AaltomiesI’m done with modern Super Robot Wars
I’m done with modern Super Robot Wars, because the mainline series deserves to be better than the mobile slop it is becoming. You, as a consumer of video and computer games, deserve better treatment from Bandai Namco. Modern SRW has become yet another DLC hell, a platform to sell you bits and parts of the game you already bought at full price.
You deserve not get fucked in the ass by people who sell you games. Especially when they’re selling you a game with Denuvo attached to it.
Super Robot Wars Y, in terms of SRW games, is shaping up to be trash. Everything about the game screams both lack of budget, recycling and ambitionless direction. You can argue that SRW has always recycled sprites. However, in the past these sprites were made to accommodate a general art direction that meshed together visually. On the GameBoy Advance, the portable games recycled some of the PlayStation 2 sprites, but the lower fidelity requiring to re-adapt the sprites made them fit together better. Then, Super Robot Wars OGS would rework all these sprites, making it a standout game in the series. This was in an era when 2D games were still largely overlooked.
Recycling animations for SRW is standard, but the way recycling was done in the aforementioned manner; adapted to fit. Even when jumping from the GBA to the DS, the reused sprites fit in with the new ones, creating a cohesive style. If you’re hardcore enough, you can tell which sprite creator made which sprites in a game, but their overall presentation makes them fit together. You can’t tell from a glance how they’re clearly from separate sources.
DD made its initial waves by having Devilman on front and centre, but looking back at this, it looks just like every other corporate clean slop we’ve been seeing everywhere in games in recent years. No character at allThis doesn’t apply to SRW Y, where you can tell just with a glance whether or not a sprite is specifically made for older games, for this game, or lifted from the mobile phone game DD. It makes a mess, when you have sprites with different styles in all manner vomited together and calling it a day. Mind, you, this was already the case with the previous anniversary game, SRW 30, so that’s the precedent. I’ve seen someone argue that it makes these units stand apart more, especially when its emphasizing the different source styles (I call this coping and a bad argument.) If this was the aim, then all units should have a unique style, following their main source material closely, but this isn’t the case. The lack of cohesive style jumps out even more when all units in the game still use SRW-style special effects, making the incohesive mess even more jarring. These range from explosions to projectile effects that aren’t part of a cut-in. The argument fails because all the different visual styles in SRW Y aren’t to make the units look different, but because they’re from different games with different styles. Because they’re throwing all different kind of sprites together without unifying the style, it looks like a slop in a puddle.
It’s funny how the fangame SRW ST manages to look more cohesive and professional than the actual series despite having less everything resource-wise. f
It doesn’t help that the attack animation, which once used to be stunning and full of life, are now largely lifeless, stiff and filled with cut-ins. Again, we find a kind of precedent in SRW 30, where you had tons of fade-ins to black. I’m honestly thinking they should just cut out the normal standing battle-sprite and follow the mobile game SD Gundam Eternal and make all attacks just the cut-ins. If you’re not doing anything with the base sprite, just remove it altogether. These sprites aren’t even proper SD anymore and haven’t been for a long time. The side effect of this is that the size differences between units makes less sense in the battle scenes, as sprites don’t scale based on their size. They’re not even proper 1:3 SD sprites, but some kind of perversion. If you look at Alpha-era sprites, there’s so much life in them, so much emotion without cutting it all the time. The basic battle-sprites have worth by doing the attacks in their animations proper, with bigger attacks getting more worth out of the cut-ins. Now that almost every attack animation is treated like as some kind of ender, it’s tiresome. Skipping and fast-forwarding has become enticing with time. When we get the basic battle-sprite doing these things, the stiffness and jank of the animation grinds the sight.
Perhaps not the best example, but note how the animations are quick and done most of the part, with cut-in saved for Fire Blaster, where it makes a proper effect
Sprite and animation recycling is forgivable as long as they’re renewed from time to time when they’re outdated. Going from the Super Famicom to PlayStation and to PlayStation 2 is still the best evolution in the series, showcasing how the sprites and animations can be smartly recycled and then during hardware upgrade, made new. The fandom largely forgave recycling with the portable games, especially when they introduced new series with each entry and slightly tweaked older ones if necessary. With the 3DS games, the game was made compatible with its 3D gimmick, and things had to be renewed. With some units, it seems like we’ve been running on same animations since 2008, when the sprite style changed. The mainline games should’ve seen an upgrade in visuals already, but instead its become a quilt jacket of bit of everything. We’re well past the point of this visual renewal the series so successful in the past.
By all means, SRW is just a marketing vehicle for Bandai Namco. If they have something they want to advertise in the game, it’s going to find its way in somehow. One of the best examples of this can be found in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, which was riling its story into deep space, but due to Sunrise and Bandai wanting Gundam Seed into the story, the staff had to make a weird pivot in the story and return circling Earth in parts for marketing reasons. Most of the series that find themselves in these games is more about marketing them and giving certain IPs visibility. This ensures the game can find bit more sales, as introducing popular [Series A] into SRW probably will attract [Series A]’s fans to pick up SRW for the first time. Recycling popular series also keeps fans of the other series with the games, but also cuts down development time when sprites and voice acting already exist.
SRW Y really looks like an amalgamation of all the bad brushstrokes SRW must go through to get made. Including an engine switch to Unity, though the mobile game Super Robot Wars DD already ran on it. The series has been running on the same engine since 2000’s Super Robot Wars Alpha, with updates to it whenever needed. I’m betting the engine switch was made to make it easier to cross DD, Y and whatever future SRW assets will be. While smart in terms of business and development, it also means mainline series, and probably future OGs titles, will be based on mobile slop. At least modding the game should be a bit easier. I’m not going to touch Unity as an engine at all, it’s a mess.
SRW OGs fans know the significance of Hero Senki to the seriesWhat grinds me the most though is how blasé SRW Y is. Sure, the series hasn’t exactly wowed anyone with its changes in time. Throughout the latter 1980s and 1990s these SD-driven games tried something new all the time, from RPG cross-overs like Hero Senki to action games akin to Great Battle and all the cross-over sports games. Super Robot Wars and SD Gundam series are the last vestiges of this, with both periodically giving their patterns of play a new lick of paint. SRW hasn’t exactly changed the core of its grid-based strategy in the mainline, but at least they’ve given it a go a few times around. SRW NEO on the Wii didn’t just use 3D models, but also gave each unit a range where they could walk freely, removing the grid system. The 3D games always tried something new like this, whereas the 2D games made great improvements in dealing with the ever-growing cast with Partner and Squad systems, combining multiple units into one squad, this affecting how battles would go down. SRW Y is as basic as it gets, offering literally nothing new in terms of play. It’s the same shit in different pants.
Battle Maps are one of the most under-developed parts of SRW; they’ve effectively been the same, be it in 2D or 3D with no innovation behind themThis of course applies to the presentation as well, which is largely boring. However, what’s even more boring is that the developers are very much stuck in the tried-and-tested Visual Novel presentation of the game and the ever-expanding number of lines these fanfiction games have. Of course, this is the most economical and cheapest way to deliver exposition, but thirty years now, and it’s the dullest possible way. At this point, Bandai Namco and Sunrise should hit their heads together and give SRW enough budget to get animated sequences between stages to ease out how lacking the series’ presentation has become. Hell, the devs should first make the story sequences during Battle Maps proper rather than have the models mash together like some capsule toys. Despite the new engine under the hood, SRW Y doesn’t seem to take any advantages of it as the devs are reusing twenty years old way to deliver battles outside battles. They can do anything during these sequences, and they choose to not to do anything creative.
I’m just so done with the newer entries in the series. If they’re not going to improve from what the series was twenty years ago, why bother? I still got some of the older titles unfinished on my shelf that are more unique in their own ways, like SRW 64. There are tons of games from the SD-character driven era that I can find to get my SD-battle fix.
I’m demanding something better. You can too, and the devs and publishers can deliver. They won’t if they’re not demanded that. The marketing forces and sycophants will tell you how true fans will buy anything they put out, no matter what’s the quality and we all recognize that it’s abusing behaviour. Knowing your self-worth matters, and a true fan would want their loved series to be better, to achieve new heights and become an even better version of what it already is. Not lay down spread the cheeks when told them to do so. The first step is stop paying for worse products, and the second step is to make your voice heard why that is. The third step is to ignore the sycophants that are yelling at you while their asses are bleeding.
I don’t like having this stance, but I like even less the direction the series has been going and how much less value the series has made itself to the customers. All the DLC shenanigans and market expansion with English versions have been a boon to Bandai Namco, but we’re not seeing any of that in the games themselves. Seeing the thumbnail for the first DLC for SRW Y just had me going Why am I even interested? I’m done with this without even clicking it. Yeah, I’m going to miss Godzilla and other cool stuff, but why bother? As a series veteran, I can tell how this is going to play out. I didn’t like it one bit in 30 or when Operation Extend tried to cash me over and over again, so I have to put my foot down and say No. I won’t allow myself to be taken advantage of anymore.
If you see me playing Super Robot Wars Y in the future, call me out on my bullshit.
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