I was getting a little burned out on Alpha 2, but by the end of it, I was as ready as ever to hop right into the next SRW game on my list~. Dealing with the squad system in Alpha 2, I was very happy that I only had one more game in the series that uses it, Alpha 3. There were a fair few changes I was hoping they’d make here, and for the most part those dreams came true! Alpha 3 is a sequel in every sense of the word, as it sits down with the biggest problems that its predecessor had and sets to work at solving them (even as it makes some new ones in the process :b). I played this on original hardware, and as I once again am forced to guess my playtime, I reckon about 80 to 90 hours easily if not a bit longer to get the good ending.

Alpha 3 is very much narratively the sequel to Alpha 2, and while it’s not as iron-clad as the connection between Alpha and Alpha Gaiden, it’s a bit more connected than Alpha Gaiden to Alpha 2. After only a few months since the end of Alpha 2, the shaky state of Earth and earthlings in space is coming under turmoil yet again. This is an all-around more space-centric adventure, as we’re not only adapting the second half and sequel OVA to GaoGaiGar, we’re also bringing back the Macross crew (among others) as we go through the story of Macross 7~. The other most interesting new series adapted here is Gundam SEED, which while definitely a weaker narrative and a pretty poor choice for a game like this (it’s narrative is very hard to follow when its split up like this, especially if you skip one of the routes that its in at a route split), it’s very interesting to see SEED injected into a world where U.C. Gundam also exists, and Amuro & Co. have already gone through the events of Char’s Counterattack.

The writing has once again taken a big step up. The original characters, particularly the player protagonist (of whom I picked the female real robot pilot this time around), who not only manage to be less annoying than ever, but even just all around well written characters whose appearances I was happy to see. We’re not just getting meaningful character growth and pathos via how a licensed series is adapted, but also finally among the originals as well. The central theme of “fighting against fate, and the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to do it” is a really interesting one, and this game does the best job I’ve seen yet of tying together the themes and plots of the different series into one well functioning whole. It’s so nice to finally get to say that I can recommend the writing of a SRW game beyond just campy crossover fun or how well a licensed series is represented. I didn’t think I’d ever feel that way, frankly, but it rarely has felt so good to be wrong~.

Mechanically, this is still very much SRW as you’ve known it, especially if you’ve known Alpha 2. Separate pilots and units, units can be upgraded with money while pilots level up and upgrade with pilot points, spirit abilities act like spells for each pilot, you have scads of units and squads of 1~4 units that they operate in, and difficulty points to dynamically determine the difficulty (though while kill counts on respective units influence special unit acquisition rather than difficulty points this time around, we not only have a good vs. normal ending determined by how many difficulty points you have (57 out of 59), but you also can’t surpass a total turn count of 420 turns for that good ending either). As far as differences go, on the more subtle level, I’d say they have a much better handle on how to design missions around having the squad system. This whole game just flows so much nicer and faster than Alpha 2 did largely because missions drag so much less despite the game taking about as long to play.

As for more major changes, most of them are on UI or quality of life improvements, particularly the one I most wanted to see which was allowing you to select multiple spirit abilities within a squad to trigger all at once. That saves SO much time compared to how you had to do it one at a time for each member and each skill in Alpha 2, and I’d also go as far as to say that that improvement is significantly responsible for how much better paced this game feels over Alpha 2. You also have training modes for the squad system as well as a squad auto-creation feature for if you’re not too comfortable taking on that system from the start, which was also very nice to see.

The main and kinda only negative change I’d say this game has is that it brings back route splits that split the party up, of which Alpha 2 had none. In Alpha 2, the route you picked more so only changed the order in which things happened, where here we’re back to splitting the party up into different groups to take on different challenges simultaneously. While this does make for more faster paced and better designed missions, Alpha 3 REALLY could have used a feature to save squad layouts, as after almost every major splitting or rejoining of the team, you need to completely remake ALL of your squads complete with giving all the items back to whoever had them. I never trusted the automatic squad maker to make good squads, admittedly, but it took AGES to put my 15~20 squads back together each time, and I’m talking like 30 minutes to an hour. It ain’t a short process. Given everything else that Alpha 3 improves on from the last game, it’s a shame it still makes a rod for its own back in this way, but given that you only gotta do this a handful of times, if this is the worst problem Alpha 3 has, then things are looking pretty good I’d say.

As for presentation, this is very much like Alpha to Alpha Gaiden was. We’re still pretty clearly using the same engine and reusing most of the same assets, but a good few units have new attacks, new animations, and even sometimes new sprites, and that’s on top of the larger, nicer character portraits this game uses as well as to all of the new units it adds to the stock that Alpha 2 had. Still no karaoke mode (as there never will be again TwT) and the weird omission of some very iconic songs that in some cases Alpha 2 even had (like no Anime Janai (the ZZ Gundam them) which both Impact and Alpha 2 have, and Dancouga also doesn’t have its most iconic theme either and uses a much worse one instead) are some unfortunate marks against the music in this game, but on the bright side, we have a bunch more new tracks from many series (like the Great Mazinger using Tetsuya’s Theme instead of the Great Mazinger them) as well as rearrangements of old favorites (my personal favorite of which being the Daitarn 3 theme) AND the ability at long last to pick and choose everyone’s used theme music individually and from any series~.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. Even with squad system nonsense, this does such a better job of justifying its inclusion than Alpha 2 did on top of everything else design and presentation related that this game does so well that it’s easily the best SRW game that had been made up to that point. As I was with the similarly flawed and similarly short-lived demon loyalty system in the SMT Devil Summoner games, I’m not really sad to see that this is the last time Banpresto tries anything with the squad system, but I’m glad that the improvements made to it are done so well and that they allow what’s otherwise a great SRW game to keep on being so darn great~.