Thursday, February 3, 2011

Super Robot Wars Alpha 3


Another SRW title that I finished!

  

Yesterday i just finished this game after months of playing the game by far this is the longest SRW that i had ever played. This SRW title is known as the title that had the largest number of the casts in SRW games and so far none of other SRW title match the number of the casts.


To accomodate the large number of the cast lists, this game use Platoon system where each platoon worth 5 points and you can arrange the units to be put in each platoon. Each squad has leaders which had leader bonus skill that vary among the characters. The members in the platoon will assist the squad leader in attacking if they had Platoon attack which is in PLA symbol in the move list of the mecha. You need to arrange the Squad wisely so that each platoon had enough firepower to fight. I would recommend each platoon at least have one powerhouse and the platoon that has Super Robots are supported by mecha that can repair or resupply.


In this game you can choose 1 out of the 4 protagonist to play as and they had their own capabilities. Each protagonist will have somewhat different story though the overall story is not changed. Alpha 3 mainly use the series of Gunbuster, GaoGaiGar Final, Macross 7, Ideon and Gundam Seed as the main stories supported by other mecha title as well.


  I used Touma Kanou as my Original protagonist in the first run despite Dis Astranagant is my personal favorite. I would say i am completely impressed by this guy. Touma starts as ordinary guy who caught in the middle of mecha fight and he end up piloting RaiOh as his mecha. Initially he is pretty weak however with the training of other Super Robot Pilots such as Tetsuya or Cyborg Guy and his perseverence, he become a really badass guy on his own.


This is the Top 3 Ace pilot in my first run. Touma is the ace because he had already racked up the kill counts by Plasma Dive/Plasma Spiral Dive from the beginning of the game while Ryusei managed to kill lots of grunt as well thanks to his Banpreios who got a post movement MAP attack. Guy managed to the 3rd because of COURAGE and Hotblood(thanks to Goldion Crusher actually).

These are the units i would recommend to use in this game in no particular order.

1) Ideon: This guy is fricking Overpowered, since this guy had access to attacks with 9999 power which makes it lives up to reputation of Deus Ex Machina. As long as you beef up this guy's defense you won't had trouble activating the condition for Ideon Sword/Gun which easily deal 30k to 40k of damage to bosses(Ideon's HP must be below 50%).
2) Genesic GaoGaiGar: 2nd strongest guy in the game since Goldion Crusher has 8100 base power attack which easily reduce his enemies into light too bad it is only one time use per stage
3) Banpreios: Solid Super Robot with awesome 3 Seishin pools(later become 4). This guy is powerful due to his Post Movement Map Attack that doesn't hit allies and had pretty big range.
4) Daizengar and Aussenseiter: Both DGG are awesome on their own, Daizengar is perfect boss killer while Trombe easily decimate high tier grunts such as the Barshems with his SturmAngriff. Tatsumaki Zankantou is really powerful as well
5) Nagahama Trilogy(Combattler V, Voltes V and Daimos): Each of them are solid super robot but when they team up together they can perform Nagahama Special or Choudenjii Reppu Seikenzuki which is fantastic with the touch of classic robot series.
6) Shin Getter 1: Stoner Sunshine is your staple boss killer moves while it got Shin Getter Spark which is pretty devastating as well.
7) Final Dancougar: Glass Cannons and another Boss killer. What make this guy is special is that each 5 pilots of this mecha had Hotblood which assure that this mecha won't run out of powerful attack though Dancougar sucks energy like there is no tomorrow.
8)Gunbuster: The most costly unit in the game since it cost 4 platoon points for the unit though it is really poweful. Super Inazuma kick will kill bosses easily and Gunbuster had access to MAP attack with 100 Willpower requirement only.
9)Virtualroids: these guys from Virtual On are one of the best Real Robot in the game. Even without mobility upgrade, enemies will rarely able to hit these guys. Temjin is pretty solid while Fei Yen had the cheapest Bless seishin in the game.
10) Hi Nu Gundam: Easily the best gundam in the game, Amuro has really good stats and grunts are hardly able to land a hit to this gundam. Make sure you upgrade Nu Gundam fully since the upgrade is carried over to this gundam.
11) Reideen: Later in the game it has access to the one of the strongest MAP attack in the game and God Voice is really powerful as well.
12) J-Ark: Had really good mobility and movement for a Super Robot, a solid mecha as well.
13) Mazinkaiser: One of the most recurring cast in the series and this guy had powerful post movement ALL attack with no willpower requirement and Kaiser Nova hit pretty hard as well.

This is one the game that Most Real Robot sucks terribly. Most Gundam units are easily getting killed and their weapons are pretty weak to scratch boss units and Super Robots in this game can easily decimate grunts with their ALL or MAP attack which reduce the significance of these Guys. Macross units are slightly better than Gundam due to their mobility but their good ALL attack typically have limited ammo count.


  SRW Alpha 3 difficulty is not particularly the worst one though by far this is one of the harder SRW that i have played. This game is really lengthy since it got 60 missions and most missions roughly take 1 hour to clear while the end game stages almost take 2 to 3 hours each. The most frustrating aspect of this game that each time that there are route splits, you need to reassemble the platoon units and you need to reequip the parts for units that returned from other route.The bosses are pretty tough as well since there are plenty of bosses had more than 100k of HP and hits really hard. You also had bosses that had post movement MAP weapon which easily decimate your units. The final boss is not that hard though it is quite tedious to kill this guy. Kaiser Ephes easily kill your weaker members in a single shot with its ALL attack. Fortunately he didn't used his MAP attack which makes things much harder than it supposed to be.


Final Stage is pretty memorable since the supporting characters(even the dead ones) are cheering the casts to go on fighting against the Kaiser Ephes. The final stage is quite crazy considering the minions that accompany Kaiser Ephes had really had lots of HP and when you kill some of them, there will be reinforcements that will keep coming.


Another memorable moment in the game is that Reideen, GaoGaiGar and Shin Getter 1 are helping Gunbuster to reactivate Buster Machine 3 which results Noriko can stay with the team members rather than waiting until 12000 years to return to the earth.


And the last one is the Epic CHESTO of Zengar to Kaiser Ephes. Just like everytime Zengar is stealing the spotlight in the game.


After finishing SRW @3 i am planning to take a break from this game and playing SRW OGs. I will do 2nd run sometime in the future and i will be using Selena for it and saving the 3rd run for Cobray's route.

1 comment:

  1. I was so excited to hear about this game back in 2005. Bought it on the week it was released and have been playing it for years. I am on my fourth run now with Kusuha. Ran with the same choices you did: Touma 1st, Selena 2nd (for Ex-Hard), and Cobray for the Ex-Special. By this time, all of the units are insanely powerful it's not even funny anymore xD.

    Definitely a great game though I really hate setting up the squads every time there is a route split (which there is many in this game).

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