I Like it, but I Have Notes

[Jackie Daytona]

I'm 100 hours in. I'm ready to review. I can't decide if the pros outweigh the cons.

Difficulty
It's far too easy. I started on normal. Nothing could hit me. I could not miss. Regular enemies would die in one hit.

I increased to hard. Low chance to hit me. Even my low mobility mecha. Some still died from one shot. Named pilots became tougher. Then I spent the credits/PP I made in normal. Which made me invincible once again.

So, I took it to expert. Same thing. Named pilots are resilient, but that's about it. Most enemies can't hit. Heavy armor robots take less than 1k damage from most attacks. My most powerful robots still one shot everything.

Now, I guess I gotta go to super expert. As there's no challenge at expert.

Balance
Most pilots are about the same. They get certain bonuses. Activated at certain points. It's all roughly equal.

Then you have Amuro. His extra attack makes him better than everyone. With minimal upgrades he cannot be hit, and he cannot miss. Even if he doesn't? His spirit commands solve those problems.

There's also Leloch. (or however it's spelled) Between his command aura and unique bonuses... I can't leave him behind.

Mechs are even worse. The "Gun Blasters" and "The Rabbits" are worthless compared to Mazingers. Combattler V pales in comparison to SRX.

I'm not saying everything needs to be equal. However, I feel that some mechs render others irrelevant. As the strength of some outshine all others.

Adaptability
I don't know why this is still in the game. Nearly every weapon is "A" in every category. Except water. Which always gets a "B". And there's hardly any water on the maps. Even then, you can simply lure the enemy up onto land. So, it doesn't matter at all.

It's the same with terrain adaptability. Everyone gets an "A" or "S". In whatever their mech is made for. Then a "B" in water.

At this point it's just cluttering the stat screen with useless information.

Animation
It looks like that computer-assisted animation used in shows like 'Archer'. Making some mechs have unnatural movement. Other that it, looks nice.

Some animated cutscenes would be nice. Especially for some of these on-foot action scenes. That would work far better than the confusing radio play sound effects.

Story
The plot (so far) has been thin. Instead, all the plot is contained within pockets. Which only concern the characters from the related series. Which never seems to matter to the overall story. It's just kinda, happening. Then it's over.

The dialog is chaos. Any one of ~60 characters might chime in, at any time. It would help if everyone didn't bring along 5 side characters. The 'Majestic Prince' characters are particularly bad. It's like every time one comments, another has to follow it up. Then they bicker. Taking away from whatever is going on.

Conversations drag on far too long. The only purpose of the story is to get to the next battle. Developing unique emotions for five different sentient robots is far more than required. I don't need everyone's full back story and motivations.

Enemies
There's not much variety. Each faction has 1-3 regular units. Some have ships. This is mostly what you fight. Aside from the named pilots. Most of whom you'll see only a few times in the entire game.

Almost all enemies have only one attack. Which requires little energy or has a lot of ammo. (So, it never runs out.) It always has a decent range. It can usually be used after moving. There's not much you can do to counter-play against them. Limiting tactics to "move up and attack".

Translation
I don't understand much Japanese. But I have ears. I can hear when an English word is spoken. So, I don't understand why liberties were taken with the translation.

For instance, Amuro says something like, "taimingda". Which is "timing". The translated subtitles say something about speed or accuracy. It doesn't use the word "timing" at all.

There's other little things. Sometimes a character will talk about someone else. They'll put the subject at the end of the statement. This is normal in Japanese language. The translation sometimes puts the subject at the start of the statement.

[lPaladinl]

The balance isn't too far off from the V,X,T Trilogy. Those games pose slightly more challenge, with X having some tedium involved due to Map Attacks being spammed and dangerous.

Unit balance doesn't matter because you can upgrade any unit to be invincible and OHKO everything. Been that way for recent games too, but it's even worse in SRW30.

I do think the plot is weaker in this game than previous entries. Part of that is the "non-linear" design they tried to go with. The overall plot is more broken up and less impactful. However I also haven't been a big fan of SRW stories in general. I liked SRW V the most so far, and that was largely due to the majority of the plot just being a copy-paste of Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato, with Gundam Crossbone sprinkled in.

Enemy variety wasn't ever that expansive in previous games. iirc SRW30 might have more enemy factions and units than the past few games, granted majority of them are just repeats of enemies in the last few games, recycling their art and animations.

SRW30 was really hard for me to finish, because while I enjoyed it about as much as I have with other SRW games, the sheer length of it started to wear on me. I had to take breaks from SRW30 for months before I could finish it, where I played SRW V and X front to back within a few weeks as my primary game each day.

In the end I don't dislike SRW30 but my enjoyment more or less just comes down to enjoying the roster of units, of which SRW30 is more of a mixed bag for me than previous games, but has a larger roster with some surprise additions that I enjoyed a lot.

[Creep Gnome]

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

Enemy variety wasn't never that expansive in previous games. iirc SRW30 might have more enemy factions and units than the past few games, granted majority of them are just repeats of enemies in the last few games, recycling their art and animations.

You're not wrong here, but I feel like VXT30 got really bad about enemy variety.

As a point of comparison, I started SRW BX recently. Most enemy factions there have like 3-4 different grunt units that get sprinkled across the map, whereas VXT30 tend to literally throw ~20 of the same exact unit at you, with a "boss" unit that only really stands out because it has an order of magnitude more hp and like 8 levels of Potential.

[TekFan]

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

SRW30 was really hard for me to finish, because while I enjoyed it about as much as I have with other SRW games, the sheer length of it started to wear on me. I had to take breaks from SRW30 for months before I could finish it, where I played SRW V and X front to back within a few weeks as my primary game each day.

Yeah, SRW30 is a bit TOO long. I still have not finished the 2nd playthrough, just due to sheer lack of motivation.

[lPaladinl]

Originally posted by TekFan:

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

SRW30 was really hard for me to finish, because while I enjoyed it about as much as I have with other SRW games, the sheer length of it started to wear on me. I had to take breaks from SRW30 for months before I could finish it, where I played SRW V and X front to back within a few weeks as my primary game each day.

Yeah, SRW30 is a bit TOO long. I still have not finished the 2nd playthrough, just due to sheer lack of motivation.

For me it almost serves as a cautionary tale to be careful what you wish for.

When I played previous games, I had hoped for them to be longer and, more importantly, just have more content to them.

Then I get to play 30 and it was a bit exhausting to mash through so many levels, especially later into the game when the challenge has left the station an aeon ago.

Still a fan though, and I enjoyed a lot of units despite me being more picky this time around. I don't think SRW30 is a bad game, but future releases might want to reconsider the current direction V,X,T and 30 took. Being so much more casual sucks some of the fun and interest out of the game, making missions feel more like a chore instead of a fun experience.

I don't want to advocate for the game to become very difficult, either, personally. But I think it's a bit too much when I never need any tactics or strategy because my entire roster can evade all damage at all times, either have more EN/Ammo than is needed to clear a mission or otherwise regen all EN/Ammo in the field, and I can clear most stages with a single unit in a single turn by abusing extra turns.

I don't even notice the difficulty differences in this game, save for the very early game (maybe first 10 stages?) because the same systems that break the game, work on all difficulties. We might even just need something like a No-Spirits mode, but then you open up a can of worms of units getting obliterated very easily.

SD Gundam also took this route of being too casual to the point of making it feel like a chore (aside from quest objectives, which sometimes add some difficulty. This is also something that was removed from SRW30 to it's detriment.) With SD Gundam I hope they can find a way to combine the mechanics in Cross Rays that allow every unit to be viable, while bringing back some of the difficulty of the previous games. SRW as a series also needs to work something similar out.

[Creep Gnome]

It may sound strange, but I think a major factor for the games becoming too easy was the addition of Accuracy as an upgradeable stat (and maybe enemy evasion being generally lower, but I don't know for sure).

Play a fresh save on a PS1/PS2-era SRW, and you'll pretty quickly find your super robots pulling ~40% hit rates against most real robot enemies. Even strong newtype pilots had sketchy hit rates when boss/midboss enemy aces show up. There was a near-constant need to spend SP in order to have reliable damage output, which meant you had to be careful about how much you spent and when. Accuracy-boosting power parts existed, but were not terribly common and competed for valuable part slots.

With Accuracy being upgradeable (and very cheap, at that) you can safely hold onto your SP for defense, which leads to this feeling that the player's army is untouchable.

Obviously there are other factors, like Potential and Leadership getting significantly stronger in recent titles, but the easy access to high hit rates can't be understated.

[REhorror]

There's also the stuff about generated Seishin, that stuff is OP. Back then it costs a ton of Skill point to buy that, now it's available for everyone.

I've been playing Triangle Strategy and TO: Reborn and I hope SRW take some cues from them, especially on the difficulty.

[Lienhart]

OP, are you Japanese?

I ask because your comments regarding the translation hints you are not.

[SmallGespenst]

Originally posted by Lienhart:

OP, are you Japanese?

I ask because your comments regarding the translation hints you are not.

some people *really* like the most literal possible translation, if it's not 1:1 perfect then it's not good enough. Y'know, just demanding machine translation (that's what you get if you ask for 100% literal translation, you get garbage that doesn't make sense 'cause Japanese is not an English cipher.
These people don't actually have any idea what they're actually talking about.

[Lienhart]

Originally posted by SmallGespenst:

Originally posted by Lienhart:

OP, are you Japanese?

I ask because your comments regarding the translation hints you are not.

some people *really* like the most literal possible translation, if it's not 1:1 perfect then it's not good enough. Y'know, just demanding machine translation (that's what you get if you ask for 100% literal translation, you get garbage that doesn't make sense 'cause Japanese is not an English cipher.
These people don't actually have any idea what they're actually talking about.

Yea.....

My mother tongue is Mandarin. I also understand a bit of Japnaese because Kanji is literally Chinese.

It is quite offensive when someone thinks literal translations are a good idea and they weren't born/raised in that culture/language. It's arrogant, narcissistic, and ignorant.

[Creep Gnome]

A lot of awful anime fans think anything beyond a literal 1:1 translation is somehow disrespecting the original text. Most of them don't stop to think about why the changes were made, nor do they ask themselves how a sentence sounds coming from the mouth of a human being. To respond to the original poster's examples:

Originally posted by Jackie Daytona:

For instance, Amuro says something like, "taimingda". Which is "timing". The translated subtitles say something about speed or accuracy. It doesn't use the word "timing" at all.

Because that line translated literally doesn't make any sense. English speakers don't abruptly shout "Timing!". Replacing it with a more natural-sounding line is fine as long as it fits contextually.

Originally posted by Jackie Daytona:

There's other little things. Sometimes a character will talk about someone else. They'll put the subject at the end of the statement. This is normal in Japanese language. The translation sometimes puts the subject at the start of the statement.

This isn't a problem. This is what a translator should be doing, provided it makes sense in the target language and doesn't change the meaning of what is being said.