High Dynamic Range Lying

Super Robot fever took over HDRL some time ago. I had been casually interested in the series in the past, but it was Super Robot Wars W for the DS that started such fervor for the series. I had been burned by strategy RPGs in the fast, often finding them too long, or aggravatingly difficult. I became very choosy about the genre, only picking up titles that were part of established franchises that I knew always bore good fruit.

I stayed away from SRW for a long time, because I knew that if I ever enjoyed one title in the series, I would have to pick up all the games in the franchise eventually. SRW is a series that spans 20 years and just as many games. Such an undertaking would be nearly impossible. Nevertheless, I delved into SRW W, and loved it. It’s no surprise then, that I was first in line to pick up Super Robot Wars Original Generations (OGs for short), the remake of the two Original Generation titles for the Game Boy Advance.

Unlike most SRW titles, OG (short for Original Generation) does not feature characters or robots from licensed anime or manga. Instead, OG games collect characters from Banpresto created original series, as well as original lead characters that first appeared in another Super Robot Wars title.

Just like the other SRW titles, the two OG titles are strategy RPGs, where players amass an army of real and super robots, and do battle with enemy armies. Each turn takes place in two phases: a player phase, and an enemy phase. During the player phase, players move their units around the battlefield, and attack enemy units in range. Players can also use abilities called seishin, that allow them to change specific stats in their favor. During an enemy phase, enemies move around the field and attack the player’s units. When an enemy engages a player’s unit, the player has to make one of three choices before the encounter continues: counterattack, attempt to dodge, or block.

While Super Robot Wars W was a single game with two “seasons” of play, OGs for Playstation 2 is a compilation of two previously released titles. OG1 and OG2 both released for Game Boy Advance, and even offered added benefits if played in sequential order.

Largely considered a remake, OGs allows players to play OG1 or OG2 in any order they like, rather than combining them into a single game (much the way the SRW Compact games were compiled into Impact when they finally released on the PS2). The remake adds multiple new characters and robots, along with new stages that flesh out the story far better than its original counterparts.

Strangely, much of OG1 remains untouched, with enemy unit placement, boss strength, and even mission objectives remaining largely the same. OGs even retains OG’s skill point system, where players have a tertiary objective that, if accomplished, are able to play the game on a higher difficulty. As long as players continue to complete these tertiary objectives, they will continue to play at the higher difficulty. If they don’t accomplish these goals, the difficulty will degrade to normal, and eventually easy.

The skill points objectives themselves are not difficult to achieve. While it can be fairly easy to fail the objectives if one is simply playing through the game to finish a mission, a little preparation and strategy is all anyone will need to complete the objective. Goals range from simply destroying all enemies in a specific number of turns to defeating a boss character before they have a chance to escape.

OG1’s changes are largely cosmetic, but those changes are drastic and phenomenal. Character portraits, mech sprites, and battle animations have been completely overhauled, making them more suited for the Playstation 2 than the low resolution sprites of the original. Battle animations are far more fluid and now employ more dramatic camera angles and close ups that show off Banpresto’s impressive sprite work. While the battle animation sprites are high resolution, though, actual unit sprites are rather low resolution and blocky, which is especially apparent if playing on a Playstation 3, like I am.

The actual battlefield is reminiscent of recent SRW titles, using an isometric view and simple polygonal graphics. All units are represented as super-deformed polygonal versions of themselves, and each one is rather simplistic, with rudimentary, and often garish, textures. Considering the rather crude polygonal representation of characters in the battlefield, it is very surprising when players first initiate a powerful attack, and are treated to a lengthy sequence of beautiful rendered and animated 2D video.

Unlike OG1, OGs’ representation of OG2 is a large difference. Plenty of missions and units have been added, along with a few choice new characters for the roster, including Compatible Kaiser from The Great Battle IV (ザグレトバトルIV). Moving from the largely unchanged OG1 into OG2, veteran SRW fans will be thrown for a loop when they realize the first five missions of OG2 are entirely new for the remake, along with other big changes to the OG2 formula. Those who play OGs in its intended order are also awarded with a money bonus upon starting OG2.

Super Robot Wars has always prided itself on its lavish battle animations, and OGs is no slouch in this regard. Because units are Banpresto originals, battle animations are often over the top, and don’t have to stick to a specific anime or manga canon to which it belongs. The unfortunate side effect is that missions tend to bog down, as some battle animations can stretch out to more than a minute. Fortunately, OGs, as with previous iterations, offers players the option to turn off battle animations on the fly, allowing them to race through easy encounters, but still savor the final defeat of an especially difficult boss. Luckily, with battle animations turned off, SRW is still faster paced than titles like Tactics Ogre and Namco X Capcom.

Super Robot Wars is a particularly addictive series, and OGs is no different, offering improvements to the formula, while still retaining what makes the series so much fun. At 6500 yen, it offers two full 40 plus mission titles, which is likely to keep any fan busy for plenty of time.

Addiction, it seems, has not changed its name. Super Robot Wars has come home to rule, and I for one welcome our robot overlords.