After some far more difficult than it needed to be technical difficulties (which boiled down to me just not realizing that the disc I had had discrot/a big hole in the data XP), I was finally able to get back to playing more SRW. This is the first console game in the series not made by either Winkie Soft or AI, but by Banpresto themselves. I figured if I had anything to expect from this game, it’d be that they’d be trying to make their mark and start things with a bang. I played the game on my PS2 in Japanese, and my conservative guess for how long it took me (as this once again don’t count playtime) is about 50 hours at least.
This is the first game in the Alpha series, which would end up having four games. It has a good few new additions (most notably Macross) as well as a *lot* of returning old series, and Banpresto sorta decided to get as many big chunks of all of them in as they could. This means there are a lot of route splits and a lot of characters, but I think they do a pretty good job of making it all fit together in this big mission to defend the Earth from terrestrial and extraterrestrial invaders. It’s definitely not without its faults though. In trying to make their mark, Banpresto gives FAR too much attention to their original protagonists and antagonists, which wouldn’t be a problem if they weren’t so much more dreadfully dull and uninteresting compared to the licensed characters. I really hope it’s a lesson they learn not to repeat in later games, as the writing between the licensed characters is as fun and well crafted as ever, showing that whether it’s Winkie Soft or Banpresto writing these games, the level of care and attention to adapting the characters involved hasn’t diminished one bit~. The gameplay is pretty darn similar, with the units & pilots being separate, spirit abilities each pilot has, money to level up units, quicksave ability, and the linear mission structure. In broad strokes, it won’t be unfamiliar to any returning player. However, what HAS changed is that it’s received a very well needed rebalancing that has made the game WAY better to play. Super Robots in particular have received a MASSIVE shot in the arm by across the board getting *far* better accuracy on their moves. This doesn’t diminish how kingly the power of dodge tanks are, sure, but it makes the big, smashy, tanky Super Robots actually able to smash and tank enemies the way they should be able to, and it makes for a much more fun play experience. Aside from that, the most notable addition is that pilots no longer have only four spirit abilities each, as that number has been raised to six. While this is an important change that makes each pilot have a lot more options available to them, this on top of the power rebalancing with Super Robots comes with the double and triple damage skills being far more uncommon or later received than in past games, while accuracy and evasion boosting skills are very thankfully much more common than they used to be. Nothing is a game-changing experience that flips the world on its head, but these on top of some general UI improvements just make the game significantly more fun to play. Outside of those base mechanics, the design has gotten one more significant addition in the form of what would (eventually) be localized as Skill Points. These are optional objectives in each map that are often quite difficult and don’t give any rewards unto themselves. However, the main thing they *do* give is extra bonuses. There are far less recruitable secret pilots and units through arcane optional story events, and instead a lot of them are dictated solely (or in addition to the arcane optional persuading and story stuff) by how many skill points you have by that point in the game. The last thing they do is also determine which ending you get, as having 45 points or more by the last few missions gets you the true ending while having less than that gets you the normal one. It’s a really neat addition to the series that I think is a really well thought out way to let the player make things just as hard as they want it, with the only caveat being that these are SECRET objectives. They’re generally just “do the hard thing” or “beat the mission fast”, but the secret nature of them does a lot to spit in the spirit of making things just as hard as the player wants them to be. Presentation-wise, we still have great music and a nice karaoke mode, but outside of the music, the series gets a *massive* upgrade with this game in a lot of ways. First and most obvious thing is how character portraits look. They’re now much larger in-between missions, and they’re even animated so their mouths move and they blink! Some characters look a bit odd, but generally it all looks really nice. The other big additions come in battle. Maps are no longer top-down, but are now isometric. This doesn’t actually change how the gameplay works (this ain’t FF Tactics with unit directional stuff or anything), but it does make things look significantly better. However, I imagine the increased resources used to make it like this is probably why there is SO much map reuse in this game compared to previous ones, as designing them must take a lot more work. The next and coolest addition is that now we finally have proper battle animations! No longer do the robots just dance around like papercraft cutouts, but they move properly and everything! Sure, the loading times for this are AWFUL (at like 10 seconds per battle no matter what console, PS1, PS2, or PS3 I tested it on), but that’s solved by the actual most important feature this game adds: You can FINALLY skip combat animations! This makes playing (or replaying) missions so indescribably faster. Finally gone are the days when missions take 2~3 hours as a baseline rule and they actually take like 30 to 90 minutes now! I cannot overstate how necessary a feature this is, and even if the rest of the game were only an okay adaptation of what Winkie Soft had spent the previous decade refining, it’d easily make this game the best one to date for me. Verdict: Highly Recommended. It has some hiccups in its design writing, and it is definitely trending towards the easy side a bit too often for my liking, but Banpresto wanted to start things with a bang and hot damn did they succeed. With this game’s stellar cosmetic upgrade, much needed stat rebalancing, and well needed addition of the ability to skip animations, this is an awesome entry in the series and easily the best game in it up to that point. If you can read Japanese and like mecha stuff and SRPGs, this is not a game to sleep on.
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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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