Super Robot Taisen A

INTRO:

There were old turn-based grid battle games, such as those designed by the now-defunct SSI. However, the first Fire Emblem on the NES was the very first one that also tries to tell a story with named characters. Those who are wordy would describe them as “turn-based tactical RPGs”, as outlandish as this sounds.

Since then, Fire Emblem has inspired plenty of others, some of which try to up the ante by including other popular elements of entertainment.

Super Robot Wars (SRW) by Banpresto was one of them, obviously doing so by having humongous mecha. Ever since then, the series has evolved, often trying to balance style with substance through licensing of popular mecha anime and implementation of this and that gameplay element. Banpresto has even made spin-offs, dropping the mecha elements and going for pseudo-real-time combat instead in the Endless Frontier and Project X Zone series.

Banpresto eventually went defunct in 2019. Banpresto’s decline and demise aside, A Portable for the Sony PSP is the most balanced and challenging of Banpresto’s older SRW titles – though it is still not free of the style-over-substance impression that the SRW games always had.

FOREWORD:

The following review is made using a ROM patch that changed the text in the game to English. Many words in this article that refer to certain gameplay elements will use the exact words in the translation patch. For example, people who had played the Japanese version of the game refers to the gameplay element of “Will” as “Morale” when they described the gameplay in English.

Such is the vagary of translating an Oriental language that has considerable nuance in its phrase-structuring.

PREMISE:

This Banpresto title is not about its original IPs and it makes licensed use of other IPs. Therefore, the player can expect the trademark mish-mash of plot elements in the stories of those licensed IPs. Tying them all together into a (hopefully) coherent story is Banpresto’s specialty.

In the case of this game, the different mecha anime IPs happen to have backstories that are very convenient. For one, almost all of them have stories with Earth as the setting, and a globalized government of sorts. Therefore, the Earth is under the governance of the “Earth Federation” in this game, which is a plot element that is common in the Gundam stories.

Humanity has also colonized nearby space. Again, this is a Gundam plot element. The organizations that live and operate in the colonies are lumped under the general term “Colonies”. There are actually two separate factions, both of which originate in the earlier Gundam stories. The Giganos comprise the bulk of the colonies on the moon, whereas Zeon is the collective of colonies based on artificial superstructures that are orbiting the Earth. Initially, they are both united in their resentment of the Earth Federation, whom they perceive as corrupt overlords.

Complicating the matter in the Solar System is the presence of aliens. These happen to be the antagonists of “Super Robot” mecha anime, specifically those with “outlandishly illogical” mecha, to quote some of the characters that belong to the Gundam IP or the other “real robot” ones.

Most of them start out as antagonists. In particular, there are the Campbellians, Boazanians, Myceneans and Saurians, all of whom appear to be in an alliance to conquer Earth for various reasons. There are other aliens too, such as the Bharmians, refugees who number a staggering one billion, and who have been recently angered by failed peace talks.

Of course, there will be plot twists that fray alliances. This is a hallmark of Super Robot Wars titles. This is used as the excuse to have a few multi-sided battles, which can be entertaining if the player manages to seize any opportunity to wipe out weakened enemies. (The latter half of the playthrough would have enemies of various factions simply focusing their ire on the player’s forces though, due to the reputation that they would garner as the Earth’s champions.)

Besides, there would be even more threats to Earth that would appear later, together with even more characters from mecha anime IPs. All of these happen thanks to some creative writing, which includes mysterious people working from behind the scenes.

BE AN AMNESIAC GOOFY GUY OR A COLD BUSTY LADY:

Speaking of mysterious people, the main protagonist is one of them right from the start. Their origins are not entirely clear of course, but it is obvious from the get-go that he/she does not belong in the world that he/she landed on.

The protagonist is either Axel Almer or Lamia Loveless; the player is given the choice of selecting either of them. The other will eventually become the nemesis of the one that the player has chosen. Of course, this seems like a major spoiler, but it is worth noting here that picking one protagonist does not completely block the other from the story’s going-ons.

Nonetheless, picking one or the other will not change the outcome of the story. Rather, the new player picks them based on their appeals, most of which are entertainingly shallow. (More experienced players would likely compare them for the combat capabilities that they have.)

Axel Almer conveniently has amnesia upon arriving on Earth, so his existence and discovery did not rouse much suspicion. However, he retained his slightly goofy and snarky but otherwise amiable personality – as well as most of his combat and technical skills. This is an SRW game, after all.

Lamia Loveless has a curvaceous body, something that distracts from holes in her cover story when she infiltrated the protagonists’ organization. Something that is even more distracting is her speech impediment, which she is not very comfortable about but it otherwise fits her cover story. Other characters also mock and chide her about it, which allayed much suspicion about how she is aloof all the time.

Both original Banpresto characters would fit right into any humongous mecha anime. (Incidentally, both of them are characters that debuted in Banpresto’s own IP, Original Generation – but that’s a matter that is outside the scope of this article.)

THE LONDO BELL:

The protagonists are the Londo Bell, the outfit that was famous for having contributed much to the One Year War, which was a conflict between the Earth Federation and the Colonies that ended in the Federation’s favour.

Its current leader is Captain Bright and its original corps of members happens to include this game’s versions of some of the protagonists of the aforementioned mecha anime IPs. Eventually, events would lead to more people joining or linking up with the Londo Bell, including the main protagonist.

The player has near-complete control over the resources of the Londo Bell, so the player can decide who gets what. However, some decisions are permanent, namely the upgrades of units.

PILOTS IN THEIR NARRATIVE:

The pilots are the Londo Bell’s main assets. None of their war machines are automatons, so each one requires a pilot. Indeed, some of the mechs can only be piloted by specific people.

The pilots’ main appeals are their personalities, their association with their source IPs and how Banpresto’s writers fit them into the story. Most of them are inserted into the story whenever the current set of protagonists needs help, thus setting up the circumstances for new members of Londo Bell to come into the picture.

Some of their introduction might seem a tad convenient, however. For example, not every fan of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is satisfied with how Kamille Bidan was introduced into the story. Another example is the inclusion of characters from Mobile Fighter G Gundam, which is best known for diverging wildly in themes and setting from the tragic and serious tones of the original Gundam series.

Some of the pilots only appear in a few missions as additional units for the player to use, and then leaving later. These appearances give the impression of fan-service cameos. Ultimately though, most of them will join the player’s team as the story progresses.

PILOTS IN THE GAMEPLAY:

All pilots use the same system of statistics that determine their performance. The exact details can differ considerably from pilot to pilot, however. Indeed, the differences can be so significant that the player might just field specific pilots for every mission while benching those that are just not competitive. For example, most female pilots are just not worth fielding, due to questionable design decisions on the part of the developer.

A pilot’s statistics do increase as they grow in experience, though the increases are so small that they can be easily overlooked. The more noticeable changes are the emergence of the pilots’ latent abilities and skills, making them more versatile and reliable. Even so, there is considerable variation among their skills and abilities. However, there is still some noticeable trends. For example, pilots who mainly fight by themselves in the source material tend to have the most skills and abilities.

GAINING EXPERIENCE:

All pilots in mecha anime are destined to engage in combat. The common trope is that all of them could only improve from the school of hard knocks. For better or worse, there are not many other ways to gain experience, if at all.

The most common way is to inflict damage on enemies. Interestingly, the amount that is granted is not necessarily proportional to the damage that is inflicted. Rather, the level difference between the attacking pilot and the defending enemy is the main factor. Apparently, this is a risk-versus-reward gimmick.

The second-most common way is to initiate the attack that would lead to the killing blow to an enemy. The pilot that initiated the attack is given a one-off reward of points, often more substantial than the amount from merely inflicting damage. The experience amount is further modified if there is a significant level difference between the pilot and the defeated enemy (again, risk versus reward).

There is emphasis on the pilot who initiated the attack here, because anyone that supported the pilot does not get any experience points. This seems rather disadvantageous, but a cunning player might learn how to use more experienced pilots to ‘feed’ enemies to less experienced pilots via supportive attacks.

Finally, Resupplying and Repairing team-mates grant experience too. Interestingly, the amount of experience that is given depends on how badly the team-mates need the service. For example, repairing very badly damaged team-mates grants more experience points than touching-up one that has merely been scratched. The differences between the levels of the pilots also appear to matter.

SKILLS:

Generally, skills augment the statistics of the pilots in specific situations. Skills have levels too; skills of higher level have greater potency or more reliability.

Some skills are practically general-purpose, such as Infight and Gunfight, which raises the potency of melee and ranged attacks respectively (among other subtler benefits).

Some skills only trigger if the pilot is lucky. For example, Parry is a skill that lets pilots outright deflect melee or missile attacks. A higher-level Parry triggers more frequently.

As a pilot gains experience levels, the pilot unlocks more of their latent skills; the player can see how many latent skills that they might have from the number of phrases that have been obscured with question marks. As a general rule of thumb, the combat specialty of a pilot determines the types of skills that he/she may have. For example, most “Super Robot” pilots would have the Parry skill because their illogical mecha have considerable close combat implements.

SKILL MODULES:

In between missions, the player can “train” pilots to have more or higher skills, if the player has obtained what can best be described as “skill modules”. This is a tradition of the Super Robot Wars series, so there is not much in the way of in-game explanation.

The closest there is to a narrative explanation is that as the pilots defeat enemies, they are gaining combat data on their enemies that they could form into training programmes for their combat simulations. Gameplay-wise, the “skill modules” pop out of specific enemies as loot.

SPIRIT POINTS & ABILITIES:

In addition to skills, pilots have “Spirits”, which are abilities that let them circumvent certain limitations in their gameplay designs. For example, Alert and Strike guarantees results for the chance-to-hit rolls.

Obviously, the usage of these Spirits can be a balance issue. Therefore, there is the limitation of “Spirit Points”, otherwise known as “SPs”. SPs are spent whenever abilities are used; generally, more powerful abilities require more SPs.

There are very few ways to restore SPs, so the player needs to be careful when to spend them. On the other hand, not spending them is a waste too, and would put the player’s units at risk of being defeated by enemies that could have been defeated earlier with the use of Spirits.

The variety (or lack of) of abilities that a pilot has makes him/her different from the others. However, most pilots only start with one or two of them, and each pilot has to unlock the rest by gaining levels; the progression of unlocks happens to be unique to the pilot himself/herself.

Interestingly, the SP costs for the same Spirit may differ from pilot to pilot too. For example, Kazuya, the pilot of Daimos, has a cheaper Valor than most other characters.

MULTI-PILOT MECHAS:

Then, there are those pilots who are within the same mecha. The first example of these is the Getter Robo mecha, which has three pilots. In the case of the Getter Robo, whichever pilot is currently in control of the Getter Robo has his statistics and skills used for determining the effectiveness of the mecha’s current form.

Getter Robo’s case is unique to itself. Most other multi-pilot mecha units use a different system. An example is the Texas Mack, which also appears early in the game (and in a hilarious scene). It has only one form, but two pilots. One pilot (Jack in this case) is the main pilot, whereas the other pilot is a co-pilot.

Co-pilots do not have any skills whatsoever and they do not have combat ratings either; rather, that is the purview of the main pilot. Consequently, co-pilots cannot be trained with most skill modules, except those that increase their Spirit Points.

The main pilots of multi-pilot units have less skills than those who pilot unique mecha, but they have the advantage of having access to the Spirits of more than one pilot. This is especially so for the case of Voltes V and Combattler V, both of which have a staggering five pilots that give them considerable versatility.

Of course, there are other designs that are intended to balance against these advantages. After all, A Portable was known to be among the harshest of the SRW titles. For example, each of the Getter Robo mech’s three forms has a glaring disadvantage, such as the Getter 3’s considerable slowness. Another example is the Zambot 3 (which is piloted by children), which is one of the least mobile mechs in the game.

UNITS – OVERVIEW:

Most of the units that the player has are, typically, mecha. There are vehicles too, namely spacecraft/aircraft and, of course, the battleships/cruisers/carriers that IPs like Space Battleship Yamato has made famous.

On the matter of the size of the units, there are actually considerable variations in their sizes according to the narrative. However, this ultimately does not matter with regard to their visual representation on the battlefield because of how the Super Robot Wars titles uses a grid system of square tiles to allocate space to each unit.

Besides, Japanese mecha IPs, especially the older ones, are particularly whimsical about their sizes – inconsistent even. Entertainingly so, however, there are moments in the story where characters would make remarks about how huge some of the mecha are. For example, there are comparisons between how small the Aestivalis units from Martian Successor Nadesico are compared to the Daitarn 3.

Anyway, the player cannot field every unit in the fleet in every battle. Apparently, this is due to concerns about their maintenance, something that is indeed brought up in the narrative, especially in the case of the practically unique Super Robots such as the Mazinger Z.

Therefore, the player has to be careful about which units to bring into battle. Unfortunately, the player might have to learn some lessons the hard way about this matter. Despite the age of the game and the proliferation of game guides for A Portable, efficient team make-ups are not easy to achieve.

For example, the player could have advance knowledge that the enemies in a scenario have Disruption Fields, which make them highly resistant to beam weaponry. The player could field melee-heavy and gun-happy units, but enemies that have the Parry skill might appear later in the same mission.

UNIT STATISTICS:

Like the pilots, the units that they are piloting have their own set of statistics. The game combines the two sets of statistics to determine their actual performance in combat.

The units have the usual statistics that one would from expect from war machines. There are hit points and armor, two of the staple factors that determine the durability of a unit.

Then, there is Energy. All units conveniently have enough fuel to power their basic functions, but advanced ones draw on their Energy reserves. Certain weapons and all combo attacks (more on these later) use Energy; obviously, running out of Energy disables their use. Every unit regains some Energy per turn, but this is often not enough to continuously use most attacks that require Energy.

All units do have attacks that do not use Energy (or Ammo), but these are often melee attacks, thus requiring them to get close. Furthermore, units and pilots that are designed for ranged combat are often not very effective in melee.

Energy can be reliably replenished with Resupplies from units that can do so. It can also be restored with the consumption of Fuel Tanks, which is a consumable Part. (There will be more on Parts later.)

TEAMS – IN GENERAL:

Having described pilots and units, their teams would be described next.

The first and main purpose of teams is that pilots from the same team can pilot any of the mecha that are associated with that team. That is so, if the mecha is not so unique such that only a specific pilot can use it. For example, the Daimos can only be piloted by Kazuya Ryuzaki.

The game does not let the player do this so readily from the start of the playthrough. The first team of interchangeable pilots and units are the Mazinger team, which starts with three persons. However, two of them are among the least competent pilots in the entire game.

The player’s first solid experience in switching pilots around is after enough pilots and units have been obtained for the “Gundam Universal Timeline” team, which is composed of characters from the original Gundam series, its sequel and spin-off series set in the same universe. In the narrative, the Gundams (and Mobile Armors) that have been produced for military use thus far have similar controls. In turn, those characters are familiar with these controls, so they can be switched around without much of a problem.

Not all pilots from the same IP can use each other’s machines, however, again due to narrative reasons. For example, none of the pilots from G Gundam can pilot each other’s machines because their Gundams are already so personalized to match their preferred close combat techniques.

CHANCE TO HIT:

Unfortunately, the Super Robot Wars titles have the kind of developers who believe and insist that combat in tactical turn-based gameplay should be decided with factors of luck. That said, there is a chance-based system that determines whether a unit can hit another unit with its attacks in any occasion that is not already scripted. The results are always binary: a hit or a miss.

If there is any silver lining to this, it is that quite a number of the factors that go into the chance-to-hit roll are within the player’s control. These will be described shortly.

UNIT SIZE DIFFERENCES:

Perhaps the most important factor in the determination of the chance-to-hit percentage is the size difference between the attacker and defender. Bigger units have a disadvantage; smaller units hit them more easily. This advantage is partially offset by the bonus damage that larger units can inflict on smaller ones when they do hit. Yet, in practice, the smaller units have the better overall advantage; after all, the bonus damage is wasted if the big ones could not even land hits.

Incidentally, the player will be encountering enemies with a diverse range of sizes, and will be fielding units of varying sizes. The source IPs of these enemies are the main deciding factor. For example, the 1970s “Super Robo” mecha are often huge, so most of them are of size “L”, as are their enemies. In contrast, the Gundams are of more modest and believable size, so they are of size “M”.

Generally, the size of a unit would not change. However, there are some units that the player can trick out with different mods, which can change their size. For example, the Lunar mod for the Aestivalis turns the “S”-sized Aestivalis into an “M”-sized unit (which is actually undesirable).

SEEDED NUMBERS:

The next-most important factor is the list of seeded numbers that has been generated for a mission when it is attempted. To elaborate, instead of rolling a fresh number to decide the outcome of an attack, the game fetches a number from the list. This number is compared to the threshold of success for the attack. If it is lower, the attack is successful.

This means that if the player does not to do anything else other than to reload the game and repeat an attack, the attack is guaranteed to have the same outcome again, with the same exact numbers. This is because the game would be fetching the same seeded numbers again. This was intended to discourage save-scumming for the sake of having a different outcome despite doing the same thing again.

However, several things other than making attacks cause the game to advance down the list of seeded numbers. Making a “suspend save” is one of these. Moving units around is another. Using Spirits is also one. It will take a fresh player a lot of experimentation to identify what would cause the game to advance down the list.

UNCLEAR EFFECT OF RANGE ON CHANCE TO HIT:

Obviously, the intended target must be in the range of an attack for the attack to happen at all. However, when the attack can happen, the effect of the distance between the attacker and the target is not clear. The chance-to-hit appears to change if the attacker is attacking from a different square, but there is no clear pattern that can be discerned.

Shooting at close range does not seem to impart any bonus. Having other units or cover in between the attacker and the target does not appear to change much of anything either.

In fact, the differences in the percentages are small and seemingly random. This gives the impression that a small portion of the percentages may be drawing from the aforementioned list of seeded numbers.

MOBILITY, EVASION & COMBAT RATINGS:

The capability of a unit and its pilot to dodge an incoming attack is determined by the unit’s Mobility statistic and the pilot’s Evasion rating. Both numbers are added together to be set against an attacker’s own statistics, which is the sum of its pilot’s Hit rating and relevant combat rating.

As for the relevant combat rating, there are two: Melee and Ranged. The Melee rating is used for any attack that has been classified as “close combat”; such an attack is labelled with a fist icon in the list of attacks that a unit has. The Ranged rating is used for any attack that is classified as “ranged”; these attacks are labelled with a crosshair.

It is worth noting here that the factors for the attacker are mainly dependent on his/her/its skills, whereas the defender has to utilize his/her unit’s Mobility.

These calculations would be obvious to any veteran of Super Robot Wars, but anyone new would have to learn things the hard way or consult a guide because the game does not have any tutorial for this.

ARMOR AND DEFENCE:

After the gross amount of incoming damage from a landed hit has been calculated, it would be reduced by any pertinent statistic that the unit has for reducing damage. Chief of these are the Unit’s Armor and the pilot’s Defence rating. These two ratings are combined together through an equation (that is not revealed to the player) into a number that is subtracted from the gross damage of landed hits.

It should be mentioned here that it is rare for the defender to have enough armor such that landed hits do next to nothing. Even if it does, there will still be at least 10 points of damage that is inflicted. (The defender will gloat about how pathetic that attack is.)

There are other factors that can reduce incoming damage. These will be described later where relevant.

EVASION EROSION:

Very agile units – and their skilled pilots – have the advantage of simply dodging incoming attacks. However, they cannot dodge everything forever. Every attack that fails to land a telling blow, regardless of how it happened, will inflict an ever-increasing penalty on the Evasion rating of the defender. In other words, relentless attacks on a single target will eventually lead to a hit.

This works more in the favour of enemies, because there would be far more of them than there are the player’s units. Having to resort to evasion erosion to hit an enemy is generally not in the player’s interest, because that would mean spending the turns of units doing nothing much.

AMMO AND ENERGY:

Some attacks can be used indefinitely, such as the basic melee attacks that some melee-oriented units have. Other attacks require the consumption of ammo and energy. For example, Gundams and Zeon mecha of Universal Timeline Gundam often have attacks that require ammunition. For another example, the Mazingers may use their own body parts for their brutish attacks, but they expend a lot of Energy to move about.

Any attack that requires ammo has an ammo counter of its own; they do not overlap with other attacks that require ammo. Obviously, after its ammo counter has run down to zero, the attack can no longer be used without a resupply or reload, neither of which can be conveniently done.

Energy is a more universal resource. Any attack that requires Energy will draw from the same reserve, specifically the unit’s. However, there are other things that consume Energy too, and running out of Energy at a bad time can be devastating.

The Energy reserves of any unit are automatically replenished at a rate of 5 points over every turn. However, this is just enough for basic attacks and flying about. If the player needs the unit to recharge faster, it needs other means, which will be described later where relevant.

FLYING:

Some units can fly. Super Robots, in particular, can do this quite readily. Units that happen to be aircraft or spacecraft are flying too, albeit permanently. Flying allows a unit to circumvent terrain obstructions, like bodies of water and terrain. Incidentally, most maps have a lot of these because they occur on Earth.

Obviously, having flying units is useful if the player needs to have his/her units reach certain pivotal locations sooner rather than later. Not all of the player’s units can fly – especially the Gundams – but the player can grant a unit flight by equipping it with a Flight Module.

Despite its convenience, flying consumes Energy. Generally, the consumption rate is one unit of Energy for every two squares that have been flown over. This can be a problem to units that are permanently flying. However, Mecha that happen to be able to fly can land at any time. In the case of units that can transform, they can transform to their land-based form too.

TERRAIN:

Most units may be giant mecha or war machines, but they are still small things compared to the edifices of man and nature. Thus, in every map, there are terrains that may either hinder or help units, depending on the circumstances that they are in when they are in/on the terrains.

Most squares are relatively empty squares, meaning that they do not provide any bonuses. These are locations that the player would want units to move through when they need to go somewhere else. However, they are not places that the player would want them to be at when they come under attack. Therefore, the player has to be careful about where to place them, because after units have ended their turns, they cannot move again until their next turn.

Then there are squares that provide bonuses to Evasion and Defence. These bonuses are granted to any unit that is on top of them, including even flying units.

There are several grades of these defensive terrain. The first of these grants only a small bonus. These can be tiles with acfew trees, or tiles with water. The second type grants a substantial bonus, and this type happens to be more common than the others. These can be forest tiles, or the ruins of civilization. The third type is actual fortification, which grants the most bonuses. These tend to appear in maps about sieging.

REPLENISHING SQUARES:

Some maps have tiles that not only grant Evasion and Defence bonuses, but also restore the Hitpoints (HPs) and Energy of any unit that is standing on them. This works both ways, so the enemy could have its own units sitting on them too if the player has not been denying these to them.

Interestingly, these tiles are associated with human-made infrastructure that is meant to service mechas and other war machines. For example, the tiles with the highest bonuses are often military bases, usually ones that the player has to protect from enemies. This example is particularly significant, because there are many missions that require the player to prevent enemies from encroaching on Earth Federation bases.

The most notable gap in the design of these tiles is that they do not appear to restore spent ammunititon. On the other hand, this limitation compensates for an advantage that ammo-using units have over Energy-intensive ones.

RESUPPLY & RESTOCKING:

Generally, any unit that is out and about on the battlefield is on a one-way trip to being destroyed. This is certain for any unit that is on the enemy’s side, and so it is for the player’s too if they lack any means of support. However, the player does have such means for most maps, assuming that the player is mindful enough about fielding them and managing the setbacks that they pose.

The first means is to equip units with consumable parts. However, these take up slots that could have been filled with other parts, especially those that improve the performance of units or grant them additional functionality.

The second means has already been mentioned; units can sit on top of tiles that replenish HP or Energy. However, this is slow, and enemies can still inflict enough damage to overwhelm the replenishment. Ammunition is also not restored, as mentioned earlier.

The third means is the most convenient and reusable. There are units that can completely restore Energy and ammo, such as the Boss Borot, Galva and Dragonar-2 (prior to its upgrade). There are not many of these units and they are not particularly tough, however. (The Boss Borot, in particular, is an embarrassment.)

The fourth means is also reusable, though not as convenient. If the battleships are available, the player can have units board them. The units will have their Energy and HP restored significantly over every turn. Any ammunition is completely restocked just before they are relaunched too.

However, the reusable methods come with extra costs. The most significant of these is the reduction in Will, which will be explained later. Considering how important Will is, this cost is the main reason for the player to not resort to them.

Another considerable cost is that units will have to spend their turns not doing anything against enemies. Units that can Resupply can only do so if they have not moved, and they will end their turn doing so; setting them up so that they can Resupply another unit can involve considerable opportunity costs. Obviously, any unit that has boarded a mothership cannot do anything else, and after they are sent back into battle, they must make a move and thus can only use Post-Move attacks afterwards. (There will be more on Post-Move attacks later.)

REPAIRS:

Some units are able to somehow repair other units. Just like Resupplying, there is no clear narrative source that justifies this in the original mecha IPs. Rather, Banpresto has identified pilots and units that have support roles in their IPs, and designated their units as Resupply- or Repair-capable units.

Anyway, most units that can do Repairs cannot do Resupplies, and vice versa. Repairs do not reduce Will, which is just as well because the player will be doing a lot more Repairs than Resupplies.

The amount of HPs restored is not always predictable. However, the amounts appear to be proportional to the percentage of hitpoints that the repair target has remaining.

XP GAINS FROM RESUPPLIES AND REPAIRS:

Resupplies and Repairs grant experience points. This is important, because units that are doing these would not be getting much experience from fighting as they will spend their turns doing what they do.

The amounts of experience points gained appear to be dependent on two factors: how badly the target needs the service, and the level difference between the servicing unit and the target. The latter factor is more significant, so there is an incentive to have the support units prioritize the player’s main-liners.

WILL:

One of the tropes of mecha anime is how the pilots’ courage or determination somehow eke more performance out of their machines. Another trope is how the pilots have to be psyched up before they can use their special attacks, instead of using them right from the start (especially the 1970s Super Robot anime IPs).

These tropes are represented in the gameplay as “Will”, which is the word that is used in the fan-made translation of the game. Will is a multiplier for many things, which include attack ratings, evasion and defence ratings and damage inflicted whenever they are calculated for the purpose of resolving combat. Generally, higher Will means higher performance. Higher Will is also needed to use special attacks.

Generally, Will starts at 100 points, which is the neutral level. There are some parts that can increase the default starting level. Will usually goes on an uphill direction, meaning that any units, including enemies, eventually push out greater performance and become able to use their more powerful attacks.

WILL INCREASES:

Will increases only if something is happening. Units that are doing nothing or simply moving about without getting into fights do not increase their Will.

The most common Will increase is getting into fights and surviving. This increases the Will of participating units. This works both ways. If the player could have a unit be in the way of incoming enemies and have it survive the attacks that would come its way, that unit can have considerable Will earlier than the others. Likewise, if the player could not eliminate an enemy unit within the same turn with multiple attacks, the player risks having that enemy unit use its high-Will attacks, especially if it is a named enemy.

Another significant source of Will increase is the elimination of units. The unit that landed the killing bow gets a considerable increase. In addition, each eliminated unit grants all other remaining units one point. This means that as the battle wears on, both the player’s units and the enemy’s become fiercer.

Last, and perhaps least, there are Spirits that can raise Will. These cost a lot of SPs, but they may be just what the player needs in order to gain an edge earlier in a battle.

There are scripted events in which units – especially those of enemies – would have higher than usual Will when the battle begins. This is usually tied to the narrative of the game, especially the plot elements about rivals and nemeses.

WILL REDUCTION:

Will is generally on a one-way trip to getting higher. However, there are a few circumstances in which Will is reduced.

The first of these is any Resupply. This reduces Will by a staggering 10 points, which can put units below the thresholds that are needed to use their special attacks; Will can even go under 100 through this method. There is no narrative reason for this, but this likely had been implemented in order to balance against the convenience of having Energy and ammunition restored.

The second of these is having units board the battleships. Their Will counters degrade over every turn, though the reduction is not as drastic as a Resupply. Will also cannot go below 100 points through such a method.

The third is any scripted sequence. These are rare, and often affect very specific named characters, such as those that are required to deploy in the next mission.

The fourth means is the Exhaust Spirit. This is a rare Spirit that is only available to characters that are known to have sometimes-insufferable personalities. Presumably, they can wear out enemies that make the mistake of hearing them out. These are costly, but sometimes, suppressing the Will of specific enemies can prevent them from using their most devastating attacks.

ATTACK PROPERTIES:

In addition to their range, damage output and expenditure, attacks may have other properties that affect their versatility in battle. These can be seen in the listing of attacks, which include checkboxes that appear next to their names. Understanding these checkboxes can be a problem at first, due to the lack of any in-game tutorials that mention what they do.

(This is perhaps understandable for the original GBA version, because that was a time when printed manuals were still a thing. The PSP remake has less of an excuse, however.)

“MAP” ATTACKS:

There are some attacks that have been given the label of “Map”. These attacks can hit multiple tiles; their range and area of effect can be seen in their in-game documentation.

There are two types of these attacks: the linear ones and the less-rigid point-of-origin ones. Both attacks show the affected tiles prior to the player’s confirmation of the attack, which is a user-friendly design, at least.

Linear attacks can only ever be directed in the cardinal directions, which gives them limited usefulness in battle. After all, it is rare that enemies would line themselves up to be hosed down. (In fact, the CPU opponent actively avoids bunching up its units if they are on the way towards the player’s forces, unless it has been scripted to do so, such as in the case of the Gespenst mecha.)

Point-of-origin attacks allow the player to select the tile that would be the center of the blast, which makes them more useful than linear attacks.

Before Chapter 20, the only map attacks that the player has are the linear attacks that the battleships can fire off. These are not reliable, due to the matter of size difference that has been described earlier. (All battleships automatically have the largest of unit sizes.) However, there are late-game units with map attacks that the player can use.

On the other hand, before that happens, the Londo Bell will have to fight enemies that do have map attacks. These can be unpleasant, because map attacks work around the fighting system. Therefore, the units that are targeted by the map attacks do not get a choice in what they can do, other than to try to dodge the attacks.

Map attacks can also hit friendlies. In the case of the point-of-origin ones, they can even hit their user if they are within the blast area. Indeed, the player might encounter enemies that have no issues with hitting their own, just to get at the player’s own units.

POST-MOVE:

Some attacks cannot be used if the unit has moved within its turn. This is usually the case for most heavy attacks and artillery shots.

Other attacks can be used after the unit has moved. These are labelled “Post-Move”. Typically, they are attacks that involve melee attacks, or attacks with hand-wielded weapons such as the beam rifles that Gundams usually have.

These designs require the player to consider carefully where to place units so that they can contribute to the battle without moving from where they are.

“MELEE” ATTACKS:

Although it has been mentioned here that some attacks are close-combat-oriented, the game has further stratification of these attacks. This is the label of “Melee” for some close-combat attacks that already use the Melee rating of the pilots.

“Melee” attacks can only be used against enemies that are on the same stratum as the attacker. For example, a ground-based attacker cannot use “Melee” attacks on an enemy that is flying. However, a flight-capable attacker can use these attacks against flying enemies. This limitation also applies to any retaliation attack too, so the player could have flying units mob a ground-based enemy that lacks any close-range ranged attacks.

“Melee” attacks can be parried, which completely negates them. However, since “Melee” attacks rarely consume anything other than the attacker’s turn and parries do not prevent erosion of Evasion, there is not much waste.

BEAM:

Being a game with an obviously sci-fi setting, there are lasers, plasma and accelerated particles that the units will be hurling at each other.

Some of these attacks are labelled as “Beam”. These attacks tend to be some of the most accurate ones. For example, most Gundams have Beam attacks, thanks to their Beam rifles. Most of the war-beasts and robots that alien enemies field also happen to have Beam attacks.

However, there are a significant number of counters against Beam attacks. Chief of these is the presence of water. If the defender is in water, any Beam attacks that land does next to nothing. If the attacker is in water, it cannot even use Beam attacks at all.

Beam Coating is a unit ability that happens to significantly reduce the damage of landed Beam attacks. Distortion Fields reduce even more, possibly even negating them altogether.

However, Beam attacks can never be parried, unlike Missiles or Melee attacks.

MISSILE:

The missile, like the hand grenade, is just so practical that it is rare for a game with a sci-fi setting not to have missiles. This applies to Japanese mecha IPs too.

Anyway, there are generally two kinds of Missile attacks: one of them is practically firing a hunk of metal and explosives that inflicts a lot of damage but is not so reliable at landing a hit. The other kind is an expression of the “Death Blossom” trope, which is a swarm of small missiles. This has less damage but is more likely to land hits than the other one.

Amusingly, Missile attacks can be parried. It can be amusing to watch a mecha cut down missiles with a metal or laser sword (or even a knife).

The hard counter for Missile attacks is the Jammer. This immediately causes any Missile attack to outright fail; the sprites for the missiles even careen about drunkenly as they fly around the defender.

Since Missile attacks must use ammo (obviously), misses, parries or jamming can be quite costly. This is the case for some units that have powerful Missile attacks, like the (player’s) Combattler V and the (enemy’s) Gilgazamune.

GRAVITY:

Gravity attacks are generally unique to units that are associated with the Martian Successor Nadesico IP. The only hard counter for Gravity attacks – other than dodging them – is the Distortion Field, which also happens to be unique to Martian Successor Nadesico units.

There does not seem to be any other property to Gravity attacks, however. This is unfortunate, because it would mean that in any scenario involving Martian Successor Nadesico-related enemies, the player would likely have to field units from the same IP. (Considering that these enemies tend to be of size “S”, the player will have to field the Aestivalis anyway.)

TERRAIN TYPES OF UNITS AND PILOTS:

All units and pilots have a set of ratings that determine their performance when they are fighting in specific types of terrain. There are four main types of terrain ratings: Air, Ground, Water and Space.

In turn, these four types have several rating levels: “S”, “A”, “B”, “C” and “D”. Generally, most pilots have “A” ratings in just about every terrain type. This is because “A” ratings happen to be the default neutral modifier to their performance. Units may or may not have all four types of terrain ratings, though whatever types that they have are generally “A” because they have been designed for such terrain types.

The ratings of units and their pilots combine together to produce a net rating that decide its actual performance in battle across different terrain types. The exact equation that is used for this is unclear, however; it appears to be a mere averaging, but this is not always the case.

Being aware of the terrain types of units are important, because the terrain proficiencies of the attacker and defender do matter in deciding the thresholds of success. For example, Boss of the Mazinger team is the only pilot with an “S” rating on Ground terrain, making him much more effective at fighting while his unit is on the ground. However, he is terrible on any other terrain type.

Furthermore, the terrain type of the unit determines whether it can even appear in a mission at all. For example, the GP03 Gundam, in its full configuration, is an LL-sized unit that is a Space-type-only unit; it does not have any ratings for other terrain types. This means that it can only be fielded in missions that take place in space or space stations.

There are several parts that can allow the fielding of terrain-restricted units in other types of maps. For example, installing a Flight Module or Dustproof part in the GP03 allows it to be fielded on planets too instead of just in space.

TERRAIN IMPEDANCE:

Buildings, forests, mountains and water tiles on planet-based maps impede the movement of any unit that is not flying. In space-based maps, debris and asteroid fields are the obstructions instead. Moving into any of these tiles costs two movement points instead of just one.

The presence of these tiles interferes with the advances of units across the map. Thus, having flight-capable units is a boon in most planet-based maps. Indeed, the player could win a battle by having flying units and the battleship(s) withdraw away from enemies so that the flying enemies advance too far away from their ground-bound compatriots.

DIGGING:

A few units can dig into the ground. The chief example is the driller form of the Getter Robo mecha. It cannot attack while it is underground, but it cannot be attacked either. Apparently, this is meant to get it to somewhere it is needed in order to attack a target behind the frontlines, or at least to get it to somewhere that needs to be reached.

In practice though, there is little practical use for this. Most enemies that are behind the frontlines are likely to be named enemies, i.e. bosses, who delay their commitment to battle and thus lag behind the mooks. Having drilling units like the Getter Robo engage the bosses on their own is usually a terrible idea. Likewise, there are few scenarios where the player needs to get units to somewhere that is mission-critical.

The main benefit of digging-capable units is that they ignore terrain obstructions completely. For example, the observant player might notice that Getter 2 can move much further than most ground-bound units.

SPACE:

Generally, any unit can be fielded in space. However, their performance in space – and the performance of their pilots – can vary considerably. (This is an issue that is raised in the narrative early on in the playthrough.) For example, the Mazinger Z has an “A”-rating in space, but its default pilot, Koji Kabuto, has a “B”-rating in space. (In fact, all of the Mazinger pilots have a “B” in space.)

In space-based maps, any flight capability is ignored. Any terrain obstructions in space maps, such as debris and asteroid fields, are considered to be dense enough that they will impede the movement of almost any unit. The only exception is any digging-capable unit, which can pass through them without any issue.

MISSIONS:

The progress of any playthrough is measured in missions. Each mission introduces plot developments that advance the story.

Many of the missions are based on events in the source IPs, but they do not follow the chronology of the stories in the source IPs, and certainly not their canon. For example, the bold and vicious Operation Stardust was the climax of the One Year War in the Universal Timeline of the Gundam IP. In the story of this game, the One Year War has already happened. Yet, Operation Stardust is featured in the missions in the first quarter of the playthrough, apparently as a re-enactment.

This gives the impression that pivotal moments in the stories of the mecha anime IPs had been reused and adapted for this game. Indeed, the progress of the story can seem like it is ticking checkboxes at times. On the other hand, this has always been the hallmark of the Super Robot Wars titles. Seeing how Banpresto’s writers work the stories together into a coherent assemblage (or an incoherent mess) has been one of the series’ appeals.

ALLIED BUT UNCONTROLLABLE UNITS:

Some missions involve the presence of allied units that are not under the control of the player. Unfortunately and perhaps predictably, their actual performance is terrible because they are CPU-controlled.

These allies are at best spoilsports. Any kills that they make takes away experience points and money that the player could have had. Having to make decisions that would prevent them from stealing kills can be tiresome.

NOT A LOT OF VARIETY IN OBJECTIVES:

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of variety in mission objectives. Most missions will involve clearing all enemies from the map, wherever and whenever they appear. After the appeal of the fan-service that can be had from their appearance has waned, there is the tedium of getting rid of them while keeping the player’s units alive.

Then there are the failure conditions of any mission. One of these is always the need to keep any battleship operational. Of course, this is understandable, because these battleships are critical to the Londo Bell’s campaign. The battleships are also quite tough; only really bad decisions on the player’s part would lead to their demise and a game-over that the player deserves.

The other kinds of failure conditions vary considerably. More often than not, these include the preservation of certain units that may or may not be under the control of the player. Those that involve units under the control of the player are obviously more manageable than those that are not.

In the case of uncontrollable allied units, the units that need to be protected may go to their doom, such as trying to fight against named enemies. There is very little that the player can do about this, because allied units pass through the player’s own units. For better or worse, one of the earliest missions in the playthrough has exactly such a scenario, which is infuriating.

The player could not even use Spirit buffs on them (not that he/she would want to; this would be a waste). The most that the player could do is to have repair-capable units repair them.

Other objectives include holding out for several turns or doing something within several turns. These are challenging, because the terrain of the map and the disposition of enemies would impede the player’s advance.

INTERMISSION:

In between missions, the player can fiddle with the pilots and units that are within the fleet. The weapons of the units or their other systems can be upgraded. The units can be tricked out with detachable parts. The pilots can be given additional training with any training programs that have been earned. The pilots can also be switched around the units, if there is compatibility. The Intermission is also the only time when the player can make individual hard saves.

For this purpose, the Intermission is given a UI that is mostly efficient for the aforementioned purposes. However, it can get cumbersome after the player has unlocked many units and pilots.

MANDATORY DEPLOYMENT:

For ease of gameplay, the intermission screen shows which characters will be deploying in the next mission. This is important, because the player might want to have them ready for the next scenario. Of course, the reason for their mandatory deployment is not explained, if only to prevent spoilers.

Unfortunately, the game lacks a tutorial for the Intermission screen. Therefore, the player has to learn about the various symbols and labels on his/her own, which can unpleasant. For one, the symbols that use alphabetical letters may be initials, or they may be acronyms. The new player has no way of knowing which is which, not without analytical hindsight, at least.

MANDATORY SIT-OUTS:

Unfortunately, the Intermission screen lacks labels that show which units have to sit out the next mission, or at least sit out the first part. This would have been useful for a player with min-maxing tendencies.

Indeed, the intermission screen uses the same symbols for mandatory deployment for units and pilots that would be on mandatory sit-outs.

Of course, one could argue that this omission is to prevent spoilers. Yet, there are labels for which units will be mandatorily deployed, which gives the impression that the omission is a design oversight.

LEAVING UNITS AND PILOTS OR REPLACED ONES:

The Intermission screen will also not show which units or pilots are going to leave the Londo Bell in the next scenario, for whatever reason. Indeed, it will not show who is joining either, though this omission is more understandable. Fortunately, leaving units will return whatever parts that they have been equipped automatically, so that the player still has them to put into units that have yet to be deployed. However, units that are introduced in missions as replacements to existing units do not get to be modified.

Most of the pilots that the player would get stay indefinitely, with the exception of one. This one leaves the Londo Bell permanently, and there is no fore-warning about this. The player could have made the mistake of spending skill modules on this character (for whatever reason; this pilot is not exact).

IN-MISSION SORTIE SCREENS:

Most missions have the player deploying units from the first turn. Some others do not; these require the player to make do with whatever units that are available until the Londo Bell fleet or detachment arrives.

These missions have turning points at which the player is allowed to make additional deployments. For this purpose, there is a slightly-reduced version of the Intermission screen, and the omission of any feature to make game-saves.

Units that are already deployed cannot be re-jiggered. This is understandable, in the case of units that the player has already been forewarned about. The battleships are also guaranteed to be deployed, so this is also understandable. However, units that are introduced in the mission as replacements or upgrades for existing units will not be customizable.

DELIBERATELY MISLEADING INFO ON DEPLOYMENT:

As mentioned earlier, the game shows which units and which pilots will deploy in the mission. Unfortunately, it is not clear about when or how.

In some scenarios, these units might deploy later, due to narrative reasons. In this case, the game actually treats them as unusable units until they arrive; their equipped parts are removed for use on other units. Unfortunately, when they arrive, the player is prevented from re-equipping them with parts: they come empty.

On the other hand, these mission conditions were made for the purpose of upsetting the player’s plans. The surprises for the first-time player can be unpleasant, but then, A Portable was memorable for doing exactly these.

NO REINFORCEMENTS:

Even though the Londo Bell would be getting a staggering roster of units and pilots, it cannot have more units than what the player is allowed to deploy or will be deployed according to scenario conditions.

It has been mentioned earlier that this limitation is said to be due to maintenance issues for completely different and unique mecha. There is also the matter of their different sizes, considering that neither battleship was canonically designed to service anything bigger than Gundams.

Yet, as a battle drags on, the battleships should have been able to deploy the others. A trickle of reinforcements from the battleships would have been appropriate, without imbalancing the gameplay too much.

EXPERIENCE POINTS:

The Super Robot Wars titles always have some kind of progression system for the pilots. Of course, this system involves the accumulation of experience points and the gaining of levels, which in turn improve the capabilities of the pilots.

Experience points are obtained from landing hits on enemies and defeating them. Experience points are also obtained from Resupplies and Repairs, as mentioned earlier.

The amount of damage dealt does not appear to be a factor of the amount of experience points from landing hits. Therefore, the player could presumably squeeze out as much XP as possible from an enemy by hitting it with weak attacks. On the other hand, this exploit is a tedious drag that is not worth the time spent doing so. Experience points from defeating enemies are obviously one-time-only.

In either case, only the unit that is making and leading an attack on an enemy would gain the experience points; any supporting units do not get any experience points.

The amount of experience points gained appear to mainly depend on the difference in levels between the player’s pilot and the enemy pilot (or on-board AI, in the case of automatons). A higher-level enemy grants more experience points, whereas a lower-level enemy grants less.

Therefore, the player will want to have the least experienced pilot inflict killing blows where possible, if the player intends to have even distribution of experience points and efficient accumulation of them.

On the other hand, such min-maxing, coupled with the factors of luck in the gameplay, can be infuriating. Nevertheless, this will help the player prepare for missions where there are mandatory deployments of specific pilots and units.

Interestingly, every next level requires 500 points to be achieved. The scaled experience gains appear to be the main complexity in the experience acquisition system. However, the use of certain Spirits, namely the ones that apply the Gain buffs, can work around this limitation. Having a low-level pilot with the Gain buff obtain thousands of points from a boss-kill and shooting up half a dozen levels can be very entertaining.

KILL COUNTS, ACE BONUSES & UNLOCKS:

Each pilot has his/her own count of defeated enemies. Unlike experience points, kills are always attributed to the pilot whose unit landed the killing blow. This may seem a superficial number, but there are quite a number of benefits that can be obtained from racking up kills.

The first of these is the Ace Bonus for a pilot; this is obtained after the pilot has reached 50 kills. There are no further bonuses to be had from accumulating kills, however, so the player might want to avoid giving them any more kills so that the others can have theirs.

The second benefit is the unlocking of certain mecha, special attacks or mods (more on these later), or even the recruitment of additional pilots. For example, if the player has Kazuya (the pilot of Daimos) reach a high enough kill count, he gains an upgrade to Daimos’s super move that inflicts more damage at the cost of requiring more energy than the original super move.

LOOT:

Defeated enemies drop “funds”, and sometimes other things, such as the skill modules that have been mentioned earlier. The amounts of funds dropped are the same regardless of whoever defeated them. Gameplay-wise, this rewards the player for clearing enemy units from the map – which is perhaps a granted thing.

Narrative-wise, it is unclear how this happens, though it is presumed that being an “autonomous battle group” (according to the narrative), the Londo Bell is expected to see to most of its own supply needs.

Presumably, the Londo Bell is salvaging anything left behind by defeated enemies, which would make sense because the narrative does mention that they recover the wreckage of enemy units. On the other hand, there are scenarios where the Londo Bell is on an urgent mission and time is at a premium. That also presumes that “funds” are the representation of parts that have been scavenged from enemies, but there are points in the narrative where “funds” have been clearly referred to as money.

Anyway, the amount of funds that enemies would drop is not immediately clear. However, enemy units of the same type will yield the same amounts.

Observant players might notice that the size and power of enemies are usually a good indicator of how much that they would drop. For example, named units tend to give the most, followed by the giant mecha war-beasts with many HPs that aliens field. Low-grade mooks like regular Zeon soldiers in their mass-produced Zaku units give the least.

Although it has been mentioned that the funds that enemies drop are the same regardless of whoever defeated them, the Luck buff does double the amount of funds obtained. However, the Luck buff has to be applied through Spirits that have considerable SP costs. Therefore, the player has to make decisions about balancing the use of SPs between combat and loot gains.

UNIT PARTS:

In addition to funds and skill modules, defeated enemies may drop parts. Which enemies would drop which parts should eventually become noticeable to observant players. These enemies will have the benefits of these parts during battle, whereas their compatriots noticeably do not have their abilities. The only exception is enemies with consumables; they will never use them.

These parts can be mounted onto any unit, as long as they have slots for them. There does not appear to be any other restrictions, even for redundancies like equipping a EWACS device on a unit that already has EWACS.

Non-consumable parts impart bonuses like increasing their statistics or imparting some different abilities. For example, perhaps the most coveted of parts are Flight Modules, which give flight capability to units and set their Aerial rating to “S”.

Some parts are only ever available by winning some “secret challenges” in the game. Most of these involve named enemies that would escape or otherwise leave after their units have suffered significant damage. If the player could inflict enough damage in a single attack (with or without supporting attacks) to knock them out, they yield these parts.

Any collected parts generally stay in the Londo Bell’s inventory, unless they are consumables. Consumables like Fuel Tanks and Cartridges are gone permanently after they are used.

There is a wasted opportunity to implement a “marketplace” of sorts that lets the player sell or buy parts, especially consumables. There may be lots of parts that the player cares little for, such as Magnet Coating that would be superseded by Bio Sensors and Apogee Motors.

By the way, amusingly, many of these parts are named after parts and systems that have been mentioned in the mecha anime IPs. For example, Magnet Coatings and Apogee Motors originated in the Universal Timeline of Gundam.

CONSUMABLES:

Consumable items can be equipped instead of parts that improve or diversify a unit’s performance. This is a considerable trade-off, but sometimes what the player needs is not some passive performance boost, but a pick-me-up.

Among these, the Mars Rice Bowl is perhaps the most coveted and precious. These replenish 50 of a pilot’s Spirit Points (never mind that they are eating in the middle of battle). Since Spirit Points are among the player’s most useful and finite resources and Spirits can circumvent many limitations, that opening statement should be understandable.

The second-most important consumable is the Fuel Tank. Considering that many things require Energy, the Fuel Tank’s ability to completely refill a unit’s energy reserves when it is used is very convenient. Granted, it is only useful when used on a unit that already has considerable reserves.

The third-most important consumable is the Repair Kit. Since all of the player’s units are war machines or are meant to support other war machines, they will indubitably suffer damage. Although they can board the battleships for repairs and there are units that can effect repairs, these are relatively slow processes that will not return the units to full HPs immediately. The Repair Kit can do just that.

On the other hand, the Repair Kit will not restore Energy and it does not grant any experience when used. The Repair Kit is also best reserved for units with many hitpoints, namely the battleships, because they benefit the most.

The least useful of the consumable items are Cartridges. These completely replenish the ammo counters for all of a unit’s weapons, if any. They are useful to specific units, like the Texas Mack and the Gundam Heavyarms Kai, which use ammo-dependent weapons. Considering that ammunition is immediately replenished upon boarding any battleship for one turn, this is of limited use.

Perhaps the most appealing benefit of all consumables is that they do not end a unit’s turn, not unlike the use of Spirits.

EWACS:

Certain units, like the battleships, exude an area-of-effect that bolsters the effectiveness of any ally in them. The benefits include bonuses to chances-to-hit and to Evasion ratings. Indeed, the most common tactic is to huddle other units around units that have EWACS. This makes them vulnerable to map attacks, but the bonus to Evasion helps in mitigating the damage from these attacks.

Only a few units have EWACS by default. The battleships are among them, and there are the Galva support fighter and Dragonar-3. The battleships are quite ponderous; the Nadesico, in particular, cannot do anything after moving. Therefore, the player would likely be dependent on the Galva and/or Dragonar-3 for EWACS coverage (and their other functions).

Later, the player gains EWACS devices that can be installed like unit parts on units, which give them player some more options in deployment.

It should be mentioned here that units with EWACS are not subjected to their own bonuses. To gain them, they have to be under the EWACS coverage of other units. Unfortunately, this is not told to the new player.

MODS:

Some mecha can be tricked out to have completely different sets of ratings and attacks. This is the case for some of the Gundams in the Universal Timeline. For example, the Full Armor Gundam is a modification of the original Gundam that Amuro Ray piloted. It is slower, but is better armored and has more powerful weapons. Obviously, if it is fielded, the regular Gundam could not be fielded.

For another example, there are the Aestivalis units, which can have one of four different mods, and different units can have different mods. However, they cannot change their mods during a mission; they are configured to whatever mods that they have for the duration of the mission.

Some units with mods can “ditch” their mods, allowing them to revert to a less-strong but more mobile form. Returning to the example of the Full Armor Gundam, it can ditch its heavy armaments at any time to revert to the original Gundam. Doing so resets its HPs and Energy to full. However, it obviously could not revert back to the Full Armor Gundam, even it boards any battleship.

Any unit with a mod that can be ditched will automatically ditch it if it destroyed; the default regular unit reappears with full HP and Energy. In other words, these mods act like “extra lives”, albeit an extra life that is more akin to Contra’s.

TRANSFORMATIONS:

Some units can transform. The first of these to be introduced is the first-generation Getter Robo. Switching the Getter mecha to the most appropriate form for the moment would be an important lesson that the player should learn. (The player is likely to use the drill form most of the time though, due to its ability to dodge a lot of incoming attacks.)

Some units have transformations merely for the purpose of getting around faster. This is the case for some of the Gundams and Mobile Armors that are associated with the Universal Timeline. They can switch from a humanoid mecha to a fighter plane to move around quicker.

ATTACK SUPPORTS:

Most units can generally only attack once in their turn – unless they have Attack Support. Attack Support is a skill that lets pilots make additional attacks with their units, as long as an ally is an adjacent and is the one leading the attack.

Only one unit/pilot with Attack Support can contribute, however. In the case of multiple units with Attack Support being adjacent to a unit that is initiating an attack, the player gets to pick which unit would contribute. However, the game will automatically pick a default option, which is usually the one that would do just enough damage to destroy the target enemy, or the one that would do the most damage if the enemy is tough enough to withstand both attacks if they land.

Making the most efficient use of Attack Supports would be one of the most frequent things that the player would do, assuming that the player has fielded pilots with Attack Supports. Furthermore, due to how experience points would be awarded, the shrewd would be gaming this system to grant experience points and kills to specific, even different units that were involved in the destruction of the target enemy.

Indeed, Attack Supports will be needed to eliminate certain named enemies that would run away; this tends to happen prior to the final battle with said named enemies (in which they will clearly mention that they have been cornered).

However, there are some limitations to attacks from Attack Supports. They cannot be buffed by the Valor spirit, which is the most notable limitation and one that is not even told to the player. (One of the pilots does gain an exception to this, but only after achieving his Ace Bonus.)

DEFENSE SUPPORTS:

Some pilots have Defense support. This allows them to defend their comrades from enemy attack, as long as they are adjacent to their friends.

These selfless pilots will automatically adopt the Defend stance, taking reduced damage from the incoming enemy attack, assuming that it hits. It likely will hit, because the unit’s Mobility and its pilot’s Evasion are not considered. However, Parries can still occur (though not Double Image or its variants), so it is possible for the defending pilot to not even take any hits.

For all their proclivity towards protecting their allies, however, some pilots have a notably low Defence rating. For example, Shiro of Gundam: 8^th MS Team has this skill from the get-go, but his Defence is rather low. (On the other hand, his default Mecha has considerable armor.)

The most notable setback of Defence supports is that they can only ever be used during the Enemy Phase. They cannot be used to defend against the counter-attacks of enemies that the player’s units have attacked during their own phase. Being able to do so would have improved the complexity of the unit, and it would have been quite balanced anyway if their number of Support uses is not restored in the Enemy Phase.

PARRIES & DOUBLE IMAGES:

As mentioned earlier, Parry allows a unit and its pilot to completely negate an incoming “melee” or missile attack. This can happen during Defence supports too, which can be entertaining whenever they happen.

Double Image allows a unit to completely dodge an incoming enemy attack, including even one that should have a 100% chance to hit. This ability is usually imparted by the pilot’s unit, and is usually only available on unique units. However, the Hyper Jammer is a unit part that can grant this ability. On the other hand, this ability only becomes usable at a Will level of 130, which can be quite high.

(Interestingly, some unique units’ Double Image ability is renamed to something else. For example, the Getter 2’s Double Image is called the “Mach Special”, whereas the other Getter forms’ is simply called “Open Get”.)

Both Parry and Double Image are luck-dependent skills, unfortunately. The skill level of Parry determines the probability of it happening, whereas Double Image has a fifty-fifty chance of occurring.

BATTLESHIPS:

The battleships are simultaneously the most useful yet most useless of the player’s units. They are the most useful because they have EWACS, considerable hitpoints and can replenish any units that have boarded.

Unfortunately, being “LL”-size units, they are unlikely to be able to hit anything. Their captains (which are their pilots too) have rather mediocre combat ratings too. Therefore, the player should not expect them to directly contribute much to the battle. Since units must obtain experience by participating in attacks on enemy units that actually manage to land hits, the player would have to pair them with pilots that have Attack support.

Both battleships have captains with Defence Support, meaning that units that are at risk of being attacked can be placed next to them so that they can be protected during the Enemy Phase.

NO CO-PILOTS FOR BATTLESHIPS:

Despite having a bridge crew, neither Captain Bright nor Captain Yurika has co-pilots for their battleships. This is especially noticeable for the Nadesico, because in other Super Robot Wars games that have the Nadesico, Yurika is not alone.

BARRIER-PIERCE:

Some attacks are powerful enough to ignore many defensive measures. Examples include the Distortion-Field-assisted attacks of the Aestivalis units (which make them potent against enemies with Distortion Fields, apparently).

These attacks can also bypass any Defense supports. There are indeed some enemies with Defense support, such as the units that belong to a certain shadowy faction.

COMBINATION ATTACKS:

Some units can work with each other to perform flashy attacks that happen to have Barrier-Pierce too. These units are usually associated with each other in several ways.

They may be in the same team, such as the Dragonar trio. They may be in IPs that are associated with each other, such as Combattler V and Voltes V, both of which are “Super Electromagnetic” mecha. In either case, the attacks are flashy, have considerably long animations, and all of them have Barrier-Pierce.

To pull off combination attacks, the other units have to be within one tile of each other, either in the lateral or diagonal direction. They can be in a linked sequence too, i.e. the unit at the head of the sequence may be more than one tile away from the last one. It takes some time to observe and learn these positional requirements, however.

These positional requirements do allow the leading unit to gain Attack supports from other adjacent units, as long as the latter are not involved in the combination attack. However, the units that are providing Attack support cannot use combination attacks of their own.

Combination attacks often require the expenditure of energy. At first glance, the energy consumption appears to be small compared to the amount of damage that can be inflicted. However, each of the other units in the combination attack will have to expend the same amount too. Therefore, if any of the other units do not have enough Energy, the combination attack cannot be executed.

Although combination attacks would appear to involve multiple units, only the unit that is leading the attack would have its turn expended. Therefore, it is possible for each unit in a team to perform its own combination attacks when spending its turn. On the other hand, the damage output of the combination attacks depends on the unit that is initiating it, so there is the risk of wasting the other units’ Energy on a relatively less-effective attack.

It should be mentioned here that the pilots do not matter in combination attacks, if the units have switchable pilots. This is noticeably the case for the Mazinger units, which can work together to launch multiple rocket punches, regardless of whoever is piloting them.

COMBINATION ATTACKS NOT LISTED:

For better or worse, combination attacks are not included in any list of attacks. They only appear when the units that can perform combination attacks are near each other. This deliberate design is likely there so there can be surprises for the player, but there could have been an option to include the listings anyway for the sake of experienced players.

ENEMIES – OVERVIEW:

Since there are so many mecha anime IPs in the story of this game, there are also many enemies to be encountered, both numerically and in terms of diversity.

Nevertheless, there are some noticeable trends, most of which are intended to fit the narrative and the progression of challenge. Firstly, human enemies are always fielding mecha. Initially, they field mostly rookie pilots, but as their casualties mount, they begin fielding veterans. The aliens initially field AI-equipped beast-machines because of manpower problems, but as the war grinds on, they begin to field actual pilots.

In every mission, there will always be at least one named enemy. This person may already be leading the enemy battle-group, or they might arrive later after enough mooks have been slain. The latter might even come together with their own small army, just to make things more challenging.

Named enemies and their retinue often stay where they appeared for a few turns before going after the player’s units. That is, unless they have been scripted to stay where they are, such as in a certain scenario where named enemies spawn on squares with base or stronghold tiles. This gives the player some time to prepare for their advance (like occupying any base tiles).

ENEMY PHASE:

Enemies make their move in the “Enemy Phase”. The player could spend the turn of any unit at any order, but the CPU-controlled enemy has to do so in a pre-determined order.

In general, named enemies usually go first. This is perhaps a blessing, because they would have to deal with the full Evasion rating of any target that they attack. They are followed by mooks from the least to the most elite, in that order. This can be distressing, because the least ones might miss and erode the Evasion rating of the player’s unit, making it more likely that their more powerful compatriots can land hits.

STRAIGHTFORWARD CHARGE:

Most enemies, including named ones, lack a plan for getting close to the Londo Bell effectively. They often do not consider the terrain of the tiles that are going to end their turns on. This means that the player could trick them to move onto terrain that they are not good on, if the player has information on their terrain ratings and their list of attacks.

TARGETING PRIORITIES:

Speaking of tricking them, the player can do this by determining their priorities of attack. This can be observed quite readily, due to the lack of any fog-of-war and how the game focuses on their movements whenever they take their turns.

If the player’s units still have most or all of their HPs, enemies will target the least mobile and combat-capable member in the team. Invariably, this is almost always the Boss Borot or Diana A, if either has been fielded. If the player’s units have taken damage, the enemies will target the ones with the least amount of hit points.

If the player could plan ahead, the player could park weak or damaged units next to units that can defend them in the Enemy Phase, namely the battleships. That way, the unit can still make retaliatory attacks when they are assaulted. This tactic is especially useful if the unit’s pilot has a considerable Prevail skill rating. (Prevail improves almost all of the statistics of a unit and its pilot as its hitpoints get closer to zero.)

ENEMIES OF OUR ENEMIES:

There are many factions in the narrative, both human and alien. They might be naturally aligned against each other, such as the alien invaders and human rebels. However, thanks (or no thanks) to the progression of the narrative, the Londo Bell eventually becomes the main threat of all enemy factions. When that happens, all of them practically have an unspoken truce with each other if they coincidentally attack the Londo Bell at the same time. This can seem unbelievable at times.

Of course, gameplay-wise, such scenarios are there to test the player’s ability to fend off different opponents. For example, there is a scenario where the player has to fight Campbellian alien war-beasts from one direction, while fending off Neo Zeon forces from another.

NOTABLY MISSING ANTAGONISTS:

With so many IPs mashed together and so many characters to reveal (and so many units and pilots for the player to manage), there would inevitably be some things that are lost in the creative licensing of Banpresto’s writers. Notably, there are some antagonists that are not represented in the game, despite the presence of some others that might not make sense.

For example, many Gundam antagonists are missing, especially the Titans, who are mentioned in the narrative but never appeared because the game’s story technically takes place after ZZ Gundam. Yet, many of the antagonists from previous entries in the Universal Timeline appear in this title.

NEW GAME PLUS:

After having completed a playthrough, the player is given the option of continuing with the final game-save of that playthrough. This actually starts a new playthrough, but the game fetches some data from that game-save. This data determines the additional things that the player gets at the start of the next playthrough.

Firstly, a sizable portion of the total amount of funds that the player has earned from defeating enemies in the previous playthrough is granted for the next playthrough, regardless of whether the funds had been spent or not. This is a considerable boost from the get-go.

Secondly, any skill modules that the player has not used in the previous playthrough would be made available on the next playthrough - emphasis on "not used". Not using them means that the player's pilots might not have ratings that are competitive enough. Incidentally, the final mission has a considerable number of enemies that drop skill modules, which is only usable in the next playthrough.

Thirdly, any kills that the pilots have achieved will be retained too, together with any Ace Bonuses. If they have met the required number of kills to gain the unlockable stuff that is associated with them, they will automatically unlock them in the next playthrough.

Fourth, and this is the most significant, any improvements that pilots have gained from skill modules are retained. This means that some lousy pilots can be made better over multiple playthroughs, if the player is really ardent about fielding them.

SOUND DESIGNS - OVERVIEW:

The sound designs of the Super Robot Wars titles are perhaps more important than their visual designs. This is because the sound assets tend to be more convincing than the visual assets in giving the impression that the game has made substantial use of the various IPs that are in it. Fortunately, A Portable mostly delivers on this.

SOME GREAT VOICE-ACTING:

The voice-acting is the most entertaining sound design. Most of the voice-overs have been made using enhanced versions of the sound clips that the original voice-actors or –actresses have made. This might be endearing to people who adored the original IPs. Some of the voice-overs also have been recorded for the Super Robot Wars titles too, instead of being extracted from the original anime episodes.

Perhaps the best voice-acting is from Tetsuya’s voice actor. He is as enthusiastic as Koji’s voice-actor, but does not have the latter’s sometimes-irritating boisterousness. Listening to him uttering the moves of the Mazingers (or even the other mecha in the team) is entertaining.

The voice-over lines usually fit the occasion. The most obvious examples of these are the pilots’ utterances of the moves that their Super Robots are making. Even the Universal Timeline Gundam pilots get in the trend of uttering the moves of their mecha, especially if they are using the Funnel drones.

The most entertaining moments of voice-acting are when rival characters confront each other. The most prominent examples of these are the back-and-forth between the Super Robot pilots and their alien nemeses. The hatred between them is amusingly overshadowed by their comical personalities.

SOME DISAPPOINTING VOICE-ACTING:

Unfortunately, there are some disappointing voice-acting too. For some examples, there are some of the voice-actresses for the female members in the Mazinger and Grendizer team. In particular, Jun (Tetsuya’s lover) has a voice-actress that is just not enthusiastic about uttering the moves that the Great Mazinger can perform, despite being quite familiar with it.

At least the poor performance of Kirika’s voice actress is understandable, because Kirika was not a particularly prominent character in the Grendizer IP and her character has an odd speech pattern that is not easy to maintain. (Tetsuya’s voice-actor may have mocked it in his line for a combination attack involving Tetsuya and Kirika).

The worst voice-acting is that for Kayra, a character in Gundam: Char’s Counter-attack that has a rather short screen-time. She has a noticeable lack of lines, and whatever she has, she repeats often, making it clear that Banpresto was not able to get anything more from her voice-actress.

As mentioned earlier, characters that have histories with each other would make special voice-overs when they fight each other. However, this is not always the case. The most disappointing case of this is that for Domon and his canonically-known enemies. His enemies may acknowledge his presence, but Domon does not. Another disappointing case is when Amuro fights Char; neither of them utters any lines acknowledging their rivalry.

NOTICEABLE FILTER QUALITIES:

A considerable portion of the voice-acting has been derived from audio assets of old media, in the case of characters from the old Super Robot IPs. Thus, there are noticeable qualities in the voice-overs. For example, the voice-overs from most of the Super Robot pilots sound like they have been emitted from external speakers. In contrast, the Universal Timeline Gundam pilots have voice-overs that sound like they have been uttered in enclosed spaces, namely the cockpits of their machines.

The most noticeably different audio quality is that of the voice-overs for Banpresto Original characters. They sound clean and disembodied, without any filters.

MUSIC:

The first thing that the player hears from the game is the music. The music has been mostly composed using software, so the player should expect electronic or digital versions of real instruments.

Some tracks are original, such as the ones that the game would use for situations involving Banpresto original characters. Tracks like that for the intermission and those for troublesome developments also happen to be original compositions. The original ones have notably different tones, e.g. the tones that are endemic to Japanese modern music post-2000.

The other tracks are adaptations of the thematic tracks of the various mecha anime IPs. They retain some of their lyrics, such as the silly opening stanza of the Daitarn 3 theme song. Otherwise, most of the tracks are electronic tunes, with lyrics replaced by digital versions of musical instruments. This can seem odd to people who remember the old IPs and their theme songs, but in hindsight, it was perhaps a wise design decision as the tunes do not interfere with the voice-overs for the characters.

(That said, it is difficult to pick out the “one, two, three!” utterance in the beginning of the Daitarn 3 theme song, due to the voice-overs of enemies or Banjo Haran being louder than the song.)

In some cases, the electronic tunes may even sound like an improvement over the original theme songs, especially to the ears of a younger audience, or anyone who may not appreciate 1970’s or 1980’s singing.

THE SAME MUSIC TRACK IN MISSION PREAMBLE AND AFTERMATH:

Unfortunately, there is a noticeable flaw in the musical composition of the game. Before a mission begins and after it ends, there are dialogue scenes that show the developments in the story. Regardless of the current tone of the scene, the same track almost always plays. There are a few exceptions to this, such as the finale.

SOUND EFFECTS:

Although the game would use adaptations of many sound assets from the source IPs, A Portable makes much use of sound effects that Banpresto has made over the years for its Super Robot Wars titles. This is perhaps the wisest decision that Banpresto has made in its history, because the sound assets of the old mecha anime IPs would have been rather abysmal by today’s standards.

Many of the sound effects in A Portable had been used or would later be used in other Super Robot Wars titles, notably MX Portable. Chief of these are the noises that any units make when they move towards their targets in the animated fight scenes. If the player does not enable the animated fight scenes, the player would be hearing more generic noises, such as the sounds of units making attacks and hits landing.

Nevertheless, they do not sound terribly dull. Banpresto has taken care to make sure that each sound clip would be endemic to the Super Robot Wars series, while also sounding familiar to its followers.

VISUAL DESIGNS - OVERVIEW:

The game is a Playstation Portable remake of a Gameboy Advance title, so one should not expect things such as fully 3D graphics (though Banpresto would try to venture into these, for better or worse). Most of the graphics are 2D layers, and Banpresto has only just mastered spliced-sprite animations. Furthermore, the limited installation size for PSP titles meant that there can only be so much snazz.

Consequently, the player may be seeing things that are both gratuitous and disappointing. For example, there is considerable effort that has been invested into the spliced-sprite animations of some powerful attacks. However, the gratuitousness of these animations is damaged by the close-up zooms of the sprites, which become pixelated because they are not made in high resolution.

SUPER-DEFORMED MECHA:

Like the other Super Robot Wars titles, the units in A Portable has super-deformed looks, e.g. oddly proportioned body parts. This is noticeable for the various Gundams, whose heads seem comically large. The most entertainingly and goofily deformed units are the Aestivalis and Quebeleys, which seem squat.

Indeed, people who have watched the original mecha anime series might consider some of Banpresto’s super-deformed adaptations to be a tad chunky, with exaggerated body parts. The Daitarn 3 is such an example; it is a lot leaner in the original, whereas Banpresto’s version has rather pronounced armour cladding.

SPLICED-SPRITE ANIMATIONS:

Banpresto is among the earliest game developers to adopt spliced-sprite animations. Having mastered doing so, it has remade one of its early Super Robot War titles with these visuals. The results are entertaining, at least; watching the mecha move their body parts around with almost no noticeable seams in the shadowing is quite gratifying.

On the other hand, the contact points between the sprites of different units can result in some hilarity. For example, the Gundam GP03’s point-blank mega-beam shot almost always seem to connect with the target unit’s crotch region, if it has a lower body.

BACKGROUNDS:

One tradition that Banpresto has set for itself is to have constantly shifting backgrounds when fights occur. This is to give the impression of motion, even when the mechas are not even moving.

The backgrounds are endemic to whatever tile that the unit is on in the main map view. This was common among tactical RPGs that originated from Japan at the time.

The backgrounds are surprisingly diverse. In particular, there are background views for locales that only appeared a few times in the story, such as the Solomon Base.

NO CLEAR TRACTION:

As mentioned earlier, the backgrounds in fights are constantly shifting, even if the units are not moving. This resulted in some hilarity, such as the impression that the mechas are sliding around on the ground. An even funnier sight is mecha standing in the air, or even bracing itself in the air for a powerful attack (like the Full Armor Gundam firing its shoulder cannon.

(Banpresto would eventually make more convincing sprite poses for aerial views and less dynamic backgrounds when units are on the ground in its later games.)

STATIC PORTRAITS:

Perhaps the most disappointing visual design in this remake is the static portraits for the characters. In contemporary Super Robot Wars games, Banpresto has implemented more than one portrait for each character. Yet, it did not do so for this remake, even though it has made the spliced sprites for units and animated them. This omission becomes noticeable when characters are expressing emotions that are clearly different from the emotions that they are expressing through their default portraits.

CONCLUSION:

Super Robot Wars A Portable may not solve the problems with Banpresto’s games, such as their preponderance of percentage-based gameplay. However, it is more balanced and challenging than most other titles, which depend more on fan-service to sell themselves. It might not be the best entry point to the series for mecha anime buffs due to its use of very old IPs, but it has paid mostly respectful homage to those IPs with the adaptation of their individual stories.