I have spent the 2020s falling headfirst into a personal mecha arc, mainly through my continued binging of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise. The Super Robot Wars franchise is hard to avoid if you’re a fan of mecha, whether it be through direct involvement or passive knowledge. I dabbled in the anniversary title Super Robot Wars 30, but I’d hardly say it was enough to form a concrete opinion (let alone any admiration). I had assumed that Super Robot Wars was a series of cynical franchises haphazardly combined to get you to buy more Blu-rays and model kits. The fact of the matter was that I hadn’t been able to see what these games were truly capable of.
Super Robot Wars Y is a gleeful love letter to giant robots. From how the series are represented individually to how they cross over with all the other shows in the decently sized roster, everything was made with meticulous attention to detail. It is unapologetically a crossover game, with many of the hand-waves to make all the series mesh together into one combined alternate universe, but there’s a confidence to it that is undeniably respectable.
The literal first scene of the story involves the events of the Zero Requiem, following a war between Earthnoids and Spacenoids where Char’s Rebellion (now also led by Haman Karn, Milliardo Peacecraft, and Gilbert Dullindal) has failed. Lelouch Vi Britannia’s efforts to keep the earth safe with the help of Treize Khushrenada have worked, but now Lelouch is the supreme emperor of the world. The world watches in horror, including Heero Yuy, Amuro Ray, and many wait to see how things pan out.
See, that was a bit of a test. If you understood absolutely none of that, I don’t think Super Robot Wars Y is for you. This is a game for people deeply invested in mecha anime, and caters to them over all else. This is a list of shows featured in Y (Condensed slightly for simplicity):
- Super Electromagnetic Combattler V
- Brave Raideen
- Aura Battler Dunbine
- New Story of Aura Battler Dunbine
- Heavy Metal L-Gaim
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam
- Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (Season 1)
- Mazinkaiser vs. The Great General of Darkness
- Majestic Prince
- Macross Delta
- Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re;surrection
- Getter Robo Arc
- SSSS.Dynazenon
- Godzilla Singular Point
As someone mainly into Gundam, Macross, and Code Geass on this list, I felt comfortable enough to take the plunge. I’d say, at the very least, jump into this game if you are a big fan of at least two or three of the series in this list. There’s an effort to represent shows from all eras of mecha, from the 1970s all the way to the 2020s, and actually write the characters in believable ways. You’re never going to mimic the original writers for a game like this, especially for any of the Yoshiyuki Tomino works, but the dialogue writing is leagues better than it was in Super Robot Wars 30.
There is an original plot that connects all of this, with a handful of original characters. This is merely serviceable; it gets the job done and not much more. Let’s be honest, though, that’s not why you’re here. I came to see how all my favorite characters would interact with each other, and I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. Moments like Domon Kashu (G Gundam) taking Shinn Asuka (SEED Destiny) under his wing, or Miorine (Witch from Mercury) becoming the manager of Walkure (Macross Delta, which is amazing and you should watch) are just a handful of the ways the writers really understood the series they were working with. Every quirky detail was taken into consideration to create fun friendships between all the different casts. It’s undoubtedly fanservice writing, but it’s the highest tier of it you can imagine. Even characters from shows you have no idea about (Combattler V was a big one for me in this regard) still have so much personality that it’s hard not to smile as they join in on the banter.
There’s a very no-nonsense approach to gameplay with Y. There aren’t multiple different play styles to bloat the experience; you’ve got SRPG combat and VN cutscenes. Between that, you use points to improve your mechs and your pilots. This means you are always seeing robots doing cool things, or characters you already enjoy talking to each other. That’s it, and believe me when I say that is more praise than you could possibly imagine. Because that’s why I’m here, and that’s exactly what I am being given.
With the focus on Kaiju with this game, your units are split into Super Robots and Real Robots, which are designated based on the context of that unit in the show they’re from. SRs are good against Kaiju, RRs are good against other mechs. There’s some nuance here, and you’re given freedom to improve them as you see fit to help them be more adaptable, but that’s more or less what you can expect. You’ll need to keep your entire roster trained up and balance your party composition to handle anything, because many missions will throw both kinds of enemies at you.
Battles are standard SRPG fare, involving a player turn and an enemy turn, where your units will duke it out to whittle health down. What I found thrilling about combat, though, was the skills you can activate on a unit during either phase, which can massively change the tide of battle. Enemies, especially bosses, can hit hard if you aren’t properly prepared. These skills can get you out of a pinch quickly, doing things like granting more strength, damage, or evasion chance. This seems cheap to use, but they’re balanced well by having a high SP cost. Do you want to use up a unit’s skills to rush at a boss, knowing they’ll be vulnerable to the next enemy round if you can’t kill it in time? Perhaps you would want to bait out enemies with a unit mainly using skills in battle to set their evasion to 100%? It’s always a fun tactical conversation to be having with the mechanics.
There are also Assists, which can be unlocked as you progress in the story and can be called in by filling a meter by simply engaging in battles. This allows many of the side characters from each of these shows to get cameos in battle, which basically means I can fill out my assist lineup with the entirety of Walkure from Macross Delta if I wanted to. Or use Astionage’s full party heal Assist in a pinch. I’m pretty fond of abuseable abilities that give you an edge that can still leave you defenseless if you overrely on them in battle.
As you get kills with specific units, you can unlock more side missions with specific characters to unlock other forms or machines for their particular units. Daba with his L-Gaim was an incredibly capable unit for me, and after enough battles, I was able to get a side mission with him to upgrade that to the L-Gaim Mk II. Characters like Shinn and Kamille purposefully start without their iconic suits, and you’ll need to take time to use them in battle if you want to unlock them early. I loved this reward for putting time into your units, resulting in fun moments of discovery about which hidden robots they included for each show.
One of the strongest appeals of a Super Robot Wars game is the wonderful battle animations, and every single unit gets its time to shine. When I saw Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz weeks before this game came out, I knew I’d need to see the Wing Zero do some of its iconic animations, and I got that and more. Every robot, both ally and enemy, has iconic fight animations from their respective series that just look great. I think you have a problem with non-protagonist mechas not getting as many cool moves, and therefore fewer animations, but I don’t think there was a single animation that wasn’t stunning to watch time and time again. There’s a bit of a mix of 2D and 3D, depending on whether the unit was a debut for this game or not, and I’m not sure if that’s just because some animations were iterated on from past games, but I think there’s enough cohesion here to not cause problems.
What I do think is the biggest criticism against the whole game is that map design is basically non-existent. Every map in the game is more or less a background on the same kind of grid, with minor variances for terrain. This is by necessity, because most of the units can fly by default. It kind of comes with the territory. To pull from so many series that are far into their own timelines, have already happened, or take place mainly in space, you have to accept that those robots likely have some kind of wings. Map design is pretty crucial for an SRPG, so it does make battles grow a bit boring during long stretches. I think there’s enough going on mechanically under the hood with battles to keep them fun, but I hope they can one day figure out a way to have really good map design in one of these games. Maybe pull from series early on in their history, so you have a gradual escalation to big open oceans and space maps?
Super Robot Wars Y is a game made for a specific kind of person, and that’s honestly all it should ever be. In focusing on that audience and committing to giving them the most extravagant clash of different action figures ever, they succeeded in making the ultimate entry point to this franchise. I don’t think this is the best SRPG ever made, but what it lacks is made up for in just how successful it is as a crossover. I genuinely do think this is a strong RPG with just a couple of issues, but it’s hard not to just let any issues slide because of how much I simply enjoyed seeing so many of my favorite robots and pilots in action in such good form.
What I think is so great about a good Super Robot Wars game is that it cements my love for my new favorite genre of anime. Shows like Heavy Metal L-Gaim and Dunbine shot up in my priority list immediately, just because of how much I enjoyed using those units. The Reideen being my go-to super robot got me looking into some of the shows under that umbrella, leading me to starting the woefully underappreciated Reideen (2007). Majestic Prince, whose cast I cared nothing for in SRW30, has so much more to work with in their banter that it got me to immediately look into the Blu-ray release. I was encouraged to finish Macross Delta with the incredible movie Zettai Live, and even decided to go force myself to finally watch the shows in the SSSS.Gridman universe. My biggest takeaway from Super Robot Wars Y is that I’m desperate for more games in this series at this level of quality. If this is the new standard, then I’ll be showing up every time we get a new entry. My second biggest takeaway is that I’m thankful for all the new mech homework I have been given.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review copy provided by Bandai Namco Entertainment
