Dai-3-ji Super Robot Taisen (1993)

Super Robot Wars 3, for SNES

Rating: 7.5/10; Good

Recommended for any strategy fan, especially if you like Fire Emblem

SRW3 is a turn based strategy rpg which takes place in the future where spaceships, colonies in orbit and mechs that can operate in space all exist. You play as a group of military peacekeepers who are regarded as heroes yet kept severely underfunded and under equipped out of fear. But what happens when the bad guys from the previous war suddenly come back in strength and take advantage of an alien invasion?

The game plays a lot like the Fire Emblem series, with all of your units being named characters that often have dialogue before, during and after missions. The mission structure includes branching paths, which can lead to optional battles for more xp and money, new recruits, and significantly change the difficulty of battles. There is some replayability in trying out the paths but there are no significant story changes. The heroes seem to run into enemies constantly and every villain comes back to fight another day, to the point that I wonder how the bad guys can keep building/repairing all those mechs and ships that are better than yours. Some missions have you hold out with a small force until reinforcements arrive, some are more like tutorials for new mechanics, some are just an excuse to recruit someone and some force you to protect your flagship (lose if it is destroyed). Outside of that, losses on your side only make that character sit out of the battle and you must pay money to repair their mech. Many missions also have surprises, including cool 3 way battles.

Mission maps include a variety of terrain features that can boost defense at the cost of accuracy (or vice versa), slow or prevent movement and affect the power of weapons. Towns and colonies can heal units. Each unit and weapon has an affinity value for land, water, sky and space, so you will have to keep an eye on that. Some weapons are weak or even unusable in certain terrains. In practice, you only need to look out for some of your weapons that: can't be used in space or underwater, can take advantage of enemies that can't hit air or water, or enemies who have underwater only weapons. Each unit comes with a collection of weapons of varying range, power, accuracy, terrain affinity, and number of uses. Uses can be displayed as ammo (restored by visiting the flag ship), energy (starts full and increases over time) and morale (goes up with kills and the yell magic). Weapons are balanced such that those with better range and power have lower accuracy, so there is a strong incentive to use weak melee attacks to make sure units actually hit and gain xp. Xp level has a huge effect on accuracy too, to the point where it is exceedingly difficult to make use of under leveled characters. The worst part of the game is that hit chance is not displayed until after an attack is confirmed and there is no way to cancel. This leads to either hedging your bets with weaker melee attacks or a lot of time wasted save scumming, and undermines a lot of the tactical aspect of choosing the best weapon for the situation. On top of that, bosses often have absurdly high evasion to the point where you need to use magic that gives 100% hit chance. Weapons with a range of 1 (and 2 special attacks) can be used after a move, further incentivizing melee attacks, but every attack will be countered by enemies if they have a weapon that can reach. So the safer way to play is to look at enemy stats to see their movement and weapon ranges, and position your units to snipe them from longer range. You can see every stat of enemies, which will help you prioritize which to kill first. There are a few universal orders you can give your team regarding counterattacking, though I found it better to only defend. Your units also have magic, which can freely be used on your turn as many times as mana will allow. Spells are mostly passive boosts for a single fight and healing. Some units can even shapeshift to get new movement or attacks, and most flying units can land or go underwater.

The flagship is your most important unit because any other unit can go inside it for repair and resupply, or to be flown around. Battles are always stacked heavily in favor of the enemy to the point that you would most likely lose every mission if the enemies did not conveniently spread out and hang back so that you only have to deal with bite sized chunks at a time. Makes it easy to prevent losses. Enemy AI is pretty terrible all around. They will usually attack the closest thing, tend to prefer high armor targets and completely fail to work together. It is fairly easy to make the enemy do what you want by keeping vulnerable units out of weapon range and a strong unit in weapon range. Mission objectives are always kill all enemies and you can take as long as you want. Money is rewarded for each kill and can be used to upgrade the armor, health, energy and reaction in between missions. You can also switch pilots around, though each pilot can only drive 1 family of units. This is important because healing does not give xp, so pilots of healing units will need to be replaced with the influx of higher level characters that join as the game goes on. You will also get better mechs. Unfortunately there is a limit on the number of units you can bring into battle, which varies widely. So you will end up with a core team of high level characters, a bunch of under leveled people that only get to fight in big fights and can't keep up, and the remaining very low levels that would only be a liability to use.

Solid gameplay held back by the inability to cancel attacks (odd since you can cancel moves) and the tediousness of having to watch cutscenes for every damn attack, against idiot enemies and a not particularly compelling story, lead to fairly good game that could have been much better.

Pro

• Can undo moves
• 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
• Decent story and characters
• Branching paths for optional battles
• 3 way battles

Con

• Cannot undo attacks and chance to hit is displayed too late
• Unit icons look weird, some are mini versions of the unit while others are just heads
• 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, including many absurdly powerful bosses that will let each other fight alone
• Final boss takes way too long
• Healers don’t gain xp for healing

Beat the campaign though I missed some optional stages and characters. I found the game more difficult than Ex, mainly because the enemies seem to have higher innate dodge %. I really had to save state scum to choose the best weapon to actually land hits, because the game does not let you back out of attacks after seeing the odds. There were also times I had to break the random seed by changing the order of attacks. I did like the tactical aspect of weaker and shorter ranged attacks having higher hit %, rather than always using the most powerful attacks like in Ex. I had to make extensive use of the lock on magic for 100% hit as well as flash to avoid enemy counterattacks due to the lack of ranged artillery for the good guys.

There were times I made use of water for tactical advantage but I never found a need to land fliers. I kept the orders on always defend and very rarely had to save state scum to avoid deaths; in fact I only had 1 lost unit the entire game (that I did not load to avoid). This game was not as much fun as Ex, with a less interesting story, and it dragged on way too long. Stupid unskipable battle scenes; just let me get on with the game! I did not like the huge cast because so many ended up not being used, and it is incredibly difficult to keep them leveled enough to be useful if you don't even have room to take everyone into battle. I focused only on the best units and did some swapping of pilots, especially replacing the healers with new higher level people. The final boss was a terrible slog. I had to use save states to avoid deaths until he ran out of long range ammo. Then everyone went to town on him and very slowly whittled away his health as I rotated tanks in and out of melee range to take his hits. I had to use the ship to restore ammo the fight took so long.

Bright: level 65 Lock on + luck to finish weak enemies but mostly hung back for support. I set up some great shots for the area beam attack.

Puru in Qubelay: level 65 Sweet 7 range with luck and 2 moves.

Shuu: level 63 He almost single handedly wiped out the entire red fleet in the final level by using fervor with his area attack. Otherwise not that great.

Getta: level 62 One of the best units that could do up to 10000 damage in an attack. Often sent to kill bosses and one shot dangerous enemies. With 3 different forms with 3 different mana pools I would blow mana on yell to unlock the ultimate attack and still have multiple uses of accelerate, fervor, lock on, flash and luck.

Banjou: level 61 Great tank and killer with his ultimate attack. Always used in melee. He could pretty much solo.

Gato in Neue Ziel: level 61 Great tank but his attacks are not that good due to lack of hit % and being beams. Also no melee. Mostly used micro missile.

Ryune: level 61 Loved psychoblaster and often had her go to the ship for additional uses. She had 2 good 6 range attacks but I found her to have trouble hitting.

Kamiyu in Z gundam: level 61 Good dodge throughout the game and almost never missed. His 6 range attack + luck got him a lot of kills but it being a beam saw him having to hang back in some fights.

Masaki: level 61 Awesome unit with the cyflash area attack, 8 range and flash. I never used his other energy attacks. The combo of cyflash + psychobuster could wreck entire fleets.

Amuro in V gundam: level 61 Sweet 9 range. Having the longest range of the team I use him to single pull enemies and snipe.

Raideen: level 60 Decent 6 range attack and multiple powerful ultimates. I never built up to the best and mostly used the middle. Great all round unit.

Cecily in Sazabi: level 59 Sweet 8 range.

Judou in ZZ gundam: level 58 Very similar to the single Z. Has the same area beam attack as the ship and I made good use of it. In the final battle he got the resupply for multiple area beams on the final boss.

Kouji in Mazinger Z: level 53 Good tank with lock on and flash but he never got a 2nd move and his attacks are weaker than others, so he fell behind a bit in levels.

Combattler: level 52 Good single use ranged attacks with a fairly powerful melee and an ultimate. Lack of flash held him back and he never got a 2nd move.

Slugger in GP 03: level 46 The unit is sweet with great tank stats and micro missile but Slugger was not able to make it into every battle and was thus under leveled for the final battle. Should have used him more.

Rei in Bluegar: level 28 My main healer, hanging back out of range. Should have changed the pilot to the higher leveled guy.

Not in final battle:

Maria in Dianan: level 48 Most durable healer.

Duke: level 46 Good melee damage but not a good tank. Does have full healing magic though.

Tetsuya in Great Mazinger: level 45 Similar to Mazinger Z but I often did not have room for him.

Junguuji in Pentagurel: level 44 Should have been in Bluegar. This unit is a decent melee finisher but is not good at tanking, range, damage or support.

Seabuck in Vigna Ghina: level 41 Good 6 range but nothing too special.

Kouchou: level 34 Not good at anything.

Jun in double spazer: level 33 Used once I think. Not enough range and no melee makes it not very useful.

Chris in Dijeh: level 33 Good range but lacking in hit %. Slugger used to be in this.

Hikaru in Marine: level 32 Never used.

Kai in F91 gundam: level 32 Only 5 range. He had a lot of use early on in a 6 range guncannon.

Keara in Regz ship: level 29 Though it has 7 range I found the lack of lock on and a melee attack made it not that useful.

Lou in Jegan: level 26 Never used.

Elle in Methuss: level 26 Rarely did I take 3 healers.

Recoa in Nemo: level 25 Some decent use early on.

Beacher in Kaempher: level 23 Never used.

Bernard in type 100: level 19 Used a couple times but was too low to be useful.

Mond in Rick Gias: level 13 Never used.

Sayaka in Venus: level 9 Never used.

Keith in Guncannon: level 8 Was in a few battles but started too low to be useful.

Ino in Jegan: level 8 Never used.

Fa in Nemo: level 6 Was a healer since the beginning but got no xp.

Kou in Gp01: level 5 Started too low to be useful.

Sayala and Mari: level 1 Never used.