A Review in with Weirdly Arbitrary Levels of Detail

Started last night, played for 5 hours, here's the rundown:

Character creation is always determined by two key factors. First: pick the best starting unit. If the units are the same, pick the best combat theme. Girl-chan gets best combat theme, so we went girl-route.

Next options: Space Route or Earth Route. This one is more complicated, but a brief reading basically sorted it as being "Earth route is going to be Super Robot heavy, space route is going to be Real Robot heavy." All the gundams are real robots, so obviously we're going space route.

Next options: Difficulty. Beginner, Normal, Hard, Expert. Only difficulty differences are stats on enemies. Expert, duh.

Chapter 1:

Basically using fuckin tracing paper over the plot of the original Mobile Suit Gundam for our original characters with only a couple slight differences but fuck it, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

NEW UNIT: Huckebein 30

Our main hero unit kinda leaves a LOOOOT to be desired. Very low power, but okay speed. Due to the birthday/blood type lottery I landed Support Attack out of the gate, which is probably the strongest skill in Expert mode, so that's pretty really good. But this thing is so weak, it takes like 2-3 full attacks to take down the tutorial stage trash units, and I don't have the skills to just ramp morale to 150 out of the gate so I'm gonna have to really rely on strategy just to make it through the "okay timmy do you know how to move the unit and choose attacks?" stages.

Tier: B (But forced to always deploy because NEVER NEGLECT THE MAIN CHARACTER)

NEW UNIT: Victory Gundam

Victory Gundam has a loooot of ranged firepower out of the gate, sucks that the Huckebein landed Support Attack and this didn't but fuckin whatever we'll make due. At least Uso has a cheap spammable Focus (+30% dodge/hit until next turn) and the ranged artillery is pretty energy efficient. Still suffers the same power issues but nothing some upgrades can't fix. The big issue is that even with spamming Focus, this thing seems VERY taggable. And not very durable.

Tier: B

NEW UNIT: Dreisstrager

Well, it's no Macross. Neither is it the Yamato or the Arcadia. But as far as warships go, it's not bad. Focus AND Intuition (100% accuracy until next turn and dodge next incoming attack) on different characters helps keep this thing accurate over many rounds. And at least it has power and range. And the captain has Support Defend which is kinda amazing on a big fuckin brick like this. It's just fuckin SLOW. Hard for a carrier to carry anything anywhere if it can't find the fuckin gas pedal but like, whatever. We'll deal with it.

Tier: A

Kill the things, do the things, get the tour of the ship, on we go.

Chapter 2

Obviously wanted to go see the new things so we opted for Team Rabbits over more Victory Gundam shit and this was definitely the correct decision because we got some real shit now.

NEW UNIT: Blue 1

The stabby one. No range but a lot of movement speed so it's not that big a deal. Final attack at 105 morale means this thing goes full tilt pretty much immediately out of the gate. Damage Shield is inconsistent and the Julia system is a statistical nightmare but whatever, at the end of the day this thing can just kinda run around and stab everything. And has "not terrible" ranged power for being a melee berserker.

Tier: A

NEW UNIT: Purple 2

The "tactical" one, which has never translated well in Super Robot Wars and continues to not translate well here. Better than average speed and accuracy but shit dodge and bad armor if we don't have Damage Shield to help us out. Wide Range Recon is our first once per map ability (Cast Analyze (+10% damage taken and -10% damage dealt) on all enemies until start of next turn) and that is the only thing keeping this bucket of shit off the F tier. They're lucky I don't have anything better right now.

Tier: C

NEW UNIT: Rose 3

The rampaging berserker, which would be fine if it had anything resembling power. Upside: way tankier than it really has any right to be. Constant boob shots are a bit of a downer though. I'll eventually be slapping my "credits per space moved" parts on this thing though because it's got the highest movement speed of anything else I've got. We'll see how it scales in later stages, I could go either way on this

Tier: A/B

NEW UNIT: Gold 4

OH MY GOD I FUCKIN LOVE THIS THING HOLY SHIT. Comes loaded with Support Attack 3 out of the gate. Needs 110 Morale to get the sniper rifle online but we can skirt those requirements soon. Better dodge than Purple 2 despite it being the "plant this somewhere and snipe everything" thingy. This thing is the core of my front formation, I just load things with guns next to it and double attack 3 things a turn. And the support attack has power behind it. Also comes pre loaded with Hit and Run (can move after attacking if you have not moved this turn) so like, this is amazing.

Tier: A

NEW UNIT: Red 5

A slightly shittier version of Blue 1 but also has range problems but it still manages to do a lot of heavy lifting. Top end attack at least has high range than Blue 1 so there's that. Just needs pilot skills beyond fuckin Accel (+3 movement to next move) and this thing will be another speedy harasser.

Tier: A

Also get to learn about the Wulgaru, evil aliens that live near Jupiter (which is awkward for the Zanscare from Victory Gundam, probably). Basically: thems aliens. Shoot em. CAN DO!

Chapter 3

Okay time to go rescue the Victory Gundam morons. And get some real bad news.

NEW UNIT: Gunblaster

Can't hit anything. Can't dodge anything. Doesn't do notable damage. Has a bug where the damage from the beam rifle attack doesn't actually display. Outside of one of them having the Trust (Restore 3000hp to target ally) skill, completely useless.

Tier: F

NEW UNIT: V Dash Gundam Hexa

It's like the regular V Dash Gundam except has someone strictly worse at the controls. At least they have Vigor (Restore 50% HP to self) but that just means they stand there and get shot and maybe sometimes land counterattacks.

Tier: C

Fighting off this many Zanscare units is actual work, even with Team Rabbits doing a lot of heavy lifting. The Shrike Team of Victory Gundam is less than useless. I should get an achivement for dragging these assholes across the finish line without any of them dying, and that only happened with the benefit of a few lucky dice rolls. When even Support Defend and Trust don't get you out of F tier, that's a problem.

Chapter 4

Okay, time to take our first big test of the tutorial. First half, fight off this big fuckoff pile of Zanscare units with two aces. Managed to kill one but not the other. Mainly because slogging through 20k health 2000-4000 damage at a time is already a pain in the ass, made worse by the fact that the evade on this thing is fuckin crazy ridiculous. Only pilots with Intuition or Bullseye (100% accuracy until start of next turn) are able to land anything. Uso's Focus is only getting him up to like, 65-70% accuracy, it's nuts. After that, Wulgaru punching bags show up for me to push over and laugh at while figuring out who to feed levels to.

K, out of the tutorial, let's see... a DLC mission? SPIRIT OF STEEL YOU SAY? STRAP IN BOYS WE'RE GONNA GO GET A FUCKIN SUPER ROBOT.

Bonus Chapter: Spirit of Steel

NEW UNIT: SRX

It's. So. BIG. So majestic. So... oh holy fuck it's taking a lot of damage. But it also deals a LOT of damage. Telekinesis Shield is a complete joke, I really don't know why I'm supposed to give a shit about a 200hp damage shield but like, there it is. And 130 morale requirement on the big final attack is a problem. But on the other hand SO. MUCH. POWER. If I can duct tape a fuckin resupply unit to this thing's back it'll be unstoppable, but we need a trip to the upgrade store about this armor problem.

Tier: S/A

Also, this thing is a MASSIVE gas guzzler so I'm limited to just fuckin dumpster punching shit for 4000 damage (even the blade kick is too much gas consumption). Manage to kill 3 of the 4 things but I had to run out the survive clock after that because I didn't have any tricks left.

One trip to the upgrade store later and now this thing is set to kick ass and take names. Test? Test.

BONUS CHAPTER: One Unit Survival

Deploy the SRX. Wander around and fuckin punch everything. Get sad when the timer elapses before I can kill the last thing. Don't pay attention to the fact the SRX was under 30% health that's fake news, everything is fine and under control.

One more chapter before bed, oh hey, it says I get a new gundam, well the last few were underwhelming, let's see what's over here.

Chapter 5

NEW UNIT: Gundam Narrative A-Packs

OH GOD IT'S SO FUCKIN TERRIBLE. The fuckin lack of mobility of a super robot with the lack of armor of a real robot and the lack of damage or the fuckin V Dash Gundam. Like I know I'm already biased against the show but did they really have to make this thing this dogshit?

Tier: C/F

NEW UNIT: Ra Cailum

Uhh, so this is a problem. I love the Ra Cailum. I can't level the Ra Cailum without accuracy skills. It doesn't come with any out of the gate. Piss.

Tier: B

The chonkiness of the Neo Zeon units presents kind of an issue, but not one that the SRX and Team Rabbits can't manage to smash their way through. I really gotta figure out how to solve the lack of damage issue on the Huckebein 30 before I land myself in a scenario where I have to rely on it by itself and I don't have options. But like, I just don't have any real options at the moment.

END OF PART 1: I'M LOVING EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS ALSO FINALLY AN ACTUAL DIFFICULT SUPER ROBOT WARS GAME AGAIN I'M SO HAPPY, JUST GIMME GUNDAMS THAT AREN'T SHIT, PRETTY PLEASE.