Super Robot Wars Z impressions

You know a game is big when you play the first fifteen levels and only feel comfortable enough with it to give impressions. But such is SRW: "motto, motto" is still the name of the game. More and more. If I were one of those publishers who listed how many numbers their videogame has on the back of the box, I'd have to cancel publishing this game because my tiny plastic videogame box could not accommodate it. The closest phenomenon to SRW that exists in videogames is probably Smash Brothers, whose last installment many gamers awaited as Nerd Event of the Century. But Smash's scale and ambition are miniature compared to SRW, which, in this outing and many others, not only smashes together 40 years of robot anime (!), but writes some more pages in its own original mythology. That mythology has grown so large that it's branched off into its own successful franchise-- completely devoid of licensed characters-- which has made it to three games and, ironically, two anime series. Frankly, SRW is convoluted and silly, but we love it, and the team working on Z has never made it more evident that they love it too.

I've addressed battle animations, but now that I'm playing the game I want to make the point that it's not just the big-ticket attacks that get this kind of attention to detail: it's every stupid little thing the robot or the minor support character ever did. Animations for weapons that were even boring in the anime (Gundam head vulcans, for example) have taken on a bit of a grand scale. Series producer Takanobu Terada says he's got 14 people working on these animations, and I'm pretty sure that whatever they're getting, they deserve a raise. This past generation, SRW been showing us the hands-down best in videogame 2D animation (disclaimer: it's not actually interactive), and the work in Z is on a whole other level even from the recent and stunning Original Generation games. I've been giving you Youtube clips, but Youtube doesn't really do justice to the clean, sharp look of the sprites: when I first saw the game on my TV, my jaw dropped yet again. Still, battle animations have been made to serve the game, not vice versa: because sometimes you just want to play the damn game, loads are extremely fast, you can fast-forward, skip, or outright turn battle animations off when need be.

And when hyping SRW, we often forget there's a really good strategy RPG down there somewhere, with, perhaps, a bit more emphasis on the latter than the former. Right now, non-readers like myself are pretty much out of luck knowing whatever the hell is supposed to be going on here, but it's apparent that Orguss is serving as the framework of the plot, with the original hero characters frequently being teleported from one reality to another: hijinx ensue early on when the cast of Zeta Gundam find themselves in the world of Gundam Seed Destiny and, presumably, stare in slack-jawed horror at botched plagiarisms of themselves. Speaking of plagiarisms, the main villain seems to be a silly evil twin of a certain established SRW character. I won't spoil this mysterious character's mysterious and not at all transparent identity, but to give you an idea, his name is Asakim. Head in my hands, over here. To help the player sort all this funny business out, most of the PS2 games have a "library" mode where players can look up arcane terminology or get a refresher on the cast of hundreds. This is probably really helpful if you can read Japanese: I played Original Generation 2 in English and I only barely understand what the hell happened in that game.

 The engine itself isn't too far from what it was, with some tweaks on certain systems: Z has really cracked down on the systems that were easy to abuse in OG and forced some more strategic play by making your guys a little weaker and enemies a little more dangerous. The game's also added an avalanche of new units, and-- since we have to be just like the original shows here-- some of them have had really good gameplay devices cooked up to accomodate them. And of course, you can micro-manage your favorite units into your strongest units: I'm putting all my money into Team Tomino Gone Mad: King Gainer, the Walker Galliar from Xabungle (of the famous ICBM Toss), and Turn-A Gundam.

Also, as ever, the difficulty level is player-adjustable: collect "SR Points" by finishing special tasks in-game that range "not so tough" to "ugh FUCK YOU FUCK YOU", and game difficulty will increase accordingly. If that isn't enough for you, EX Hard mode unlocks when you beat the game, and having played much of EX Hard mode in OG2, I can assure you that you will be completely miserable and have no fun playing it whatsoever. If that's your thing.

In other "unfun things in SRW" news, quicksaving and reloading is so fast that your game is reloaded before you can even let go of the Select button. Hell, you don't even have time to read the load screens. Either of them. This is a game that knows its players: if you decide to get the SR Points, for example, you're going to find yourself reloading constantly so that everything goes just right. You usually have to in order to accomplish the goal you're given. Of course, you don't have to get the SR Points. They don't do anything in this game but make it a bigger pain in the ass. But some of us-- myself included-- are compelled. It's a pretty vicious circle. I just had to skip a point today because, God damn it, I didn't want to suffer anymore with the mission.

So I guess you should ignore me and just play Easy mode. That's what Terada does, and I'm starting to see his point.

Comments

[astrange]

Every time I refresh RSS this entry shows up as unread again, what's with that :(

[Anonymous]

You serious? Playing easy mode?
How disgusting
The only people allowed to play in easy mode
are elementary school kids.