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I just noticed that Masou Kishin III existed. Was it not talked about much because it was bad or was I just not paying attention?
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Jul 30, 2014 19:52
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It was ignored because it was out right around when people were still having fun with 2nd OG. Hell, in my experience, I don't think that many western fans pay attention to Masou Kishin.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:12
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I usually don't either, except the MK part was my favorite part of OG2, so I'm sort of interested because of that. And because it's now cheaper than Coffin of the End.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:27
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I think most people dont care because its just not very good or balanced. Its not at all like the first part of OG2nd if thats what youre thinking.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:30
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It also has the worst enemy AI in a very long time (it targets based on ability to reach and remaining HP total, but very little else) but everything hits so hard and nobody can tank well, so you have to abuse its lovely targeting just to survive.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:42
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Okay so after reading some of the LPs around here I decided I needed to get in on this game series. I found the Alpha collection at a local place for pretty cheap, so that came with Alpha, Alpha 2 and Gaiden, and then I grabbed Alpha 3 separately so I could have the whole set. Only later did I realize that 2, 3 and EX(4? or something different?) are also on the PS1 and readily available locally. I'm a few missions in to Alpha 1, but since the overarching plot of SRW starts with 2-4, should I stop and go back and play through the PS1 remakes of those first? Or does my enjoyment of the plot in Alpha not really hinge on knowing exactly where every single character and plot point came from? Also I want to have a portable SRW to play on train rides and stuff (sadly I do not consider my PSP to be a portable system, so I'm talking about GBC/A/DS) so what would folks suggest? I know J and W are pretty popular among western fans, but I've gotten a lot of recommendations from Japanese friends that D or A are the best for the Nintendo portables. These same friends also told me that Impact is 'SRW Hell', in that it is freakishly long and does not allow you to skip battle animations. Considering this was made during the PS2 era I find that hard to believe. Is it true?
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Jul 30, 2014 23:22
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Alpha is completely self-contained. You don't have to play anything else and also they're better games than the earlier ones. D has a fun plot but some pretty screwed up gameplay mechanics. W has a fun plot but is easy as balls. A is a bit better mechanically but its plot is less fun. I'd go for D or W honestly since A got a PSP upgraded port. Do not get SRW Impact. Get SRWZ. A good rule of thumb: Every SRW game is self-contained unless it is specifically part of a series. (Alpha, Z.) You don't need to play any other SRW game to enjoy one. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 23:23
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You want the SRW Z's. If you own a PS3, get SRW Z1 from the PS2 Classics line. Get SRW Z2-1 and Z2-2 for PSP/Vita. Then you've got SRWZ3-1 for PS3 or Vita.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:24
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Policenaut posted:You want the SRW Z's. If you own a PS3, get SRW Z1 from the PS2 Classics line. Get SRW Z2-1 and Z2-2 for PSP/Vita. Then you've got SRWZ3-1 for PS3 or Vita. Even if I'm reading the LPs?
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Jul 30, 2014 23:25
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Yeah, they're super fun games and playing them is probably more fun than reading about them.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:26
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Super Robot Wars is like many JRPG franchise in that the each game can have its own continuity. 2-F are a different continuity then the Alpha series and there are a lot of stand alone titles. In all honsty I'd stay away from anything pre-Alpha 1 because it's a lot clunkier.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:26
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Getsuya posted:Even if I'm reading the LPs? Z at bare minimum is one of the better games to play, and the LPer of Z2 said they're not moving on to Z2.2 IIRC.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:26
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Getsuya posted:Even if I'm reading the LPs? As one of the Z LPers yes.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:27
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Getsuya posted:These same friends also told me that Impact is 'SRW Hell', in that it is freakishly long and does not allow you to skip battle animations. Considering this was made during the PS2 era I find that hard to believe. Is it true? It is true that Impact is so long you will want to shoot it before you finish. Impact is the last of the old-style SRW games and is in some ways a throwback, because it's a remake of Compact 2; it's so long because Compact 2 was released in three parts (!) for the Wonderswan, and thus has 100+ stages. Compact 2 part 1 predates Alpha 1. Don't play Impact. As an added 'bonus', if you're playing the games emulated (which you might; I own legit copies of the whole Alpha series but preferred to play them on my PC), Impact doesn't emulate properly and is unplayable.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:28
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I'd say that the GBA games are easily ranked reverse chronologically. People are iffy on J but its available to play in english which is cool. J>D>R>A, with A being on the edge of "too old" imo. For DS, W is largely regarded as the most fun with the best series, even though its probably one of the easiest SRW games to date. I played it literally a dozen times and still love it. K and L are neat at least for the series they put in but can become a bit of a slog. If youre already at it, definitely play the Alpha series because its practically impossible for me to go back after the quality of life additions in subsequent games.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:36
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I always felt like MX (PS2 version, the PSP one is plagued be awful load times and a "difficulty increase" accomplished by inflating boss HP massively, making the entire endeavor kinda tedious) was a great intro to the series. Solid mechanically, standalone plot, great cast (Rom loving Stoll is the greatest). Of course, that may just be nostalgia talking.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:58
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I'm always going to have a soft spot for W, which was my first real game (tragically, because of Voltron). Play Z though. Z owns. Everything about Z (except Hibiki) owns.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:00
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Getsuya posted:These same friends also told me that Impact is 'SRW Hell', in that it is freakishly long and does not allow you to skip battle animations. Considering this was made during the PS2 era I find that hard to believe. Is it true? Impact does let you skip battle animations. The problem is that it is still an excruciating slog even when skipping animations. The map animations that replace skipped animations are still very slow, and you will see a whole lot of those as all enemies are very tough to kill off.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:01
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Getsuya posted:These same friends also told me that Impact is 'SRW Hell', in that it is freakishly long and does not allow you to skip battle animations. Considering this was made during the PS2 era I find that hard to believe. Is it true? After that, it is a mess of lengthy battle animations and load times. Example: a typical battle encounter goes roughly like this: quote:>Unit initiates battle-->Attacking pilot dialogue-->Attack animation for initiator-->Cut to target--Attack hits/misses If anything, I recommend at least looking at videos of Impact side-by-side with Z1 videos. You really can gauge just how the series develops as over the PS2 era and watch as Banpresto pushes the PS2's capabilities to the max.
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Jul 31, 2014 01:09
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KoB posted:I'd say that the GBA games are easily ranked reverse chronologically. People are iffy on J but its available to play in english which is cool. J>D>R>A, with A being on the edge of "too old" imo. I'd say that R is better than D; the armor bug in D is really quite game-breaking, if you want to use super robots at all.
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Jul 31, 2014 01:35
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Nah, you've got Fire Bomber which makes any unit usable.
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Jul 31, 2014 01:40
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Regarding the GBA games, I consider it... D=R > A > J Picking from D and R is a matter of whether your preference is better cast list/cross-over concept versus a much more balanced game overall. R is probably the best balanced SRW of the GBA games, although it's still easy, but that's SRW for you. Incidentally, D doesn't really have an "Armor Bug", it just has really screwed up stats where something like an Armored Valkyrie has more base armor than Mazinger Z. I think I mention this in an off-chance that someone could potentially mod the game and raise every Super's armor by a few hundred points or something. The original GBA A has some serious issues with not receiving the interface/gameplay jumps that Alpha 1/Gaiden brought to the series, but I still think it's kind of interesting if you can get past that... and since it doesn't use "Modern" SRW mechanics there's some reason to play this over its PSP version if only for curiosity (though I would recommend the latter) J is such an ungodly slog and you might as well play W instead outside of a handful of series which didn't make the jump from J to W.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:52
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Davzz posted:Incidentally, D doesn't really have an "Armor Bug", it just has really screwed up stats where something like an Armored Valkyrie has more base armor than Mazinger Z. I think I mention this in an off-chance that someone could potentially mod the game and raise every Super's armor by a few hundred points or something. No wonder I couldn't find anything about it by googling just now. All I could find were vague mentions on Akurasu and TvTropes of all things. I even tried searching in japanese (with my admittedly limited knowledge), and couldn't seem to find anything at all. I did find this wiki page that has a comprehensive list of seemingly every bug in the series, but the sections on D never mention armor.
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Jul 31, 2014 03:01
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maou shoujo posted:I did find this wiki page that has a comprehensive list of seemingly every bug in the series, but the sections on D never mention armor. The "Armor Bug" was really common belief that spread around the Internet (I'm not sure if Wikipedia still has that line about it) until some people actually tested it. If you go ahead and cheat or something to raise your armor values to some really ridiculous high values such as 5000 or something, you can clearly see that armor works. It's just that Armor doesn't scale fast enough compared to enemy damage values in D, which I think is something that also happens in A Portable. You can still use Tanky units if you double up and stack Defense Up stat parts along with increasing their Armor, but it's just much better to focus on the other methods of damage mitigation such as dodging since the math works out better. Ironically even upping Skill is most likely a much better defensive option for triggering abilities like Sword Cut and Shield Defense.
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Jul 31, 2014 03:15
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Since we're back on this subject, the other oddity about Impact that doesn't get mentioned a lot is space backgrounds. This was the first PS2 SRW game, and also the first SRW that included 360 degree scrolling using the right analog stick, which was a mind-blowing development at the time, I assure you. But for some reason, space stages were hard locked to a single angle with no scrolling allowed. Why? Well, I kind of figured out the reason by accident. There's one space stage featuring the episode of Nadesico where the heroes check out an errant mining asteroid. That stage allowed 360 degree scrolling, probably because it needed it with the visual constraints of being in an asteroid. And when I did it, the starry space background whirled by so fast that it actually made me a little nauseous. I can only imagine this is the reason for locking the camera on every other space stage. Whatever the actual programming or graphical issue was that caused that, either it was fixed by the time Alpha 2 rolled around, or Alpha 2's 90 degree scrolling restrictions were enough of a band-aid to not make it an issue. MX was the next game to have full 360 scrolling, and it definitely wasn't an issue there.
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Jul 31, 2014 03:37
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Well, after reading everyone's suggestions I came to the conclusion that it really didn't matter which of the GBA/DS titles I picked up since they all seem to have good things and bad things said about them. 'I'll just pick up whatever one they happen to have and I'll probably enjoy it' I said to myself. So I did. I bought the portable SRW games they had at my local Book Off.  They just happened to have quite a few of them. I was pretty surprised to find every single GBA one just sort of sitting around, and equally surprised that the only DS one they had was W. I thought that one was slightly harder to find for some reason. And I was only planning to buy Z2-1, but they had the box and I had no idea if the box was for Z2-1 or Z2-2 (the titles didn't really help, though now that I look at them one has the kanji for 'again' in the subtitle so I suppose that would be the 2nd one) so I ended up buying both just to be safe. Alas for PS2 the only ones they had were Impact and the 2 Scramble Commander games. No Z just yet, though I know another store in town has it. Oh and they had the A strategy guide for a buck so I picked that up because why not. Yeah this was all a bit of an impulse buy but what the hell $70 for 7 SRW games, basically $10 a game is a pretty solid deal if you ask me. Now I just need to figure out which of the portable ones I'm going to start on. And get back to Alpha. V Nah I bought both Z2-1 and Z2-2. Z2-1 is just still in the box. And I am definitely going to space these out, though I'll probably have one portable and one console one going at a time when I do play them. Besides SRW I have a crapton of PS2/3 games I just bought over summer break so whenever I get tired I can always just go back to Wild Arms or Galaxy Angel or whatever. Getsuya fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 13:03
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You bought Z2-2, just FYI. Enjoy your gaming, and try not to get burnt out. A lot of SRWs play pretty samey if they're done back to back.
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Jul 31, 2014 13:06
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Getsuya posted:So I did. I bought the portable SRW games they had at my local Book Off. Maaaaan. This is the thing I miss the most from my time in Japan. For the uninitiated, picture a prolific used bookstore chain that sells books, CDs, and video games at rock bottom prices. He mentions basically paying $10 a game, and that's still on the higher end of what they charge for stuff. I paid ¥700 for a full 7 book manga set there once, and it was pristine condition, as was just about everything else I saw. Book Offs are wonderful and I would shop in one every week if I could.
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Jul 31, 2014 13:25
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Hokuto posted:Maaaaan. This is the thing I miss the most from my time in Japan. The only place better for used game shopping than a Book Off in Japan is Sofmap. Kyoto, where I was within 10 minutes of 3 different Book Offs and an easy hour away from 3 Sofmaps and a Super Potato 8, was pretty much Heaven on Earth, though I didn't have the money to appreciate it at the time.
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Jul 31, 2014 13:36
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I bought a copy of Scramble Commander at a Book Off for 300 yen and I still regret doing so. 
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Jul 31, 2014 13:42
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As someone who's apparently living in Japan, this might not be QUITE as useful to you, but is still handy to have: http://akurasu.net/wiki/Super_Robot_Wars , which is basically THE go-to wiki for SRW info in English. Even if you don't need the translations it provides, it also tells you secret requirements and other useful stuff. A fantastic tool for newbie and pro alike.
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Jul 31, 2014 14:15
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SRW D is great because for the longest time it was the only one with Getter Robo Armageddon, the Getter with The Best Theme 
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Jul 31, 2014 18:33
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HEATS or Ima Ga Sono Toki Da? Your life depends on this answer.
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Jul 31, 2014 20:35
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muike posted:HEATS or Ima Ga Sono Toki Da? Your life depends on this answer. Is 'both' acceptable?
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Jul 31, 2014 20:36
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you may live
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Jul 31, 2014 20:43
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muike posted:HEATS or Ima Ga Sono Toki Da? Your life depends on this answer. Theyre both great for different reasons/situations. HEATS 
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Jul 31, 2014 20:44
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muike posted:HEATS or Ima Ga Sono Toki Da? Your life depends on this answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71wG9uLaMLQ
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Jul 31, 2014 20:46
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I can only dream for this to be available as a default theme in Z3.2.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:31
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TARDISman posted:I can only dream for this to be available as a default theme in Z3.2. God knows if it's not, it'll be made one by custom BGM.
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Aug 1, 2014 01:53
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So after buying all the non-OG GBA SRWs last night I decided to go chronologically through them (not in one sitting obviously but over time), so I started with A. I figure that way I won't miss quality of life upgrades from later titles if I tried going from newer to older. At first I got frustrated with how hard it is to accurately shoot down named guys that run away under a certain HP%, but then I came to two startling conclusions. The first is that this entire game is based around co-op attacks and so I should just always make sure everyone's together in a big clump so they can combo off of each other for days. The second is that Great Mazinger is broken as hell and always seems to do 2x or 3x the damage listed on its attacks. What? The enemy runs away when it hits lower than 5000 HP? Good thing Great Mazinger can smack them for 6500-ish by himself despite this being the second level of the game.
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Aug 1, 2014 03:06
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