Gihren’s Zeon Campaign Part 1: Turn 1
Now that we’re done with intros and mechanics, it’s time to begin. The first thing when booting up a new game of Gihren’s Greed, you have to pick which faction you are going to play as. The first time you boot up the game, you have the five main ‘campaign’ factions unlocked, but you can unlock extra as you go.
For the One Year War Era you have the Earth Federation led by General Revil, and the Principality of Zeon led by Gihren Zabi. For the Gryps Conflict Era you have the Titans led by Jamitov Hymen, The Anti Earth United Government led by Blex Forer, and Axis led by Haman Karn. If you don’t know your Gundam lore, those names mean nothing to you.
We are going to be playing the Principality of Zeon, led by Gihren Zabi, for a few reasons. I would argue it’s the most newbie friendly campaign, the game is named Gihren’s Greed, and I like Zeon’s Mobile Suits quite a lot. I’ve also played Gihren’s campaign before and know what I’m doing, something I can’t say for the others
We’re also going to be playing on Normal, because this is a hard game already, and I am loath to make it harder. Most of the difficulty settings just increase the aggression of the AI, on Easy they’re extremely timid and won’t attack without a severe numbers advantage. But Very Easy and Special are… well. Special.
On Very Easy, you start with an additional 100,000 Funds and Resources, as well as some incredible freebies. Several of your aces will start with whatever their best machine was, even if said machine is several levels ahead of the technology curve. On Special, everyone deals and takes double damage, which turns every firefight into a bloodbath.
Like I said, we’re going normal.
Every campaign has an intro, to tell you how we got here. These are actually not stills from the anime, I believe these are original artwork made for Gihren’s Greed, in the style of the anime. They’re very good, and I think I’ll let this one stand without commentary.
“This began what would be known as the One Year War”
“However this massacre was only a prologue to Zeon’s true plan. Zeon initiated an unprecedented strategy…”
“The target was EFF Headquarters, Jaburo."
“The power ratio was 3-1… The EFF vastly outnumbered them. However, the battle was a massive victory for Zeon.”
“The Federation Flagship “Ananke” was wrecked in the fierce fighting. General Revel, who tried to escape, was captured by Zeon. The Zeon government offered a ceasefire to the Federation citing the amazing results of the battle of Loum. The Federation could not reject it, they were exhausted and defeated.”
(Part 1. The One Year War. I think. I don't actually know if that's what it says or not.)
“The Earth Federation had lost their will to fight due to their successive defeats. Signing the treaty would guarantee Zeon’s victory. At the same time, news that Revel had escaped ran through the Zeon homeland.”
“The war was about to enter a new phase.”
“Revil’s return to the Federation has allowed them to begin regaining control, but it’s only temporary… How are the preparations for the invasion of Earth going?"
“It’s finally time! Big Brother! The descent troops from Solomon are almost assembled at the Earth descent point, the first descent operation can be started at any time!”
The intro finally loosens its grip, and we’re free to start playing the game. But first, let’s talk about that intro, and a facet of Zeon I’m sure people who have seen Gundam before know about.
Zeon are the bad guys.
That’s not really negotiable, they gassed a space colony full of people and then tried to drop it on earth, missing their intended target and taking out a chunk of Australia. The first production model Zaku II has armor hardened against radiation under the impression that nukes would be a major part of the war. Gihren has literally published a book which posits that Spacenoids are superior to Earthers, and that they should rule the earth sphere per their superiority. Whatever point they had about the Earth Federation’s heavy hand on the colonies in space, they lost whatever moral high ground they might have had as early as their opening volley.
But part of Gundam, is that there is evil in good, and good in evil. Zeon as a political structure is exclusively a bad thing, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all bad people. Likewise, the Earth Federation has the moral high ground, but there are some scumbags there too. Not sure if you can call it ‘complex’ morality exactly, but it’s a bit of texture that I appreciate about the setting.
“Crosswire here. I’ll say that it’s more complicated than even that.”
“Zeon as a movement started off with Zeon Zum Deikun, who advocated for Spacenoid independence, believed humans should leave Earth to let it heal due to seeing it as sacred, and was the founder of Newtype Theory.”
“Shortly after establishing the Republic of Zeon in the face of Federation efforts to stop them, Zeon abruptly fell sick and died. His closest friend at the time, Degwin Zabi, supposedly said that Deikun declared him the successor on his deathbed.”
“Degwin then established the Duchy of Zeon, purged all of Deikun’s loyal followers, tried to kill Deikun’s kids, and then put his own children in charge. Said children, Gihren specifically, proceeded to tarnish the movement of spacenoid independence through blatant power grabs and atrocities taken as a shortcut to victory against the Federation.”
“However, Zeon still stands for spacenoid independence and they’re the only meaningful force trying to accomplish it. The people in charge are using it as a justification for their own ambitions, but the majority of people fighting for them do so out of a desire to see an independent space.”
“The Earth Federation meanwhile does not, in any way shape or form, care about the people living in space. They want to bring about an end to fighting and peace purely to reestablish the status quo that worked for them.”
“In fact the Earth Federation’s belligerent and heavy-handed policies in regards to how they treat people in the colonies directly lead to the creation of Zeon. Their behavior before the war made it very easy for people to overlook the Zabi family’s questionable actions, because animosity towards the Federation was that high.”
“The Earth Federation are only the ‘good guys’ in the sense that they have less overt and widely known atrocities under their belt. They’re a force of stagnation and quiet, political oppression.”
“So there is, or at least there’s supposed to be, a nuisance to things. There’s good, honorable people fighting on both sides. And there’s pieces of shit on both sides as well. It’s just that the protagonists of series always work for the Federation and that no matter what they do, they can just point to the colony drop and always look vastly better by comparison.”
It is kind of hard to argue with a colony drop. Especially when you claim to fight for Spacenoid rights. That said, this is an Order playthrough, so we won’t be seeing anymore colony drops. I hope.
Right, let’s get started. Before anything else, I drop 2,000 Funds on espionage to bring us up to the max rank. Next I spend 400 funds on all 3 forms of technology research. Believe me, we’re going to need them. Next, let’s look at our development proposals for this turn.
Like I said, this screen isn’t translated, but I can tell you what these are. The Zaku II-F, aka the Zaku Mass Production Type, the Dopp, and the Jotunheim. We’ll get into their stats later, but let it be known that we are researching all of them.
Next we go to the Plan menu, and pay 5,000 funds for the First Descent Operation, which will allow us to capture Odessa. Before doing this, we would be unable to drop on Odessa, but now we can! It also gets us another short little cutscene.
“This Operation had two meanings to Zeon.”
“Therefore, Central Asia, which has a large reserve of mineral resources, was chosen as their first target”
We’re almost ready to get started, but there’s one final thing I want to talk about. Each faction has a select number of pilots which they can assign to units to increase their stats. As described in the mechanics post. I will not be taking great care to talk about pilots, unless they are of great importance, but I do want to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with. So…
Gihren Zabi’s Zeon has the following pilots.
Acous, Adamski, Akahana, Anavel Gato, Andy S, Apolly, Arth, Barom, Barry, Billy G, Bone Abust, Boone, Char Aznable, Cima G, Clamp, Conscon, Cozun, Darota, Delaz, Dell, Denim, Dimitri, Doan, Dozle Zabi, Daize, Dren, Duvall, Gadem, Gaia, Gaily, Garcia, Garma Zabi, Gene, Gihren Zabi, Genius S, Hamon, Holbein, Jonny R, Karius, Kelly L, Ken, Killing, Kocsel, Kult, Kuspen, Kycilia Zabi, Lackoc, Masado, Mash, Misha, Mquve, Mulligan, Neven B, Nimbus, Norris Packard, Ortega, Raba Ral, Roberto, Rommel, Runen, S Matsunaga, Simus, Slender, Sonnen, Steiner H, Tokwan, Topp, Twinning, Visch, Von Helsing, Wolfgang W, and Yuri K.
To save you the trouble, that’s
72 pilots. Some from the original, some of them from the various spinoffs and explorations of the One Year War. I’m not about to give you a rundown of everyone’s stats, because that would take too long. Instead, I’m just going to give you a helpful rule of thumb.
If a character’s stats are all around 6 or less, they can afford to pilot whatever grunt suit you get your hands on. The Zaku has a limit score of 130% which is exactly 6 for ranged and reflexes. These lads are grunts. Characters with 10s or higher are Aces, and you should put them in high performance, commander type suits, to make use of their higher stats. Characters with high leadership, charm, and high rank such as the Zabi family may be better put in battleship and support-type units, to take advantage of their command aura.
There is a lot of movement going on on this map, so I’ll try to break it down. The majority of our forces are going to gather in the center of earth, that’s where our troops from the moon are headed. The Troops at the top left and top right of earth are dropping onto Odessa and North America respectively. Odessa’s attack is being led by the Black Tri Stars, while North America is being invaded by Garma Zabi and Ramba Ral. The group above the earth is moving to invade the adjacent Federation controlled space, and the central army is doing the same with the section of earth that the Federation is contesting. The other space units are congregating in the center.
The goal in space is to blockade Luna II by capturing the two open spaces, as well as Luna II’s connection to earth. From there, I’ll leave small groups in each of the earth segments, and a single large garrison in the center. That way if they try to attack, I can quickly reinforce from the central army. For our forces on the ground, the goal is to capture Odessa. Literally the most important battle in the game.
Now, for our very first taste of combat. This is the landing party on earth, 3 HLVs stuffed with Zeon’s finest. When invading enemy territory, there are two ways to win. Either you capture every base on the map, or you kill everyone on the map. When defending, capture is not an option, but in return you start the map with all based captured, giving you a tactical advantage. Since we’re invading, every base starts blue, with the Earth Federation star on them. Our units are red, naturally.
Battles in Gihren’s Greed have a movement phase and a shooting phase for each side. So we move, we attack, then the enemy moves, and the enemy attacks. Of course, assuming the enemy engages in the right range bracket, you can counter attack during the enemy turn, and they can do the same to you.
This is how things look at the end of our turn. Ramba Ral captured a base while Garma leads the charge towards the next base, which appears to be defended by some planes.
The enemy phase is a bit of a mixed bag. Their movement happens on this big area screen, where we can’t see the details. On one hand, it can be very annoying to see the enemy fly by at max speed, unable to tell which dot is which. On the other hand, watching them move one at a time would be torture, so I’ll take it as it is. The planes move forward, the tank on the central base stays still, the tank on the eastern base advances.
Also, we can see that we outnumber them, both in terms of units, and in terms of officers on the field. Good news for us!
Next turn we keep advancing, nothing special, but I want to draw attention to something here. Normally, Ramba Ral’s Zaku I can only move 3 hexes in any direction. But here, he can move 5. Why is that? Well, it’s because of the supply line. Supply lines connect bases, and neutral lines can turn to your color as long as one of yours is standing on the line. Normally moving across ground or space terrain takes 2 movement points (Ral’s Zaku has 6) but when moving over favorable terrain, and a supply line, it only takes 1. Not super important for this battle, but it will be in the future.
On the Federation’s turn, the planes fly further towards the central base, the tank on said base stays still, and the other tank trundles a few hexes closer. Next turn!
I said I wouldn’t spend too much time on pilots, and I won’t. But I need to call attention to Garma, and more importantly, Garma’s custom Zaku II. Somehow, Garma has a Zaku II high mobility/commander type, before that type of Zaku has been developed. On top of that, it's been customized for his use. This Zaku II has better terrain movement and attack capabilities than a normal Zaku II, namely it can cross mountains. Also, Garma’s rank gives him a pretty healthy command aura, and he is actually the best pilot of the Zabi family overall.
Remember this, it will be important later
Our Zaku stacks move in to attack, while Garma captures our second base. Singular bases are useless, they have to connect to other bases in order to function. Now anyone who stands on the supply line will have their supplies restored, and anyone who stands on the base itself will be healed. We end the phase, and it’s time for battle.
When combat starts, we get a quick view of the two sides, in this case our Zaku IIs piloted by Boone, Dimitri, and Tokwan, against an unknown enemy. All enemies start greyed out, and they must either be scanned by unit with sensors, or be engaged in melee to ID them. Our only scanning equipped units for this battle are Garma’s Zaku II Custom, and Ramba Ral’s Zaku I Custom.
The combat animations in these games are really simple. We have 3 units of 3 Zaku each, who stomp onto the screen, aim at the sky, and start shooting. The enemy would fire back but… well. I recognize that silhouette. That’s a Don Escargot, and they are only armed with depth charges, not bombs. So our Zaku take aim and open fire, undeterred…
Boom! When an enemy is shot down it’s name and health bar flash, and then it explodes, removing it from the map.
Our second squad tries to follow up by shooting down the other plane (this one is a Medea, a transport ship that, once again, can’t target land units) but proves a bit sturdier.
Since they can’t (or won’t) fight back, they flee closer to the central base, and we follow them, Ral and Garma reforming their unit at the back of the pack
This is what it looks like when an enemy attacks during their phase. In this case, two brave little squads of tanks decided to roll up on us. This is a slightly more fragile squad that includes Zaku I, so perhaps I should be cautious… but C’mon guys. They’re just tanks!
Oof… one of our Zaku 1’s is destroyed, lowering the offensive power of that unit by 1/3rd. In exchange almost all of the tanks were wiped out, but not all of them. However, this leads to our very first melee engagement of the campaign. See, melee weapons follow a few special rules. They ignore the extra evasion provided by being unscanned, and melee attacks take place in their own separate phase. Everyone shoots first, then once the guns have run dry, the earliest 3 units in a stack engage in melee.
For example, if you had Garma leading the charge here backed up by some Zaku II, he would engage one enemy with his heat haw, followed by 2 of the Zaku II supporting him.
As you can see, we managed to cleave one of the remaining tanks, and ID them (they’re not greyed out any more.) However, melee attacks can’t spill over from one unit to another. We’ve wiped out the first unit of tanks, but can’t continue towards the rest. They definitely came off worse than us, but I’m impressed they managed to take one down at all. Who’s tank was that?
Ah, that would explain it. I don’t know who that is, but they’re clearly an enemy ace. The map screen did say there were 4 enemy officers here. Looks like we’ve taken one down, but they took a Zaku with them.
“Fun fact! That’s Federico Czariano. He’s a named Federation character who shows up in the MS Igloo OVA. A rare piece of Gundam media that features things from a Zeon perspective.”
“He was the captain of a team of Federation soldiers who used captured MS-06 Zaku IIs to perform false-flag attacks on Zeon supply bases in North America.”
“I believe, but I could be wrong, that as the Federation player you can get an event where you’re given the choice involving Federico. One that allows you to get a stack of MS-06 Zaku IIs as the Federation, at the cost of losing Federico Czariano as an ace due to his death.”
“Of course, he’s in a tank here. And it doesn’t matter who you put in a tank as the Federation, they’ll always come up short against actual mobile suits.”
I think you know how things work now, so I’ll be speeding up a bit. Garma and co take on the tanks, while our damaged squad moves forward to engage that fighter. Every remaining enemy unit has gathered around that base, so the best thing to do is take them all out.
This isn’t important, I just wanted an opportunity to show our ace customs. Also, since we have multiple units attacking this set of tanks, half of our attacks come from off screen in the from of crossfire.
To nobody's surprise, the stack of tanks is torn to shreds.
At the end of turn 5, we get a call from our advisor, telling us that the battle has been suspended (for some reason only some of the messages are translated. Not sure why.)
Every battle in this game has a 5 turn time limit. When the 5 turns are up, the battle is paused, and we move onto the next. Once all battles for that turn are done, we begin the large scale strategy phase again. This has huge ramifications on the rest of the game. If you take too long in a battle, the enemy may send reinforcements. Or if you stall the enemy long enough, you might be able to send in your own.
On one hand, it’s a really interesting system, and I like it a lot. It gives a big more weight and meaning to stuff like, stalling tactics, or wanting to move and capture quickly. It incentivizes different ways to play. Of course, on the other hand, nothing is worse than having your enemy cornered, only to realize the battle is over until next turn.
“Or being stuck chasing a single Medea, or god forbid a submarine, around the map.”
There are times where aiming to capture all the bases instead is a mercy, and times where it's arguably worse. If the only enemy left is a durable flying unit or submarine, sometimes capturing all the bases is what you have to do.
Next on the list is Odessa. This is one of the most important fights in the game, so let’s do it right.
The defenses in North America were weak, but Odessa has a respectable unit here. Also worth mentioning, a lot of the tan region north left of the cursor are mountains, which slow our units to a crawl. Going in too hot would be reckless… but being too timid will extend the battle.
First off, we send the Black Tri Stars forward, in the hopes the enemy will be drawn in. Our stack of Zaku 1s take the base, while another stack moves south to capture another. We’ll want these bases connected, so we don’t lose all our supplies and become unable to fight. Our only other stack of Zaku IIs joins the Black Tri Stars, since they have supplies and energy to spare compared to the rest.
The enemy spend their turn shuffling and moving, nothing special.
Unfortunately due to the terrain, I couldn’t get the Zaku IIs in, just the Black Tri Stars and our stack of Zaku Is. Thankfully the Black Tri Star Custom has scanning capabilities, we have a Medea on it’s lonesome, and a Saberfish supporting a Fly Manta
We knock the Medea down to about half health, but unfortunately it’s a tough old bird, not helped by the fact it has Matilda as a pilot. The Saberfish is shot down, while the Fly Manta squad is reduced to a single unit.
I won’t be going into too much detail on enemy units, we’ll get a chance to use them when we play their campaign. But for context. The Medea is a transport ship that can only shoot other air units, the Saberfish is a fighter with the same restriction, and the Fly Manta is a fighter-bomber. Most of their airforce is prepared for a dogfight, but we’re not going to give them one.
The retaliation is pretty sad. The Black Tri Stars gun down a unit of tanks in a single go, but our Zaku I squad has it rougher. Two tank squads and a Fly Manta. When the smoke clears we’ve lost 3 Zaku Is. Gaily’s squad is down to a single Zaku 1, while Kult lost 1 as well.
Our fourth squad has reached a second base, so now resupply is possible. I send the Zaku 1s back for repairs and resupply, but sadly there’s no way to restore a lost unit in battle. The Black Tri Stars finish off the tanks and gets ready for their own resupply, while the Zaku II squad advances for a fight. See, the customs and Zaku 1 are less efficient than the Zaku II. Not a big deal in space or with a supply unit. But on earth? It can be rough.
On the enemy phase, base capture crew is bombed by 2 squads of Fly Manta, but between the base's defense boost and their excellent armor, no one is lost. The damage will be repaired, by the time our phase starts anyway, and our retaliation nearly wiped out one squad and left the other hanging on for dear life.
On our phase, I remember that the merge command exists. When two units of the same type are damaged, you can combine them to restore their numbers, and fit the proper number of units into a squad. When doing this with piloted units, the first one selected will absorb the other. Since Gaily’s stats are a bit higher than Kult, I have him absorb Kult’s unit, giving us 2 squads of 3 Zaku Is each.
The Black Tri Stars take their turn on the base for repair and resupply while the Zaku 1 start trekking over towards the fight, and our valiant Zaku IIs keep shooting, this time at a stack of planes. Our base capture team also lights up the remaining Fly Manta.
We take down one of the two planes in the stack, and shoot down the Fly Manta. On the enemy phase, none of them attack, they just huddle around the bases. In my experience, this happens when the enemy realizes it is severely outclassed, and now aims to waste your time instead of actually fighting back. Thankfully, they prioritize defending the main base, otherwise they might fly around the edges of the map wasting our time.
Nothing to do but keep pushing. Zaku II keeps pummeling the enemy, our Zaku Is and Black Tri Stars are heading to reinforce. And our base capture team has split up. One of them is heading south to capture the southernmost base, in case we need to win this fight via capture. The rest head towards the big brawl in the middle.
In our attack phase, we finish off the damaged Fly Manta and tanks that were trying to heal, and lightly wound the Saberfish up front. For the enemy phase, they do a bit more shuffling, and a Fly Manta makes an attack run against the Black Tri Stars. The ship does not survive. Not even a little bit.
Now we can start looking at the battles in space. This one is in the zone of space above Jaburo, so it’s of great importance to us, and our enemies.
I’m not sure how I feel about the hex lines in space. On the ground, they’re honestly a little hard to see, due to the colors of the terrain. In space they stand out a lot. Maybe too much. Anywho, the enemy here is based around the central objective, and we’ve got 2 squads moving in. This one is a Musai carrying a bunch of Gattle ships, a HLV carrying some Zaku, and an extra Gattle.
Up here we’ve got roughly the same thing. Musai, Gattle, HLV, Zaku, but with the addition of a Paupua supply ship. At the start, we all just cruise forward, getting ready to capture those bases and give ourselves some places to hide and repair if things go south.
For the first couple turns, nothing really happens. We advance and the enemy does a little dance but doesn’t try to pursue or attack.
I was a little concerned about what was coming, so I decided to use the Musai’s special ability, Minovsky Particle Spread. Most ships, and a few support units have this ability. Minovsky Particles serve as extra evasion against ranged attacks, and reduces the likelihood of getting scanned. We can’t benefit from the second part, but the first is a great boon.
But another turn passes and the enemy hasn’t advanced, so I launch the Gattle up front to absorb the first enemy attack and capture the two bases we approached with the Musai.
We finally get some aggression, but it’s a single squad of fighters attacking our cruiser. Being light and nippy, they avoid most of our counter fire, but 2 of them go down to missiles, leaving 3 out of 5 alive.
Our ships all dogpile the foolish fighter while our Gattle and Zaku stack moves towards the enemy. The group on the lower half of the map does the same.
Unfortunately we are charging an encamped position, and get shot at on the way in, though the long range seem to help us evade most of the shots. You can’t tell right now, but that is one of the Federation’s finest battleships, and even though only one shot landed, it nearly took out one of our Zaku IIs.
Another new mechanic for us, arranging. We don’t have time to fall back and get supplies, so I put Visch’s Zaku in the back down, while moving Johnny to the front, and keeping Nimbus in the middle. The frontmost unit is the most likely to take damage. You can use this to your advantage, by putting tough units in front of fragile ones, but I tend to make my units monotype if I can.
Nothing for it, we’ve just got to get stuck in. I accidentally took the screenshot a bit early, the Musai at the top left base does slide in to support us, but we still only attack the two bundles of ships closest to our bases.
Compared to how one sided most of our fights have been before now, Gattles against our enemy’s space planes are brutal. I was talking shit about the Saberfish earlier, but that’s because it was in the atmosphere, against mobile suits. In space, the Saberfish is a grade above the Gattle in every way.
“It’s sort of a trade-off in regards to Zeon and the Federation. Zeon has mobile suits, but the Federation’s conventional craft are a lot better than Zeon’s conventional units. Though that only matters in the early game anyway.”
I'm certainly not building anymore Gattles when I could build some Zaku instead.
Case in point, this battle turned into a mutual kill. We may have taken out the pair of Saberfish while outnumbering them 2 to 1, but they got theirs back.
Now this was a bit scary. Our ships are tough, but here we were getting swarmed by 3 units, with no support. Since we can’t fire the main gun against adjacent targets anyway, I hit defend instead of attack. We lost about a hundred points of HP, and then the battle was suspended. Only one left now.
This one is interesting, because our numbers are even. But here we have Char and his wingmen, as well as Dozle Zabi himself on our side.
Something I want to call attention to. The ship my cursor is over, that’s a Chivvay. It’s statistically an upgrade over the Musai. Superior speed, firepower, armor, and can hold an extra unit. This one is serving as Dozle’s carrier.
“Musai-class ships are light cruisers, while the Chivvay-class are heavy cruisers. More HP, more unit space, but more expensive.”
Also of note, there’s no enemy in the center this time. This territory was undefended, but we arrived to conquer it just as a fleet flew in from Luna II. So instead of starting at the center they start at the edge, like us. But, since this is still their territory, they can take the supply lines to zoom over here.
Turn 2, nothing of note happens, Char and co pop out of the Musai to capture the base, everyone else advances along the supply line. The enemy zooms over to the center, quick as they can. Turn 3, Char and co get back in the Musai, nothing else happens, what do you want me to say?
Turn 4, we have this defensive formation, with everyone hiding in a fine cloud of Minovsky Particles. They’ve got 7 fighters, 1 carrier, and 3 supply ships (the third one is all the way on the right for… some reason) But right now we are just barely out of range. I’m hoping to coax them closer. But if they don’t we can still get the first strike with our Big Guns.
They take the bait. Char’s team are lined up to gut the Salamis cruiser with their heat hawks while the Chvvay provides support fire. The team of Zaku II grunts are up against a group of the Federation’s worse space fighters, supported by the Musai. The Papua stays out of this. It’s a delicate flower.
“Cargo ships like the Papua-class, ideally, stay out of direct fire.”
You can’t see it because he is somehow perfectly hidden behind the sprite of his wingman, but that kill belongs to Char, slicing the ship with his heat hawk. Fun fact, Char earned his Red Comet nickname during a battle in which he destroyed 5 ships in one go.
“The Battle of Loum birthed a lot of aces. Ramba Ral ended up known as the ‘Blue Giant’ and I believe the Black Tri-Stars made their first proper stint on the field of battle.”
For the rest of the attack phase, our Zaku II squad also decimates the 2 ship squads they fought, without taking too much damage. But of course, that was our attack phase. The enemy’s attack might be a bit rougher…
Eh… not really. Even if I didn’t defend, I’m fairly certain Dren would have survived, but it’s better safe than sorry. But that’s the end of turn 5, so we suspend the battle.
That, is the end of our first turn of Gihren’s Greed. A bit slower than it could have been, since this campaign is pretty front loaded in the fighting, and I had to take time to explain everything. But here we are, back at the top of the round. And this is where we’ll be ending the first update.
What do you guys think of the game so far? Personally I really like the way that battles have a limited timespan, and you can do things on the strategic scale to influence the tactical scale, and vice versa. I also think it’s neat that pilots and units are a bit of a reversal from the norm. Instead of the pilot/character having stats, and the weapons modifying them, the weapons have stats the pilots modify, and the limit system is a fun way to integrate that feel in Gundam. When a pilot is letting a unit down, or the other way around.
“Gihren’s Greed will always have a special place in my heart. For me it’s not just the gameplay but the branching paths and the ‘What If’ potential. It’s really satisfying and I can feel a lot of love for the whole series in it. The game isn’t without its flaws, but I’m happy to get to see it played like this again.”
I'm having fun playing, and It's good to have you along for the ride Cross.
Next time, we'll conquer our first bits of territory, develop our first set of new units, and I'll make a tactical blunder.
