Relationships and mental state in a mech RPG

[felicity]

Make all the pilots teenage girls in school uniforms and add in a dating minigame and nudity and you will have the first game that truly appeals to every gaming demographic in existence without being watered down.

http://www.abandonia.com/games/669/PowerDolls.htm

Power Dolls don't have school uniforms nor dating minigame... It does has very mild fan services but aside from that it's pretty much a hardcore strategy game.

Speaking of Power Dolls it reminds me of Sequence Palladium which is a mecha SLG made by the same developer. The mecha in the game are manned by two operators who have to form a contract with each other. The relationship between operators directly affect the performance of their mecha. Unfortunately as far as psychological mechanic is concerned, the relationship can be summed up in one stat, and there is no cross-unit(mecha) relationship, so this is not in-depth mechanic, though other traditional attributes like str, mag, are taken into consideration when a contract is formed. The game is a lot easier than Power Dolls but still very hard especially if you don't abuse a certain spell.

I really liked the techno-magic lifeform design of the mecha.
http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee385/KimimisBlog/Sequence Palladium/504f4bd2.png

 

[Aikanaro]

So, any RPG systems (PnP or otherwise) come to mind that tackle the human psyche?

Lots - but Bliss Stage comes immediately to mind, seeing it's about mecha and relationships. Relationship mechanics are central to the game.

Grey Ranks is also something to look into - the emotion grid is an interesting idea.

But not sure how well any of these things would translate into a cRPG system.

 

[Destroid]

Armored Core: Formula Front is a PSP/PS2 game in which you manage a team of gladiator mechs, but you don't control them rather make the designs and AIs for them. Never played it but sounds interesting and a little relevant (insofar as rather than controlling your units you have to manage them to be the best).