EcchiOujisama

Let me see here... 5.Imari from Bible Black I don't hate her exactly per se, but I'm not into her bland character in the least. She's always in the way. Either I want to go full evil and bang the shit out of Kitami-sensei and her followers, and the swim team, or play the white knight and have Takashiro-sensei pleasure me to high heaven in return. あいしてる、Takashiro-sensei! 4.Hisui from Jewel Knights Crusaders So let me get this straight. I'm an evil antisuperhero who gets to rape the shit out of my giant-titted superhero teammates, complete with cornball names and costumes, as well as a giant-titted supervillainess who wants to take over the world and is in love with me? Did you see my hometown? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW! Except we're going to screw this up by adding some loli who looks like she's about 8, talks like a child, acts like a child and even gets tired and goes to sleep super early like a little kid. And has to be in most of the harem scenes to ruin those too. BULLSHIT! Like you're going to make a good upstanding Oppaiseijin like myself stray from the righteous path so easily. 3.Kaede from Shuffle! Most of the main heroines are all kinda generic and just don't have much going for them. Kaede on the other hand...just gets under my skin at every opportunity. She makes herself the world's biggest doormat to the point that I not only don't feel sorry for her, but want it to break her and make her go away. Seeing her past in Really? Really! made me hate her even more. If she were going to jump off the roof of the school, even Great Teacher Onizuka wouldn't feel bad about kicking her in the back so he could look at her panties on the way down. 2.Sumika from Muv-Luv Words do not describe how I detest this petulant child. Immature, nagging, omnipresent, cockblocking, unintelligent, unfeminine, I can't come up with a single nice thing to say about her. You'd think someone would get the hint after being locked out of the house so many times. I would gladly sell my best friend to Tsukuyomi-san to have this matter handled permanently. And quietly. In a way that could never be traced back to me. I'll even take Yuuhi as my mistress to sweeten the pot. 1.The heroin used by the writers of Muv-Luv Alternative To give a SPOILERRIFFIC recap, you sit down and create a game with Mitsurugi Meiya, Hayase Mitsuki, Kouzuki Yuuko, Koubuin Yuuhi, Suzumiya Akane, Kashiwagi Haruko, Ayamine Kei, Sakaki Chizuru, Isumi Michiru and even Suzumiya Haruka and closet nymphomaniac Marimo-chan. You take all of these awesome, amazing women and you decide that a red blooded heterosexual man in his sexual prime is not going to pursue ANY of them. In an environment where young men are very scarce and he probably get away with making a harem of them. No, he's too hung up on one of the biggest cockblockers in eroge history to realize that aside from that whole "could get killed at any time, fighting for survival of the species" snag he's surrounded by premium poon from THREE awesome eroge. MOST people would be quite happy to have one eroge's worth of heroines in their lives, but not this asshole. Serious lack of taste in women aside, I could even accept that as a necessary evil to get where the story is going. I get that real life doesn't always have a harem ending. But there is no reason, and I mean NO GODDAMN REASON, that all of these characters I have come to love and respect can't be recognized for their part in SAVING THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE! Give them a memorial, let them be honored and remembered for their unparalleled heroism and I'll honor their memories with a stick of incense with not a single complaint. There is no need to whitewash their existence now that the 00 Unit did its job. Is that small drop of emotional closure really too much to ask? To the writers of Muv-Luv Alternative and the heroin that inspired them to such massive failings I say FAKKU YUU!

No. I'm not even sure if this or the next patch is supposed to fix the crash. I did confirm that if you have a save file that crashed on the 9th floor this does not retroactively fix it. I still get the exact same errors. It's theoretically possible something in the save file is causing the crash and they've fixed whatever that root cause is, but it would require going through the game again to find out.

It sounds like the guys working on the English patch are now going beyond an English PC version, and are trying to create an ultimate complete edition of Eiyuu Senki with everything from the PC, PS3 and Vita versions of the game. I approve! All of this is in the 1.3.2 patch that dropped today. 1. Full restoration of 18+ content (untranslated). 2. Set of alternative PS3 events (including all new CG) - 19 events. Events placed AFTER their PC versions. 3. Expanded CG Gallery for PS3+PS Vita CGs. 4. Restoration of all voice files, recorded specifically for PS3. 5. Michelangelo Graphics Custom Fix 2.0 (bear with my poor skill). Can do better - contact WinkelHime on Hongfire/Blick_Winkel on Rutracker. ***1.3.1 adds: 6. Vita pack v0.5. - Adds exclusive CG from PS Vita version. Source - mighty Internet. Quality - various, from good to "wtf". Further restoration impossible without access to PS Vita with installed Eyuu Senki (contact me on HF, if you have it and want to improve this patch). ***1.3.2 adds: 7. Porting of PS3 system of English subtitles (voices in battle and world map). It will update a previously patched English version with no problems. Loading my save from the Shambala 9th floor crash the PS3 exclusive events were accessible on their own and the subtitles work as well. It did NOT resolve the Shambala 9th floor crash issue when loading from my save that previously experienced the crash. Whether it resolves it from a clean slate remains to be seen. From what I pieced together on the Russian site I believe that is going to be tackled in the next patch, but I'm really not too sure about that. My Russian is quite limited.

Hmm...it never did that to me. There's the stupid random problems that can be fixed by closing and reopening the program and/or rebooting your computer, but you've probably already tried that. While it usually breaks things, here's a wacky idea. It looks like you're playing it in Japanese. Make a copy of your install and apply the English patch (findable with Google, unlinkable here) to that copy. It just might break whatever is getting it freeze up. Your saves are stored outside of the install directory so you won't have problems saving/loading the save files in both versions.

Oh no no no no no. When you said Oni and a different girl I thought you knew what the deal was. You get Liz and Maki (the Tifur and Oni you banged in BB1) at level 1. That's it. If you don't get them through importing a BB1 save you'll get them in BB2's NG+. If I could bring my BB1 team with me I'd be stomping everything right now. The nice thing about Liz and Maki is that if they are beaten in battle, and you don't get completely wiped out, they're still there with 1HP. All other characters need to be repurchased ala BB1, and you have better things to do with your money.

@KisoThe first time through I used Columbus and Oda's gun techniques on the guy with the healing ability in that fight, then poured them on Hughes. The Billy/Bandits combo works as well. On later runs I was able to keep most of the guys in line with Atlas' Orichalcum Punch, but I also used Atlas in just about every fight in the game so it isn't ideal for a first run strategy. I haven't heard of the game crashing when trying to combine items. Does the game give you a specific error code you can Google? Much to my surprise I found solutions to a lot of the errors I got with Google searches of the complete error code.

When you open up BB2 it says an install of the BB is detected and gives you the extra characters from that, so I believe you need to have it installed. I would think you'd also need a save from a complete game, but if installing it isn't enough I'm sure we can hook you up with a save file so you don't have to go through the whole game again. They require 5 and 6 command respectively, so you can't even use both of them at the beginning. FYI, from everything I've read the grinding was an intentional design choice from SHChara. The first one wasn't built to be difficult, this one was built to take up your time. The AI being redesigned to make less efficient choices in dealing with enemies doesn't help either.

Note to new readers: I changed the title of the thread as it morphs from an early review to a source of information on how to 100% the game over time. I saw XReaper say the full patch was going to be out on 1/26 so I decided to start giving this one a go with the partial patch yesterday. I'm about 7 hours in so I've been through enough to contrast it with Bunny Black. The good: -If you liked the story in the first one, there's a lot to like here so far. It maintains the style of the original by giving you the story in small pieces so there is always more story to anticipate. -The on-screen map now comes in multiple sizes. You can change the size of the map with the shift key. Once you step on a trap Darx is actually smart enough to mark it on the map. -YOU CAN NOW SAVE ANYWHERE IN THE DUNGEONS!!! It would have been nice if I realized that before getting wiped out several times. The neutral: -Treasure no longer infinitely spawns, unless I missed out on how to make it respawn. -You are now given the opportunity to "invest" in the city after you see enough events, and by "invest" I mean personally foot the bill from your save the demon world budget. Right after it is established that Maou-sama's government has put a ton of money into these projects, because that's not good enough apparently. I give this a neutral because doing so increases your renown by 1 or 2 each time you "invest" in these -100% interest bearing bonds. Ah, how I long for the good old days of picking up 30 or 40 renown just for cleaning up graffiti. In BB2 raising your renown also raises your command and some of these unlock new units, so in practice it's fine. The story reason behind it is just ridiculous. Seriously, SHTF to the point that your king is out there fighting himself and you think THIS is the time to hit him up for his weapon money? Fortunately this is Bunny Black so there's no need for a hookers and blow budget. It's a built in fringe benefit. \(^o^)/ The bad: -The game gets WAY TOO HARD and WAY TOO FAST. If you're old enough to remember playing NES RPGs you'll remember that walking too far could quickly see you die if you don't gain a few levels first. Not in this one. You get random encounters capable of wiping you out on the very first floor of the game. -All dungeons have multiple floors. One of the things that kept the pace feeling brisk in the original was that most of the missions you did were on one floor, so you never spent too much time in one place. Even if you were just doing patrols or cleaning up graffiti it felt like you making progress at every turn. They get around it being "multiple floors" by calling it floor 9, 9A, 9B, etc. but if I'm going up and down stairs to a different map, it's a different floor. -RANDOM FUCKING ENCOUNTERS! Everyone's favorite part of RPGs right? That whole awesome aspect of the first game about being able to see your enemies on the map so you could seek them out or avoid them? Yeah, that's gone. Apparently they decided it was too great and had to get rid of it after the first dungeon. Which leads to another problem... -THE PACING SUCKS ASS!!! Based on who the enemies are, I could see a storyline reason for it not being on the map's radar if they bothered to explain it. But why in the name of fuck would you take away something as great as knowing where the enemies are so you can kill them in a game that requires a metric shitton of level building?!?!? Most of the time I have in the game so far is walking back and forth looking for random encounters to kill so I could finally beat the last fight in the second dungeon of the game. If you've played Digital Devil Saga on PS2 you understand the difference between a satisfying challenge and wasting my time. DDS is the former, this feels like the latter. -Your party has been "streamlined" down to 6 characters, while your enemies still get 9 plus backup units. Because that' s fair. -Apparently reigning as Maou has greatly decreased Darx' ability to control his underlings, as he now only has half the command ability needed to boss Meryl around, despite doing so in the scene before you discover this fact. -The speed up battles button has been changed from CTRL to CTRL+SHIFT. Because holding down only one button for hours doesn't hurt enough. Fuck that, get yourself a gaming mouse. I just posted about this and it's even more recommended for BB2. -Per the opening video, in Japanese logic Daakusu = Dirks. That's putting those 6 years of English you guys took in school to good use. Had they given him the last name of Digglers I would have moved this neutral. Looking at all of that, you're probably thinking the game is terrible, and it's not. However, most of the changes that really stick out are negative. The Wiki that noted "not all of the changes were positive" put it gently. Still, if you enjoyed the first one, you'll enjoy this one, and I suspect NG+ will cancel out most of the BS associated with this one. It should also be noted that I carried over my save from BB1 so I actually started with 2 characters that are better than what you can buy on top of it. If you're not going to wait for the full patch, there are two files to get from the thread on Seiha. There is the patch which translates the game text, and a separate patch that translates the buttons. Make sure you grab both of them. http://games.seiha.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1095&sid=63061fb69d749fb186264196defafb1e

Most definitely. If you could post a picture of the battle @Kiso it would jog my memory for what I normally did. I flew through the game 4 times to get the achievements so it's all started to run together in my mind. (^_^); Which difficulty are you playing? I know I had to change my strategy at higher difficulty levels.

Specifically, you need a 5 button mouse recognized as a 5 button mouse by Windows. I only mention the one bought as I can recommend it as a quality solution at a very reasonable price. Those crazy MMO mice with 16 or 20+ buttons aren't supported and the developer has said he's never going to make a version to reconfigure a mouse with more than 5 buttons. If you already have a 5 button mouse you're just a free download away. https://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/xmousebuttoncontrol.htm

If you're anything like me, you've noticed a similar nagging annoyance of every major HRPG - it requires an inordinate amount of holding down or repeatedly pressing a button to speed up battles, fight efficiently, etc. After enough hours the tip of your finger might even start to hurt from this. It seems like there has to be a better way to H. There is. The combination I have found to do wonders for my HRPG gaming is a gaming mouse (ReDragon Centrophorus, available for $12ish shipped on eBay, $16ish on Amazon or $40ish in your local big box store) and a program called X-Mouse Button Control. The main stumbling block with one of these so-called "gaming" mice is that Windows immediately appropriates the buttons for forward and back for web browsing, and does not make it very easy to reassign the buttons for something that is actually useful in games not programmed to use a 5 button mouse. This is where X-Mouse Button Control comes in. Not only does it make it extremely easy to reconfigure what each mouse button does when you press it, but it allows you to change what the buttons do on a PER PROGRAM BASIS! What does that mean? Well in Brave Soul you need to hold down TAB to get the game to accelerate. In Eiyuu*Senki and Bunny Black you use CTRL to get the battles to move along. As you are remapping the buttons per program you can have both be same button on your mouse! It might not sound like a big deal, but trust me, you get used to this very quickly. Moreover, X-Mouse Button Control gives you options for how buttons are utilized. You can press the mouse button once and have it held or pressed repeatedly until you press it again, or pressed down as you hold it, or held down until you press the button again. It is extremely configurable, and can simplify your controls immensely in a way that makes the most sense to you. If one of the preprogrammed commands isn't what you need, which it probably isn't for HRPGs, the simulated keyboard option from the dropdown takes care of anything and everything you could need. Minimizing wrist strain is a big deal for me as both of my wrists have been broken horribly (when the cast goes from your knuckle to your shoulder, it's bad). As someone with very bad wrists, I have found the positioning of buttons on most 5 button mice to cause as much wrist strain as it would save from using the keyboard. Not with this one. The 4th and 5th button placements are quite ergonomic, even for someone with bad wrists. I give it my highest recommendation to avoid wrist pain associated with holding down or repeatedly pressing buttons for extended periods of time. Thus far I have used it on Eiyuu*Senki, Eiyuu*Senki GOLD, Bunny Black, Brave Soul, Rance 3 and Little Princess with great success. It further streamlines other tasks I do regularly in normal applications. Two thumbs up from me, a very worthy investment for your 12 bucks.

There is something that has mystified me for years. In the English TL of Brave Soul, Backy is referred to as a "fickle beefer." Now, this makes basically no sense in English. Does anyone know what that was in Japanese and have a less nonsensical translation for it? As someone who very decisively beefs at the all you can eat yakiniku joint I am most perplexed at the thought of doing so in a fickle manner.

I had already breezed through Normal and was fighting in Shambala when you posted your save. I went through the Japanese version this time and in addition to having more H scenes and a few fewer characters it was noticeably more than difficult than the English version, about halfway between the English Normal and Hard. What is the best way to level up once you get to Shambala? I always feel sorely underleveled when multiple characters get wiped out before I even get a turn. 9999 is plenty to beat the game, but not this place. The 7th floor actually has 4 nasty fights - Angolmois with 100K HP and Nostradamus plus whatever Angolmois summons as the fight goes on, then two different Knights of the Round battles that also have ways of wiping you out before you have a chance to get any brave, then the triple Nyarlathotep and Tentacle. It's amazing that I blew through it like it was nothing with similar stats on the English version.

You've basically got it right. The first two games are what they are, you'll see when you go through them. The experience is interesting as it contains one of my favorite (Meiya) and most hated (Sumika) characters in any VN. Opinions on the end of Alternative are widely varied, but you'll probably react strongly one way or the other. Here's what I recommend. 1.Watch the Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (also called Rumbling Hearts) anime. 2.Play every route in Muv-Luv Extra. 3.Play the route of your favorite character in Muv-Luv Unlimited. 4.(Optional) Watch Akane Maniax OVA. It's not particularly great, but you'll get to see Iinchou and the world's greatest physics teacher in anime form. Stars Suzumiya Akane (no relation to Haruhi). 5.Muv-Luv Alternative 6.Watch AyuMayu Theatre. It's SO awesome when you get the Muv-Luv jokes, and makes you think the writers were on acid when you don't. If you end up liking Haruko after you get through Extra you could play Haruko Maniax (translated) at any time, as it doesn't tie in to the rest of the series at all. On the plus side you'll get to see Haruko's awesome body, on the creepy side the H scenes are her little brother imagining her doing different guys. A penny's worth of free advice - the game gives the option of skipping the H scenes and viewing them later, and it's actually better to go through the story and view the H scenes on their own afterwards. Just take my word for it.

There is a lot to like and a lot to dislike. Extra, Unlimited and Alternative all have their strengths and weaknesses. It is very much a series of extremes, the good is very good and the bad is very bad. I talked about this in some detail with another forum user so I'll copy/paste what I said for your convenience. If you have any other questions let me know. How much you read before Alternative is largely up to you and your preferences. To start with, the first two games of the series, Extra and Unlimited, are packaged together. In order to get access to Unlimited you must clear the Meiya and Sumika routes in Extra. There are three other routes in Extra, and honestly, even though I like Iinchou and Ayamine a lot as characters, the story they decide to tell is largely something I didn't want to see. From a storyline standpoint I actually liked Tama's route, even though the thought of doing an H scene with her makes me throw up a bit in my mouth. I would still suggest you play every route in Extra. Why? The characters introduced in these routes will show up in Alternative, and their appearance and roles will make far more sense. I also loved the "bad" end with Marimo, which I thought was awesome and wouldn't call a bad end at all. It answers a nagging question I had throughout the VN as well. While we're talking about the world of Muv Luv Extra, this happens in the same world as Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. There are several tie ins with KimiNozo. As it is only in the beginning of being translated, and is one of the longest VNs of all time, it's probably not an option if your kanji isn't at JLPT level 1. I would say watching the TV series is absolutely necessary. You should actually watch it before playing Extra as one of the characters from Kiminozo has a good amount of screen time. Watch Second Season is you want, and watch Akane Maniax after you play Extra for a chance to see some Muv Luv characters in anime. AyuMayu Theater will make far more sense after you play Alternative, so wait on that one. Unlimited is a different story. All of the routes are the same and the choices you make have almost no impact on the story. Instead of event A happening with character A, you could manipulate it into being character B with enough of the right choices, but the differences are minor. There is no reason to play the game more than once unless you want to see the H scene of another character. The endings are all EXACTLY the fucking same, to the point that it doesn't feel true to the characters. It's done to plant seeds for Alternative and it makes sense now in retrospect, but it drags on a LOT when playing for 100% and felt like a big fuck you from the writer to the fanbase IMO. I'd suggest making choices that seem like they will maximize time with your favorite character and to play Alternative before going through the game again. Clearing it to 100% after the first character was brutal. Alternative is extremely linear. The choices you make have only a minor impact on the story, and after going back through it to see what would happen with all of the opposite choices, there's basically no difference. The game gives you a big middle finger by having zero benefits after clearing the game. No soundtracks. No CG gallery. Nothing. It's like "Oh, you just forked over 60 hours of your life and thought that would let you listen to the game's music? Well fuck you." There are only 2 H scenes in the whole game, and they're both with a character I wouldn't even want to bang in real life. Now that I've said all of the bad parts about it, on the whole it's really great. Just about everything I didn't like in Extra and Unlimited tied into the story and paid off in a way that made sense. The effects that they pull off are visually stunning. While the others would have points where the story was interesting and would then drag, this went more than 10 hours before it even came close to slowing down once. The more you pay attention to little details in the prior games the more you are rewarded in Alternative. Alternative doesn't expect you to remember every hint about the way things might go and reminds you of lines here and there when foreshadowing is paid off. As you go farther into Alternative you'll be glad you at least watched KimiNozo as a lot of characters from Kimizono appear, and are true to the characters you've come to know. There aren't a lot of areas that are light-hearted in this one, but it will grab you by the balls and not let go for hours at a time. The ending is certainly divisive, you'll probably love or hate it, but the ending of the ending gave me huge blue balls for Altered Fable. I can't wait to play it.

I thought I'd share some information on how to get all of the achievements, now that I have all of them save for finishing Nightmare. I won't go into detail on the achievements that are obvious/basically automatic (like clearing your first mission) but will instead look at getting as many points for NG+ bonuses as possible on your first playthrough. Getting every achievement requires beating the game at least 4 times. Sometimes you'll get a graphic alerting you that you earned the trophy when earn it, other times you won't at seemingly random times, but you will earn the achievement either way. 01 - Novice Hero - Unmissable, just clear one mission 02 - Conquer Zipang - Again, pretty much automatic 03 - Colonist Spirit - Make sure you conquer the USA instead of buying it, although you may still get it if you buy it 04 - Northern European Hero - Conquer the EU 05 - Gentleman of the UK - Conquer the UK 06 - Seaside Town Domination - Conquer Vinland (notice a theme on these yet?) 07 - Charisma King - To get this one you need to recruit all of the heroes. As long as you don't skip anything on the map you'll get this automatically. 08 - Lewd King - For viewing all H scenes, you'll get this as long as you do all of the events 09 - Apprentice Combination Master - Just combine items one time and you'll get this 10 - Alchemist - You have to combine all combinations of items together and make everything that can be made once. You CAN get this on your first run through the game if you combine everything to the highest level of of synthesized item. Sometimes items you synthesize will also show up in Seimei's shop, so check to see if you can buy your original items back. Notably this happened on a later run with items from Galileo's events. 11 - Avid Collector - Have EVERY item in the game in your possession at the same time. It will take a minimum of 4 times through the game to get this if you always get every item that is available and always combine items as far as possible on each run through the game. 12 - Thriving Business - Buy everything Seimei has at one point so there is no longer anything in the store, pretty much automatic 13 - Destroyer - Dealing more than 10,000 damage in one attack, Hercules is a lock for this 14 - Master - Destroy 6 enemies in one attack, Atlas' Orichalcum Punch is a good one for this 15 - Veteran Hero - Take out 100 enemy units, basically automatic 16 - Strength of a Thousand Men - Take out 1000 enemy units, I didn't count as the game went along but got this on my first run and would also classify it as automatic 17 - Dazzling Fighter - Rack up 10,000 in bonuses from fights, another one that takes care of itself 18 - Vehement - Using any particular technique 100 times over the course of the game, liberal use of Himiko's healing early on will take care of this 19 - Millionaire - Have over a million gold on hand at any one time, happens on its own later in the game from my experience, or you can pinch pennies for a little while and get it earlier, up to you 20 - Loser King - Withdraw from battle 10 times, meaning you are attacked in a city you currently hold, lose, then choose withdraw. I had to try to get this the first time as I stopped getting attacked after 3 withdraws on any continent. 21 - Sloth King - doing nothing for 30 straight turns, do it at the very beginning to avoid attacks from bandits 22 - Strategy King - USe up 50 action points in a row. You can do it right from the beginning or save up some events with the girls and blow through them between conquests. 23 - Tactician - Conquer the Mu continent. You'll have to do this a few times if you're going for the items anyway. 24 - Seeker - Conquer all of Shambala. You only need to do this once for item purposes. 25 - Summit Conqueror - Conquer the 60 floor tower. You'll have to go through it a second time to the 40th floor for the items. 26 - Hurricane Fury - Beat the game in 100 turns or less. Not recommended for the first playthrough, but with a fair amount of NG+ perks you can take 4 cities on almost every turn with no problem. Much easier than it sounds. I suck at strategy games and did it on Very Hard. 27 - The Hand of Fate - Beat it on Normal 28 - True Hero - Beat Hard 29 - Legendary Hero - Beat Very Hard 30 - Eiyuu Senki - Beat Nightmare

@CeruleanGamer I appreciate the upload. I flew through the game again and was already in Shambala when you posted. Strategy games are not my forte and I'm having enough problems getting through it on normal. (^_^); For the moment I'm stuck on the 7th floor as everyone gets eaten or decimated by area attacks before I can do anything. It seems crazy to think that I flew through it without giving it a second thought 2 days ago. @wyldstrykr NO! While GOLD has most of the same characters, many have vastly different movesets that affect how you use them in battle. The conquest of the world takes a different path as well. The two games are quite different. I started a separate thread for GOLD to make it easier to keep track of which game is being discussed.

Well that explains it. The problem started with the English patch and carried over to the untouched Japanese version via Michelangelo. There sure have been a lot of issues with the English version for something that was advertised as simply inserting the PS3 script into the PC original. It's almost like no one bothered to test it before it was released. Looks like I'm going to have to through the game all over again just to get that last fake item. (T_T)

I have hit a weird technical snag in the original Eiyuu*Senki and wondered if anyone else has come upon this. When trying to enter the 9th level of Shambhala the game crashes immediately, citing a syntax error I can't quite translate. According to posts I saw on other sites the English patch can create some weird errors, as can installation errors, so I installed the Japanese version in a different directory. It loads my save, shows the dialog box (the English version crashed before it got that far), the first battle appears and the game crashes with 2 similar errors before I can select my party members. So the problem isn't the English patch. The Japanese version has a file checker that verified none of the Japanese files are corrupt, so that isn't the problem either. In searching the web I've found other people have this problem but no one has the solution. Any idea for other things to try?

I am always in favor of more useful information. Nightmare is very appropriately named. I am finding the best way to deal with it is to win a battle or two and do something else for a little while before continuing. Does anyone know if the option to prepare for Russia and avoid the 1/2 HP loss is still around in Very Hard/Nightmare? It never showed up in my Very Hard run. Can you take Russia through the backdoor via St. Petersburg like you could in the first game? I haven't had any luck finding a way to do that yet. Has anyone tried leaving half of the EU untouched in Nightmare, going right for Carthage and then to Johannesburg? It seems Napoleon would attack you more than it would be worth it on her turn, but it's a nice thought. For now I shall patiently await Eiyuu*Senki Gaiden: Sextreme Beach Volleyball as the next blockbuster release from TENCO. The tagline shall be: TENCO and Tecmo team up to create the ultimate in jiggle physics! A man can hope, can't he?

A few tidbits of information on Nightmare for you guys. Both synthesis and the shop are gone. It shouldn't matter as you've likely already done everything needed in both places by the time you start, but you never know. Skipping a turn is a big no no. In Very Hard you got bandits immediately if you skipped a turn. Now it's a fight with an overpowered Yamata no Orochi. However, reading Himiko freak out about it makes me smile. Somehow I think she'd have the same reaction if she asked Takeru to get somebody's pet off of her lawn. lol I think just about every NG+ benefit is a requirement, not an option. Right now I'm playing with every benefit except Magoroku and keep items sold to the shop and I'm STILL running out of people with enough HP left to do anything. I can already tell that doing the EU and Dark Area back-to-back is going to be so much fun (sarcasm). When I fight Balin she has 27000 troops. When I get Balin 17001 of them suddenly decide to do something better with their lives. That hardly seems fair.

I guess I'm the old guy on the forum with my first VN being Paradise Heights, back in the days of that being new and topical in the western otaku community. What, never of heard of Paradise Heights? Come on, it was all the rage back in the 56k dial up days! https://vndb.org/v1012 Sadly, to make the game downloadable for the...ahem...community...the voices were removed, and those 56k piracy-friendly versions remain the only versions of the game available. I've been wanting to buy the games of that era just to have them on the shelf in my library if for no other reason, with no luck. I've always wanted to play the real versions of those games. (T_T) Season of the Sakura, Time Stripper Mako, Ring Out Les-Ring...it takes me back. To say True Love blew my mind would be an understatement. https://vndb.org/v241

More specifically, she shows up after beating the Macedonian-Mongolian Alliance if you have 30 of your items in Seimei's shop, or previously sold her 30 items. Not sure which. Either way, never would have guessed that. おきに. The heads up that Very Hard and Nightmare are for speed running was definitely appreciated. I was taking it slow in Very Hard, one city per turn to maximize gold having idea there was a troop multiplier based on number of turns. My RPG sensibilities tell me it doesn't matter when I kill them, as long as I do. Not so much in the strategy world apparently. lol I'm trying to take 4 cities per turn on Nightmare now and am always super broke. That EU/Dark Area marathon was no fun on Very Hard and will probably be less so this time. Sometimes I hate my need to earn every achievement myself. I'll go so far as to say Very Hard and Nightmare are probably impossible without most of the NG+ bonuses. Can't say much for Hard mode, with just about every NG+ bonus outside of action points and 1 battle per turn my team of Hercules, Achilles, Cu Chulainn, Siegfried, Atlas and Jiang Ziya made it much easier than it was the first time. I d on't even want to think about doing Shambala on Nightmare. That was enough of a pain on Normal. lol

According to the Wiki "Keep Archimedes" is the bonus between Keep Charlemagne and Keep Copernicus, and is coincidentally the only bonus that is locked after beating the game and not finding Archimedes. http://eiyuuwiki.wikidot.com/wiki:achievements They also list her as Macedonian in the character section for GOLD leading me to beleive she has to be hidden somewhere. http://eiyuuwiki.wikidot.com/wiki:gold-characters

I have some more info to share that isn't on the Wikidot site with a lot of useful info. http://eiyuuwiki.wikidot.com/ On the issue of heroes in NG+, heroes do NOT keep their HP from previous runs of the game. They are assigned a fixed number that varies with the difficulty you select. The Seiso patch sadly does not add the option to start the game with Seiso. The final bosses (both in Mu and in the game) are either very easy or very hard, depending on how you decide to fight them. If you slug it out it becomes a race against getting eaten which is difficult, but winnable. Or, you could have Palamedes suck their brave away and use attacks that add wait time. Before the fight was over I had unlimited turns combining wait +30 attacks and Palamedes brave stealing technique. Very hard cranks up the difficulty in two major ways. You can no longer freely waste turns to get money from your cities. Any turn without an action point being used is an immediate bandit attack. Also, HP and troops appear to have a hard limit of 9999. My heroes with 9999 are not gaining HP, and attempts to buy more troops than that results in my money being gone without any new troops coming in. The get all items achievement appears like it is going to take 4 runs through the game to get. As some items require multiple levels of synthesis I've been ending the game with the items that require the most fusions. On my third run now I still have about 5 items that can only be made through synthesis missing. On strange/awesome thing I noticed on hard was that right after I used Tetrabiblios and Almagest (items acquired during Galileo events) Seimei was immediately selling them! I don't know why she suddenly had them in stock, but if there's a way to manipulate that it should be possible to get the all items achievements in fewer runs. Does anyone know where Archimedes is hiding? I've been through the game twice and have managed to not find her anywhere while doing every event. That's speaking for normal and hard difficulties, doing very hard now, in case she only shows up in the higher difficulty levels for some reason.