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Dust: "...All right, engine's warmed up."
I smack my fist into my palm, climb the nearest building, and survey the entire city.
I'm not checking the map. Triangle Trinity always uses a fixed triangular map. In a match where each side starts from one of the three corners, what I need to check is...
Dust: "No UFO, no fang tower... so it's Mechanitan the Machine Swarm."
Triangle Trinity is 3-on-3-on-3. Amelia Sullivan and I aren't the only forces on the field—there's a third faction as well.
These hostile enemies, original to this game, are randomly selected from three types for each match... and every single one of them is a pain in the ass.
"Invelzer the Invader" descends from the sky and rampages around abducting NPC civilians.
"Repdinos the Re-Ancient" rises from underground, evolving lizards scattered throughout the city into weaponized dinosaurs and setting them loose.
And "Mechanitan the Machine Swarm" establishes itself on the ground, converts electronic devices into mechanical soldiers, and sends them marching through the city.
The Invader abducts NPCs, so the longer the match goes, the harder it becomes to build Gauge. With the Re-Ancient, it's almost impossible to tell where the enemies are going to emerge from. And the Machine Swarm can crop up just about anywhere, so you can never let your guard down.
There's only one way to stop them: defeat their "Target Enemies," all three of which appear simultaneously, unlike the three-character teams of the player factions.
Destroying a Target Enemy grants a bonus to the player who took it down. But since every faction is hostile to every other one, you have to think carefully about how you're going to play it...
Pretty damn interesting, actually.
Dust: "Mechanitan's Target Enemies were..."
Tch. The cameras can see me from up here.
Amelia Sullivan's lead character is that damn TV currently sitting at the top of the meta. Getting caught on electronic devices—especially surveillance cameras—is nothing but a disadvantage.
I drop from the building and continue thinking while slipping into the gap between two buildings.
Dust: "Got it."
Mechanitan the Machine Swarm's Target Enemies are "Valkyrie," "Colonel," and "Commander." If I remember right, each of them has its own unique abilities.
Dust: "If I'm going after one, should I start with Colonel? No... but if I remember right, Valkyrie gets stronger the more she's cornered..."
They're tuned to a pretty exquisite power balance: annoying to take down alone, but safe enough if two people work together.
Part of me wants to curse the devs for it, while another part wants to praise them for the good balancing. But unlike when you're playing with randoms, it's hard to imagine Amelia Sullivan and me taking the cooperation route.
Dust: "What the hell do I do..."
The character I'm controlling right now, "Dust," wears a long coat and a simple face covering with holes only for the eyes and nose—and he's got a rather troublesome system built into him.
That damn TV is classified as a villain... actually, all three of Amelia's characters are villains, aren't they?
If that's the case, I guess I can go down the Heroic route.
The character "Dust."
My memory of the original comic is pretty hazy, but he's basically positioned as a dark hero. Added in an update, he's a character with an extremely unusual system.
Normally, a character is supposed to have only one Gauge, either Heroic or Villainic.
Dust has two.
More precisely, instead of having one of them at 100%, he has a 50% Heroic Gauge and a 50% Villainic Gauge, and he can't use his Super unless he fills both.
Even replenishing his "bullets" is tied into those Gauges, so while his potential is high, actually bringing it out demands a high level of technical skill too.
Dust: "For now... yeah."
Well, look at that. A bank spawned in just the right place.
Let's borrow its help.
I'm not playing hide-and-seek here. If running into Amelia Sullivan is inevitable either way, then whether that happens sooner or later, every second I spend hesitating before then is just wasted time.
Dust: "A bank should have some kind of panic button to call the cops."
I'm not planning to waste any bullets, but I draw both pistols and aim them as a threat toward the NPCs before kicking open the bank doors.
Dust: "Hold up! I don't have a cell phone, so call the cops for m—"
Oh.
I just remembered.
This isn't exclusive to the Machine Swarm, but with NPC factions, the two Target Enemies other than the big boss are generally...
Valkyrie: "Battle mode..."
...random spawns.
As machines modeled after women go, it has that much in common with SLF's Conquista Dolls.
But compared with Saina, this one's "skin" is obviously way too sturdy.
A woman in armor... no.
Armor in the shape of a woman raises a weapon that looks like a lance fused with a missile launcher, while a laser sight from its glowing eyes locks onto my forehead.
Dust: "Bad time? If I'm interrupting, I'll see myself out..."
My right-hand gun spits fire at the exact same moment the missile launches.
Dust: "Wooooah!?"
Headshot! Minor flinch! Drop in the bucket!!
I dive sideways. The missile passes right beside me, flies through the still-open doors, slams into the building across the street, and explodes.
Dust: "A normal attack that hits as hard as a Gauge move? Give me a break...!!"
And yet when a player tries to use the thing, it's just a lance.
How wonderful that it's such a damn fine weapon when the NPC has it!
Ptooey!!
What do I do?
Considering I need to replenish my bullets, I can't exactly dump a full burst into an NPC. But whether I run or fight back, there's no avoiding some ammunition expenditure.
Dust has two Gauges, one for good and one for evil.
That's because, in the original comic, Dust is "a man possessed by a demon of judgment sent from Hell." As a result, his two pistols load and fire "Good Bullets" and "Evil Bullets."
In gameplay terms, they're separate resources.
Do good deeds and you build up Good Bullets.
Do evil deeds and you build up Evil Bullets.
Good Bullets work especially well against villains, while Evil Bullets are effective against heroes.
That damn TV is a villain.
Judging by her behavior, Valkyrie is a villain too.
Which means if I'm looking ahead to Amelia Sullivan, I'd rather conserve my Good Bullets.
Dust: "Tch!!"
I pull the right trigger repeatedly, sending pitch-black bullets screaming toward Valkyrie.
All three shots aimed at her face are knocked out of the air by the sword the mechanical female armor swings with her left hand.
It looks like an absurd level of interception for a fighting game, but apparently, in terms of the actual hit detection, that counts as a Guard.
As long as an attack isn't the guard-breaking type, she can even cut a cannon shell clean in half.
Even knowing she's technically just guarding, seeing it happen somehow leaves me feeling completely powerless.
Dust: "Ghk! Ngh!?"
This isn't turn-based.
Obviously, she's going to attack too, and there's no guarantee my "turn" is ever going to come around.
Valkyrie closes the distance in one burst, effortlessly swinging around that missile-equipped lance.
Damn it. If I'd known I'd run straight into a Target Enemy at the very start, I would've led with Twinkle Pixie.
But reality is that I didn't know, and now I'm here.
So I've got no choice but to make Dust work.
Dust is primarily a ranged character. That doesn't mean he can't fight up close, but if you ask whether he's good at close combat, he's firmly on the weaker side.
Against Valkyrie, whose lance has exactly the kind of reach that keeps an infighter from getting close enough to hit her, I'm at an overwhelming disadvantage.
Dust: "Still... your patterns are a little too straightforward."
The missiles don't home in.
And her physical attacks boil down to two choices: swing normally, or accelerate with an effect and then swing.
Wielding that enormous lance one-handed is certainly threatening, but her other hand basically uses nothing besides the sword. And even that sword is a "shield-sword," so in practice she's an enemy armed with a lance and a shield.
In other words, despite carrying a lance, she's basically an orthodox knight-type enemy.
Dust: "You're a fighting-game NPC. No way you can guard and attack at the same time...!"
If I just shoot, she'll Guard.
Then I'll take full advantage of the fact that this is full-dive VR and shoot while I'm dodging!
Just like SLF, GH:C lets the situation itself directly affect the game system.
Simply being a hero character fighting the Machine Swarm as it destroys the city causes the Heroic Gauge to build.
At the same time, the bullets I've spent firing gradually reload.
Valkyrie in her first phase honestly isn't all that strong.
If I took my time, I could probably defeat her using nothing but Good Bullets.
But this is Triangle Trinity.
If I start raising hell in the middle of an office district like this, of course I'm going to show up on the cameras...
And there's no way that damn TV—with a pro gamer installed inside it—who can scan up to eighty percent of the map right from the start of the match, is going to be taking a nap.
Ms. Play Display: "Yooo... I've been wanting to meet ya, Real Cursed Prisooon...!!"
Dust: "Didn't you sound different a minute ago?"
Ms. Play Display: "You better fight me with everything you've got...!!"
Dust: "Hah! Don't you go croaking halfway through...!!"
With her natural way of speaking laid bare by that real-time translation system, "Babel," the villain whose head had been replaced by a television came leaping down at me from the top of the building—!!