Back in the pilot’s seat – part 1

So here we are some five months later. I’m finally moved in and caught up on house work, and have a free evening to sit down with a game book. Still sitting in my book bag is Ronin 47, the mech vs kaiju book my Jonathan Green. So let’s pick that one up.

To be entirely honest, it’s not just the housework that had me set this aside for all these months. This book is very big and very hard. In two dozen plays, only once have I gotten anywhere near Kira, and I know that I’m missing some vital item that can destroy the monsters and save the day (the anti-mutation chemicals, the 5 Hz tone) so it won’t count for much if I defeat Kira anyway. And there are so many kaiju, most of which are on par with my mech, that I doubt one can really fight through them all.

But hey, let”s not get back in the pilot’s seat with a bad attitude. Let’s get back to the mission.

Lets start with my mech’s loadout. I know that Enhanced Scanners are really useful in several locations in order not to be surprised. And of course the Upgraded Hull is extra hit points and +1 Armor rating, which itself translates to 16% less damage. For my third, well, let’s try depth charges again since the others (drones, flares) don’t seem to have some up very often.

We open with a training mission, a routine extermination of a couple of giant crab monsters. I drop a couple of depth charges down the hole, which really ticks off the monsters hiding below. Fortunately, it also kills most of them outright, and I finish off the one straggler in a single steely punch. Still, in a very important plot point, my radio is damaged. We return to base to find it under attack by a legion of kaiju, something never seen before, and discover that our assistant director has turned traitor and stolen a new prototype Shogun mech that’s far more badass than our Samurai mechs. Oh geez. Then things get really bad, when every mech and pilot blows up suddenly, a result of a computer virus. The broken radio is what saves me, leaving me to fight my way off the island and to safety.

That night, I fix the radio and swear revenge on Kira, the traitor who brought down Ako Base. Why did he do it? How did he do it? I’ll have to ask him in person, the hard way.

So, where is my next stop to track down Kira? I have a choice: a weapons vault with advanced mech upgrades, or a research ship where I may learn something useful against the monsters. For a change of pace, I go for the research vessel. Bad move – it’s already been sunk, and the thing that sunk it is still down there. Still, I move in to investigate because that’s how a gamebook is – leave no stone unturned and no door unopened. I have a brief run-in with the mutated megalodon, but a single barrage of missiles sends it fleeing into the dark depths. Aboard the wreck of the ship, I do find something that may be of use – a list of chemicals they tried against kaiju, and their effectiveness against different taxa of monster. So that could be cool. Not as cool as badass missiles and better armor, but oh well. I head back up to the surface, but am accosted by the killer chrondroichthys again and this time I have to kill it. As it sinks slowly into the depths to provide food for the deep dwellers, I notice that I’m down to 32 integrity points out of 55 – not awful, but not a good trend considering that I’m only on the second map out of at least ten maps.

My next stop, the control center for the Tengu Satellite Array. I need to find out where Kira is, if I am to get my revenge.