Sailormoon: Another Story (Part 02)
As we left our heroine, weird shit was apparently going down in the Juuban District of Minami ward, Tokyo, Japan. As the sailor-suited pretty soldier of love and justice, Sailor Moon, it's our job to go actually do something about it.

Obviously no one cares what color scheme I go with, so I'm just going nice and neutral.

Anyway, we were in Usagi's bedroom. Her house is actually rather extensively mapped out in-game, but we don't really care about that, so we'll just head right outside.

I'm pretty sure you don't care about every single thing every last NPC has to say, so I'll just show those that I found particularly interesting/amusing, along with introducing the shops as we go by, since there's a wide enough variety and we come back to the area often enough that it makes a pretty good shopping hub. We can't go into a lot of them yet though - most of them are closed barring the tutorial and plot-related ones.


This guy took the wrong turn at Albuquerque, and is now hopelessly lost on Usagi's street. But he gives us free heals, so he's cool. Later in the game these guys get a palette swap on the clothing and act as shops, they're cool too except that by that point we probably won't need to buy anything ever again except piles and piles of one thing. I'll explain when we reach that point.


Here's the cosmetics store. It's got a wide variety of single-use items, with a focus on status cures and stat-ups. It's one of two, maybe three, shops we actually care about.


The bookstore is pretty lame. It only carries two items, one of which another store carries too (and isn't even very useful). Though the other is non-obvious but totally supposed to be a porn magazine, lol. We only care about it because a plot event brings us here later.


The arcade is one of two locations that explains game mechanics. It doesn't really have much of even that, though. I think it's mostly just here because it was such a prominent location in the series.




Crane Game Joe is kind of amusing, if useless. Maybe it's Candlejack causing the weird stuff in to


Suuuuuuure, kid. I guess you are a little young for the actual long stuff like Xenosaga though.


I don't even remember what the toy store has, the internet won't tell me, and I really don't feel like jumping back in-game just to check. I think it's minor healing stuff. Can you tell we don't care about this one? (EDIT: I did find one item at least that pretty obviously is from here - it's a full-party HP restore that costs twice what the one at the cosmetics store that also refills EP costs.)


The convenience store is the main place to get healing stuff. It's got food covering a wide range of amounts of HP restored, and is the other store that stocks Nakayoshi magazine, the magazine that ran the Sailormoon manga (which refills 2 EP - I'll explain EP later, but suffice it to say that this is useful, but not really enough to spend money on). It's not a bad store to visit, but there's enough healing from drops and chests that's it's not vital either. It's also the only regular shop that's open right now, because it's a 24-hour store. =P


You're fucking nuts, kiddo.


The clock shop is the other tutorial location, but I'll be explaining battle once we get into one. It also sells two items, a speed-up (watch) and a sleep cure (alarm clock).


And finally, the jewelry store. This sells accessories, making it the equivalent of most RPGs' weapon and armor shops. It's also where our next plot point occurs, but we're not going in quite yet.



Why yes, we are cool, thank you.


Luna bitches at us if we try to leave this part of town. =/


This is school. Several of our characters go here, Juuban Middle School. They and a couple others at other schools are in third year middle school, equivalent to America's 9th grade.

Off to the jewelry store, I suppose!



And of course Naru Osaka is being monster bait. As usual. That doesn't qualify as "something funny" at all, Luna. >=|


Yeah yeah, I know, Luna. It's not like I've never done this before.



Transformations and most combat actions are accompanied by little voice clips from the anime voice actresses. It's cute, even when under SNES limitations. =D


"Ai to seigi no seeraa fuku bishoujo senshi Seeraa Muun!"



"Tsuki ni kawatte..."


"Oshioki yo!"


=O
Time for our first combat!


Anyway, at the beginning of every combat, we get a screen like this identifying our enemies. The very early-game bosses (like here) and the random battles are monsters of the day from the anime. This one is both from a moderately important episode and quite fitting for a jewelry store, though.


At the top are our various commands, at the bottom are all our party members and their current HP (hit points) and EP (energy points? unsure, it's never actually expanded and unlike HP the magic resource isn't consistent across the genre). HP is pretty standard, EP works perhaps a little unusually - the max any character can have is 12, but it fully refills between battles. This is probably why you can't use healing techs outside of battle - since it refills, you'd basically get infinite healing out of combat.

The currently-selected (though it might be a bit hard to tell in the screenshot - I'm starting at the far left and moving right, if it helps) command is "Attack". This is the pretty obvious "smack them in the face" command. It's weaker than techs, but doesn't use any EP, so when you're not wiping out monsters in one turn, it's probably more economical to switch to this than to refill EP when you're out and not fighting a boss.


"Techniques". Moon Spiral Heart Attack is listed in red because it costs 3 EP and Sailor Moon only has 2 - it's unusable.


"Link Techs". Not even going to open the sub-menu because we still haven't set them up, but it works the same as the techs menu - white if you can use it, red if you can't (either due to insufficient EP or the other character(s) in the link not being around. Link techs cost EP from all characters involved equal to the number of characters in the link - 2 EP each for a 2-person tech, 3 EP each for a 3-person tech. They only take up the turn of the character selecting it, so if you want to and have enough EP, you could use the same one 2 or 3 times in a turn.


"Formation Techs". These are all too expensive to care about (they take the listed cost per person, and 5 EP is the cheapest) and as I recall, take up the entire party's turn. For what it's worth, though, there's one for each formation and one that's formation-independent but requires that your party consist of specifically Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus.


"Item". Pretty obvious.


"Defend". Cuts all damage in half (except I think poison).


"Run Away". Attempts to flee battle.

So anyway, let's smack this bitch down. We'll start with a Moon Tiara Action.


Unfortunately, Persian-Cut is faster than we are and smacks us first for 3 damage. ;_; (Each turn you select the entire party's actions at once and they resolve in order of character speed.)




We smack her for way more though. =D

After one more Moon Tiara Action and a few kicks in the face, Persian-Cut dies and we get our rewards:




But why are old enemies coming back to fight us again?

Afterwards we reassure Naru and her mom that things are alright and we'll totally beat up any more evil things that try to hurt them. Like we always do. Because Naru is useless.

One of the rooms upstairs has our first chest:



This goes under our Rare Items:

Any items with this description get sold for phat lewts at a store we haven't seen yet because it's elsewhere in the city.

Talking to Naru afterwards:


Because you sure as fucking hell can't rely on yourself.



Oh come on, you only just got up.


Someone else is sleeping too, though, and he gets a pixel-y transition to a DREAM SEQUENCE:

Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Kamen ("Tuxedo Mask")
Usagi's love interest. Was the prince of Earth in his own past life, and rules by Usagi's side in the future too, because they are in luuuuurve and also it's destiny. Mostly shows up to provide pithy pep talks, but sometimes gets kidnapped and brainwashed. He's not playable, so he has no stats to care about. =P


In a dream, duh.




Kunzite is the leader-ish one of the Shitennou ("Four Heavenly Kings"). In the anime, they were just the major henchmen to the first season's Big Bad. In the manga, they were that too, but they got expanded upon some in that they were the guardians to Mamoru's royal past life, Prince Endymion, and their spirits kept hanging around and advising him after their defeats in the present-ish day.



Summary: "There's an evil comet which is going to fuck up every single part of the timeline. Obviously, this isn't cool."



Yeah right, like Mamoru ever does anything that vital. That's Sailor Moon's job, duh.




Later that day? The next day? How should I know?:





So here's two more of our protagonists:

Rei Hino/Sailor Mars
She's a miko (a sort of priestess, typically a young maiden) at Hikawa Shrine. In the manga she was very quiet, mature, and reserved (though not necessarily "shy" per se), but in the anime she was sassy and fought with Usagi like an old married couple. Powers are fire themed,
In game terms: High HP and attack, but fragile.


Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter
Tough-girl exterior hiding a girl who loves flowers and cooking. Pretty much every guy on the planet reminds her of her ex. Powers lightning and plant themed.
In game terms: Can I just copy Mars's line here?




Clearly this game is using snarky anime-personality Rei.





Ami Mizuno/Sailor Mercury
Resident Science Genius Girl. IQ 300, with the shy, geeky personality to go with it. Powers are water/ice themed.
In game terms: High defense, low pretty much everything else. She's good for chucking healing items around at least.


Urawa-kun appeared all of twice in the anime. I'm not sure he appeared at all in the manga. All you need to remember about him is that he's psychic and kinda-sorta Ami's boyfriend, even though he moved away.


Here, they pretty much just discuss boys. Highlights:



Urawa-kun is visiting and Ami is taking him to the freaking library. To study. She is entirely serious about this.

[And... apparently I accidentally got rid of the other particularly amusing bit. Oops.]</br>
(By the way, Ami is also allergic to love letters. Pretty much literally.)

Frankly, this scene is pretty boring. One more playable character shows up in the middle though:


Minako Aino/Sailor Venus
Pretty much the exact same personality as Usagi, minus the crybaby-ness. Also half her powers are moon-themed too because in the manga that came before Sailormoon she was told she was totally the moon princess, but then later it turned out she was just a decoy, lol.
In game terms: Good attack, good evasion, crap defense.


Also, the sprites for characters in the scene but not on-screen at the moment are hiding behind the border.




Anyway, Ami leaves for the train station and everyone else decides to follow her. Makoto is kind of reluctant though.


And we take the bus to the train station.


Everyone hides behind the pillars and Usagi has to talk to them to advance the scene for no good reason.


Ami goes up to the platform to wait while the others hang back, still "hiding". Not very well, I say.



Great.



*sigh*



Or the Sailor Senshi. They're right here, much more convenient.






Onward! But first, a word from our spons- er, no, our explanations of formations and the link tech menu.

So anyway, there's four formations:




As explained earlier, they're pretty typical stuff, people in the front deal and take more damage while people in back deal and take less. Cluster is a bit weird though - the center actually gets enhanced attack and defense, while the front and back are more extreme than the other formations in their effects. It's pretty potent, though any of the formations can be plenty effective. For now, though, we're just going to be lazy and go with Shoot.


The link tech setup menu is pretty easy to use. Just select characters on one side and move them to a spot on the other, then press Y to see if the set on the right has a link tech:




I find its remark on the lesbians amusing though.


Anyway, get on the train and about halfway through the first train car is a battle. It's easy, but it gives us enough XP for everyone to level up!


There's one of these screens for everyone who levels up even at the same time, but you really didn't want to stare at 5 of them, I'm sure. Also, this is one of those lovely games where leveling up provides a full heal. =D

Next car gives us another battle, with enough XP to level everyone again. These 5 are already getting pretty close to the EP cap, you reach it quickly.

One more car, with...



Don't worry, he's just unconscious. We'll take him back to the Hikawa Shrine to rest up and he'll be good as new.



He had a dream though. Someone's screwing around with destiny.







... okay, however that works.







*ker-SPLODY*







Bathtime for Rei. I can't really blame her.




The phone is currently being guarded by Rei's pervy old grandpa. But he lets us take the call after minimal interference.








Off to the hospital for us!





Also, Luna's going to leave us alone for a while now too.

A short walk later...




All the other rooms are empty. Apparently no one gets sick in Tokyo.

So let's go meet most of the rest of our protagonists!


Haruka Tenou/Sailor Uranus
Races cars, dresses like a guy - she's the butch lesbian (though she also plays a pretty good piano). She's generally badass. Powers are earth and air themed.
In game terms: High attack and HP and she's fast! She's squishy and sucks at dodging, but overall she's pretty decent.


Michiru Kaiou/Sailor Neptune
Graceful violinist, femme lesbian. She's also kind of badass, though not as much as Haruka. Powers are sea themed.
In game terms: She's pretty much another healer - doesn't die easily but doesn't hurt much either.


Hotaru Tomoe/Sailor Saturn
Mysterious waif who was possessed by evil, then Sailor Moon healed her but reverted her to a little baby in the process, and then left her in Haruka and Michiru's care. Powers are death and rebirth themed. She can pretty much destroy the world if she wants to - good thing she doesn't want to.
In game terms: Low all-around stats at first, but her unique items turn her into a strong all-around character. Plus, she has an attack that hits all enemies for 2 EP. We love her. A lot.




She's all sickly and stuff. =/





That's probably not a good sign considering the other stuff going on lately...



Oh great. Mugen Gakuen ("Infinity Academy") was a K-12 private school acting as a front for the bad guys in the third season.)


And Mistress 9 was a villain that possessed Hotaru at the time. She will totally choke you with her hair.





Hrm?




And another battle. It's not difficult either.




Fucked if I know. *shrug*


Haruka thinks this game's plot is dumb. But then again, Haruka and Michiru think everything is srs bizness.



Oh hey, the Vaguely Familiar Character Design Squad is behind it all.



*shiny power flash*



Yeah, your boss said that already.




Nope. =D



So... you have the same plot as every other villain in the history of the series? I don't see this working out for you.




D'awwwwwww, Anshar has a crush, does he?




You should probably go check on Naru instead. She's the monster bait.



But DA~~~~~~~~~~D!

... okay, fine.

So! Now the game lets us off the rails a little bit - all the Juuban shops are open, though random battles have started up too. (It's OK, we can use them to get grind for money.) We've got four characters:

... I guess those train battles were worth more than one level each...




The other three will catch up soon enough though.

Now, questions for you, the readers!

1. What formation do you want me to use? Do you have any other requests within that, like the usual "put the squishies in back" or maximizing strengths by putting the glass cannons up front and letting the tanks just blow healing items on them to make up for it?


2. What accessories should I buy for everyone? (The jewelry store stock is listed below.) This goes for the characters introduced but not in the party right now too, since by the time we get control of them again we'll be away from jewelry store access for a while - they will all get their unique accessories not long after that, but it's nice to give them some equipment in the meantime.)