VOTOMS: Lightning Slash (Playstation 1)

Original title: 装甲騎兵ボトムズ ライトニングスラッシュ
Release date: March 18, 1999

This AT here is the Slash Dog.

The final PSX VOTOMS game, Lightning Slash is the best of the bunch. Taking cues from Berserga Monogatari and forsaking everything about Uoodo-Kummen, this game expands on everything good that Berserga had. The main gameplay venue here is the sport of Battling. There is a story mode, which is structured just like Berserga's too - choose options, talk to people, arrange Battling matches, and so on. Other modes are Battling, Versus and Survival.

Anyway, for the story mode. The story here is that you're a Gilgamesh AT pilot called Erslight/Eslight Vicks (you can change his first name), disillusioned with the world because something that happened in his past. He was part of the Hamilton Platoon, which was wiped out by its own commander, a woman called Tia Hamilton. This incident was quite fishy to begin with, and when the Hamilton Platoon's existence was officially erased to cover it up, our hero left the army and went to the city of Woodo. There, he met Robe, a matchmaker (someone who arranges Battling matches) who introduced him to the world of Battling. Through the game, you'll meet old friends, and by gaining notoriety in the arenas, you'll finally discover the secret behind the destruction of the Hamilton Platoon. As in Koutetsu no Gunzei, this game also has a totally original story. No characters from the TV series appear here, except for a single cameo: Keak Carradine, a character from Armor Hunter Mellowlink. If you saw Mellowlink, you'll recognize that Carradine is an investigator for the Melkian Army. In this game, he's investigating a project called Facial Soldier, which seemingly aims to duplicate  the powers of a Perfect Soldier.

Story Mode sequences.

As for the gameplay itself, the game uses a different engine from Berserga, so it doesn't feel the same. While Berserga was a Virtual On clone, this game doesn't really feel like anything else I've played in the past. The controls take some time to get used to, but they get the job done. The only problem is that left/right is reversed when the AT is dashing backwards - this is a little disorienting at first. There is no "hard" lock-on, like in Berserga. You do lock onto the enemy when you press the attack buttons, but you're not "anchored" to the enemy. If that sounded too complicated, let's just say that Berserga used Z-Targetting, like Zelda Ocarina of Time or Megaman Legends. Once you locked onto an enemy, the directional buttons moved your character around the enemy, kinda like you're anchored to them. Not in Lightning Slash. When you push the attack buttons (square and circle by default), the AT turns towards the enemy to attack, but you can still move freely.

The game doesn't really help you get acclimated to the controls... it throws you into a battle right at the start, and there's no training mode anywhere. Still, since you only lose your betting money if you lose, a loss isn't really that costly.

Shop screen. Pictured is the Berserga WP.

Anyway, you have 5 attack options in total: both arms, both shoulders and a bomb item. When you begin the game, you can only use your arms, and only use a gun on the right arm. The left arm will do arm punches. Shoulder weapons and bombs only become available once you progress enough in the game. Ammo for hand-held weapons is mostly infinite, although there's a counter onscreen showing how many bullets are left in your current magazine. Once the magazine is empty, it takes an instant to put another one in. Ammo for shoulder weapons and bombs is definitely not infinite. The counter for shoulder weapons only shows up when you're holding R1 (otherwise, the handheld ammo counter is always shown), while bombs are shown at the top-right of the screen, below your lifebar.

Fighting a missile launcher vehicle.

Instead of a single health bar, every AT (player or enemy) has two: ATHP and PTHP. ATHP is what you've already guessed, while PTHP is Polymer ring HP, the liquid that gives ATs their human-like movements. If either of those bars is depleted, the AT is destroyed. At the beginning, most weapons will damage ATHP much faster than PTHP, but there actually are weapons that damage PTHP faster than HP - those are situational weapons like flamethrowers.

When you connect a punch at short distance, the camera angle changes.

Combat is done at two distances: "In Fight", which is short range, and medium/long range. When you're in "In Fight", a small window appears at the bottom of the screen, meaning you're into this mode. What this does is change a few of your attacks: if you're carrying an assault rifle and try to fire it while at this distance, you'll try to smack the opponent with it instead of firing. The only advantage I can see of this mode is that, if you attack an opponent with an arm punch, you can sort of lock them in place (like a throw in a fighting game). The camera will change when you do this. Speaking of throws, the ATs can also do a throw with the triangle button. It's sort of a desperate maneuver, since it leaves you open to everything and is quite slow too. The advantage of the throw is that the damage done to PTHP is huge, and the enemy is left sprawling on the ground for a few seconds. You can't shoot the enemy on the ground, but you can get away from him.

Fighting a Brutish Dog.

As for boosting/roller-skating, the system is much better than in Uoodo-Kummen. Although you still have a skating bar, it's pretty big, and you can usually skate through the whole arena in a straight line before it empties. One thing of note is that the skating isn't free-form like in the PS2 game. The way you initiate the skating will change the movements you can do. You can either skate forwards/backwards, or to the sides (strafing). If you're skating forwards, you can't just start strafing while doing it. You have to stop and then start strafing. You can also circle around an enemy by inputting different directions while already skating. Example: if you're skating forwards, you can circle around the enemy by pressing left or right. If you're strafing, you can circle around by pressing up or down.
Even without skating, your AT can move pretty well too. Walking isn't all that fast, but at least it's not as slow as molasses like in Uoodo-Kummen. If you hold L2, you can also walk to the sides. This is mostly for emergency situations.

Slash Dog fighting.

The ATs can take damage on their limbs and weapons too. If you get attacked too much on the right side, for example, the AT may lose its right-side weapon (each weapon has its own armor points), and that arm becomes useless (even for arm punches). The arms themselves can be destroyed too, and in that case the AT attacks with its legs. It's kind of a sad sight seeing your AT with both arms blown off, trying to kick the enemy to death.

Customization screen. Pictured is the Slash Dog.

For the customization aspect. You start the game with a Scopedog, and there's already a hangar at the beginning ("Factory" option) to customize stuff. The options are:
- Change parts: change parts of the AT. Available parts are Head, Right Arm, Left Arm, Body, Legs, Backpack, Muscle Cylinder and Turbo.
- Change weapons: Right Arm, Left Arm, Right Shoulder, Left Shoulder, Bomb.
- Color: change the colors of your AT. Can change the whole AT at once, or only parts of it. Can also choose color profiles from other ATs, like Bloodsuckers, Bersergas, Purple Bears and so on.
- Emblem: can paint an emblem over a specific part of an AT. You can either apply a pre-made emblem or make one yourself.
- Hangar: change the whole AT.
- Name: you can change the name of your AT and your ringname. Those names appear right before a battle.
- View: just rotate the AT around to check it out.

Matchmaking screen.

To customize your AT with parts, your only option is to buy them with the money you get from the fights. At the shop, you have three options:
- ALL AT: Buy a whole AT. Note that a whole AT costs much more than anything else.
- Arms: Buy weapons.
- Parts: Buy parts.

The final customization option only appears once you reach the second chapter. There's another shop called "Junk" where you can customize parts or weapons with better attributes.

Now for the story mode. You usually get 4 options onscreen during the game.
- Bar: talk to people, arrange fights.
- Shop: buy stuff.
- Factory: customize ATs.
- Save: self-explanatory.

Story Mode main screen.

The parts all have their pros and cons, like in Armored Core. A better part will usually be heavier too. A better arm will not punch as hard as the first available arm, and so on. Weight is important because you need to stay mobile. Like in Armored Core, you need the right balance between speed, defense and attack power. Different ATs also have different attack paradigms: the Zwergs for example, can't attack with melee, since they fire from their arms. If you put a Brutishdog arm on your Scopedog, it won't be able to punch with that arm.

Shop screen.

There's also a separate statistic, the Mission Disk. It's sort of like your level in an RPG. The mission disk is that same between every AT, and you get experience on it by battling and defeating opponents.  The mission disk gives you passive stat increases, which you can see on its appropriate screen. All in all, Lightning Slash has a pretty good customization system. Too bad there's nowhere to test it without penalties, like in Armored Core. Well, nothing's perfect.

The story progression is a little different from the norm. You can't just go to a place and talk to people to go ahead with the story, like in Berserga. Specially in the beginning, you have to fight a few battles at the arena before the story moves forward. In the meanwhile, you really have to fight in Battling. This part is pretty self-explanatory. Choose an opponent, choose the kind of fight, bet and fight. There are 4 kinds of fights: 1 vs 1, 1 vs 2, 2 vs 1 and 2 vs 2. 1 vs 1 is the norm. In 1 vs 2, you fight alone against two ATs. You get a pretty sizable bonus compared to 1 vs 1. In 2 vs 1, you choose a partner and fight against 1 AT. The prize is slashed in half (the other half goes to your partner), so you actually get less than in 1 vs 1. In 2 vs 2, you choose a partner and fight 2 opponents. The prize is the same as in 1 vs 1. You may want to set up a few 2 vs 2 fights along the way, because you can actually get to know people through them.

While in Battling, you'll also see that enemies have different classes. You start at class D4, and can fight enemies from D4 to C2, for example. The difference here is that enemies at higher classes are better equipped and pay better. One nice touch here is that you can take a sort of "admission test" to move up classes. You pay a fee and the matchmaker will tell you to fight a number of opponents. If you win this fight, you go up a class. Easy, right? Well, not really. Every class is already accessible from the beginning, but the higher ones have such a difficult admission test that you'll need to wait until you have better weapons to try them. The classes are D4, D3, D2, D1, C3, C2, C1, B2, B1, A and S. To put it into perspective: to change from D4 to D3 you fight one opponent. To change from B1 to A, you have to fight 10 opponents, back to back. To change from A to S, you need to defeat 15 opponents! FIFTEEN opponents. This is harder than the final boss. Anyway, what changes when YOU get to a better class is that your payments are better, and your partners are better-equipped too.

One little tidbit about the arena fights: you can actually fight against vehicles, like helicopters, launcher cars, hovercrafts and even tanks! I wonder who in the VOTOMS world would be crazy enough to fight in Battling against an AT... with an helicopter. Pretty nice commitment to variety from the developers.

Tanen gives you the Slash Dog.

Back to the story mode. You usually have three people to talk to: Robe (your matchmaker), Pamela (assistant) and Tanen (an AT mechanic). When moving the story forward, you'll usually get a message from Robe asking you to do something for him, or that something happened and you need to get right into it. The first situation of the sort happens when Pam is kidnapped. Robe will stop arranging matches until you sort this situation out. An option called "Colosseum" or "Mission" will appear on the main screen, and when you choose it, you go into a story battle. They're not much different from a Battling match, they just have either more opponents or are fought outside of the Battling arena. Sadly, there's not much variety to those story missions. If you were expecting some missions akin to the PS2 game's... well, you won't have them. There's no objective besides "destroy everything". Rarely you'll get an "escape" objective too. If you've ever played Virtual On MARZ, then you already know the sort of missions I'm talking about. You're always in "Battling Mode", there's no separate mode for missions.

Chapter End movie.

Anyway, by fighting in matches and either winning or losing, you move the story forward a tiny bit at a time. The amount of matches that need to be fought change based on what the next story event is, but you'll always be warned of the story event. You'll get a choice, and the cursor will always be at the bottom choice, which is usually "I need to get ready first". If you don't read japanese, well, that's your cue when a story mission comes up. That and the matchmaker won't arrange matches until you complete the mission.

The story is divided into 4 chapters, each one taking place in a different planet. You start in the city of Woodo, and later move onto other planets. To signify that a chapter ended, there'll be a scrolling video with text over it. You only unlock more options in the shop on Chapter 2, where you'll be spending most of your time in the game. On Chapter 3, you stop getting Battling matches (there's no Battling arena), and now must do missions for Robe. The missions are usually fights against multiple opponents. One thing I noticed is that the environments you fight in also start becoming more diverse from Chapter 2 onwards. Before, you were always fighting in the same arena, even during missions. After, you'll fight inside craters, cages, rugged terrain and that kind of stuff. You can also fight when it's raining or snowing (the AT slips more than normal). It took me a while to notice that you fight during different times of the day too (the background sky changes). To see the conditions you'll be fighting on, look at the two icons on the screen where you arrange a match: they tell you the conditions.

Tia Hamilton while being pursued.

Tia Hamilton after battle.

If you want to know how the story concludes, let me tell you. The Facial Soldier project aimed to mass-produce soldiers that had the same abilities of a Perfect Soldier, but at a fraction of the cost. Remember that PSs needed copious amounts of Jijirium to function (Jijirium is a costly commodity in the VOTOMS universe). Anyway, what this project did was implant a Nerve Connector into the medula of the AT pilots of the Hamilton Platoon (your character included), to enhance their abilities. However, the implants are prone to malfunctioning, and the soldier will go berserk as a result. That's what happened to Tia Hamilton. There's no way to remove the Nerve Connector without killing the person. By the end, most of the candidates were disposed off.

Keak Carradine, from Armor Hunter Mellowlink.

You fight Tia Hamilton in a last desperate battle at the end of Chapter 3, with Gyap (a friend of yours from the Hamilton Squad) as your partner. This battle was awesome for me because Tia piloted the Gusty Dog, the main AT from Battling Road (the SNES game). After the battle, Tia Hamilton dies and you finally get closure on the demise of the Hamilton Platoon. Some ATs appear right after it, and Gyap is seemingly killed. You're then pursued by the Secret Society (yeah, the same guys from the anime),  battling scores of ATs (I think you can just lose to expedite the process...?) and they force you onto a shuttle towards another planet. Thus starts the final chapter, Chapter 4. On the way there, you'll meet Keak Carradine, a Melkian Army investigator (same guy from Mellowlink), who'll disclose all he knows about the Facial Soldier project. You'll then be taken to a series of battles, where you'll fight against some of your past partners from Battling. After some fights, it's revealed that Gyap wasn't killed, and was just kept under control by an envoy from the Secret Society, named Togal. However, it later becomes apparent that Gyap isn't really being controlled at all, but he still wants to fight you. He unveils the final AT, the Trial Gorilla, and the final battle begins. Once you defeat him, that's the end. The Facial Soldier project failed (even if you survived) and the Gilgamesh-Baralant conflict is still going on.

Well, I think that's mostly it for the game itself.

Final boss, the Trial Gorilla. Explosions!

AT variety is one thing that surprised me. I always played a lot of Gundam games, and MSVs (Mobile Suit Variations) are rare in those games. Usually you only get an MSV or two per game. Three if you're lucky. For example: in Gundam Encounters in Space, you get Gundam Units 4 and 5.  In the VOTOMS games, you actually get quite a few original ATs. Anyway, there's a lot of ATs here, and a few that never appeared in the TV series. The titular AT of the game is a Scopedog variation called Slash Dog. It's the red AT on the cover, and also in the intro FMV. You get it way into chapter 2. After playing Battling Road for the SNES, I was kinda surprised when I learned that one of your opponents uses the Gusty Dog, the titular AT from that game. The final boss uses another original AT called Trial Gorilla, which is sorta like an "AT heavy weapons platform", in that it uses even beam weapons! For those that don't know, beam weapons are very rare in VOTOMS.

It doesn't make much sense to have all those ATs by this point in the story (I believe Lightning Slash is set either a few months before or during the TV series), but I guess they just wanted the fanservice. There's a passing mention of Neeva (the antagonist of Big Battle), and you fight someone else on his AT, the Ecrevisse. At least this one makes some sense, since there's an Ecrevisse in Dead Ash too, I think.

As for the other game modes, there are Battling, VS and Survival. Battling and VS are the same mode, but Battling is against the CPU, and VS is for two players. The ATs you unlocked during Story Mode also appear in Battling Mode, if you load that save beforehand. You can even fight as the vehicles, which is pretty fun. You can also bring in the custom AT from Story Mode.

Battling Mode selection screen. I think the two empty spaces at the bottom are the missile launcher vehicle and the tank.

This was a game that surprised me in a lot of ways. Most of them positive. The story isn't just some derivative crap, there's some real thought put into it. Too bad you have to take the story mode on such small doses. If you're a fan of VOTOMS and have access to a clear save game, I'd say try to put a few hours into the game, even if only in Battling mode. You won't regret it.

Can I play this without knowing japanese?
Yes, but you'll miss out on a ton of stuff. If you really want to brute-force through story mode, just know that:
1) when you arrange a match, the bottom option is always yes, and the top is no. You have to answer YES twice to enter a match.
2) when you arrange a mission (not story mission), ditto.
3) when you're faced with a mission choice in story mode, the top choice is always YES and the bottom one is always NO (or "I want to prepare first").
4) you have until the end of Chapter 3 to buy stuff. Don't worry, it takes quite a long time to reach that point. Just know that there are no shops in Chapter 4.
Still, there are a few choices where you'll need to know which one is YES and which one is NO. You don't lose a lot by choosing the "wrong" choice, just some extra battles.