….
OH WTF
Even with concentrate it’s not much better, so I’m just going to run.
End of turn 1.
Turn 2
Just keep on running.
Turn 3
On turn 3 there’s finally an event.
Firebug does a number on Esther
But the Million Dollar Man himself shows up!
Finally after some trash talking the rest of ZEXIS show up.
Here’s the map.
Since there is no rush to clear the stage I just clump my guys up, cast defense up and just wait it out.
Turn 4
Aaaaand this is why these guys are so annoying. The Firebug Axios are equipped with a Jamming system, which grants an aura that gives extra accuracy and defense. These stack with each other, so if there are 2 or more of these guys next to each other, forget about hitting them without seishin. Oh and did I mention they have support attack? And support defense (well some do anyway)?
Be sure to utilize support attacks and defense, and Zero’s buffs. Try to kill these guys before they group up!
End of turn 4. Managed to kill around 3 Axios.
Enemy phase
Turn 5
Firebug will usually prioritize a weakened unit nearby, they will mercilessly attack it until it’s dead. Marilyn will always go for Crowe himself. Luckily for me they don’t clump up that much.
End of turn 5. Defeated/sniped most of the incoming Axio Burglars.
Enemy Phase
Turn 6…?
With just Marilyn and 3 Axios left, we’re in pretty good shape.
End of turn 6. I’ve spared her for now because her defeat will undoubtedly cause more reinforcements to appear, and also…
Repair trick v2! Since Marilyn always goes for Crowe, I set Fa/Shuttle next to him so they can tank, heal and resupply each other. It takes about 200 turns, but Fa and the Shuttle are now level 99, with Daiguard and Tetsujin around the 50s.
But before we finish off Marilyn, there’s a bit of business to take care of. A secret item can be obtained by moving Esther to the following coordinates (3rd left, 9th from bottom).
It’s that crazy bitch who blew up Remonicia!
And you get some of Nyan Nyan’s famous buns for that. Good shit.
Finally Marilyn is taken out.
And more Insalum freaks show up to the north.
All my guys move up, again Heero and Shinn do their thing.
Enemy Phase
Turn X
I’ll just call this turn X, since a ridiculous number of turns has passed due to me doing the repair trick. Turn X is the turn after you defeat Marilyn and the reinforcements arrive. On this turn an event happens…
Geroud shows up in a Dim Li. Apart from being level 70, there is nothing really that special about this guy, but his high stats might mean you’ll need Lock On seishin to hit him.
And the SR Point is revealed, defeat the guy in 3 turns. So basically X+2.
Using Heero’s C.A I set up for a pretty good MAP attack, taking out 4 guys.
End of turn X. I’ve pretty much obliterated the entire left side.
Enemy Phase
Geroud can support attack himself, so you might want to defend against his attack in the enemy phase.
Turn X+1
Business as usual.
End of turn X+1. Geroud might not be that amazing, but he does have high defense so I spend some time damaging him this turn. Still you could easily down him in one turn.
Enemy Phase
Rargh, Tetsujin goes down to Geroud after getting attack twice :S
Turn X+2
Time to clean up these guys and finish the damn stage.
Since the guy is level 70, be sure to cast double XP and money if you have it. It’s also worth considering giving the kill to one of you battleships, since it’s pretty hard to level them up in general. I choose Dancouga Nova for the kill.
He drops a DM Unit.
SR Point GET!
And repair costs 🙁
Post scenario Crowe racks up yet ANOTHER 1 million dollar debt. As he was flying to save Esther from the Firebug squad, the sonic boom causes civil damages which he offers to pay for, which he has to borrow to pay. I’ll post better translations later.
Meanwhile, Marylin manages to strike a deal with Uther, gaining herself the Black Pearl. Apparently the Insarium army is ready for whatever is in the ZONE, so they are ready to make their claim for the planet for the rebirth of their Empire.
-JL Lee
A pretty tough stage if you’re not prepared, the biggest mistake could be letting the Axio Burglars clump together and letting their Jamming buff stack. Marilyn also has that nasty leadership aura which goes on top of that. Without proper planning it’s possible to run out of seishin and not being able to hit Geroud when he appears.
You can level up C.C to lvl 99 as well, and Esther. I had the same setup you had, along with Esther(I think with the repair kit, unless she heals others on her own), above Fa to heal her and C.C near both her and Crowe(since they lose EN over time) to replenish them.
Esther
C.C Crowe
Fa Shuttle Daiguard
Zero Tetsu. << Is their positions relative to one another. Hope it makes sense.
I can’t do the repair trick for too long. Around 30+ turns the girl attacking Crowe loses all of her EN and doesn’t attack him anymore. How did you make it to 200+ turns?
@Jeff
Every turn she regens 5 EN so after 3-4 turns she can use her Dagger attack. Not ideal but it works.
@YJ
Thanks.
Is it more efficient to only power level fa and the shuttle here and not cc/tetsujin/esther cause I was planning on making all of the repair/resupply crew have max level here or are there more stages where it is more efficient?
@Jeff
If you don’t mind the grind, you can do them all here.
Otherwise there are more opportunities later on, Stage 31 is good because the bosses will attack specific units and have HP/EN regen. There may be a few stages in between where it’s possible too, but I haven’t played all route splits so I can’t tell you which stages.
Turn X… Don’t scare me like that!