A few weeks back, I dragged myself through the first of the three scenarios in this and thoroughly didn’t really care for it. I didn’t care for it to such an extent that I totally wrote off playing through the other two, and kinda got fed up with SRW in general. But after writing a pretty biting review and then sorta drifting around among not playing anything at all for a week, I decided to give the other two scenarios a chance. I’m really thankful I did, because I ended up enjoying them much much more than that first one. I’m not sure I’ve ever outright written a replacement review on purpose, but this is one case where it’s absolutely deserved. EX still certainly isn’t my favorite SRW game. It isn’t even my favorite of the three games in the Complete Box remake pack. But it’s definitely a game I can recommend much more easily than I could before. It took me around 60 or 70 hours to get through all three scenarios on original hardware.
Taking a bit of an unconventional approach from just about any other SRW game (at least that I’m aware of), EX has not just one story with diverging paths, but three different scenarios with very slight paths within them (with one exception being a sorta route 3.5 tucked in the middle of the second scenario, which I did not play). A month or so after the events of SRW 3, several of our heroes find themselves sucked into the world inside the Earth of La Gias, a world of high technology and magic. Each of the three scenarios follows one of three main characters going through different events in the conflict concurrently to one another that increase in difficulty as they go along. The first is the most dull and the easiest and more or less sets up the world and its conflicts and principle players, the second is the other main side of that conflict but still good guys, and the third is playing as a more grey hero on a third, tertiary side of the conflict. I was originally very harsh on the writing in this game having only played through the first scenario. It focuses very hard on the original characters in an overly boated plot that sidelines the more interesting characters HARD, and makes the debut licensed series in this game, Aura Battler Dunbine and Go Shogun, feel like very distant tertiary concerns (because quite frankly they are), and while it isn’t a huge deal, the new series introduced in SRW 3 being all absent here (no Raideen, Combattler V, or Daitarn 3) was also a bummer. The second and third scenarios are written much better, with far better pacing and usage of licensed characters, and while they do still focus on the original characters more than I’d like, they’re far better conceived narratives than the first scenario. It’s only a shame that you need to play through the first two scenarios to unlock the third one, as slogging through scenario 1’s Fire Emblem wannabe plot is nowhere near as fun as the content it’s gating. There’s also a neat system where you can use the completed save data from previous scenario playthroughs to alter your playthroughs of successive scenarios (and playing through the second scenario again after playing through the third is how you get that 3.5 route I didn’t do), which is a neat system but ultimately not all that thoroughly used or interesting in its execution. The writing is very uneven, with relatively high peaks but very low valleys, and while scenarios 2 and 3 are much more like the other Winky Soft-era SRW games in their quality, the very boring and poorly paced first scenario gives EX the odd man out of having easily some of my favorite and least favorite writing in the Complete Box games (with Scenario 3 being my personal favorite of the bunch). Mechanically and design-wise, we’re still very much similar to the other remakes found in the Complete Box. Counter attacks are a thing, equippable items are a thing, pilots and mechs being separate is a thing, and pilot passive skills are a thing (which itself is something I only recently realized was an innovation of SRW 4, meaning none of the first batch of SRW games on SNES had passives :O). The thing most worth mentioning in the mechanics is the level design. Where SRW 2 was one shorter campaign with very few units, and SRW 3 had a fair few more units along a significantly longer campaign, EX is three campaigns that all play like they have the unit count of SRW 2 but the capacity for level design of SRW 3. What comes out of that is generally some very well put together campaigns, but we’ve gotten a bit further into the bad habits that started popping up in SRW 3. While I definitely dig the more puzzle-like approach of fielding basically all of your units in every map (something much more present in the second and third scenarios than in the first), what I really don’t enjoy are how SO many maps have so many huge damage sponge bosses to contend with (especially in the first scenario). It isn’t even particularly a challenge, as there (thankfully) isn’t even a total turn counter you’re playing against for a best ending (like SRW 3 and 4 have). They’re just there to drag things out, and in a game with unskippable battle scenes, I really didn’t appreciate that. The other elephant in the room is occasional HUGE jump in difficulty that will just ambush you out of nowhere. Just about each one of the scenarios has at least one really brutal mission (with the worst being in scenario 2, for me), and that’s not counting the awful mission each of them has where you’re just fighting three to five super huge boss-type enemies. The unavailability of little enemies to grind up willpower with means that a meaningful portion of your army (especially the Aura Battler Dunbine guys) are basically useless because their only worthwhile moves are willpower gated, and they just about always devolve into a frustrating slog of how to use your resources in such a way that you can still take them out. While that *sounds* fun in concept (it even sounded fun typing it out here despite having already gone through it), they’re so taxing and often leave so little room for error that they end up being far less fun than the other puzzle-like missions of the game. The presentation of the game is very much par for the course for the other Complete Box games. Pretty decent music for Winky Soft’s PS1 games, and nice enough animations and sprites. The big new addition worth talking about are all of the isekai-type magic-y mechas in the world of La Gias. They’re on the whole alright. I’m not a huge fan of most of SRW’s original designs, particularly during the Winky Soft era, but they’re still nicely made even if they’re by and large far too over-designed for their own good. Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. The quality of the later two scenarios definitely makes me no longer Not Recommend this game, but the low quality of the first scenario makes it really hard to outright Recommend. This is definitely a game worth playing if you’ve enjoyed your time with the rest of the Complete Box, but it just isn’t quite the shining star of the collection it’s otherwise so close to being. The Complete Box as a whole is something I definitely Recommend though, if you’re a SRW fan who can read Japanese. It’s a really well done and well thought out set of graphical upgrades and re-balances for some old classics, and they’re well worth checking out if later Winky Soft games like 4 or F/F Final were ones you found good but wanting of some more tweaking. They’re a lovely sendoff from Winky Soft for their era of SRW, and despite the frustrations and bumps in the road here and there, I’m really glad I gave them a look~.
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I’d always heard that SRW 3 was a significantly harder game than its relatively easier predecessor, but after how relatively and surprisingly challenging the Complete Box edition of 2 turned out to be, I was hopeful that SRW 3 wouldn’t be *that* bad, especially once I learned that it had a true ending and true final mission locked behind beating the game under a certain total turn limit. I knew I was in for a bumpy ride, but after having so much fun with SRW3, I just had to give this one a genuine try. It took me about twice as many days, so I reckon about twice as many total hours, to beat SRW 3 as it did for me to beat 2, so probably like 60 or 70 hours in total for me to beat the Japanese version of the game on real hardware with the true ending.
SRW 3 picks up a few months after where SRW 2 leaves off, with our heroes’ battle against the Divine Crusaders not only resuming, but the impending alien threat that the DC were ostencibly accumulating totalitarian power to combat also finally arriving at Earth’s doorstep. In what the series would come to call The Inspector Incident, a powerful alien armada of enigmatic but bumbling galactic watchmen have come to destroy humanity. In gameplay terms, this means both more One Year War UC Gundam stuff (which is neat to see as it was in the last game) as well as fighting against this new threat. Though you aren’t alone in your battle, as this is when non-Gundam/-Getter Robo/-Mazinger franchises start gracing SRW, as Combattler V, Daitarn 3, and Raideen grace the series with the first of what would be many appearances (particularly for the former 2). As with the other Winky Soft SRW games, the writing here is hardly high art or going for any particular kind of pathos outside of the once in a while cinematic recreations of iconic moments from the represented shows (many of which are over comically fast), but it’s silly and quick-paced crossover fun that gets the job done to facilitate the action and never outstays its welcome. It continues to do a lot with just a little text, in that manner, which is something I’ll always appreciate Winky Soft’s approach for doing in such an entertaining way. As for gameplay, this is effectively identical to how the Complete Box edition of SRW2 had changed the overall mechanics of the original Super Famicom game. There have been some changes in regards to balancing in regards to how good certain units are, with Gundams overall getting a bit of a boost and the Daitarn being better balanced than he usually is before this point, but the Getter Robo in particular still being strong yet nowhere near as dominant, but the bigger changes are in campaign and map design. As for maps, we’re getting closer towards what things would come to be like in F/F Final, where you have quite strong bosses, generally quite strong normal enemies, and reinforcements being much more common sights than they were in SRW 2. We thankfully don’t have reinforcements quite as numerous or mean as they were in the F series of games quite yet, but we’re definitely taking baby steps in that general direction. We also start getting a lot more units, more like basically every other game from this point on, so while it’s understandable in is execution, we’ve decidedly moved away from the whole “fielding your entire small army every map” design that SRW 2 uses so well. It’s really the campaign design that’s one of the most interesting things about this one, however. As previously stated, this game has a true final mission locked behind beating it’s normal final mission in under 350 turns (lowered from the 420 turns of the SFC original). Now I managed to do that in about 310 turns as I played about as quickly and conservatively as I could (probably only could’ve gotten here 3 or 4 turns faster, realistically), so the turn timer isn’t exactly as strict as something like Alpha 3’s would turn out to be. However, what makes that total turn limit counter interesting is that this game doesn’t just have route splits (and is the first game in the series to do so), but this game also has outright shortcuts in most of them. It’s often stated to you in in-game dialogue (though I used a flowchart guide to help plot the most efficient route to the end), but many of the choices you get to pick your route split will give you an option between a longer route and a shorter route. These longer routes really add up as well, as the smallest amount of missions you can beat the game with is something like 34, while the highest amount is more like 51. You could always take the longer route and grind for more money and experience points, sure, and that’s particularly valuable in the first half or so of the game where you feel really remarkably outgunned by your opposition, but take 3 or 4 extra missions and you very might well push yourself out of the threshold necessary to get that true ending. It’s gonna be *really* tempting to just take your time and do the extra missions too. That first third or half of the game, heck even the very first few missions, are damn hard and far too reliant on RNG to actually survive, let alone do well on them. By the end of the game, you’ll likely be hitting the soft level cap anyhow with a lot of your best troops (as once you hit level 60 you *can* still level up, but it takes twice as much experience now), so it ultimately doesn’t matter *that* much in the end game, but that true final battle is really brutal regardless. If you haven’t done your due diligence leveling up your super robots, you’ll very likely simply lack the firepower necessary to beat it, even with unlimited turns to do it (as was very nearly the case for me). This difficulty cliff you’ve gotta overcome right at the start is easily SRW 3’s biggest weakness, as even in this remake, it’s a significant problem whether you’re going for the true ending or not. This whole system of differently long routes and weird difficulty curves isn’t executed the best, even in this remake, and I’m kinda happy that it’s not an idea that they ever really revisit in this way, but it’s a neat idea that gives SRW 3 a certain special kind of charm, even if that charm is often more negative than it is positive. If you’ve read my review of the Complete Box edition of SRW 2, there really isn’t any more to say here than there is there. The robots are still cool but very stiff in that old Winky Soft way, and the Inspector leader craft in particular have a neat and distinctive look to them. The music tracks of the new series are cool to see though, and I quite like this version of the Daitarn 3 theme in particular. However it is sad that one of my favorite tracks, the Great Mazinger theme (which is actually in this game after not being in 2 despite the Great actually being in that game), seems to not quite have been encoded correctly, as the first few notes are very clearly flat and the whole song sounds really off as a result. That’s hardly a truly deal-breaking error, sure, but it’s still such a weird and unmissable thing that I couldn’t not mention it here. Verdict: Recommended. I certainly didn’t enjoy this as much as the CB remake of SRW 2, but this is still a fine SRW game, warts and all. It’s hardly my favorite, but particularly once you get past the start, the balancing is good enough that this game is plenty good fun to puzzle your way through ,especially if you’re not like me and don’t mind only getting a normal ending instead of the true one XP |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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