Let's Play Galaxy Angel, Prologue: And This Is Where The World Blows Up

[friendshipbeam]

-|-| Forward

So I've been talked into doing an LP. Whatever, this game is pretty short and pretty simple, anyway. It and its first sequel have been given fan translations, so those of us who played them in Japanese can finally understand more, and those who didn't... well, they can play it now. Unfortunately, these days, it's extremely difficult to find legal PC copies of the Galaxy Angel games. Fear not! This will make it easier to experience the story, if you really want to see it.



Let's do this.



YouTube doesn't have the opening cinematic up anymore, so I'll transcribe it here. We open in space above Transbaal, the seat of the Transbaal Empire. That weird-looking white thing above it is its moon, the ever-so-cleverly-named White Moon. Unlike in pretty much every other game ever, in this one, the Empire are the good guys, a peaceful civilization rooted in nonviolence.





Unfortunately, we need some source of conflict in this game, so the planet is suddenly bombed by an obviously evil fleet of spaceships that comes out of absolutely nowhere.



We see that the army pretty much sucks at defending their planet. In fact, the only ones doing a half-decent job are five obvious main character crafts that look nothing like the other fighters, piloted by five young women who will get proper formal introductions later on. They're trying and failing to fend off the black ships before they can do any more damage, but the forces get past the front line and basically kick their butts. Our five heroines hate to give up, but the only thing they can do is retreat.



Retreat while the invaders make themselves at home overthrowing the Empire.

Click to view

After that introduction, we get...



WALLS AND WALLS OF EXPOSITION

tl;dr:
-Long, long ago, people lived in space and had the most awesome tech ever
-600 years ago, the Chrono Quake happened and sent everyone back to the Dark Ages
-412 years ago, the Transbaal Empire established itself, created the new TC (Transbaal Century) calendar, and started to rebuild the civilization
-People live in space again now and have all kinds of awesome things
-However, Lost Technology from before the Chrono Quake is basically a big black box and nobody has any idea why it does what it does
-The rebels we saw in the beginning just took over the seat of the Empire with no trouble at all. Really. Like we couldn't figure that out just by looking.

Now that we've gotten through all that, our story takes us to a corner of the middle of nowhere called the Criom system. Here we meet the PC, whom I'm sure will be a professional and heroic person who impresses everyone he meets okay no.



Player Character: Tact Mayers
Slacker, pervert, shounen hero ahoy!

Tact, on a routine patrol of the boonies, is frustrated because he hasn't heard any word on the coup since it began. He's worried about the King, who we saw get vapourized in the opening video, and somebody else, too: the Holy Mother of the White Moon, Lady Shatyarn. We'll learn more about her later. As Tact mulls this over, we see one of the most prevalent aspects of his character:



He tempts fate. A lot.



Bromantic Foil: Lester Coolduras
Exists to tell Tact to stop loafing around

Tact's subcommander snaps him out of his daydreaming to lecture him about looking so relaxed when a coup d'etat has just erupted on Transbaal. Tact reasons that panicking wouldn't do anything, so he may as well try to keep his subordinates calm. It looks like they're all of the same opinion as Lester, though; that a commander who acts happy and unbothered isn't taking things seriously. Lester, at least, has some faith in Tact, tempered with a lot of facepalming.



Stop tempting fate.



Okay, so that's the prologue. A few notes:
-I'll only be playing through this once for you guys, since the five routes aren't really all that different from one another; the main plot is the same, though the subplots differ. There is a screamingly obvious route split halfway through the game, and I'll put up the choice of which route we go with then. Until that point, I'll be taking suggestions for choices.
-This game is half visual novel, half real-time strategy.
-Probably going to go with the Shiva sub-route as well. It's not a route in itself; for those of you familiar with Fate/stay night, it's more comparable to Illya in Heaven's Feel. (In the "interact with the mysterious plot-relevant kid, keep kid happy, and change the ending somewhat" sort of way.) The route's not entirely canon, but neither is what happens when its events don't occur -- later games have a third option somewhere in the middle as their backstory. But then, you guys shouldn't care too much yet since you haven't even met Shiva.
-Suggestions will be taken... probably in the comments, but who knows how things will work out in the end.

And now I pass out.