Super Robot Wars is a franchise which started its life as a series of Tactical JRPGs, with its main feature being the fact that it’s a hodgepodge of several popular mecha anime and manga – like all of them. The one writing this is a total newbie when it comes to this unique and quite old IP, having only tasted about two to three, very old video games. As such, he entered the world of the latest instalment called Super Robot Wars Y with almost no expectations. Can’t say the experience was as pleasant as it could be.
First things first. If you grew up pitting all sorts of big robot toys against each other, and maybe you occasionally used a Barbie as a Kaiju, you’ll enjoy the premise. This is a grid turn-based strategy that, when a unit attacks or uses an ability, a nice mini-cutscene will commence and show the unit in question do its thing, in what can be described as a tiny dose of mecha anime. While obviously not a big budget production, this is where this is at its best, with the attack animations being cool, and the mechs quite varied… aside from the generic enemy AI bots. Word of caution: if you dislike the typical presentation tropes of the world of anime where everything is over the top, and characters shout their lines at the top of their lungs… this isn’t for you.
The protagonist, a male or female NINJA member, follows Echika, a young heiress who discovers that her inheritance, the city left behind by her father, is a massive flying fortress. When mysterious forces attack, she teams up with the main character, who acts as her bodyguard, and a legion of legendary mecha pilots. Unfortunately, the story is of mediocre quality despite the promising, futuristic, war-torn setting. Another issue is that the narrative unfolds through overly lengthy and way too frequent (way, way too frequent) visual-novel-style cutscenes where things take too long to happen while you try to stay awake.
More importantly Super Robot Wars Y won’t stop to explain who this or that seemingly important character is, whether that’s Heero Yuy, Ryoma Nagare or Squidward – it assumes you already care. For veterans, the banter between franchises is probably delightful. The fanservice-heavy nature of this title won’t please greenhorns, though.
Putting the plot aside, the tactics gameplay is mostly passable. Each mech has its own unique attacks and abilities, but none really stand out as much as they could, and as such don’t manage to make the gameplay that much fun. Part of the blame must go to the maps themselves and the objectives they offer, which rarely change or involve interesting combat scenarios, even when compared to much simpler titles like the age-old Advance Wars.
The enemy AI doesn’t offer much resistance either. Even on Normal difficulty, one can brute-force most encounters by focusing on upgrading a selection of good units and use them as the durable tanks, or the lethal canons of the battlefield. All this makes encounters feel like slow and repetitive chores rather than exciting tests of skill – especially as attacked units immediately counter in the same turn, adding to the tedium. At least the animations can be skipped with the simple push of a button.
Despite the mini cut-scenes mentioned earlier looking relatively good, the rest looks like a budget title from the PS3 era, with the backgrounds being blurry pictures of forgettable landscapes. The UI and the menus are even worse; cluttered, unintuitive and annoying to read both on your big TV or when in handheld mode. All these wouldn’t matter so much if the asking price was much, much lower, but this is sold almost at the same price as next gen, major league, triple-A titles.
Plot, visuals and all that baggage put aside, at the end of the day, if looking for the next great SRPG this isn’t it. Super Robot Wars Y was primarily made for mecha enthusiasts – but while its passion for the genre is tangible, beneath the fanservice lies an uneven tactical experience weighed down by dated visuals, clunky menus, and a story that can rarely (if even) be described as captivating. For – really – diehards watching at mechs fighting other mechs might be enough. For everyone else this is a mediocre-to-decent experience that’s more fun to watch than play.
