by Stephen DeckAlso available on PlayStation 4
Review written by Stephen Deck; originally published 7/13/2019 on Teacher by Day, Gamer by Night
Super Robot Wars T is a massive crossover of roughly two dozen mecha game and anime series many of which are quite obscure in the West in one massive strategy RPG experience. Due to difficulties with licensing issues, only a small handful of games in Super Robot Wars series have been released in the West despite the series including more than six dozen entries if you include spin-offs and the like. Technically, this wasn’t released in the West, either, but fortunately, for me and like-minded English speaking gamers, the Southeast Asia release of Super Robot Wars T included English subtitles on both Switch and PS4.
Given that this was my first SRW experience, I wasn’t sure what to expect going in aside from an SRPG. That alone didn’t tell me the whole story; would it be like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Golden Sun, SD Gundam, or something entirely different? In the end, what the game offers is a cross of SD Gundam and Fire Emblem; the gameplay feels almost identical to the recent SD Gundam G Generation Genesis with more of a Fire Emblem-esque focus on characters rather than using in-game currency to assemble your own mobile suit army. Fortunately (or I suppose perhaps, unfortunately, depending on your perspective and taste), the game omits Fire Emblem’s permadeath; unless that unit was a key part of that chapter’s story, any destroyed units will be right back in your roster for the next chapter.
So what IS the story of Super Robot Wars T? That’s…complicated. Because it tries to blend so many series that take place in completely separate universes – a feat it pulls of brilliantly, all things considered – the story is SUPER convoluted and all over the place. It makes sense for the most part, but it’s definitely not easy to follow. Basically, your avatar/protagonist works for a company called VTX Union and is working on manufacturing a prototype mobile suit to pitch to the Earth Federation Forces for adoption as the EFF’s new mass-produced suit. Then, as if straight out of the Bush administration, terrorists attack! Your workgroup, VTX’s Special Section 3, ends up working with the EFF to weed out these terrorists and end up discovering a sinister plot to disrupt the stability of the Earth’s government. Actually, you end up discovering like six or seven different plots, each more sinister than the last, that are all being put in motion all at once. Not only do you have to contend with terrorists, but you also have to battle Neo Zeon, the Martian Successors, the Jupiter Empire, the Jovian Federation, the 31 Machine Primevals, space monsters, Dr. Hell, some probably-a-pedophile priest-looking dude with a claw, whatever Rita Repulsa-looking hoe is the antagonist in Magic Knight Rayearth, some aliens from God knows what galaxy called the UND, and probably a couple of other groups of bad guys I forgot about it. Yeah, it’s a wild ride, but for the most part, the game’s pacing and storytelling (with an admitted flawed translation in places) manage to keep the plethora of plot threads going smoothly with minimal narrative confusion.
While various Gundam series only make up about 1/3 of the units in the game, I’m a gigantic Gundam slut, so aside from Spike’s Swordfish from Cowboy Bebop and two Super Robot Wars original units that I took a liking to (one of which is my protag), my entire team consisted of Gundams. There’s nothing quite like going up against space monsters with Zeta Gundam, ZZ Gundam, Gundam Mk-II, Nu Gundam, HiNu Gundam, two different Crossbone Gundams, two mass production Gundam F91s, Burning Gundam, Dragon Gundam, Bolt Gundam, and Noble Gundam. GUNDAM GUNDAM GUNDAM. I mean, I COULD have used Rayearth, GaoGaiGar, Mazinger Z, Brownie, or Dann of Thursday, but those are Gundams and therefore are inferior. The variety is fantastic, however; you end up with something like three as many units as you can even field, so there’s an enormous about of unit variety. Between missions, you can spend accrued funds to upgrade suits, use special training to give pilots an XP boost, attach extra parts to enhance mobile suits, and even juggle your pilots around to different suits within a series. For example, I had Elle from ZZ Gundam piloting Nu Gundam, and I had Fa from Zeta Gundam piloting a Jegan.
Visually, the game looks fantastic. The animations are crisp, clear, and fluid, and the character models all look superb. The characters keep a roughly homogeneous look so as to appear to be from the same universe for the most part while still maintaining the essence of each series’ unique art styles. Magic Knight Rayearth characters, being guilty of the super stereotypical 90s anime gigantic eyes, stand out the most in terms of appearance, but other than them, pretty much everyone looks like they all fit in together. The same is true of the mobile suits. Gundams still look distinct from Armored Troopers and the Brave Express robots, but none of them look out of place from one another. That’s quite the accomplishment for the game’s art designers to have pulled off in my opinion. The battle animations – which are literally the most amazing battle animations I’ve ever seen in an SRPG – are just the icing on the cake. They can be rather lengthy, so I ended up skipping most of them, but they’re freaking amazing and arguably the most badass thing about the entire game.
The game’s soundtrack is also almost perfect. As one would expect, it incorporates iconic music from each of the various series, and my one and only complaint with how this is done is that the transitions are jarring. Whenever you use a unit, the game plays the music from that unit’s series. The only problem is that in the span of two or three minutes, you could go from Cowboy Bebop’s high energy jazz to Gundam’s more orchestral battle music to GaoGaiGar’s…whatever rock/jazz/vocal spasm genre that is. Individually, they’re all pretty great and fit the tone, but the transitions are a bit rough. It also would have been nice to be able to disable certain series’ music as the theme from Magic Knight Rayearth makes me want to pierce my eardrums with an ice pick. It is, however, a small price to pay for Cowboy Bebop.
I truly cannot overstate how much I loved this game. The just over 60 hours I spent with it were an absolute blast, and I can absolutely see myself replaying the game in a few years after I’ve seen more of the series that lent characters and units to it. The fact that so many different series with such drastically different styles and characters were so relatively seamlessly blended together into a single game with a single continuous story still astounds me and in my opinion, really blows a hole in the “Infinity War is the most ambitious crossover” claim. When you’ve got Spike, Amuro, Van, Guy, Harlock, and Koji all on the same battlefield, THAT is the most gloriously ambitious crossover hands down. If you’re not a fan of mecha anime or strategy RPGs, then there’s probably not much here for you, but if that is your jam, then you absolutely owe it to yourself to check this game out. SE Asian English imports aren’t the cheapest things in the world, I know, but this one is absolutely worth the expense if you’re able to spare the cash.
