Super Robot Wars is a series of tactical role-playing video games produced by Banpresto, which is now a Japanese division of Namco Bandai. The main feature of the franchise is having a story that crosses over several popular mecha anime, manga and video games, allowing characters and mecha from different titles to team up or battle one another.
Reviews View More
Though I didn’t quite realize it starting out, with this game ends my journey through the Super Robot Wars games released on the original PS1 (granted I didn’t play F and F Final on this console, they were still released on it!). I’d originally heard, way back like when I was actually playing through the F games and thinking about playing more of these games, that Shin wasn’t very good and that it wasn’t worth playing. I figured after playing the glacially slow and very much a SFC port SRW 4S, that this would be a similar sort of slog before I got onto bigger and better SRW things released after the turn of the millennium. Imagine my surprise when this turned out to be something I enjoyed so much! Sure, it ain’t perfect, but it’s a game I’m super glad I played at any rate. I played through both routes to get the secret final mission after them, and doing that all on real hardware probably took me about 70 or 80 hours over the course of 2.5 weeks (as we are never allowed to have playtime counters in these things no matter what console generation we’re in, it seems XP).
Shin SRW’s story (as the name implies) is an explicit departure from the series’s narrative up to that point, with a whole new continuity and a bunch of new appearances. Not only do we have Gaiking and SPT Blue Layzner making their first appearances in the series, but we also have the first console appearances of G Gundam and Victory Gundam (those last two taking up a lot of the narrative in their respective parts). When it comes to U.C. Gundam stuff, we also get some interesting laser focusing on specifically Char’s Counter Attack rather than as the first three series as a whole, and lastly we even get the debut of SRW’s second original series-within-a-series: The SRX Team (who are written quite differently as to how they’d appear in later incarnations). The game also has design very similar to SRW EX’s scenario system, but instead of completely separate scenarios that take place over the same period of time, you have a route split around 6 mission in that determines which of the next 30 missions (i.e. the rest of the game) you’ll experience. All of these interesting focuses on particular series in ways that don’t get done again on top of that design choice make this game have a very cool style all its own, and I absolutely loved it. While it’s hardly high art with meaningful themes beyond the bits of the stories that it’s adapting, it’s a thoroughly entertaining romp in ways that the other WinkySoft SRW games really aren’t, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing through both halves of it.
Shin Super Robot Wars (also called Neo Super Robot Wars by the game itself, for whatever reason) was released after SRW4 and SRW4’s remake(s) via F and F Final. It was originally intended to be the start of a new sub-series within SRW (as some hints dropped in the secret final mission very heavily (albeit bittersweetly) imply), but as the project that would become F and F Final ballooned in scale, it was decided that this would simply be a one-off as to pool resources more wisely and not confuse customers as to which series they were partaking in. Part of that division of resources is why this game’s writing feels so different to the WinkySoft games both before and after it, as this wasn’t written by the usual writer (who was apparently feeling a bit burned out at the time), but instead by WinkySoft’s president himself. He did a bang up job, in my personal opinion, as especially with the original characters, this game is oozing with funny moments and personality. I especially loved how clueless and not always on top of everything the main antagonists were by the nature of their overconfidence. It made for a dynamic that you very infrequently get to see in SRW games like this. While I wouldn’t call it a tragedy that we never got any more games in this sub-series, this was a super fun experiment that stands on its own really well, and it’s still at least a bit of a shame that WinkySoft never got the chance to try this again.
Mechanically, we’re both far improved on where we were in SRW 4S, but also noticeably behind where we’d be by SRW F. As far as the basics of upgrading weapons individually as well as stats with money, pilots being unique from their units, spirit abilities that each unit has, basic SRPG Fire Emblem-ish gameplay, that’s all still here. This is still very noticeably SRW, so no surprises there. On the incredibly important point of loading times (given that this IS a 1996 PS1 game), they’re better than SRW 4S (thank gods), but they’re still not amazing, and you also still can’t skip or turn off battle animations yet. You can at the very least tell that we’re playing a game designed from the ground up for the PS1, as everything for navigating around the map is just so much nippier and faster than SRW 4 was.
Map design is also a fair whack better, though you can really feel them struggling to get to that 35 mission counter with how incredibly short some missions are (and the underwater and truck defense missions are AWFUL, even if they aren’t too long). While it’s nice to have some shorter missions for a change in this era of SRW, these are SO short it’s pretty obvious that they’re just padding. This game is also quite easy. It’s not too easy, and it’s far from how mean SRW F and F Final can be, but for someone looking for something to cut their teeth on, they’re really not gonna find that here. I enjoyed the difficulty as it was, but I certainly would’ve preferred something at least a little harder.
On the topic of more just outright bad things, we’re tragically still chained the item acquisition system from SRW 4, though this is mercifully the final game to have it. You still need to either look up a guide to where items are hidden in invisible places in each map, or use the Search spirit ability to find any equippable item. While it’s still the case that every unit across the board can only equip 2 items at once instead of it being specific to each unit like it is starting in F, we do get the small mercy of significantly more units having Search in the first place.
Another annoying holdover from the earlier games that is again the last game to have it is that support units still do not get EXP from healing or refilling ammo (that’s another innovation that F brings to the table). It’s not awful, as the game is easy enough that you don’t really need dedicated healing or ammo refilling units anyhow as opposed to just using spirit abilities for that stuff, but that they even went as far as to give healers only 1 or 2 charges of healing before they’re tapped out for the battle (unless you’re gonna waste a reload charge on them) just feels so unnecessarily mean on top of all that. It’s not like healers were particularly good or even a little bit useful in SRW 4, so this nerf of an already bad unit type is nothing but baffling to me.
Aesthetically, it’s generally quite nice although a pretty mixed bag. We’re clearly no longer using glorified SFC tracks like we used to be in SRW 4S, and a lot of the arrangements here are really good (especially the original tracks), but a few are arranged so strangely. Very familiar classics like the Getter Robo theme or the Mazinger Z theme (they’re in damn near all these games so any SRW fan would be very familiar with them) are arranged in a way that makes it sound like one instrument is doing the melody amongst a smattering of backing tracks (like they just took out the vocal part and replaced it with an instrument). It doesn’t sound awful, but it pales pretty hard in comparison to other versions they’ve done of these themes they’d do very shortly after (or even had done on the SFC). Even some of the newcomers to the series like Trider G7 have themes with this One Instrument Syndrome, making it even all the more perplexing as to why they chose to do it like this.
While the music may be a mixed bag, graphically it’s basically all positives. As the final SFC game had also done, we’ve abandoned the iconic super deformed style (and by loose extension, the SD Gundam license) and all of the included robots are just drawn with their normal proportions in their normal styles. Some robots like the Shin Getter Robo look pretty weird, but most of them look really good. We also have a lot of very nice animations for the time, with neat little flourishes like with how the Layzner does its punches on the small end, and really cool high-detail cutaways for a very significant amount of the super/special moves (like Mazinger Z’s Breast Fire or the Shining Gundam’s Shining Finger). I was very skeptical of the lack of the SD style going in, but it had me sold on how nice it looks pretty quickly. We even get some cool pre-rendered 3D cutscenes for one or two of the super robot combining sequences, which is a neat extra aesthetic treat~.
Verdict: Recommended. As a strategy game, I’m not sure this is necessarily the best of the WinkySoft games, but as an overall product (particularly in regards to the writing), this may be my new overall favorite of their tenure over SRW. The interactions between and during missions had me in stitches more times than I can count, and I had a ton of fun relating them to friends after (and even ones who aren’t into mecha stuff just about always enjoyed them x3). The gameplay is fun and mostly well designed, and even though the rough edges with certain missions and the whole need to Search for items makes this hard to Highly Recommend, this is still one very worth playing if you can deal with the loading times and battle animations (and of course if you can read Japanese ^^;).
Shin SRW’s story (as the name implies) is an explicit departure from the series’s narrative up to that point, with a whole new continuity and a bunch of new appearances. Not only do we have Gaiking and SPT Blue Layzner making their first appearances in the series, but we also have the first console appearances of G Gundam and Victory Gundam (those last two taking up a lot of the narrative in their respective parts). When it comes to U.C. Gundam stuff, we also get some interesting laser focusing on specifically Char’s Counter Attack rather than as the first three series as a whole, and lastly we even get the debut of SRW’s second original series-within-a-series: The SRX Team (who are written quite differently as to how they’d appear in later incarnations). The game also has design very similar to SRW EX’s scenario system, but instead of completely separate scenarios that take place over the same period of time, you have a route split around 6 mission in that determines which of the next 30 missions (i.e. the rest of the game) you’ll experience. All of these interesting focuses on particular series in ways that don’t get done again on top of that design choice make this game have a very cool style all its own, and I absolutely loved it. While it’s hardly high art with meaningful themes beyond the bits of the stories that it’s adapting, it’s a thoroughly entertaining romp in ways that the other WinkySoft SRW games really aren’t, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing through both halves of it.
Shin Super Robot Wars (also called Neo Super Robot Wars by the game itself, for whatever reason) was released after SRW4 and SRW4’s remake(s) via F and F Final. It was originally intended to be the start of a new sub-series within SRW (as some hints dropped in the secret final mission very heavily (albeit bittersweetly) imply), but as the project that would become F and F Final ballooned in scale, it was decided that this would simply be a one-off as to pool resources more wisely and not confuse customers as to which series they were partaking in. Part of that division of resources is why this game’s writing feels so different to the WinkySoft games both before and after it, as this wasn’t written by the usual writer (who was apparently feeling a bit burned out at the time), but instead by WinkySoft’s president himself. He did a bang up job, in my personal opinion, as especially with the original characters, this game is oozing with funny moments and personality. I especially loved how clueless and not always on top of everything the main antagonists were by the nature of their overconfidence. It made for a dynamic that you very infrequently get to see in SRW games like this. While I wouldn’t call it a tragedy that we never got any more games in this sub-series, this was a super fun experiment that stands on its own really well, and it’s still at least a bit of a shame that WinkySoft never got the chance to try this again.
Mechanically, we’re both far improved on where we were in SRW 4S, but also noticeably behind where we’d be by SRW F. As far as the basics of upgrading weapons individually as well as stats with money, pilots being unique from their units, spirit abilities that each unit has, basic SRPG Fire Emblem-ish gameplay, that’s all still here. This is still very noticeably SRW, so no surprises there. On the incredibly important point of loading times (given that this IS a 1996 PS1 game), they’re better than SRW 4S (thank gods), but they’re still not amazing, and you also still can’t skip or turn off battle animations yet. You can at the very least tell that we’re playing a game designed from the ground up for the PS1, as everything for navigating around the map is just so much nippier and faster than SRW 4 was.
Map design is also a fair whack better, though you can really feel them struggling to get to that 35 mission counter with how incredibly short some missions are (and the underwater and truck defense missions are AWFUL, even if they aren’t too long). While it’s nice to have some shorter missions for a change in this era of SRW, these are SO short it’s pretty obvious that they’re just padding. This game is also quite easy. It’s not too easy, and it’s far from how mean SRW F and F Final can be, but for someone looking for something to cut their teeth on, they’re really not gonna find that here. I enjoyed the difficulty as it was, but I certainly would’ve preferred something at least a little harder.
On the topic of more just outright bad things, we’re tragically still chained the item acquisition system from SRW 4, though this is mercifully the final game to have it. You still need to either look up a guide to where items are hidden in invisible places in each map, or use the Search spirit ability to find any equippable item. While it’s still the case that every unit across the board can only equip 2 items at once instead of it being specific to each unit like it is starting in F, we do get the small mercy of significantly more units having Search in the first place.
Another annoying holdover from the earlier games that is again the last game to have it is that support units still do not get EXP from healing or refilling ammo (that’s another innovation that F brings to the table). It’s not awful, as the game is easy enough that you don’t really need dedicated healing or ammo refilling units anyhow as opposed to just using spirit abilities for that stuff, but that they even went as far as to give healers only 1 or 2 charges of healing before they’re tapped out for the battle (unless you’re gonna waste a reload charge on them) just feels so unnecessarily mean on top of all that. It’s not like healers were particularly good or even a little bit useful in SRW 4, so this nerf of an already bad unit type is nothing but baffling to me.
Aesthetically, it’s generally quite nice although a pretty mixed bag. We’re clearly no longer using glorified SFC tracks like we used to be in SRW 4S, and a lot of the arrangements here are really good (especially the original tracks), but a few are arranged so strangely. Very familiar classics like the Getter Robo theme or the Mazinger Z theme (they’re in damn near all these games so any SRW fan would be very familiar with them) are arranged in a way that makes it sound like one instrument is doing the melody amongst a smattering of backing tracks (like they just took out the vocal part and replaced it with an instrument). It doesn’t sound awful, but it pales pretty hard in comparison to other versions they’ve done of these themes they’d do very shortly after (or even had done on the SFC). Even some of the newcomers to the series like Trider G7 have themes with this One Instrument Syndrome, making it even all the more perplexing as to why they chose to do it like this.
While the music may be a mixed bag, graphically it’s basically all positives. As the final SFC game had also done, we’ve abandoned the iconic super deformed style (and by loose extension, the SD Gundam license) and all of the included robots are just drawn with their normal proportions in their normal styles. Some robots like the Shin Getter Robo look pretty weird, but most of them look really good. We also have a lot of very nice animations for the time, with neat little flourishes like with how the Layzner does its punches on the small end, and really cool high-detail cutaways for a very significant amount of the super/special moves (like Mazinger Z’s Breast Fire or the Shining Gundam’s Shining Finger). I was very skeptical of the lack of the SD style going in, but it had me sold on how nice it looks pretty quickly. We even get some cool pre-rendered 3D cutscenes for one or two of the super robot combining sequences, which is a neat extra aesthetic treat~.
Verdict: Recommended. As a strategy game, I’m not sure this is necessarily the best of the WinkySoft games, but as an overall product (particularly in regards to the writing), this may be my new overall favorite of their tenure over SRW. The interactions between and during missions had me in stitches more times than I can count, and I had a ton of fun relating them to friends after (and even ones who aren’t into mecha stuff just about always enjoyed them x3). The gameplay is fun and mostly well designed, and even though the rough edges with certain missions and the whole need to Search for items makes this hard to Highly Recommend, this is still one very worth playing if you can deal with the loading times and battle animations (and of course if you can read Japanese ^^;).