Big Bang Age

"Zanma Rouga, introducing himself to his classmates."

- My name is Zanma Rouga. I am the man who will conquer Japan.

About
Daibanchou: Big Bang Age is the second installment of the Dai Series after Daiakuji, and was released in Japan on the 19th of December 2003. Though unreleased in the West, it has been fan-translated into english.

Much like its predecessor, it is a conquest strategy game where the player controls a vast array of characters with different stats and abilities. Using them, one must try to take over and defend different territories on the game map as one fights a variety of enemy factions. While doing all this, one must manage your faction's income and payments, the loyalty of your units, and all the while be wary of the fact that if any of your units has its health dropping to 0, it is lost forever (this leads to a gameover if any of the heros/heroines die), making the game fairly deep but challenging for the unitiated.

Adding to the complications is that while all but basic units and the two main characters can be "cleared", giving them greats boosts on current and future playthroughs, finding the right events to do may often prove to be somewhat difficult, and some characters cannot be cleared without having obtained specific character, and in some cases characters can be mutually exclusive.

The game has two main routes for its two main heroines, and is divided in three phases (or game maps), the School Chapter, District Chapter, and National Chapter, with the last one making up the majority of the game.

Story
In the year 200X, a giant hole erupted in the middle of Japan. Called the Hell Hole, its appearance caused the sea to split and the lands to bend. The entirety of Japan was twisted out of shape, and dark B-crystals appeared everywhere, bestowing special powers to some people, mostly the younger generation. Special Students, as those people were soon called, became the object of fear. Japan became ruled by violence and terror and was cut off from the rest of the world.

A year after the appearance of the Demonic Hole, a Special Student with extraordinary strength and will managed to unite the Special Students throughout Japan. He formed the Student Union (S.U.) to bring order back to Japan, and Japan entered a peaceful time, but it was not meant to last.

Now, the land is more split than ever between the military of the PGG, the horrifying vampires of the Nightmare Eyes, the disciplined ninjas of the NPI, the fanatical Holy Flame knights, and the violent Skull Serpents sky pirates, with no end to the hostilities in sight. However, one man appearing in the Tokyo school may just change Japan forever...

English Translation
An english translation patch was made for the game at Seiha. It is no longer available on their site however.

Alt link for patch: http://www.mediafire.com/download/t20twj7ykp01vja/BBA+English1.0d.rar

Note that the translation may contain different names/terms than the ones used in this wiki. If you note such differences, please edit and change them to the terms used in the translation.

Trivia

 * A poster of Big Bang Age is seen in one of the mazes in Rance 6.
 * Characters such as Rouga and Gou have made appearances in Alicesoft's 4koma mini-manga series.

Related Games

 * Daiakuji
 * Daiteikoku
 * Sengoku Rance
 * Big Bang Beat