Super Robot Taisen EX (1994)

Super Robot Wars Ex, for SNES

Rating: 8.0/10; Great

Highly recommended for any strategy fan, especially if you like Fire Emblem

Super Robot Wars Ex is a turn based strategy rpg which is extremely similar to the Fire Emblem series. There are 3 campaigns with different characters following the overall plot from 3 different perspectives, with each consisting of a series missions that take place on fair sized maps. The maps include forests, mountains, plateaus, rivers, water and towns, all of which are important to keep in mind for tactical bonuses. Terrain features grant defense bonuses at the expense of lowering accuracy, so you have to consider whether the trade off is worth it, and it costs more movement to travel through difficult terrain. In addition, towns give minor healing and beam weapons (they have a B next to them in the weapon list) do less damage to units that are underwater.

Missions have simple objectives; usually kill everything but occasionally survive for X turns or a few that are slightly more involved. Loss conditions are extremely generous with only 1 mission having a time limit. At least of the ones that I played because there are some branching paths. And since I beat it within the time limit I don't actually know what happens if you take too long. The situation seemed like the time limit is not a big deal, which would make it even worse if failing the limit leads to game over. Missions usually begin with all units preplaced and fully visible though you can choose which units to deploy from your roster. Unfortunately there is a limit on how many units you can have deployed so there will often be weak units that are neglected. Just like Fire Emblem, each character has a name and personality, and there is quite a bit of dialogue between characters both during and after battle. Many battles have something unexpected and sometimes there are enemies that can be optionally recruited by moving the appropriate character next to them and picking persuade. Unlike Fire Emblem, characters do not die permanently. Being reduced to 0 health means they eject out of their vehicle and are not usable for the rest of the battle. Even the main characters can get their mechs destroyed without getting game over! Money must be spent between missions to repair damaged mechs, which would otherwise be spent on upgrading their base stats or specific weapons. You can also swap around who pilots what (there are some limits of course) and there are spare mechs.

The stats, weapons and combat strategy have a bit of a learning curve that may take the entire game to fully understand. You can select enemy units to view their stats and how far they can move. It is fairly simple to count tiles to put your units just out of range of the enemy. Each unit has a variety of weapons; those with a range of 1 or the letter P next to them can be used after a move. Ranged combat is more important though. Each attack provokes a counter attack in a little cutscene-like battle, again just like Fire Emblem, but they sadly cannot be skipped or turned off. They get old after the 1st few missions and make the game drag on longer than it needs to. Outranging enemies to avoid counterattacks is important. Each unit's weapons come in a variety of range and power combos, often with limitations such as ammo counters, energy cost (energy starts out full and slowly goes back up over time) and willpower requirements (goes up by using focus or attacking but does not go down). On top of that many weapons have different effectiveness against air, ground and sea (like beams being bad against sea). Many melee attacks cannot hit fliers and some weapons specifically counter 1 type (such as anti air missiles). Many of your units can switch between flying and walking, thus making it important to not only consider higher movement vs getting defense bonuses, but also how vulnerable your unit will be to enemy weapons. Some units even have multiple forms with different weapons, the 1st being the hero Masaki who can turn into a jet for higher movement while disabling some weapons. And then there are spirit powers, which are like magic spells that can be freely used without consuming the unit's turn. The "order" command can be used to give your units general instructions on counter attacking. There does not seem to be a way to control what weapon is used for a counterattack so you may wish to avoid it to conserve your better weapons. Not counterattacking also boosts defense, which may be needed for a unit to survive. The enemy AI is neither challenging nor entirely predictable. They conveniently stagger themselves so that you do not get entirely overwhelmed. They do not employ any kind of strategy or thinking ahead and do not coordinate against low health targets. They seem to prefer attacking ships over mechs but otherwise it can be hard to predict who they will attack. Still if you are not careful you will suffer losses from their greater numbers and boss units that are individually more powerful than any of your units.

Ex is fun to play with colorful characters, interesting dialogue, considerable tactical depth and fair replayability. You can try using different characters, getting more xp and money or take advantage of the branching paths to create new scenes and missions in other campaigns.

Pro

• Can undo moves and back out of attacks after seeing chance to hit
• Will not let you use a spirit spell if no benefit will be gained (like accidentally using a buff twice or healing at full health)
• All stats, ranges and weapon effectiveness is clearly shown
• Large variety of units, weapons, ranges, movements, terrain, upgrades and special powers that greatly enhance the tactical depth
• No permadeath, penalty for characters being defeated is significant enough
• 3 campaigns with branching paths
• Good characters and story

Con

• Unit icons look weird, some are mini versions of the unit while others are just heads
• Can’t see weapon range in upgrade screen
• Limit on how many units can be deployed, forcing benchwarmers that will never be able to catch up
• Battle cutscenes cannot be turned off
• The enemies would win every battle if they were not spread out and instead waited to make a coordinated attack and focused fire
• Healers don’t gain xp for healing