Let's Play: Super Robot Taisen: W

[NOTE: This party ain't starting yet, but I need to get some ground work out of the way before I start next week due to school and work]

Hey kids, this here's the LP of SRT (or SRW, depending on who you ask): W for the NDS. It's a strategy RPG more in the vein of the Shining Force series crossed with a fair bit of Front Mission type customizing, all wrapped in a nearly incomprehensible plot designed to shoehorn about a dozen different animes/mangas into a single game. It's basically porn for giant robo fans, but it's great porn. Usually. The early games in the series are pretty bleh, but they've worked most of the kinks out of the formula by now.

Anyway, before I get started, I need to make a few very important decisions (with yon audience's help, o' course). First and foremost is whether I'm doing a completely NG or a NG+ playthrough. There are a number of differences, since NG+ changes a few missions (including the final mission and the ending) and it also unlocks the part & mech shops along with retaining any upgrades you've made to your mechs (but not the full upgrade options), and it allows us to customize our MC's Seishin list (special command/magic type dealies). Going for a vanilla playthrough will start us at square one and make it very, very hard to meet some of the secret unit/part reqs.

Second is deciding our MC's name (both personal and family) along with his callsign and the name of both the MC's mothership and his mech. We can also change the name of the attacks for both, but I'm just going to Anglicize the names just so you guys know what's what. We have the usual assortment of options, ranging from hiragana and katakana to English, symbols and Greek letters (!?). If you guys name the MC some random string of symbols I will kill everyone who suggests it and then go with something else less annoying to type.

Third is picking the favorite series' for our playthrough. Favored series gain extra XP and cash over non-favoreds, and they get extra upgrade slots. Going from center to the right, we've got: Banpresto Originals (our MC and crew), Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, Martian Successor Nadesico, Space Knight Tekkaman, Full Metal Panic!?, Shin Getter Robo, Mazinger/Mazinkaizer, King of Braves GaoGaiGar, and Hundred Lion-Beast GoLion (a.k.a. Voltron). We get to choose three, and given the way the leveling system works in this game the most important thing about favoreds is the extra money gained and the upgrade slots. My previous playthrough for the NG+ version had Banpresto, Tekkaman and FMP as my favoreds (they're also the best units in the game, besides G: Seed, and Seed Astray. Considering how often we're stuck with Nadesico units for our Reals, they are pretty sucky and balanced horribly for the endgame. I tend not to use Supers, but both GoLion and GaoGaiGar are primo Super types, and the Mazin/Getter units are way too EN hungry to use without babysitting.

...Aaaand that's it for now.

Actually, doesn't the W stand for "Double" (ie, double screen)? Or failing that, it's a random letter they picked because they're starting to run out.

And I'm wondering what SEED units you picked that they're good. My experience is that while SEED Astray is awesome, regular SEED....kind of meh.

Let's see...I'll vote for clean new game, since W isn't that hard anyway. Unless you're planning to show off how the final original unit can become a perpetual motion machine capable of handing out damagex5 attacks, a clean new game is fine. Since I'm going for that, I'll throw you a bone and say Originals, GaoGaiGar, and Tekkaman as favourites, and keep that through the game since Tekkaman only really gets broken once you get Hiver. Not that Blade is any slouch, especially with so many of his upgrades carrying. That should break the game in half enough that you shouldn't have any problems.

x_x Japanese... Nice DS screenshotting though!

+ sounds like more fun to me. "More stuff, less pain" right?

The only "Taisen" I am familiar with is Sakura Taisen. I guess this is unrelated, but that will not stop me from suggesting "Sakura" for one of the name slots.

Tempting! Unfortunately, I beat W again a couple months ago, and I've got other games to play. But I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

Oh, and if you want a fun challenge, ditch the Banpresto Originals and go all real. I managed to beat SRW W using just the Gundams and the FMP units... (I don't like Nadeisco, what can I say). The lead Banpresto Original is absurd in its final form.

It probably does, but the group the MC's group joined is called Warter, so...editorial decision? As for the SEED thing, Athrun and Kira in even fully upgraded vanilla Justice & Freedom are essentially supers with the mobility of Reals plus their SEED and Coordinator pilot abilities. Once you get the Meteor units it really breaks them. Strike and Strike Rouge aren't all that great though, and the IWSP pack is the only SEED extra worth earning since the Lightning Pack is a pile o' turdage, especially with the hoops you have to jump through to get it. We won't get any of the SEED stuff until the second half of the game, so it's not a big deal right now anyway (unless you guys want me to go for the Lightning Pack).

GoLion isn't actually that good. Yeah, having five pilots for Seishins is good and all, but all five have comically low SP pools. And GoLion itself doesn't really have any awesome bonus going for it other than being Voltron. It's not really more energy efficient than the others either. Shin Getter gets Energy Regen, and even if it didn't, all three forms have a three range free attack that's stronger than GoLion's. And Mazinkaiser's Turbo Smasher Punch has more range and has higher base damage and it gets Mazinpower. Mazinpower is huge. Shin Getter, Mazinkaiser, Great Mazinger, and GaoGaiGar are all far better, but I guess the game's easy enough that it doesn't really matter.

But regardless, this is me if you don't pick GaoGaiGar. Not only are the various GaoGaiGars great, but its good buddy Big Volfogg has one of the best attacks in the game. Melting Siren completely shuts down the target's barrier for the rest of the turn. This is very, very nice when you have to deal with things like distortion fields so often. I would have killed to have something like that back when I played through A Portable.

I didn't find the IWSP too impressive. Shame. And I ditched the Meteors until the final mission. Kind of ugly and boring compared to the normal units.

On a side note: I just went out and preordered SRW Z. Yay!

I'm gonna say GoLion, Mazinger, and Getter Robo, regardless of how well they perform. I'd vote Gundam but I never was much of a Wing fan.

Always was kind of interested in this series, but never had a chance to get into it. Definitely looking forward to this!

But why should I care about them when every single GaoGaiGar unit is a super that dodges like a real? Or when all the Tekkamen and SEED Astray units do the same thing? (okay, Sol Tekkamen kinda suck) W is pretty much made of incredibly powerful units that can't be hit. I'm just not seeing a compelling reason to use Kira over someone awesome like Lowe or Guy.

I made the final original unit dodge like a real too, but in terms of brokenness, even in W, the Valcazard is in a class all by itself.

GoLion is the successor to Combattler and Voltes V like that, being a slightly sub-par unit that survives by having pretty much every seishin in the game, but balances that by not giving them as much SP. I was disappointed with GoLion up until the endgame of my first time through, even though it was favourited because it didn't quite tank or dodge that well. I gave Guy Support Defense solely to shore up GoLion's tendency to get chipped to death. That said, it eventually became a good unit, but hell, so does Boss Borot.

I don't know, maybe I can appreciate GoLion more now that's I've extensively used Combattler and Voltes. W was my very first import SRW after the OG games, and the OG games really don't have any units like that. ...plus I'm on a new game+, and I full upgraded GoLion my first time through. Yeah...I'm not sure if I like having upgrades carry over to a new game+. It just makes an already easy game even easier.

I guess I can see appreciating GoLion more if you associate it with Voltes V and Combattler V. But my mind has always compared it to Dancouga, which has a ton of subpilots and would still be pretty damn awesome even without the extra SP.

Voltron is a juggernaut. Its final attack doesn't quite compare to something like the Shin Shine Spark, but its five pilots and their seishin more than make up for that. If anything, Voltron is overpowered.

And I love it.

Oh like I'm NOT going to vote for Voltron.

Plus, Gaogaigar and Getter Robo. I like them okay too.

So, does this game nerf Reals like OG2 did? I know that by the end of that one, pretty much all my mission slots were devoted to Supers or support mechs. It sounds like the Reals become ridiculously powered here, though.

And uh, Favorite GaoGaiGar, Shin Getter, and Mazinkaiser. Because they're awesome.

Five pilots is a big bonus, yeah. But it's not nearly enough to make a mediocre unit overpowered in a game full of overpowered units.

Let's compare it to Shin Getter. Shin Getter gets three pilots, HP regen, EN regen, Bunshin, one of the strongest attacks in the game, and I believe the strongest unite attack in the game. And the three forms on top of all that to make it more useful in certain situations. And unlike certain other SRWs, the other forms can actually be useful!

GoLion gets five pilots.

That's honestly pretty much it.

Its second strongest attack at the beginning is weaker than Shin Getter-1's second weakest attack. It gets another attack (Maybe two? My replay isn't far enough along to check.) later on, but so does Shin Getter. On top of that, over half of its starting attacks use the shooting stat. This makes raising stats and learning skills a bit more complicated, since pumping everything into melee makes those attacks comparatively useless. Splitting them evenly makes its already unspectacular attacks that much worse than Shin Getter (Or damn near any other super), who has exactly 0 shooting attacks as Getter-1. GoLion also doesn't get a unite attack, something that Combattler V and Voltes V have traditionally shared to somewhat help them out.

Yeah, GoLion can be good! But the list of things that it's actually better than consists of M9s and Aestivalises and support units. Shin Getter's not even the brokenest thing in the game.

What a convenient excuse to finish this game! Would "Tyrone Shoelaces" work as a name or is that too long?

So far we have:

Pilot: 1 for Tyrone Shoelaces
1 for *first name* Sakura

Favs: NG R/+:
Orig: 1 Reg: 1
Tekk: 1 +: 1
Gao: 4
SG: 3
M: 2
G/V: 1

We need some mech names, otherwise I'm going to go with a Macross theme, because there's an absurd amount of Mac references and homages in game. Macross nerds are going to love a mech we'll be getting about halfway through the game. Anyway, the Anglicized names for the MC's mech and mothership are Valhawk and Valstork respectively for reference.

As for the Supes/Reals debate: While Supers win in overall power almost always, Reals generally have the advantage in mobility and weapons that don't drain EN like crazy in order to use, and they also get a lot more combo attacks which means they generally don't need the use of Melting Siren. The GaoGaiGar units don't really play within the "rules" Banpresto's set up for the series anyway, since they're all M sized or smaller and they've got a lot of combo attacks. Genesic GaoGaiGar is almost as broken as the last of the MC's units if you use it right.

SUGGESTION: Link to YouTube videos of the shows' theme songs or something, so people who aren't familiar with some/any of them can get an idea of what the show's like.

Yeah, I was planning on linking to the collected attacks since I know those are on Youtube to an extent. And that too. As usual, my brain's about half a step ahead of me.

For example:

Valhawk
Valstork

Reals were nerfed in OG2? Which OG2 were you playing? The one I played had pretty much every unit be a real, most combo attacks (and therefore most damage) were with reals, and only blink tanking was any good because the final boss could practically two-shot the Gan-Duro. Oh, and will was a huge issue on the normal final stage, so most supers weren't any good due to not being able to get up enough will. The only supers I took along to the endgame were DyGenGuard, Aussensiter, SRX (which is technically made of of reals and to get the most out of it you have to decombine and use Rai and Aya), and RyuKoOh.

As for reals in W...depends on if you think Tekkamen are reals. Wing and Nadescio are good in the first half, but fall off a bit by the endgame. SEED Astray units are pretty broken, and if you believe Mightyblue regular SEED units are good too. Orgun suffers from basically being a single unit and just a knock-off Tekkaman. I've never used FMP much, but I hear that Sousuke is good, but everyone else is kinda meh. Tekkamen...Tekkamen are broken. They're incredibly dodgy, hit really hard, have a good mix of free or practically free melee and sniping, have HP and EN regen, most have MAP attacks and combo attacks, Tekkaman Hiver has the most broken MAP attack in the game, and they almost all have effectively two lives because the first time they die, only their support unit gets killed and the actual Tekkaman keeps fighting. It gets kind of crazy. But on the other hand, it's W, and almost any unit is incredibly powerful with a little work.

Oh, names? I vote for just going with the defaults, only put them all in English for us. It's the simplest way out.

Oh god, Sousuke in the Arbalest with the Will Overlimit skill is possibly the most powerful and broken single unit of the game, solely due to how the Lambda Driver works.

Oh, and I vote for GoLion. Playing the mechs with the best stats and attacks does not make the game more fun. My enjoyment of SRW games increases exponentially with my familiarity with whichever series are included.

How long do the Gundam Wing guys stick around for?

Forever and ever. W is pretty bad for not killing off anyone as far as various series' plots go, or otherwise removing them.

I don't mind having them, I was wondering if I should restart because I was giving them all the upgrades. I might as well, I'm only on the fifth or sixth stage.

Bando Eido, callsign BandyAid is the only answer.

Is Shining Finger too long a name?

Or "Patches."

There is no way he's more broken than the natural perpetual motion machine that is the final original unit. Damage is nice, but if you do it right (okay, abuse a bug) your turn never has to end.

Introducing:
G Wing: Endless Waltz
MS Nadesico
Tekkaman Blade
Full Metal Panic
Shin Getter RoboThis isn't the same as the in-game one, but the game's Shin Getter Robo is based off of the manga version, apparently.
Mazinger Z/Mazinkaizer
GaoGaiGar
Golion

Okay, barring anything unusual* happening to me tonight, I should have something hammered together for an initial post tonight. But to hold you all off until I get back from the uni:

MC: Bando Eido [Callsign: Patches]
Mech: Valhawk
Ship: Valstork
NG+ playthrough

I'm not going to go terribly in depth with the story since it's mostly a horrifying amalgamation of a dozen animes/mangas, and I have something else planned to string things along between battles. Besides which you can always catch the story FAQ on GameFAQs anyway (not something I would really wish on anyone). The mech and ship names are just transliterated versions of the original JP, so unless someone has something more brilliant in mind, that's where we're going with this.

*I am having horrible sinus problems today, but it shouldn't prevent me from updating or anything.

Who-hoah, just noticed this bit. Can you change the attack names for all units? Can you change the seishin commands?