Video Game / Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion Lost Stories

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion Lost Stories is a Mobile Phone Game by DMM Games and f4Samurai

Set in the universe of Code Geass, it follows a new protagonist (default name Mario/Maya Disel), a half-Britannian half-Japanese student at Ashford Academy. Their usual routine of secretly bringing food to those in Shinjuku is interrupted by Clovis' actions, inadvertently putting our hero on a conclusion course with Lelouch, who soon offers them a place in his forming rebellion. As Zero begins his war against Britannia, our hero must work to reclaim their story from the Empire.

In the vein of Arknights, gameplay is focused around a Tower Defense map style, where players can deploy melee units to block enemies and ranged units to damage foes or heal allies. Uniquely, there are two parts to each deployable unit - a pilot, who determines the skill set of the unit, and a knightmare frame, which determines if they are a ranged or melee combatant. Additional pilots and Knightmares can be obtained from the gacha, but Knightmares can also be assembled by the player if they have spare Blaze Luminous Cores.

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• Adaptational Badass: Several.
  • All of the Ashford Student Council are pilot options, meaning you can have Shirley, Rivalz, Milly, and Nina fighting alongside Lelouch, Kallen, Suzaku, and the protagonist.
  • Clovis is a Non-Action Big Bad in canon, but is a selectable pilot here, as is Emperor Charles.
  • Several Knightmares also get this treatment - Lelouch's Burai has no special equipment in canon, but receives a rocket launcher here and can fire off a rocket barrage as its special move.
• Adaptation Expansion: The event stories flesh out what happens in the background between each episode of the anime, while also adding in some new characters to help this along. It also helps explain why Lelouch's Geass went out of control by having him use it rather frivolously in certain events.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If you roll a character who you already have and they come with a Knightmare, you don't gain a duplicate KMF, but instead get said Knightmares' Core Luminous. This allows you to save room in your Knightmare Hangar for better Knightmares you might get later, while also providing cores that can be converted into materials for fully upgrading other Knightmare Frames later on.
  • Any lockets remaining after a pilot has been max limit-broken can be converted into Locket Shards, which can then be exchanged for generic lockets in the shop. Both conversion and purchasing are usable for any type of locket, so you can eventually grind up enough lockets from one-star pilots to get the materials for four-star pilots. You're also guaranteed 1 four star locket for completing every weekly mission.
  • Your Starter Mons, the Shinjuku Resistance, have at least one character from each class, while your Starter Equipment is composed of six Glasgows, which have both their ranged and melee modes already unlocked, allowing you to make a full squad from the get go.
  • Unlike Arknights, enhancing pilots and Knightmare Frames will lower their deployment cost if done enough (by a maximum of four points if the pilot and Knightmare are both full upgraded), preventing deployments from making high-end pilot and Knightmare combinations Too Awesome to Use.
  • Completing the story missions will gradually award you with some very nice budget Knightmares (namely the Sougetsu and Arondight), which help alleviate issues with the gacha.
  • Unlike other Gacha games, there are tangible benefits to having friends and joining an Order beyond just getting currency for shops and completing guild missions - you can put up item requests that allow guild members to donate unwanted items to you, easing up on the need to farm certain missions. This is especially useful here because the dedicated item farming nodes have daily caps on how many times they can be run.
  • A special once daily campaign ability allows the player to destroy a portion of the map, making it impossible for enemies to traverse any paths it hits. In the event that this leaves no way for those enemies to reach your target zone, the game will treat them as destroyed for all intents and purposes, including getting mission stars.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Kallen's Glasgow is nothing to write home about, being the lowest tier Knightmare in the game. At the same time, though, it's also got the lowest deployment cost, making it excellent for deploying low cost Strikers to quickly build up cost points.
  • The normal Glasgow isn't an extreme enhancement over Kallen's version, but innate access to both its ranged and melee modes means that it's going to be carrying your team for a while, as more advanced Knightmares are very heavy on the deployment cost and infeasible for some battles.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Several of the in-game shops only accept paid Sakuradite as currency, and among the items sold here are the Sutherland and Gloucester, both of which can not be acquired via Scouting.
• Chess Motifs: This is Code Geass - this is to be expected. Every class (except Specialists) is themed after a chess piece.
  • Strikers are knights - eager for glory, they charge in first and provide extra cost points, acting as the frontline to your forces.
  • Guardians are rooks - the Stone Walls of the game, they hold enemies at bay so that others can cut them down.
  • Engineers are bishops - while not having mystical powers for the most part, they are the only pilots who can consistently heal, making them invaluable for keeping your team alive.
  • Executioners are Queens - they possess some of the highest cost in the game, but have the firepower to obliterate waves of enemies if well protected.
  • Tacticians are Kings - though not necessarily weak on their own, their buffs and rebuffs mean they are best kept behind other Knightmares and shuffled around to maximize their utility.
  • Specialists are represented by a star, as their skill sets are outside of the other five roles and are far too specialized to qualify as pawns.
• A Day in the Limelight: The sidestory events help flesh out many of the side characters from the anime.
  • The first event focuses on Milly helping out a friend struggling to run a coffee shop.
  • The Escape from the Beach Resort event features Rivalz as one of the main cast, trying to get his friends to help out with his part time job.
  • The Purebloods are the focus of the aptly named Pureblood Party, where they host a Halloween party to fundraiser for Euphemia.
  • Nunally is the focus of the first Christmas event, long before she becomes an Ascended Extra in R2.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: Deployable units consist of Pilots (determining the skillset of the unit and how many opponents it can block) and Knightmare Frames (which determine attack range and whether the unit is a short or long ranged one). You can use whatever combination you like, but most pilots are generally specialized toward either melee or ranged combat.
• Close-Range Combatant:
  • Certain pilots, such as Tohdoh, Kallen, Takami, and Chiba, have statlines that work best if given melee Knightmare Frames.
  • On a factional level, Japanese aligned Knightmare Frames are geared more toward close range fighting than long range - the Burai Kai, Kallen's Burai and Glasgow, and the Sougetsu are all melee only Knightmares.
• Dual Mode Unit: With certain exceptions, most Knightmares come with a ranged configuration or a melee one. Only the Glasgow comes with both modes unlocked, with the rest requiring the player to unlock them via upgrades. These can also introduce unique mechanics depending on which weapon is in use - Sutherland variants, for example, can either attack at long range with their rifles or fight in melee with stun tonfas. The rifles have long range and higher damage, but the stun tonfas, as the name suggests, can stun opponents for a few seconds on impact.
• Foregone Conclusion: The Knights of the Round event takes place during the interim between R1 and R2, despite being released right after Chapter 6 of the story, confirming that the events of the Black Rebellion will play out almost identically to canon.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The signature Knightmare Frames of certain pilots are usually statted such that they sygnerize well with said pilot - for example, Kallen has higher damage as a melee fighter, and all of her signature frames (her Glasgow, her Burai, and the Guren Mk II) are solely melee Knightmares. In contrast, Lelouch's Burai can is a ranged-only Knightmare, synergizing well with his own lack of melee skill. Suzaku, meanwhile, has roughly equal ranged and melee damage, with his Lancelot being one of several dual-mode Knightmares that can attack from either range. Similarly, due to having multiple Ace Custom Knightmare Frames with multiple melee and ranged fighting options, the protagonist's pilot stats are also evenly distrubted so that they can use any of their mechs without loss of ability.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Due to how the game's gacha works, it's entirely possible to get a character or Knightmare Frame well before they appeared in canon. In particular, all of the Knights of the Round use their Knightmare Frames from R2, many of which didn't exist in Season 1, according to the side stories.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: All Gloucester variants can attack in a straight line and hit every enemy in range. Their best placement is therefore either directly behind a Guard in melee (as their attack range lets them strike enemies two tiles in front of them) or perpendicular to two adjacent paths at range (where they can hit enemies in both paths simultaneously).
• Mook Mobile: As in the main series, the most common Knightmares you fight are Sutherlands and Gloucesters. Ironically, you can only obtain them for yourself via paid Sakuradite - they aren't attached to any pilots you can Scout, though some variants are obtained from getting either the Purebloods or Cornelia's elite forces. The Japanese Mook Mobile, the Burai, is instead offered as a reward for completing Chapter 4. The Glasgow, meanwhile, is the Starter Mon for your Knightmare units.
• The Musketeer: Generally speaking, Knightmare Frames come with one melee weapon and one ranged weapon - the Sutherland, for example, uses a rifle and arm-mounted stun tonfas. While gameplay limitations prevent both weapons from being used simultaneously, they do allow a Knightmare to be configured for either melee or ranged combat.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Certain Knightmares have abilities that cannot be used by the player when creating units with them - the Glasgow, for example, not only has an area of effect explosion on death when fought as a mook, it also gains a damage bonus against Ashford Academy pilots when fought in expeditions.
• Mythology Gag: In the first story segment of Chapter 2, a news broadcast mentions Sokkia Sherpa from Code Geass: Oz the Reflection, revealing that she's currently leading in the KMF league.
• Named by the Adaptation: The Royal Guard Commander that was the Starter Villain of Code Geass (read:the one Lelouch geassed to "Die!") is finally given a name in the English version: Kinoshita.
• No Cure for Evil: While Grey-and-Gray Morality is in effect, Britannia is generally the most antagonistic faction in-universe, and they have the most limited options for Engineer characters - at launch, they only had Euphemia li Britannia, and wouldn't get another until the release of Chapter 8 and Viletta with it. Both of these characters are in the highest rarity category, so good luck getting them.
• Non-Action Guy: Defied by the protagonist both in story and gameplay - in addition to getting directly involved in the fighting over the course of hte storyline, the game breaks tradition with most gachas games and gives away the MC as pilot for completing the half-anniversary missions. They are a very good pilot, too, and have high enough stats to be used in either a melee or a ranged Knightmare.
• Not So Above It All: As the "Escape from the Beach Resort" event shows, Cecile, normally the straight woman to wise guy Mad Scientist Lloyd, can get carried away drinking.
• Pre-Order Bonus: Pre-Registering fro the game awards the player with the Knightpolice Knightmare Frame, which is a very good Stone Wall in the early game.
• The Quisling: The Royal Guard Commander from the first episode of Code Geass is accidently named in this game due to a translation error, being called Kinoshita. This implies that he is also an Honorary Britannian, making his absuive treatment of Suzaku and the other Honorary Britannians profoundly hypocritical.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Hina, one of several orphans the protagonist has been caring for in Shinjuku, is crushed under debris when Clovis tries to liquidate the Ghetto, along with two other unseen orphans (Mari and Tomo). Thankfully, the two other orphans (Ako and Yuu) survived as they weren't in Shunjuku at the time.
• Starter Mon: Several examples.
  • By default, Ohgi, Tamaki, Inou, Yoshina, Minami, and Sugiyama are available as pilots. Your first Scouting pull, meanwhile, is guranteed to draw either Kallen, C.C., Suzaku, Cornelia, or Euphemia.
  • Knightmare-wise, you're given a full squad of Glasgows, which can immediately be shifted between ranged and melee forms.
• The Stations of the Canon: While the Protagonist's presence does affect some things, the major beats of R1 of Code Geass happen pretty much exactly as in canon - Zero Debut, Lake Kawaguchi, Narita, Yokosuka, and so on. The Black Rebellion still fails as well.
• Support Party Member: Tacticians, Engineers, and Specialists represent three variations on this trope.
  • Engineers are The Medic, and have no way to attack enemies, but are invaluable for keeping allies alive.
  • Tacticians have unique skills that can give you distinct edges over enemies, like stunning them or buffing allied damage. These effects are temporary, so you're encourage to retreat and redeploy them to address new situations as they arise.
  • Specialists are geared toward manipulating the deployment times of allies, either reducing the cost of deploying other units or reducing the time before defeated/retreated alleis can be redeployed.
• Taking You with Me: Enemy glasgows explode on defeat, harming any enemies within their area of effect. This, ironically, makes them more dangerous than the common Sutherlands and Gloucesters you can fight, who can only attack one unit at a time.