Super Robot Wars is one of those series I've always wanted to play, but haven't been able to because of the limited availability of the series in English. I haven't been terribly interested in the Original Generation games that have been localized either, seeing as they lack the crossover element that is the main draw to the series. So I was delighted to find this hack when I went looking, and though this game took a long, long time for me to beat once I finally got around to it, I can say without a doubt that the experience was well worth it.

So let's get into things. The story, as one might expect from such a crossover, is a beautiful mess. There's a cast of about, oh, I don't know, 300 or so (about six pages in pilots alone), many of which have similar appearances and characterizations. And of course, that's not even getting into how all the stories of the various series are meshed into one. However, what I was surprised to find is that the game does a very, very good job of getting you to know which character is which, what series they belong to, and whatnot, even if you're unfamiliar with the series in question. The game features a good number of series; to be specific, it has SPT Layzner, Martian Successor Nadesico, Space Knight Tekkman Blade, Combattler V, Voltes V, Mazinkaiser, Full Metal Panic, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Super Bestial Machine God Dancouga, Brain Powered, Hades Project Zeorymer and Mobile Fighter G Gundam alongside the original characters they created for the game. Full disclosure here: I'd seen all of Mazinkaiser, G Gundam and Dancouga before playing this game, so that probably helped in making me familiar with the cast. However, these aren't the primary series featured in this game. That honor goes to Nadesico and, unfortunately, Gundam SEED. SEED makes up a large portion of the plot, and even though I have not seen a minute of that show, I am now sufficiently turned off from it based on the events I've seen in this game. But anyway, it is surprisingly hard to get everyone mixed up when they all have their own specific robots, power suits or support craft that they pilot. You associate the character with that machine, that gameplay function, and your brain is just able to compartmentalize it to the point where you remember. Though granted, the huge amount of time you spend playing the game helps.

That said, it's obvious that some of the series fit into the main plot far better than others. Zeorymer, for example, integrates all of its own events fairly well with the knowledge of the mysterious figure of Masaki Kihara. He's able to provide info on what happened in the original plot. Of course, Gundam SEED and Nadesico fit in pretty well too, what with the story being designed around them. Brain Powered also unfortunately gets lots of focus, and that was another series the game turned me off to due to the dull characters and the uninspired mecha. Beyond that, however, it starts to get... interesting. You have some series, such as Mazinkaiser or Voltes V, which make up a small share of the story and are fairly self-explanatory, but seem more like distracting divergences from the main plot. And then you have others like G Gundam that make very little sense in context despite the story's best attempts at explaining and shoehorning elements from the series in (I'd be very confused as to who these people were if I hadn't watched the series). And then finally, you have series such as Dancouga and Combattler, which have little to no relevance to anything at all and are pretty much only there to give you an extra unit or two and have a token cameo from a series character. It's a bit confusing in Dancouga's case. Given the military aspect of that series, one would think it would fit right into this game. But I digress.

As far as the original plot of this game goes... it's not very well done. Granted, at the time of this review, I've only done the playthrough for the female character, but I assume the male one is largely the same (and judging from what little I've done on my new game+ file, it is). It's another one of those instances where they don't introduce the villain until the plot is almost over and then proceed to dump info on you to make you care before you kill him. In fact, most of the plot is like that. They keep you in the dark about almost every single detail until the story's almost over, and even then, you still have a few questions remaining once all the answers are given. It needed better pacing, and it certainly needed to fit in better, because like many of the series, it doesn't really mesh well with the UEFA vs ZAFT conflict that so much of the game revolves around.

But enough about that. The bottom line about the story is that it works in some places and in others it doesn't, which is inevitable when you have a crossover like this. There's a very, very small chance that any person will enjoy every single series in this game, even when you factor out those series that have no representative events. However, I can say that if, like I was, you're not familiar with every single series in this game (and I doubt that most people are), this can be a good way to get acquainted with them. For all the bad things I said about Gundam SEED and Brain Powered, the game now has me keenly interested in watching Nadesico, Tekkaman Blade, SPT Layzner and Voltes V, and I've already seen a fair bit of Combattler V since I started to play. I just couldn't resist watching a robot that fights with yo-yos.  Zeorymer and Full Metal Panic, I find myself favorably indifferent towards. I enjoyed what little I saw, but it didn't quite inspire in me a want to watch like the others did. Well, Zeorymer did at first, mind you, but then I looked up some info about the series and got turned off to it, which I could see happening if I saw more of the Zeorymer events in the first playthough.

Let's talk gameplay. It's pretty obvious this is where most of the effort in a SRW game goes, and this is where the game really shines. I mean, it is just a standard turn-based strategy game at its core, but here's the thing that makes it special: just about every unit in the game is unique. Oh sure, they all share some common features. Some even have the exact same design (though this is true of surprisingly few of them). But each and every one has something that makes them stand out in some way. Kurz's Gernsback, for example, has a different attack from Mao's otherwise identical Gernsback. Not to mention a different pilot with a different set of spirit powers and a lack of a fin on its head. Most of the Brain Powered units are clones of each other in terms of design and abilities, but their pilots set them apart. And really, this is what sets the game as a whole apart from any other bog standard strategy game. Instead of having a bunch of no-name grunt units to command as you would in something like Advance Wars, you have a whole cast of unique characters with unique robots with unique attacks and their own personalities and uses for each one. You'll get attached to each character and each mecha as you play and you'll really try your hardest to prevent any of them from being shot down. I restarted entire missions just because my Blue Earth support unit got destroyed. I could have likely finished the mission without it, but I certainly didn't want to.

And in all fairness, the units in this game (and SRW at large, I presume), are incredibly versatile, each having a surprising number of functions. Take Mazinkaiser, for example. At first blush, it's an obvious tanking heavy hitter, and indeed, that's mostly what it's good for. Slap a ton of mobility upgrades on it, however, and suddenly you have yourself a nigh indestructible god of war that won't ever get hit and will take barely any damage even if it does get hit. The problem with this being that enemies will know better than to target Mazinkaiser and will aim for someone less mobile instead, transforming it from a tank into merely a heavy damage dealer. More positively, Boss Borot from the same series looks like nothing more than a support unit at first, having little armor, horrible mobility and laughable attacks. Upgrade its weapons and wait until its pilots level up and you'll find yourself with a legitimate boss killer on your hands, pun fully intended. A boss killer that, mind you, still functions great as a support unit because it can still repair and supply other units. Because of this kind of versatility, the loss of even one unit can be fairly profound since it limits your options on the battlefield quite a bit.

Take, for instance, the case of Gundam Rose. It's a fantastic unit, able to hit enemies close and far away, it has a map attack that can damage multiple enemies at once in an area of your choosing, and its pilot has a fantastic set of support abilities. Not to mention it is required for and has access to the most powerful attack in the game, the Erupting Shuffle Alliance Attack. Now imagine that your fighting the final boss and out of nowhere the boss hits you with an atrocious map attack that ends up blowing up Gundam Rose in the crossfire. Not that I'm speaking from experience, but you just lost one of the best distance fighters, a unit with a map attack of its own, and the ability to do the Erupting Shuffle Alliance Attack for the rest of the battle. Now do you see why the loss of just one unit can be devastating? Granted, not all units are capable of all the things Gundam Rose can do. Some will always have a particular role that they will stick to. The aforementioned Blue Earth will always be a support craft, as alluded to earlier. Its attacks just don't measure up to anything else you can put on the battlefield. The Aestivalis units will pretty much always be hit and run light attackers. But for a lot of units, there's so much that they're capable of that losing one feels like the worst thing even if it means nothing other than the fact that you can't use it anymore and that you'll be paying a small fee to have it repaired at the end of the mission.

Unfortunately, however, that is this game's main strength, as the attacks have surprisingly little in the way they vary themselves other than animation. You have a few attacks that will lower a stat or two, but nothing that will cause serious change, such as a "poison" status effect or whatever the robot equivalent of that would be. There's not much variance in the missions either, with most of them amounting to "kill all enemies." Granted, I'm happy to see that, but I'd like more changes than I got.

Graphically, the game is a bit of a mixed bag. The attack animations, of course, look splendid, but other than that, there's really not much to the game. There's some nice maps, I guess, and a few backgrounds, but that's about it. There's no character sprites outside of battle sequences except for the OCs and their mechs (and these are shown very rarely), so most of the story is just character portraits and textboxes set against a backdrop. Now I can tolerate that, but I do find it rather jarring when having to switch from gameplay and back, and it doesn't do a whole lot to keep your interest if you're not into the story. You kinda just want to skip the dialogue and get to the gameplay, because that's where there's actually stuff to see. On the bright side, there are a few CGs for certain events, and while they're nice, I do feel some of them could have been done better. The final scene in the G Gundam plot comes to mind; you can barely make out the characters.
 But other than that, it all does look well done. That's about all I can say.

Musically, you've got mostly remixes of songs from various anime done for GBA, and some of them impressively sound better on the GBA. "Reason" comes to mind. "Fire Wars" and "Majin Kenzan" unfortunately got the short end of the stick, but they're serviceable enough. It all sounds good, though some tracks are a bit dull, such as "You get to Burning." And it is a little irritating how the music reverts to the same song after passing every turn. It's alright until you're 30 stages in, look at the turn counter and realize you've heard that song come on literally 500 times. Especially since almost all of the other music in the game is better.

SRWJ is a really nice package for we English-only plebians. It's a stand alone title, so no real context is required (though doubtless some knowledge of Gundam SEED would help), and all in all is a great strategy game featuring lots of characters you probably like. Enjoy it, and make sure you light a fire in your soul.

Even though I have never heard about this game, yours was an excellent review. Perfect structure (even without explicit titles), lots of details and some comparisons with other games. Although I have to ask: is the game so large that it deserves most of its attention on the plot and gameplay? You barely talk about the other components.