Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation is the first game in the Super Robot Wars series to be brought
over to the United States. SRW is a long running series of turn based
strategy rpgs in Japan known for featuring several playable characters
and mecha from popular Japanese anime series such as, Gundam, Shin
Getter Robo, Macross, Mazinger Z and many others. SRT OG is different
because it does NOT feature any characters from anime. All characters
and mecha are original creations by Banpresto. That is the reason it
was brought over to the US so easily. The reason none of the other SRW
games haven't been brought over here is because in the US, several
different companies own the rights to each anime. For example, Bandai
has Gundam, ADV has Evangelion, Getter Robo and Robotech/Macross,
Geneon has New Getter Robo, and Funimation has Full Metal Panic. Even
though no famous anime series are in the game there are plenty of
interesting characters and cool mechs to keep you satisfied.
When you start a new game you can pick one of two different routes. You
play as either Kyoske or Ryusei who will be your main character on
their respective routes (but you still control all other characters and
you eventually meet up halfway through). Ok here is where your patience
and time are needed. Before each mission you are forced to read through
tons and tons and tons of dialogue that you can't skip. It wouldn't be
that big of a deal if the story was interesting, if the translation was
good and if the graphics were at least eye catching. To be honest, I
skipped through most of the dialogue in the whole game. I really only
read the dialogue that comes up while you're in a mission.
The basic story is this: Two groups have a war with each other on
earth, one side wins, then aliens show up to invade the earth and you
have to fight them off. That pretty much sums it up. The dialogue is
poorly translated, especially in the beginning, and the use of the text
boxes is extremely poor. On average they only fit half a sentence in
one dialogue box then you have to press "A" to go to the next. There's
clearly plenty of room to fit more text but for whatever reason Atlus
decided not to use it. This means that before every mission you'll be
pressing "A" almost constantly, and the worst part is if you fail your
mission you have to start over from the beginning. Not the beginning of
the battle but the beginning of all the dialogue and there is no way to
skip it other then pressing "A" a million times.
The graphics in most of the game are really bad. In the conversation
sequences there is a static, boring background, usually of the bridge
of your ship, the hanger, barracks or an office. You see a small icon
of the character who is speaking on the left of the text box. There
will be one text box on the top and bottom for each character speaking.
The avatars do change expressions every once in a while but there are
probably only 5 or so different variations of the main avatar. When you
are in a mission the screen is set up in a top down grid. Similar to
Fire Emblem or Advance Wars but with much worse graphics. Think NES
graphics or SNES at best. Each unit is represented by the head of their
mech or a miniturized image of the unit if it's a plane or tank. At
first it will be hard to tell which one of your units is yours but
you'll get used to it over time. The only redeeming factor of the
graphics, and really the whole reason you'd probably play the game is
the kick ass battle animations that you view when a unit attacks
another unit. Each unit has basic attacks but the best animations are
the "Supreme" attacks. These are unique to each unit. Some even have
combination attacks which are very long and very cool. At first they
are interesting but will get repetitive each time you see them and
eventually you'll just turn them off since they take so long. So you're
basically stuck with horrible graphics the whole game unless you
constantly watch the animations which take a long time. If you're
familiar to Fire Emblem imagine that game but without any of the
animations. It'd be just the top down view with your character swinging
a sword and the enemy indicating it has received damage. Pretty dull
and boring.
Before you start your mission you can customize your units, their
weapons, learn skills, assign pilots to different units, equip parts
and weapons and save your game. The game does not have any sort of
tutorial mode AT ALL. You basically have to figure out everything for
yourself. And there's a TON of stuff to learn. You can try using the
instruction manual but it wasn't much help to me. I'll go through the
different things in the menu and tell you what they do.
First is your units. You can view info about them and see their stats,
customize them or equip parts to them. The view unit option lets you
see who's piloting it, what weapons are equipped and all the unit's
stats. Then you can customize it using money you've earned from
defeating enemies. You may upgrade the units HP, Energy, Mobility and
Armor. Finally you can equip different parts to the unit. These include
expendable items such as repair kits, and items that increase your
energy, HP, armor, mobility, hit rate and success rate on different
terrain types.
Next is the weapons menu. Here you can equip and customize the weapons
of your mech. Not all weapons can be swapped between units but most
can. You can customize the weapons using your cash to increase their
damage rate. As with customizing units, the more you customize one
thing, the more expensive it gets. Each weapon's efficiency various on
the different terrain types. There are Air, Ground, Water, and Space.
The lowest is C and highest is S. You cannot upgrade a weapons
performance here but as I said earlier there are different items you
can obtain that increases your performance on the terrain types.
Next you have the pilot submenu. Here you can see your stats, train
your character to earn new skills or assign a pilot to a unit. You
train your pilot by using Pilot Points (PP) you earn from defeating
enemies. There are several skills to earn and you only have so many
slots available to use. I highly recommend you learn SP Regenerate and
Support. The first regenerates your SP, which is similar to magic
points if you're familiar with RPGs. Support is a skill that lets you
assist an adjacent ally in offence or defence. The extra support can
help you kill an enemy or save a character from certain death. During
the mission you use something called "Spirit" which are basically your
magic spells. These are the skills you learn with your PP. The most
common are Focus (increases your hit/evade rate by 30% for one turn),
Alert (evades an attack for one battle) and Strike (increases hit rate
to 100% for 1 turn). Others will increase your damage rate, recover HP
or SP, or let you get double the exp or money in the next battle.
The next menu is where you can save your game. Pretty self explanitory.
The very last option is load next map. This is what you select when you
are ready for battle. You'll go through a ton of dialogue and then the
mission will start. Before you start you can once again customize,
equip, train and do all the things you could do in the hanger or you
can just select the units you want to use and start fighting. Like I
said earlier the battlefield is arranged in a grid like Fire Emblem or
Advance Wars. Your units will start usually clumped together in one
section and the enemy will be in a nother section usually pretty far
away. When you select a unit you can move them, attack, or standby (end
turn). Some units can fly so you can tell them to land to conserve
energy. Others can transform into a flying ship or a land vehicle. And
some can repair or resupply other units.
Each mission has a goal and a battle mastery. The goal is what you need
to achieve to finish the mission and go to the next. The battle mastery
is a much harder thing to do but if you complete it, it will increase
the difficulty level of the game and allow you to get the various
secret mechs, weapons and items in the game. You probably wont get a
lot of battle masteries until you know what you're doing and that
probably wont' be until the second time you've played through the game.
By then you've spent 30+ hours and might be sick of it. Each mission
usually sees the enemy get reinforcements and some tough boss enemy to
defeat.
The game is very hard and the learning curve is insane. If you have to
patience to wade thru the tons and tons of text, and tons and tons of
menus, then there is a good game here that strategy fans will love. If
you're more into RPGs I'd suggest you try it out first. You have to
plan your attack constantly and can't just run in and kill off
everything like you can in many RPGs. Mainly this is because there is
really no time to level up your characters. There are no random battles
to gain extra exp and money (it's too bad cause you NEED it in this
game). There is a game over trick you can do though. When you get a
game over the game restarts at the beginning of the mission and you
keep all your money, exp and such. That's really the only way to level
up your characters but it takes forever since you have to wade through
all the dialogue each time and there's no way to outright skip it.
There is a second SRTOG game that was released recently and that one
has much better animations and cooler characters but the downside is
that it's much harder then the first one. If you have trouble with this
game, stay away from the second cause you'll get your ass handed to
you.
