Blood Gear:

[termis]

Well, I thought I'd write up a mini review of the game once I was finished with it, but I can't because I'm stuck!  For now, I'll just say that it's a solid action-RPG.  And the action sequences reminds me of something like a toned-down version of Cybernator or Target Earth. 

Anyway, I can't find a damn thing about this game on the web, and it seems a few of you have played this game, so help me out if you remember this part - sorry for the crap pics - I'm not too handy with a camera:

Here's the overworld part where I'm stuck.  To the northwest, I see some mech, but I can't do anything there, I just enter from the left side of the screen, and over a structure in the center part of the scene, then I just exit again on the right, and I'm back where I am.  I presume I have to get to the enemy boss somehow, but I'm not exactly sure how.

So in the mean time, it looks like I can do something on the right side of the screen, the maze in the forest -- I figure I have to do something here before I move on to the boss on the top section.


So here I am, and I've got the map of the maze from the commander in the town (shown on screen), but I have no idea where I'm going.  I just keep on warping from one part of the maze to another.  The far-right and far-left have these barriers, but I can't get through them.  I tried using the same bombs that you use to blow through the barrier in the dam part of the game, but that doesn't do anything...


Anyone know what I'm supposed to do?   

Oh, and my mech sometimes get into the "lock" mode, where it doesn't turn around.  What exactly triggers that event?  It seems somewhat randomly for me.  Is it when I get hit in a certain way?

[Keranu]

You know I am stuck in this game too and it might be the same part, but I'd have to load my game again to check since I haven't played it for like nine months or so.

[shubibiman]

I finished this game quite a long time ago (5 years ago) and I don't remember being stuck. It can't be too hard a problem, I guess. Have you tried to use or buy a special item?

[GUTS]

Toned down Cybernator??  Blood Gear is the mech game that Cybernator and Target Earth only wish they could they could have been.  Anyway though, you probably just need to buy something like Shubibiman said.  I finished the game years ago with no problems, and I don't know a single bit of Japanese beyond domo arigato. 

Anytime you get stuck you either need to talk to someone in town, or buy something at a shop, did you try revisiting the few places you can go and see if something new has happened?

[runinruder]

Anytime you get stuck you either need to talk to someone in town, or buy something at a shop,

Or discard an item.  I remember getting stuck one time because someone was trying to give me a new item but my inventory was full.  This was long before I was able to read any Japanese, so I had no idea what the problem was.   

[termis]

Anytime you get stuck you either need to talk to someone in town, or buy something at a shop,

Or discard an item.  I remember getting stuck one time because someone was trying to give me a new item but my inventory was full.  This was long before I was able to read any Japanese, so I had no idea what the problem was.   

Actually just made it through.  Damn, that was a confusing-ass maze.  It wasn't an item issue - though that definitely is a good tip.  That happened to me too (my inventory being full), though I was fortunate enough to understand what the game was saying.

Keranu, if you're actually stuck on that part, you basically have to warp through the right set of those green transfer beam things.  That's the tough part.  I'm not sure exactly how I did it, but I think I warped back and forth between ones in the upper-central area until it got me to through to the right one - you'll notice it immediately when you hit the right one from the scenery.  It's distinctly different than other portions you've been warping to - You'll be at the very bottom center portion of the maze.  There you talk to Yan, then that'll disable a lot of the green warp beams, which will allow you to get to the very top center portion of the maze, where you meet the Marn, the boss.

Toned down Cybernator??  Blood Gear is the mech game that Cybernator and Target Earth only wish they could they could have been. 

You think?  If you were to compare just the action sequence alone, I don't think Blood Gear can match something like the Assault Suit series, but the customization process of Blood Gear is so damn cool that it and makes it just-as, if not more enjoyable experience.

[Tatsujin]

i never gave big attention to thsi bloody gear. but sounds interesting, so i will give it another try later

[termis]

i never gave big attention to thsi bloody gear. but sounds interesting, so i will give it another try later

Definitely do give it a go.  It's been good.

So I finally beat it.  So my final thoughts: 

This game in a nutshell would be something like this.  Mix in overhead scenes from Exile and the action sequences from Cybernator, then throw in cool customization options, great looking cut scenes, a good storyline with interesting twists (of what I could understand, anyway), and you have Blood Gear.  And controlling big-ass robots is also infinitely cooler than being some cliche RPG character. 

The graphics aren't stellar, but halfway decent, and as I mentioned, the cut scene art is real nice.  The music would be my main gripe about this game.  It's pretty generic, and all the BGM is done off the chip.  A rockin CD track would've been cool. 

It plays real nice, and quite challenging at times,  The last few scenes and the final boss are tough as nails!  It's been awhile since any game _really_ challenged me, so this was good. I'd guesstimate my playtime, including getting lost and playing levels over to beat a boss/scene, to be around 13-15 hours or so.  It's possible that a non-Japanese reader may get tripped up in a couple spots, but nothing is ridiculously hard to solve -- everything is pretty linear as you have limited places where you can be at one point, so if you just talk to everyone, and go wherever you can, and you should be okay.  Definitely one of the more import-friendly titles for those who fear that they aren't able to play this because there's a lot of Japanese text. 

The only other minor issue I had with the game was that the ammunition on your weapons would run out too quickly, and your gun would be rendered useless once the ammo ran out.  A system where you'd be able to reload your gun would've been nice.

To cap this mini-review off, I noticed a peculiar line on the ending credits.  It read - <Aurail - Scenario 2: Blood Gear>.  I never heard of Aurail, and went and looked it up.  It's some overhead mech-tank shooter game published by Sega, but developed by a team called Westone.  I also thought that I saw that developer team in the credit screen later on (I'd have to double check that), so it looks like this game is actually somewhat of a sequel to this Aurail game. 

[GUTS]

I noticed that too when I beat it, since Westone is one of my favorite developers of all time I was super stoked to see their name in there.  I could never find any info on exactly what they did though, did they do the whole game or just part of it?  Or was their name in there just because it was a sequel to an older game they developed?  I also could never find the first game, but this was like 5 years ago.

[shubibiman]

I looove the shootgun sound effects of this game, which came out to me as a really good surprise first time I played it. Blood Gear deserves to be a little more renowned than it is nowadays

[termis]

I noticed that too when I beat it, since Westone is one of my favorite developers of all time I was super stoked to see their name in there.  I could never find any info on exactly what they did though, did they do the whole game or just part of it?  Or was their name in there just because it was a sequel to an older game they developed?  I also could never find the first game, but this was like 5 years ago.

Yeah, I wonder myself.  But what's sure is that these two games look nothing alike.

Aurail:
 

Blood Gear:

[shubibiman]

Thanks for the screenshots! Never heard of that game.

[Black Tiger]

I owned an Aurail pcb for a couple years, but I never played very far into it before selling it with other little-played pcbs.

I never would've guessed that it was related to Blood Gear (not that I've played any more of Blodd Gear).

[Keranu]

Wow, that is interesting. I had no idea there were any games related to Blood Gear. Thanks for the information!

[RegalSin]

What I love about this game is how they hide lenguidoism,
Mecha love = bike love?  considering the JAV popularity.

The story plays out with one bad mecha riding guido, who also has his own blood
gear I assume, decides to kill the doctors, leaving the other to barely escape.

Blood gear proves that games like rockman could have made it on the PCE
but also proves when not to use hand drawn sprites. In fact I believe 100% that Megaman Legends pretty much used alot of blood gear ideas. From the
junkers, to the insano from the begining of the game. However the same could be
said for Macross as well.

Asides for bikers, the game also feels like a mecha dominated PSO. Imagine
playing PSO and it was nothing but gigantic mechas.

Like Exile, I really starting to love the game, especially with the playing feild being like "Eternal city" but less extreme. However this game being a cd game, has gigantic
on screen sprites that are strong like boss.

Manivuring is another story. It feels like you are driving a real mecha. This is sappose to be futuristic but the movement is sluggish. However you get usted to this movement considering how the AI of the enemy matches your movement, which can make this game annoying sometimes. However the AI of certain enemies are not quick enough. Enemies that are human driven, mostly will have AI that looks like speedy gonzaless. Which makes almost every fight feels like the first battle in Megaman X.
You can win it, but most people decides to die instead.

Things that I am ticked off about. The amount of weapons you can carry sucks.
You have to drop one kind of weapon, as well as items. However if you did have that
kind of item privilege you would be unstoppable, which also makes the game challenging.

It is pretty much the same gameplay as Megaman Legend. One moment you can
find a bunch of weak enemies, but the next moment you will see an extremly hard
enemy. Gun Hazard is the only other game I could think of, but Gun hazard just does
the traditional, stage to stage, get item, bionic commando thing.