Mech SRPGs?

[Rafidur]

Mecha without cute animu girls in skinsuits is dumb and boring.

Girls?

 

[Silentstorm]

SRW 30 has an original plot and it's a lot, like you can spend minutes just skipping dialogue, as for combat, it's kinda old Fire Emblem like, only without items that will break after a few uses and you get spells that cast buffs or debuffs and each character has some.

No grinding required, i think only one or two SRW games ever required grinding, overall, it's a SRPG franchise that, since the SNES days, just allows you to play the story and win, the enemies give enough EXP and the mechas/pilots have enough options to win not to mention items you can get and buy.

Even the hardest games allow this, it's probably the least grindy SRPG franchise ever, don't know if that's good or not for everyone though.

 

[Galdred]

SRW 30 has an original plot and it's a lot, like you can spend minutes just skipping dialogue, as for combat, it's kinda old Fire Emblem like, only without items that will break after a few uses and you get spells that cast buffs or debuffs and each character has some.

No grinding required, i think only one or two SRW games ever required grinding, overall, it's a SRPG franchise that, since the SNES days, just allows you to play the story and win, the enemies give enough EXP and the mechas/pilots have enough options to win not to mention items you can get and buy.

Even the hardest games allow this, it's probably the least grindy SRPG franchise ever, don't know if that's good or not for everyone though.

Thank you! How is the difficulty? Is the game challenging ? Do you need to beat the game to unlock higher difficulties (I hated that in Langrisser)?

 

[Silentstorm]

Since the PS2 days, the series isn't exactly hard, the newer games do give a hard or expert difficulties from the start, but even then, you see people doing challenge runs.

I guess maybe it's harder if you aren't a veteran of the series, but as for general difficulty, SRW 30 is easy on normal, like not the easiest in the franchise but still easy, if you want a challenge it's best to stick with anything made before the PS2 or SRW A Portable.

It's not exactly XCOM...even the Super Expert mode that takes away game mechanics or nerfs them(like not having buffs on the enemy turns) doesn't exactly make the game super hard.

 

[somerandomdude]

Front Mission 5 is definitely better than 4 is, and it's got a reasonably good translation patch. I felt like 4 was kind of on the short side, I think it was like maybe 15hrs to beat it. 5 pretty much does everything 4 does, just better in pretty much every way, and it's a larger game. It's fairly challenging for a sRPG (let's face it most of them aren't challenging). There isn't a robot sRPG that's as challenging as Xcom, or Battle Brothers (massive incline, hugely recommend it).

 

[Silentstorm]

Still have to play the new stuff, but Into The Breach got a massive free update and i love that game.

As for mech SRPG's...yeah, a lot of them aren't hard, and even the older SRW games mostly only were hard because true endings required a small number of turns that forced you to speedrun and hope the RNG was in your favor rather than grinding or taking your time, also bosses that after a while pratically ignored or even got healed by a lot of your side's strongest attacks, a barrier system that thankfully(or not, depending on how hard you want the games to be) got taken out in modern SRW games where every boss can be damaged by every attack.

I think the last SRW game that was remotely challenging unless you go for super expert mode was A Portable for the PSP, and that was a game where enemies were dodgy as hell and hit like tanks all while being the only game in the franchise to do stuff like only letting you pick the final attack of Combattler V or Voltes V, two units that appear in quite a few games that always let those two units have their best attacks without care and even made the two get a combination attacks where they use those...except for A Portable where you have to pick for no goddamn reason, and that is if you don't want Master Asia, in which case those two units get locked out of their best attacks and you don't get other units and characters at the same time.

Not really something that makes the game hard as those two units are never the best in any game, but just the fact they went out of their way to make attacks that they have in every single game, many times unlocked from the very first stage you get them, as route exclusives just says something about how they hard to nerf your characters and buff enemies to make it remotely challenging.

 

[Gastrick]

I just finished playing through the first SRW game on the gameboy. This one is alright, but is drawn out enough that I had to play it in separate sessions here and there over several months. Liked how it made taking out the enemies near the boss impossible without taking advantage of their attack range and repeatedly healing. Some challenge in this game, forces you to use the magic/spirit and it is very easy to get your players killed. The AI goes after your weaker robots, but is still quite idiotic. Never figured out how the land/air/sea stats were supposed to work.

 

[Silentstorm]

SRW is one of those franchises where like the first two games are disregarded and no one puts them as their favorite games in the franchise, to some people, the franchise starts at the SNES or PS1.

The 1st game did get a remake for PS3 and Vita as a special thing, but they never felt like re-releasing or remaking the older games again for a reason, i do know SRW HD adds new chapters to play through, more units, and a different final boss.

It doesn't help SRW 2 changed the gameplay by a lot, you get pilots as robots aren't sentient but still have stats, so you must manage the stats of pilots and mecha, there is no tower to capture or anything you must capture in all missions, you upgrade mechas through money, everyone has Spirit Commands and they are fixed and specific to pilots.

Also blocking is a thing and units can dodge with some Spirit commands helping both of those things, depending on the pilots, Gundam pilots tend to get spirits that help with dodging, Mazinger pilots in the franchise tend to get really damn good Spirits for defense, stuff like only taking the least amount of damage possible in the game for the next attack...even if it's the strongest attack of the final boss of the game or taking only 1/4th of the damage for one turn making the Mazingers basically iron walls and the hilarity of seeing absurdly powerful attacks with epic songs and animations only deal like 1 damage to them...unless it's SRW D...a bug in that game made the Mazinger's defense stats be pratically zero and their main use of being the defenders(if ones that have a low chance of hitting many foes, particularly bosses) goes away and they seem made of toilet paper...ah gotta love the times when games couldn't be patched and thus SRW D has the Mazingers being hilariously low tier when their absurd defense alone usually makes them worth using in every single game even if just as absurdly resistant meat shields.

 

[Gastrick]

SRW is one of those franchises where like the first two games are disregarded and no one puts them as their favorite games in the franchise

In my experience usually the fans are idiots, and shouldn't be listened to for what is good or bad.

unless it's SRW D...a bug in that game made the Mazinger's defense stats be pratically zero and their main use of being the defenders(if ones that have a low chance of hitting many foes, particularly bosses) goes away and they seem made of toilet paper...ah gotta love the times when games couldn't be patched and thus SRW D has the Mazingers being hilariously low tier when their absurd defense alone usually makes them worth using in every single game even if just as absurdly resistant meat shields.

That's funny.

Edit:

SRW is one of those franchises where like the first two games are disregarded and no one puts them as their favorite games in the franchise, to some people, the franchise starts at the SNES or PS1.

The 1st game did get a remake for PS3 and Vita as a special thing, but they never felt like re-releasing or remaking the older games again for a reason

Not really true, looking at Wikipedia, the 2nd game has been remade the most out of the entire series; five times with the most recent one made on 3ds.

 

[Galdred]

I gave Super Robot Wars 30 a spin. The base game is very easy, even at highest difficulty, but the super expert mode plus (seriously, who came with this imaginative name?) is quite challenging, as you are horribly outmached, and the XP reduction means that you cannot close the game as fast as with the base game.
It is a real shame it is gated behind a DLC (but I am a VOTOMS fan, so it made it easier to accept taking the DLC), as it really is a huge upgrade over the base game.
You need to abuse the + MxP and + Credit per tile update to ludicrous levels to catch up if you have not cleared the game before (as you can retain part of the resources after clearing).
Seeing the super giant robots from my childhood and Gundams fighting together was something I didn't know I needed.
The UI is reall very mediocre, though, but not as bad as Gundam Generation Crossray (and the game makes more sense, which was not a given considering the wonky premise).