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Masochism, poor translation, and giant robots, let's play Super Robot Wars 3!
Welcome to Super Robot Wars 3! If you're here, you've probably read the Super Robot Taisen Original Generation 1 and 2 LP (unfortunately not available in the LP archive), and/or Tobias Grant's Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden LP (just finishing up here).
If not, then let me break it down for you: Super Robot Wars is a strategy RPG series (like Fire Emblem or Disgaea, but nowhere near as hard) that takes a whole bunch of different robots from different robot anime (originally Gundam, Getter Robo and Mazinger Z, although they branched out starting with this game) and has them fight a whole bunch of bad guys from various series.
Unlike Original Generation and many of the other SRW games, but like Alpha Gaiden, there's no Banpresto original character/mecha to serve as the player avatar here. That's not to say none will be appearing, but as the story begins we won't see any for some time.
The translation of this game is... usable, but many things were misromanized or flat-out mistranslated. I'll be pointing these out and correcting them as we go along.
In addition, I won't be using in-game saves. If I lose a mission, the game will start me over from the beginning of that mission with all the XP and money I got from it. However, the best ending requires that I beat the game under a certain amount of turns-- if I end up not getting it, I may cheat to set the turn counter under the limit as a bonus update after whatever end I do get.
Without further ado, let's begin-- I'll explain the gameplay as we go, for those new to the series.
This is referring to the events of Super Robot Wars 2, which is unfortunately untranslated. As far as I can tell, it largely mirrors the first half of Original Generation, but with anime robots in place of Ryusei and Rai and their team. Either way, it's pretty much unimportant to the plot of this game.
The Zabi family are the leaders of the Principality of Zeon, the enemy faction from the original Mobile Suit Gundam. I'll say more about them when they appear.
*lieu
Londo Bell is what the protagonist faction from the Mobile Suit Gundam movie, Char's Counterattack, named themselves. It's often used to refer to the 'player group' in SRW games.
This is Bright Noa, the captain of the space battleship White Base, appearing in Mobile Suit Gundam.
This is Ryuu Jose, a fighter pilot, also from Mobile Suit Gundam.
Kai Shiden, also from Mobile Suit Gundam. He pilots the mecha Guncannon.
Ryouma Nagare, pilot of Getter-1 from Getter Robo. The Getter Robo itself deserves a larger introduction, and I'll be doing that when it appears.
Hayato Kobayashi, from MS Gundam. He pilots the Guntank, but the Guntank doesn't appear in this game. The Minovsky particles he's talking about are what makes Gundam's plot somewhat feasible-- basically, they interfere with radar and any form of electromagnetic communication.
This is Amuro Ray, the main character of Mobile Suit Gundam. He pilots the eponymous Gundam, and goes on to star in Char's Counterattack as well with a different mech.
Frau Bow, a bridge bunny from MS Gundam.
Gotta love that Mode 7.
The enemy deploys...
...and so do we.
Kouji Kabuto, pilot and main character of Mazinger Z.
Sayaka Yumi, pilot of the Aphrodite A, also from Mazinger.
Hayato Jun, pilot of Getter-2. More on that when the Getter Robo appears.
Char Aznable, one of the main enemies from Mobile Suit Gundam, and some grunt soldiers.
Here's the fighting force the game starts you off with:
The White Base. You can dock your units onto it to replenish ammo, energy, and health.
The Aphrodite A can heal (amount depending on Sayaka's level) but she doesn't yet get XP from it.
Sayla Mass, also from Gundam. She pilots the G-Fighter (not appearing in this game) and, occasionally, the Gundam. GMs are the good-guy grunt suits from Gundam. Technically, nobody on the White Base ever piloted one, but since they cut out all the mechs these guys are supposed to pilot they gave them GMs instead.
If you lose a unit during battle you have to pay for its repair (but you do get it back on the next stage) and the GMs are pretty weak, so I'll be putting Hayato K. and Ryuu into the White Base and using just Sayla.
These are the good-guy mechs. Instead of the regular Getter, Ryou is piloting the Proto-Getter (mistranslated as Getta, as you can see).
The unit's stat screen.
HP, EN, and Armor are fairly self-explanatory.
Unit Range is how many squares the unit can move (barring rough terrain like mountains or asteroids).
The 'Allterr' in the lower left means that the Getter can move in any kind of terrain. The 'Type' in the upper right tells what terrain the unit's specialty is (in this case, sky and land).
Adaptability has the actual numerical value of how a unit performs in each terrain (in later games, these will be replaced by letters-- A rank, S rank and so on).
Response is a stat which was later phased out. A pilot has his own stats, but the Response acts as a cap for those stats-- anything over that cap can't be used. Thankfully, the robots can be upgraded to increase all of these stats but Range and Adaptability.
Now, the Getter Robo is a very special robot. It's not a solid robot-- instead, it's made up of three Getter Machines (each with its own pilot) which can combine in different configurations to make up different robots.
Let's show that off now by combining into Getter 2.
This should be 'Open Get!'. It's the command given to Getter to seperate it into the three Getter Machines.
Getter-2 is the form piloted by Hayato J. As you can see, its main weapon is a drill.
Getter 2 can't fly, but it can move further, and it can drill underground. It's a little less armored than Getter 1, as well.
Here's another mistranslation. His name is Hayato Jin, but they've translated it as Kami instead.
As you can see, moving onto certain terrains protects you better. I think the hit rate just applies to people trying to hit you and not your own hit rate, but I can't be sure.
After moving my own units closer to the enemy and ending my turn...
The three Zakus (enemy grunt suits from Gundam) retreat.
I begin my turn by moving forward and attacking one of the Dra-Cs (enemy grunt from Gundam 0083, a side-story short animation) with Proto-Getter 2.
This screen is largely useless-- you can't actually cancel out of your attack once you've seen it, unlike later SRWs.
The sprites are much more static in this game than later games.
Why exactly they're using Proto-Getter isn't explained (maybe in the manual?). They definitely used Getter during SRW 2, so why they chose to downgrade is a bit of a mystery.
I move in and finish off the Dra-C with Sayla.
Uwaaaa, getting blown up is scaaaary!
After one-shotting another Dra-C with Mazinger's Photon Beam (and completely missing screenshotting it) I end my turn.
Unlike later games, you can't choose what action you take when you counterattack. The game chooses for you (although you can choose in the options menu when you want your units to guard/dodge for fear of being blown up).
Amuro dodges...
...and counterattacks.
I have the White Base try and snipe one of the units near the Gundam. Nice word wrap there, buddy. Never heard of a variable-width font?
Unfortunately, it misses.
I try and snipe again with Kai, sitting on the colony, and get a missile to the face for my trouble.
This little cinematic shows up every time I transform. I'll only be showing it off when I transform into something new, though. (Again, it should be 'Open Get'.)
There's Getter-1 again.
One of the mechabeasts targets Sayaka, and she counterattacks with missiles. In the anime, she fired missiles from her mech's chest in... just about the way you'd imagine. Thankfully, they didn't animate that in this game.
Getter's taken some damage, so I open up Ryou's Spirit menu.
Spirits run off of a pilot's SP, and work basically like spells.
I attack one of the mechabeasts with the Guncannon...
...and take some heavy damage for it, so I have Sayaka move up and heal him.
Here's the Mazinger Z, showing off its absurdly powerful Breast Fire attack.
And the very first Rocket Punch, which many mechs have copied.
Kai takes out a Zaku.
And now, all that's left is Char himself.
I'll use a spirit to make sure the Mazinger hits...
...and then finish him off with Getter 2.
All of the Getter Pilots gain six levels.
And that's the end of the first mission. This game has branching paths upon branching paths, most of which I won't be showing off because the game is ridiculously hard. Instead, I'll just spoil the mechs that are unique to each path and have you guys choose which path you want me to go on.