Chronocidal

Actually, that's pretty much what happens when you mold a kit that big entirely out of clear plastic. Transparent styrene is just fragile in general. Loses all the flexibility and ability to shape like regular plastic.

Actually, one nice thing about the P and Fire valk.. if you lift up the speaker covers on the shoulders, you can actually rotate the shoulder covers up far enough to get to the screws and completely take apart the shoulders. If it bugs you, it might not be hard to remove the arm and flip that sleeve around.

Eh, it's looking like them being back in stock may have been a typo. Either I got one of the very last ones, or they never had any to begin with, because the VF-17Ds are both listed as discontinued. I got an email confirmation of my order for a plain 17D, but despite sending it in early monday morning Japan time, I've got no charge to my Paypal account as of yet. Edit: Scratch that, looks like it went through in the past couple hours. Phew. I'd been waiting for something worthwhile to ship with my VF-19P and those 1/200 sets that went on sale. Sad to think though, this might be the last big Yamato purchase I'll ever make.

Yeah, I've taken the time on easy to unlock everything I wanted, and to max out Isamu's YF-29 and packs, and I've got everyone flying it now just for added offense/defense stats. I'll probably take a run at normal, then hard, and ultimate in succession. I expect things to get MUCH harder, due to the fact that really.. well, in easy mode, you don't ever need to really put out any effort to avoid enemy fire, because the missiles barely track, and you have to be standing still for gun shots to hit you. I expect this to change with a vengeance on later difficulty levels. I mean, I've barely had to use the dodging skills or anti-missile actions at all so far. Also, given how twitchy flight controls can be, I'm wondering if the other difficulty levels damage you when you bump into things. It's really easy to bounce off the scenery while flying, or walls/ceiling in those bases and caves.

If you don't see a big green highlighted region with a quest icon on it, your best bet is comparing quest names to the map. If you see any names that match, you need to head into those caves/bases/ruins to kill things or collect item chests.

You, sir, are a genius. Now I know what to do with all those old bits of packing material left over from my stereo components!

Yeah, I wouldn't expect the actual plot to be anything groundbreaking here. The only reason it's there is because they wanted an open world game where you could have all the characters meet up, and the episodic structure of the PSP games wouldn't allow for something like that. Sure, you got to play through all the famous scenarios in the various series and movies, but you probably didn't get any funny dialogue when Ozma met Basara. I am looking forward to seeing the entire story mode translated at some point, but I've kind of given up on the story making much sense anyway due to the way the ending went.

Actually, a minty RVF-25-ish green, and purple. Yeah, they didn't get very creative with that one sadly.

Think it's a one time choice. I made a solid end-game savepoint after finishing with a maxed out YF-29, so I'll probably poke at the other difficulties with it just to compare. Btw, funny thing I noticed about the YF-29s. I've only tested this with the standard and Isamu's custom version, but they're slightly different, even when maxed out. It might just be a bug with the standard one actually. Normally, maxing the missile stats will give you 24 simultaneous lock-ons using muti-target mode. But if you equip the super packs, you're suddenly restricted to firing 12 at a time. Maybe the missiles are slightly more powerful, so you don't need as many, or something. Mostly, I just noticed my ammo was lasting longer with the normal version. Isamu's can still fire 24 at a time with the packs equipped. Other oddball thing.. The loading screens with the super-packed YF-29 show the version with the covers used in space, but I've never seen them actually used. Is there some option that equips them? I'm guessing they're only there because someone used them in space early in the game, but yeah. Just wondering.

Doesn't seem to be possible, no. Each plane has three weapon types, but they're pretty much locked into a default set. The only variation you can get on any particular aircraft is if you equip a fast pack of some sort, and it changes the weapons load.

There's five paint schemes for the YF-30, but on all of them except for the last, the only thing that changes is the color of the red striping on the default. The last scheme is an overall deep red. Anyway, yeah. If you look really closely, Isamu added a bayonet to his gunpod too. I seriously want his, but I think I'd even shell out for the blue version of Alto's scheme you can get in the game. If you mix and match the parts between the Alto and Sheryl decal YF-29 1/100 kits, you can actually get close to that scheme easily. I will not, however, EVER understand why someone had the urge to texture up a bunch of valks in plaid for the game. All those slots for good paintschemes wasted.

This one annoyed me for a while too, until I discovered that the name for the cave/ruins/etc where you need to find the targets to kill is in the quest name. Even if you can't read it, just visually match the text for the quest with the name of a location on the map, and you should be golden. If it doesn't appear in the name of the quest, there might be a reference to the area somewhere in the text. My recommendation would be to write down the names of all the locations on the map to use as a reference. Right now, I'm wondering if they purposefully wrote certain quests to only be accessible at the level you get them. Even translating the quest isn't helping much, because the thing they want me to get isn't available in any region due to where I am in the game right now.. I manually looked up the kanji for the item name, and it's telling me to "Get the Dyaus egg." See, this one is an oddball. I've never seen a quest that required me to pick up an item dropped by an enemy. On top of that, I'm guessing they're referring to those big egg structures, in which case, they're out of luck, because I've destroyed them all. Unless the quest text is actually directing me toward an area where they still exist, I don't see how this one can even be completed.

Ok, so... due to the sudden stock market shenanigans, the yen to dollar rate is looking extremely good at the moment. Currently sitting at 96 yen per dollar. And HLJ has the VF-17D (pack and non-pack versions) in stock again. Think I'm going to go ahead and complete Diamond Force then. I would go for another super pack version, but I think one set is probably enough. They look cool, but not $40 extra worth of cool.

Are they actually losing faith from the Macross fanbase, or are they losing faith from the foreign Macross fans? I don't know one way or another. We all seem to be in a tizzy because we're worried our source of Macross toys overseas is disappearing, but given all the Yamato sales at places like HLJ, I wonder if the Japanese fans are so saturated with valks that they're not that concerned about it.

Have to agree about that one, the transformation leaves the tails and wings in a really awkward position. Though, I do appreciate the fact that it's not another copy of the VF-25. It's a lot closer to the SV-51. The way the legs are attached, this design might even be one few valks where you can build in a true waist pivot. I do think the giant missile pod looks awkward though. Really, it's part of why I really would prefer a kit of this one... I've got no attachment to battroid mode, so I'd just leave it as a fighter all the time. Sad thing about the way the game works is that since the YF-30 has no super pack designed for it (that I know of), it's easily outclassed by lower level valks in terms of game stats. You're just locked into using it because it carries some kind of plot device. If bandai wants to make more money though, they NEED to issue more stuff from the game. I would gladly shell out a premium to get ahold of Isamu's custom YF-29.

Actually, I'm not sure that cancelling a quest does anything about the spawns, though I have tried it too. I remember the trouble finding VF-0As, but after a while, I realized they were among the fighters that pester you near that northern guild base. Problem is, once you find things, they don't always respawn until you move out of the area. What I've been doing is once I find a spot to farm, I enter the nearest cave or ruin, and exit again. Reloading the region forces all the groups to respawn, so you can hunt more of them. Helped a lot when I was hunting the various Zentraedi mechs on the north-eastern corner of the map. Hehe.. I should have known that VF-19A one sounded familliar. I think I also translated a little of the quest description, and picked out something like "Guild Courier," so that definitely fits. Btw.. if you explore the glacier map fully, there's a couple of surprises to find on the outskirts.

K, I finally got the VF-19A one done. I don't know where I got the item, but you have to take it to the not-SDF1 in the first region. I don't think I've even seen the VF-0S rank 2 quest yet.

Considering how critical I can get, I'm actually finding very little to rant and rave about with this particular game. I think a lot of people's gripes are mostly about choices made in terms of content, and while I can understand people being sad that such and such valk wasn't included, I don't think it detracts from the game. Well.. for the most part anyway. I do think it would have been more fun to have all of Sound Force involved, as well as the VF-17, but oh well. I think Ray and Veffidas wouldn't have contributed to anything really. This isn't a game where you go blasting music to win battles, so having an entire music brigade would have probably been beyond the scope of the game. At least they added Diamond Force color sets to the VF-171s. I do have maybe three major gripes about the game, but they're mostly about gameplay mechanics, and control schemes. First.. gerwalk steering.. terrible idea. Why would a hovercraft need to make a big circle to turn around? The way gerwalk mode maneuvers just makes moving around frustrating, especially when you're forced to circle around an item pickup a dozen times to line up correctly. You can lock the controls into a more standard first/third person shooter setup by holding the lock button down, but then you have to deal with the view snapping to any target that gets within range. Not game breaking by any means, but it's irritating. Second, the new game plus mechanic is a bit screwy. Basically, all it does is let you keep your items, stats, and valks, and start a new run of the story mode. This is all fine and dandy, until you realize that you can't use any of the stuff you unlocked until you get to the endgame again. All those blueprints for higher ranked valks aren't going to be usable until you get back into the end of the game where high quality building parts drop, because the stuff available when you start won't give enough points to make higher ranked planes. Also, because of the way it restarts, you lose any progress in any quests you didn't finish, and you don't get to start them up again until you can get the quests again. You get to keep any drops you had collected for the fetch quests, but that's another headache entirely, because it seems like the game can generate multiples of unique quest drops. A lot of my frustration comes from the fact that I can't read the quest descriptions, but I definitely was sent on a quest to find 5 items at one point, and only found 3 of them in the spot it told me to look. Because the items didn't reset, I still had the other 2 in storage. Anyway, I just think the lack of an actual free-play mode after finishing the story is a sad thing. What it means is that to use all those unlocks, and go build up your fancy valks, you have to run through the game twice. "Free Play" starts before you do the last mission on your second run. Last.. well, ok. This is a personal gripe I have, and people might or might not care one way or another. Basically, they committed what I'll just refer to as "the cardinal sin of flight games"- They forgot how wings work. They didn't screw it up as badly as Hawx did, because flying upside down will actually drive you into the ground, but they forgot that banking left and right will actually turn an aircraft. It only applies if you like using the "real" setting for flight controls, but it's a pretty big physics failure going on, and it makes it difficult to steer at times. All that aside though, it's still a blast to play. I'd say the flight controls make it difficult to line up gunnery shots, but that's what gerwalk is for.

You haven't experienced WTF until you get to the ending. Granted, it's partially due to not knowing the language, but even then.. I have no idea what explanation could possibly be given for what happens.

Those are some of the ones I gave up on, because there's something particular you have to do for them to ever work. Even having the item they request won't let you complete them, because some unknown condition can't be fulfilled. For the race center though, I think it's actually the guild base nearest to where you ship is, should be nearly directly east when you launch. It's buried inside a crater on a glacier, so the only part sticking out will be the very top of the building. Ok, for those of you wondering how to buy various individual blueprints of assorted levels.. My only recommendation to you is to do every guild quest you possibly can. Once I got through enough of them, new quests started popping up, and a particular chain appeared at one point that was numbered. Each quest requested a single item that you could find in a highlighted area of the map, and nearly all of them gave out a blueprint as a reward. In the process of hunting all these quests down though, I also have entirely maxed out the standard YF-29 and YF-30, hitting 999999 TP on them. (A menu tip btw.. hitting the right stick in the tuning menu will automatically dump the maximum amount of TP into a category, so you don't have to sit there holding the right arrow button.) When I got through the middle of the desert quests, I finally hit the one that gives out the YF-29 super packs, and it was incredibly simple, since I already had the item they wanted. So.. now my YF-29 is sitting around 35,000 HP, with every stat maxed out. It's amazing how fast stuff dies that way. Anyway, there are a lot of quests I still can't make sense of, mainly because they ask for things that are impossible to find without directions. I have multiples that ask me to collect a bunch of items, but I cannot find them in the map where the quest was given. There's also a slew of ones that ask for a single item, but give no hint where to look for them.

Well, make sure you actually have all of the races. There should be (at least) ten at every race location. You start out with only a few, but get quests to unlock the others. Speaking of quests though... there's a metric crapton of them. They unlock progressively as you complete others, so I keep having to go back and forth to guild bases to check for new ones. So far, the absolutely most annoying type are the ones that tell you to collect some kind of item, but don't give you any visual cue as to where to find it. Sometimes, you get those big map icons to look near, other times the game just seems intent on making non-Japanese speakers cry. I can say that after realizing the quests will often tell you the name of the cave or ruin to look in for targets, I've had great success with red quests. What's irritating is that I've entirely maxed out the standard YF-29, and the YF-30, but I still have not seen a hint of how to get the YF-29 super packs. That's mainly what I'm after at this point, because once stats get maxed out, the YF-30 will be at a disadvantage since it doesn't have any packs to use.

Out of all the races I've done, I think most require at least a silver for any kind of blueprint reward. Fortunately, most have been easy enough to do after a couple of runs, but the one to unlock the YF-21 fast packs is nasty. The one for the VF-1 strike pack is a pretty simple run, with a string of gates to fly through, and a series of targets to shoot while mostly stationary. I'm actually liking the variety of some of the races, as far as how they combine flying and gunning. Most times, I switch to gerwalk for shooting targets so I can aim easily, but there is actually a race in the desert area that focuses purely on gerwalk skill. Basically, you get a short course of gates to fly through, and a set of targets that are offset from the gates. To do well, you actually have to do most of the race gliding sideways in gerwalk around the course, while shooting the targets alongside you. Challenging for sure, but I didn't find it frustrating. Anyway, yeah, I think these multiple threads about the game are getting difficult to manage, because questions are being asked in all of them, and sometimes overlapping. I didn't even know there was a picture guide with the control layout translated. On another note, anyone seen a way to get the YF-29 fast packs yet? I know they're in there, but so far I've got no quest that lets me get them. I'm guessing it's something that'll unlock after completing other guild quests, but it's definitely not buyable in a shop, and definitely not a race prize. Also, after crafting a few rank 3 planes.. word of advice... DO NOT attempt to skip rank 1 or rank 2, at least not on any of the later valks. Yes, it'll cost more money buying all the blueprints, but it is literally impossible to make some of the rank 3 valks right off the bat. Basically, each time you build a valk, those item point values you need go into a total overall value. Ranks 1 and 2 are steps that lead up to 3, and building them first decreases the amount of points needed to reach rank 3. I picked up one rank 3 blueprint that needed over 250 points in each category, because I hadn't built rank 1 or 2 yet. The maximum any part seems to be capable of contributing is 12 points, so even using 50 12 point parts wouldn't get you the points necessary to build it. So yeah, don't think you can save money by building the rank 3 valks you unlock without building 1 and 2 first. For early planes, it can work, but by the time you get to the VF-19s, it just won't be possible.

Eh, don't worry about the tutorial, it's pretty simple, and just meant to teach the controls. Sadly, you can't skip it, and have to repeat it every time you do a new playthrough of the story mode. Anyway, I've only been using control type C, but I can break it down here. Left Stick: Steering/Strafing. Clicking it will bring up a sniper mode view over the shoulder. Right Stick: Dedicated camera. You can toggle some extra HUD info off and on by clicking it. Directional Pad: Transformation control. Up for fighter, left/right for gerwalk, down for battroid. Ok, the buttons get fun. X: Basically, your jump/boost key. In fighter, it's a speed boost. In gerwalk, it's your ascend/descend control (press and hold once for up, double tap to drop). In battroid, it gives you a limited jump/hover. Circle: This one gets fun. It opens your weapons selection menu. Once open, the four face buttons each are set for a different function, and once clicked, the menu automatically closes again. After clicking it once, you get the following options: - Triangle, Circle, and X will all select a different current main weapon (main meaning not gunpod). These weapons vary by valk, so the buttons won't always mean the same thing. Generally, you'll get two types of missiles, and a head laser or beam gun of some type. - Square switches gunpod modes. It just toggles between standard gatling fire, and a charged beam shot similar to Michael's VF-25G rifle. Triangle: Normal functionality is as an airbrake in fighter mode. In gerwalk and battroid, it functions as your melee attack button. The attacks vary by plane some, but they usually have a very short range. Square: Mostly a "dodge" key. In fighter, it'll do quick maneuvers like barrel rolls, and hard brakes if you pull back on the stick. It's dependent on stick input in general. If you just press it, the fighter does a snap roll. In gerwalk, it acts more as a boost function, because it will let you slide forward, back, or side to side quickly. In battroid, I believe it's used to dodge, but I haven't used battroid much to practice this. Shoulder Buttons: These I don't know as well, because I know they're used in combo attacks and special moves. I only know the basic functions well. L1: Functions a lot like the Z-trigger in Ocarina of Time. Place the reticle near a target, and this will lock onto it while held, locking the view onto the target. It also activates more first-person-shooter controls for gerwalk, changing the standard "fly the direction the stick is pressed" into a forward/backward/left/right strafing. Clicking it repeatedly cycles through targets. L2: Special Actions. Combined with other buttons, you get a special boost or attack. Only real combos I know are using that plus either boost or brake. L2+X gives a massive short speed boost, L2+Triangle basically gives you the classic half-gerwalk full stop brake (for fighter). L2+Triangle in gerwalk or battroid activates a charged melee attack I think. R1: Pretty much your gunpod trigger. I don't think it does anything else. R2: Missile/Secondary Weapon trigger. Depending on what ammo you have selected, it'll function in a couple ways. Rapid fire micro missiles will just unload continuously while you hold it down. Multi-targeting ones will assign targets while held, then fire on release. In practice, I rarely use battroid for anything. I tend to split my time between gerwalk and fighter mostly, depending on how much space I have to move around. When in gerwalk though, I nearly exclusively hold down L1, even if there's nothing to target, because it locks the controls into strafe mode. The normal gerwalk steering is just plain useless, because you can't actually pivot in place. Switch directions quickly, and you actually have to turn in a big circle to go the other way, which makes collecting items on the ground incredibly annoying. If there was one change I would make to the controls, it would be to make gerwalk permanently steer like a first person shooter, because it's far more useful that way. Note, there's more to the controls than I'm mentioning, because I don't use the combo attacks much at all. The one I do know and use is pressing Circle + Triangle, and I only do it because activating your own special attack is one way to avoid getting nailed by an enemy one. It seems like all special attacks give you a short invulnerability window, so unloading your own attack is basically a cheap and easy way to dodge a potentially lethal combo.

I apologize if there's any misunderstanding, but I really don't get what spoilers you're referring to. If you're talking about what types of valks are available, there's nothing to spoil, because the game teases you constantly with the loading screens showing all the stuff you can unlock. I couldn't spoil the plot if I tried, because I don't even understand it. Ok, so on the plus side, I was able to unlock a few things due to finally understanding the quests. The races are still a pain to unlock though, because I cannot find the drops needed to unlock them... I'm wondering if you actually have to pass earlier races to do it. The item I need is an "Ouroboros Stone," or ウロボロス石. I have 6 of them from somewhere, but I can't find any more in the map where I got the quest. So, I'm going to head back to the other maps and check if races give those out as rewards. Edit: K, the good news is, I found them. The bad news is, yes, the game will give you multi-region fetch quests. The quest came from region 3, but I'm finding all the items I need in region 1.

Ok, been grinding my face into the guild quests, and been having a surprising amount of success now, because I discovered a few things. First, there should be 10 races at each of the bases with them. You start with three, and the other seven are unlocked by other guild quests. They're the ones that say "LvX" in the name. I was missing several blueprints all this time because I didn't have all the races unlocked. The VF-1 strike pack, and the YF-21 fast packs are both available from the first region races. The YF-21's is nasty, but the VF-1 strike pack is easy to get. Second.. those red quests. I was driving myself crazy trying to find out where I had to go to get the kills they wanted.. It's in the freaking quest name. If you aren't going after a named target like a Regult, or VF of some type, you probably have a generic name that looks like バンデット. That's not the important part. Look at the quest name, and then look at your map. The name might match up with a specific cave/base area on the map, and that's exactly where you need to go. This didn't even occur to me until it slapped me in the face. I figured I would just try every cave, and see where I got credit for the kills.. Cue massive facepalm when I noticed that the name of the cave I was in (named in English mind you) sounded suspiciously close to the unknown enemy I thought I was looking for. Sure enough, I got credit for all the kills easily. So yeah. If you don't have a named target that you recognize, check for a cave area that matches the name.