FATARU AROU!

Well, I beat Chitose's section of Galaxy Angel: Eternal Lovers. (One of those weird Japanese relationship/tactical?/space sim? games, where your relationship affects how your units fight? Nothing dirty though, GA's pretty clean.)
What can I say...my roommate HATES the yamato nadesico (traditional Japanese woman)image, and with good reason, cause geez christ some STUPID shit happens in Chitose's arc.
Still I found her sweet enough to play through with, although I seem to be missing a scene.

The battles were ridiculously easy UNTIL a certain point.
Then they become "pretty" easy.
Up until a certain point, I had subscribed to a "Get as many points as you can and crush everything, regardless of objectives" method of play.
Nothing too hard, even when Galaxy Angel 7 showed up.
Ironically, it was Unit 7's "advanced" AI that let me exploit it.
Traditional AI in GA went something like this: MOVE STRAIGHT TOWARD ELSIONE, IGNORE GIRLS ON HIGH COMPLETELY TAKING ME APART.
Understandedly, GA7 gave me my first REAL scare, as it is FAST (maybe as fast as Sharpshooter or Happy Trigger), and powerful as all hell.
The thing is, it's AI actually RUNS AWAY when low on life.
Meaning it'd fly straight for my mothership (You lose it, game over), I'd recall all my angels (the six girls/ships I control using crazy tech)to beat the UTTER CRAP out of it, and it'd run away.
So I could still crush all the other units on the map while harassing it.
After that, there were still no problems, in fact in later missions you get Allies, meaning the only obstacle to killing everything is well, having THEM kill something weak, like a fighter.
Admittedly, later it IS rather hard trying to play for score, as some of the missions become rather time constrained and your allies are blasting more things than they should.
But still really easy.

That all changes in the last battle.
I personally think if they set it up like this in the last half of the game I'd have enjoyed it more.
Basically, you have allies, but even then, THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL YOU CAN KILL EVERYTHING in 15 minutes.
Hell forget killing everything in 15 minutes, forget killing HALF in 15 minutes.
What you basically have in this mission is a Galaxy Angel 7, cept with 1000 times the hitpoints, twice to three times as powerful, AND SINGLEMINDED.
The mission objective is to kill him.
No, it's not really number GA007 (Vine's already died in your care), and it is slightly slower, but my god.
First off, the avenues of escape (two asteroid formations) have fighters (paper planes) and A HEAVY BATTLESHIP AND HEAVY CRUISER each behind them.
Meaning, if you decide to run Elcione up or left (which is the first instinct because...described later), your Angels have to somehow punch through this pair of ridiculously high hp ships.
Add this to the fact that the BOSS goes straight for you.
He spends like 1 second if he hits an ally, vaporizes him, and continues.
There is no running from him, he never runs away.
What ended up happening the first two or so times I lost and numerous restarts was this: I'd try to get Elcione to one of the asteroid formations so I could play merry go round with the Boss.
My angels would fly ahead, destroy most of the paper planes, TAKE A WHILE on the heavy battleship and heavy cruiser, and by that time, Boss man would have caught up to me AND new reinforcements would have appeared where I was running around, namely ANOTHER HEAVY CRUISER in each escape zone.
So I'd get pincered, Elcione would die, and the end.
There was another thing to note, while I was concentrating on survival, the MAIN mission objective was to KILL this thing in 15 minutes.
The thing was a godamn tank.
Forte's super barely scratched it, Milfeuille's did a respectable amount if she was CONTINUALLY LOCKED, Ranpha's didn't do that much, MINT'S was unpredictable, and Chitose's was respectable damage.
Anything else did piddlings.
So in fact the crush here was twofold.
EFFING SURVIVE and DEAL ENOUGH DAMAGE.
Considering the large amounts of OTHER shit flying about to help you fail the first objective, I'd sometimes completely forget the second one.

So to finally beat the mission, I had to change my playing style.
Instead of making a break for the asteroid fields...I just took a gamble and had Elcoine run into the WAYYY back of the starting corner of the map.
It would take a while before the mass of Heavy ships and mister boss man would get there (if they got anywhere near it though I'd have no way to run and be dead in like 30 seconds).
Then, I ran the angels UP THE MIDDLE and went for as MANY weakling fighters/attackers/noncapital ships as I could.
These things are paper thin, and die within 30-one minute at most.
Basically after clearing out all the fighters in the middle (I left the capital ships so the angels were taking periodic damage from them, but no time to really concentrate on them) I had them all focus on the boss.
And fired every bloody super within the span of two minutes.
Some twice (thanks Ranpha/Chitose).
I won with about five minutes left, but my mothership had amazingly suffered no damage, cause it was wayyyyy down in the corner.
THIS is the only battle in the GAME where the mission objectives are dire and important enough to warrant completely forgoing anything else.

Also of note is my grasp on the story is ridiculously tenuous at best. Honestly my Japanese picked up a lot more than I think it would but I guessed half the time. (How is Vine from Val Fasc AND Eden? How exactly did Chitose forget her feelings for you? etc etc etc.)

The omake is awesome. You unlock of course battle mode (replay all battles of one girl's scenario) and you can replay them normally or IN FIRST PERSON/COCKPIT VIEW. Meaning I can control Chitose myself, fire her weapons, super, fly around, etc. That alone rocks, in fact I'm sort of annoyed that the main game didn't allow this option.

Still though, I'm going to have to take a break from trying to find that missing CG and playing through with a different girl. I spent a lot of time on this game surprisingly and well, all the major projects I have assigned are due soon.