Super Robot Taisen Original Generation

[Gabriel]

So, does anyone have this yet?

 

If so, am I going to be absolutely blown away by tactical mecha goodness?

 

I pre-ordered it online, but the shop in question seems to be taking their sweet time.

[sega saturn x]

OG looks pretty ho hum in my opinion OG2 looks a lot more promising so I'll pick that one up instead.

[JB]

So, does anyone have this yet?

 

If so, am I going to be absolutely blown away by tactical mecha goodness?

 

I pre-ordered it online, but the shop in question seems to be taking their sweet time.

I have it.

It is awesome.

...

Of course, anything with mechs is pretty much awesome by default here.

 

 

Mini-review:

SRX! Cybuster!! SRX andCybuster!!!

 

 

Oh, you want something more than that?

 

The visuals are a bit bland. Relative to the SNES games, they're good(the mechs ARE animated), but next to their contemporaries, they're pretty blah. However, character and mecha "cut-in" shots serve to liven the battle animation up signifigantly.

 

Some of the mechs seem to be excessively bright, probably to compensate for the original GBA's alleged screen problems(I'm PLAYING on an original GBA and find some of them to be "washed out").

 

I'm not really a graphics whore, but given the franchise's origins, better animation would be much appreciated.

It WAS originally released back in '02, though. Guess I should cut them some slack.

 

 

Sound is good, for a GBA game. No voice acting, but this isn't really surprising.

 

 

The main menu is dissapointingly sparse. No mech encyclopedia, no character encyclopedia, no sound test(not that the GBA is exactly an orchestra in a box, but it's the thought that counts), nothing.

Just new game, load, and continue, unless something more is unlocked after beating it(I can only hope).

 

 

The actual gameplay is... well, it's a strategy RPG. You've already got the idea.

 

There's 2 seperate storylines(Straight-man Kyosuke of the ATX team for the "realistic" side, or excitable teenage mecha fanboy Ryusei of the SRX team for a more traditional anime feel). That adds signifigantly to the mileage you can get out of it.

 

 

 

Also! The game has an adaptive difficulty feature of a sort, which is a rarity for ANY genre.

 

There's "battle mastery" points you can earn for meeting special conditions in each stage. Some are pretty hard to miss, others are almost impossible to acheive.

All are mentioned in the mission objectives option on the battle menu. If it says ???? under the battle mastery conditions, don't worry. As soon as you can start trying to meet it, the game will replace those ????s, which are basically just a "spoiler warning"(as if you couldn't guess Character X was going to sneak into the fight a few rounds into it). There are no "secret" points.

 

If you have enough points, the game shifts to hard mode. Too few and you fall to easy mode. Current difficulty is called out on the intermission screen. The thresholds go up with every stage, so if you land hard mode early and fail to perform as expected, you'll fall back to normal after a few stages.

 

 

 

 

 

I wouldn't say you'll be blown away(at least, not if you've fumbled through part of the Alpha series, or even 4 or Gaiden), but you'll still have a good bit of fun if you like mech anime. Despite the lack of actual anime mechs, it's still very anime-ish(well... the OG mechs HAVE been animated, but it was in an anime BASED on SRWOG, so...).

It's in english for a change, too.