Vixen 357
released on Oct 23, 1992
Vixen 357 (ヴィクセン３５７) is a 1992 strategy game for the Sega Mega Drive by NCS released exclusively in Japan.
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Incredibly impressive strategy game for the era. Some of the last missions are nearly impossible so I suggest playing with save states if you don't want to have to replay levels for a really long time. To me the game was a great experience but without save states I think I would have really resented it. It's a different time and we don't have infinite hours to plop down in front of a genesis anymore.
An elaboration of Masaya's Assault Suit Leynos via thesis: Mid-crisis mech military cinemacy, now taken form as a Strategy RPG. Depth starts somewhat shallow, slowly matures into a highly-intricate behemoth, then fails to stick the landing with a borderline game-killing victory lap.
As a mech tactics game, your squad (and the opponent's) are outfitted with extremely long-range options right out the gate, with little inhibitions. In most other SRPG's, this would create a severe imbalance, so Vixen compromises by making all units extremely tanky - most enemies take 8 shots to go down, and your own team can burden anywhere from 10 to 30 depending on the scenario. Taking out enemies effectively is a matter of dogpiling on them one at a time in a grand war of attrition. But within a couple missions, your squad is joined by reliable ol' Ben and his aerial battleship. Ben's range is even more absurd than your ground squad's, his movement's unaffected by terrain rules, and his health is monstrous. But most important: He can carry your own units and let them refuel/heal. This starts a spiral of balancing aggressive play while keeping Ben in range to stock up on healing opportunities, like a portable home base - a huddle-like system that expands further when Chay & Nina join with their shield-generating Panacea. It's also worth noting pilots and mechs are selected independently from the disembarking menu. This opens up a huge swathe of technical options: Mixing pilots into mechs that comfortably match their stats, sending pilots out in bad stat matchups as a means to grind EXP, but most importantly, returning a mech to the battleship and tagging in another pilot with it so you can double-attack. When the game gives you proximity missles around the second half, pulling this tandem move is a risky but game-changing maneuver. Vixen is fantastic at taking these simple-but-deep mechanics and slowly introducing new vectors of challenge for you to overcome with them.
That is, until the last few missions - the back five against the big bad and his quartet of right-hands are all noticeably difficult, but mission 14 is a signal of infamy. It's a surprise attack mission - and the enemy does the surprise attacking. Not only do they outnumber you and get full coverage of the map when they appear, but their ambush happens on their turn, meaning they're guaranteed a better start. This mission is borderline impossible - if you give the team even one weak unit to gang up on, they will. I would've finished this game a month or so ago, but this single mission pushed me away from it for so long, and I only beat it today by save-scumming through - constantly checking the enemy AI for which unit they were going to target, treating the load/save toggle like a simulation of guerilla horrors until I figured out a perfect plan of action.
What's more demoralizing though is how the game totally drops the ball after that; the last mission isn't even somewhat hard, just a slog. The final boss holes himself up in a corner of the room, using MP to throw screen nukes and full heals around willy-nilly. Take about 25 turns of shooting him and he'll eventually run out of ammo. I nearly shit myself when you beat him and they fake you into thinking he has a second phase, I was close to losing it.
Had this game ended better, it could be one of my new favorite Genesis games. In its current state though, it's not super recommendable, and even though I'd love to play it again, I'd probably stop once things get hairy. A shame; it deserves to be seen as one of many other SPRG classics on Genesis, up there with Lord Monarch and Shining Force.
Super Fighter Team got close to a commercial translation of this a while ago, but it got cancelled out of the blue. Masaya's been working with Ratalaika a lot since then; I'd love a port to modern platforms with some difficulty tweaks and emulation furnishing, just like their Gleylancer port.
As a mech tactics game, your squad (and the opponent's) are outfitted with extremely long-range options right out the gate, with little inhibitions. In most other SRPG's, this would create a severe imbalance, so Vixen compromises by making all units extremely tanky - most enemies take 8 shots to go down, and your own team can burden anywhere from 10 to 30 depending on the scenario. Taking out enemies effectively is a matter of dogpiling on them one at a time in a grand war of attrition. But within a couple missions, your squad is joined by reliable ol' Ben and his aerial battleship. Ben's range is even more absurd than your ground squad's, his movement's unaffected by terrain rules, and his health is monstrous. But most important: He can carry your own units and let them refuel/heal. This starts a spiral of balancing aggressive play while keeping Ben in range to stock up on healing opportunities, like a portable home base - a huddle-like system that expands further when Chay & Nina join with their shield-generating Panacea. It's also worth noting pilots and mechs are selected independently from the disembarking menu. This opens up a huge swathe of technical options: Mixing pilots into mechs that comfortably match their stats, sending pilots out in bad stat matchups as a means to grind EXP, but most importantly, returning a mech to the battleship and tagging in another pilot with it so you can double-attack. When the game gives you proximity missles around the second half, pulling this tandem move is a risky but game-changing maneuver. Vixen is fantastic at taking these simple-but-deep mechanics and slowly introducing new vectors of challenge for you to overcome with them.
That is, until the last few missions - the back five against the big bad and his quartet of right-hands are all noticeably difficult, but mission 14 is a signal of infamy. It's a surprise attack mission - and the enemy does the surprise attacking. Not only do they outnumber you and get full coverage of the map when they appear, but their ambush happens on their turn, meaning they're guaranteed a better start. This mission is borderline impossible - if you give the team even one weak unit to gang up on, they will. I would've finished this game a month or so ago, but this single mission pushed me away from it for so long, and I only beat it today by save-scumming through - constantly checking the enemy AI for which unit they were going to target, treating the load/save toggle like a simulation of guerilla horrors until I figured out a perfect plan of action.
What's more demoralizing though is how the game totally drops the ball after that; the last mission isn't even somewhat hard, just a slog. The final boss holes himself up in a corner of the room, using MP to throw screen nukes and full heals around willy-nilly. Take about 25 turns of shooting him and he'll eventually run out of ammo. I nearly shit myself when you beat him and they fake you into thinking he has a second phase, I was close to losing it.
Had this game ended better, it could be one of my new favorite Genesis games. In its current state though, it's not super recommendable, and even though I'd love to play it again, I'd probably stop once things get hairy. A shame; it deserves to be seen as one of many other SPRG classics on Genesis, up there with Lord Monarch and Shining Force.
Super Fighter Team got close to a commercial translation of this a while ago, but it got cancelled out of the blue. Masaya's been working with Ratalaika a lot since then; I'd love a port to modern platforms with some difficulty tweaks and emulation furnishing, just like their Gleylancer port.