Mobile Police Patlabor (Super NES)

Original title: 機動警察パトレイバー
Release date: April 22, 1994

This one is a strategy RPG, just like the Game Boy game I posted about here. Most of the basics of that game also apply here. You walk up to enemies on the map and initiate combat. The differences are mainly the battle system, and the game is also much longer than the one on the Game Boy.

The story is game-original. There is a project to create a next-generation Labor, called Gustaf Project. While investigating the case, you also get the common missions that Second Division usually gets. Apprehend criminals, stop rampaging drunks, catch runaway pigs and so on. You can play as either Noa (Alphonse) or Ohta (Ingram Unit 02).

The main draw of this game are the visuals. There's a lot of stills drawn for this game, and they're all very beautiful, even for the low resolution of the SNES. They're very sharp and give you the very same feel of seeing the Patlabor anime. Before every stage, you see the engineers of the Mobile Police prepping the Ingrams up, the Ingram being loaded onto the carrier, that kind of stuff. Those scenes change according to the character you're playing as.

The battle system here is more formulaic than the Game Boy game. You select a command per turn, and see the results based on a dice roll. The main difference is the amount of commands available now, and the way you initiate battle. You now have to initiate battle every time you attack an opponent. There's no "being locked into a battle" here. While in the map, there's a bar on top of the screen (MVS, the patrol lights) that signifies your "readiness". Once this bar is filled up, you can walk up to the enemy and initiate an attack. Push A, the game asks you to specify a target. Once you confirm it, you initiate the attack.

Here's what sets Patlabor apart from other games. Once the action you chose finishes, you're booted back into the map screen. You have to wait for the MVS bar to fill up again to initiate another attack. Seems easy, right? Well, there's more to it than that. The enemy can also initiate an attack on you! So you have to balance approaching and staying away from the enemy, or you'll end up eating tons of attacks. There's no way to completely avoid being attacked, but try to stay away from the enemy as much as possible. One last thing is the Battery meter: it's sort of a time limit. It drains constantly, and initiating attacks or defending also drains it (stronger actions drain more of the bar). To recharge your battery, you must have the Ingram approach the Labor carrier (the big truck in the screenshot above).

Now, for the battle screen. It's a little overwhelming at first, but you'll get the hang of it pretty fast. There are two versions of this screen: one for attacking and another for defending. The attack options are as follows:

- Melee: those attacks are usually the weakest, but they have a very good chance to hit, and drain the least Battery.

- Special: attack with the baton or with guns. Lower chance to hit.

- Combo: this depends on the stage. Usually you'll get combos of moves, once you level up enough. Combos have a lower chance of success than almost every other attack. On the stage with the pigs, you use this to catch the pigs.

- Talk: you need to use this to finish some stages, but it has usually no effect on enemies still on fighting condition. When an enemy is greyed out, you can talk to them to get them to surrender.

The defense options are:

- Evade: completely evade an attack. Lower chance of success than Guard.

- Guard: receive less damage. Higher chance of success than Evade.

- Counter: not available at first, but counters a melee attack with 100% success.

Some notes: Even Guard has a chance to fail completely. Counter works 100% of the time to nullify the enemy attack, but your follow-up attack can still fail. To get Counter, you need to get all the 8 moves for both Melee and Special. 

Lastly, if you take too long at the Defense screen, the enemy goes through with its attack. You can take as long as you want on the Attack screen, and even cancel it to choose another target.

There's also the matter of range. You can initiate an attack from either long or short distance. If you choose short distance, all the options will be available. If you initiate from long distance, you can only use guns to attack. Even Talk will fail. All enemies will only attack you from short range, with a single exception, the final boss. When you push A to initiate an attack, the game stops for a second and lets you choose targets, even if only one target is available.

For the game itself. It is mission-based, and each mission is a "File", like in the TV Series. Finish the mission, close the file. The missions tend to be rather short, and are usually "destroy everything", like Second Division always does. There are story cutscenes between missions. There's also an intermission menu, you don't just go from one mission to the other. This is another interesting part of the system. Your Ingrams (Unit 01 and 02) can level up in 4 statistics, and you can train those statistics here. Level ups are done by doing the same action over and over. The 4 statistics are: Strength, Cle, Jud and Mobility. Strength governs melee and health. Cle governs special weapons, and Mobility helps in dice rolls, and also your speed while in the map. Also the MVS bar seems to fill up faster. I have no idea what Jud does. Judgement? Judo? 

The intermission menu is as follows:

Option 1: Mission

1a - launch

1b - sound (stereo/mono)

Option 2: Hangar

2a - train

2b - see available moves

Option 3: Save

There are three slots to save on.

1a and 1b are self-explanatory. 2a is very interesting. You choose either of the Ingrams, and you train against the other pilot. It is necessary to train both pilots, because neither of the Ingrams is available on all missions. I thought that if an Ingram went on a mission, it couldn't go on a mission right after it, but sometimes it could. So I don't know the reason that sometimes Unit 01 or 02 isn't available. Just have both of them ready. You can train indefinitely here, and you don't even need to exit the training once you defeat the other pilot. Goto will ask if you want to continue training. If you choose Yes, you go right back to it. Infinite grinding, yay. This isn't to say the game is easier because of this - the final stages are pretty hard, even with every stat at 99.

Now, the missions. Usually you just punch everything, but most missions have a small gimmick. Sometimes you have to convince someone to give up, like in Mission 2. There will be a lengthy conversation with the Labor pilot, and if you choose the wrong option, it's game over. Good thing that's the only mission where it happens. In another mission, you have to stop three rampaging Labors before they destroy a house. In another, you have to grab runaway pigs. In yet another mission, you need to fight in a horse track, and must be careful to not step on the horses. But usually, you just punch stuff. If the stage doesn't end there, you go up to the disabled enemy and talk to them, and they'll usually give up.

I didn't notice any gameplay differences between Noa and Ohta. They seem to have the same normal attacks, and even the combos are the same. The backup officer also changes (Asuma for Noa and Kumagami for Ohta), but this only changes dialogue in stages. Still, you can say there are 2 versions of every stage, since Asuma and Kumagami give different advice on dealing with the present threat.

I didn't expect much out of this game, and was quite surprised how much fun it is once you get the hang of it. The art is a huge plus, it's really gorgeous. The battle scenes also don't take too long, usually 1 or 2 seconds each. The only thing I didn't like was how you do so little damage with attacks, even with 99 on all stats. It takes between 5 to 15 attacks to take down a single Labor. Combos take them down faster, but are prone to missing. One thing of note is that the dice rolls on every hit of a combo, not just the first. So if a combo has 5 hits, you can miss on any of them, and the combo is interrupted.

The game has a few subsystems, but one that will usually be ignored is limb damage. When you enter battle, you can see your Ingram's condition at the top-center of the screen. If you take too much of a type of damage (punch, hammer punch), certain parts will start to deteriorate, first flashing yellow, then finally becoming disabled. Once the part is disabled, any attack done with that part is disabled. If your right arm is disabled, you can't punch, and so on. However, this is pretty hard to come by, and I only got this consistently during training matches (Ingram vs Ingram). I don't know if the same applies to the enemies, since you can't see their condition onscreen. A few moves seem to target specific parts, but without confirmation, there's no way to know if enemy parts can also get damaged. Immobilize Target, for example, targets one of the enemy's arms.

The Labor variety is pretty good. You'll usually fight most of the Labors that appeared in the TV series. The final boss is an original, called Gustaf. The pilot is an old acquaintance of Noa, a woman called Sumika, and the Gustaf is the only Labor in the game that uses a gun. Sadly, there's no Griffin. The enemies are all beautifully drawn too, even though they don't have as many poses as the Ingrams. On the player side, you only get the two Ingrams. No Type 0 this time.

The game has 21 missions and 2 endings, one for each pilot. Before Mission 18 is the last time you can use the intermission menu. On Mission 18, the pilot you choose will fight the final boss. Missions 19 and 20 are the same for both endings, just the pilots are switched around. The situation is that there is an explosion on the bridge you're standing on, and both teams are separated.

Well, to wrap this up. The game isn't what you'd call hard. Since you can just grind endlessly, and Counter works 100% of the time, you can't really lose to anything once you get it (save for running out of battery). Save for a few stages where you may need to be careful where you're stepping, the only hard parts are a stage in a dark cave, where you need to finish it in one go (no recharging on the Labor carrier), and the final stage, where the final boss uses a gun that does in almost 1/3 of your lifebar in a single attack. You can remedy the latter by staying near the final boss and just countering until you need to recharge. The former is just a question of memorization.

There's no English translation. But if you're in a Patlabor frenzy, you'll want to play this game at least once.

Can you play this without knowing Japanese?

Except for Mission 2, you can brute-force the rest of the game. You'll get a few Game Overs the first time because you won't know the failure condition, though.

Option translations:

All translations are from left to right.

Melee, Weapon, Special, Talk.

Punch, Kick, Tackle, Elbow, Lariat, Hammer Punch, Dropkick, Judo Throw.

Baton smash, Riot Cannon (Revolver), Baton thrust, Leg sweep, Wire, Baton crush, Riot Gun (Shotgun), Immobilize target.

Combos. They're strings of moves put together.

Talk.