Super Robot Wars A Portable

There's a lot packed into just describing this game. It is a tactical RPG game that is also a crossover of many, many mecha anime, and a remake of the GBA game from 2001. I played the original GBA version many years ago and even though I didn't understand a word of Japanese, I did recognize numerous characters and mechs from Gundam Wing in this game. Outside of Gundam Wing, there are many other featured series in this game. What brings them all together is the "Banpresto originals" - i.e. the characters that are the actual focus of the story.

I'll take this moment to note that I played A Portable with an english patch.

As you start the game, you will pick a character: Axel Almer or Lamia Loveless. Depending on what kind of mech you use, you will start the game in a different path. The Real path will have you start out in space, joining the Gundam and Dragonar crew. The Super route will make you start off down in planet earth, with my preferred version of the plot: Axel/Lamia fell while inside his/her mech. The Mazinger or the Getter Robo crew find the protagonist and they join forces as said protagonist struggles with memory loss.

Now, you might say, that's all great, but what do you actually do in the game?

Essentially, you and your enemies are set on a grid where you can move. Your pilots can also use "spirit commands" which I prefer to call "spells" - either way, they are special abilities that can greatly change the tide of battle when dealing with certain situations. Wanna bait the AI into attacking one unit that can hit all of them hard while taking little damage? You can do that with the Guard spell. You want to have a 100% guarantee of hitting your opponents for a turn? You can do that with the Strike spell. What if you want an ally that doesn't have the Strike spell to have that guarantee? You can give it to them! Use the Attune spell for that.

What if you want to heal an ally? Well, there are multiple ways to do that. You can use the Faith or Trust spells, or you can have a mech with the Repair ability. In lower levels, the amount of HP that is healed is tiny, but if you level up pilots that are in mechs that can Repair, they can heal great amounts of HP, even more than the Trust spell that heals up to 2000 HP.

What if you want to replenish EN (energy that is wasted by some attacks) and Ammo in one shot? You can do that too, but only with mechs that have the Refuel ability. I noticed that pilots can level up very quickly via Refueling.

The combat actually gets quite deep, as you can already imagine. There are a total of 30 spells, and I'm not going to go into all of them, but generally, some of them power up your attacks, others affect how many tiles you can move, how much EXP or money you win, and there's a few that have to do with the Will of pilots.

Will?

Yes, your pilots have a number known as the Will - the higher the Will, the more powerful your attacks can get, and in some cases, new attacks are enabled after reaching a certain amount. This number increases via successful attacks, and kills.

Battling also has its details - when it's the enemy's turn, you can dodge, defend or fight back.

Dodging is where this game can get annoying. See, this game has a mechanic known as "Evasion decay" - it works in your favor as well, but you will notice it way more when the AI decides to take a bunch of its units and have them gang up on 1 of yours. As you keep trying to dodge, you'll notice that the percentage of the AI's attack being successful is going up. That is the essentially what Evasion decay is. The game doesn't want to let players just spam the dodge option, so this mechanic is there. Hell, you don't even have to choose to dodge constantly - as long as the same mech keeps dodging attacks in a turn, Evasion decay will kick in. The AI seems to know this is a thing, and thus, they will keep going after 1 unit to trigger this effect.

In the early scenarios (stages/missions/whatever you want to call them), this isn't really a problem. However, later stages have enemies with ridiculously high HP values. This can easily become a big problem.

Is there much that can be done about this? Aside from casting Confusion to cut the AI's success percent by a half, or using the Focus spell for one of your pilots, not really. In the original GBA game, if you had units right next to each other, you could trigger Support Attacks while on offense, and everyone could defend an ally on the defense (Support Defense).

This is not the case in Porta-potty. The developers must have felt like the game wasn't hard enough on the GBA, and thus, they made some very questionable decisions in this PSP remake.

As you make progress through the story, you'll get more ally mechs, but unfortunately, many of them don't guard units next to them by default. You have to get the special skills known as Support Attack and Support Defense, which only get dropped by a few enemies in the entire game, and in a few scenarios.

This brings me to another issue I have with the game - this one was present in the GBA version as well. When you beat enemies, you get EXP, money, and a part/skill that you can equip to a unit/pilot. If you get past a scenario and you missed a part/skill because one of the major enemies escaped, tough break. However, what happens when you lose in a scenario? Well, to do that, you don't have to lose every single unit on your team. Past stage 4, you definitely have to deal with a mother ship like the Argama or Nadesico being with your crew. If you lose one of them, it's "game over" - you failed the scenario and will get sent back to the pre-scenario menu.

However, you get to keep all the money, EXP and parts you won prior to failing the scenario.

This means that it's actually more favorable to lose scenarios. Far more favorable, because this is the only way to replay scenarios. The issue is obvious - repeating the same stages over and over is not very fun. As I made progress through the game, I found myself having to repeat missions because even the grunt enemies get ridiculous HPs by around scenario 22. Luckily, the enemy pilots have their levels scaled around the top levels of your crew, but they also get very dodge happy in later stages. Mechs have stats of their own and when you combine ridiculous Mobility stats along with pilots having ridiculous Evasion stats, you get enemies that are practically untouchable without a lot of spells being wasted.

Spells are not infinite. Your pilots all have their own set of Spirit Points and increasing their levels is the main way to increase the SPs. Another way is to pump them with SP+ skills, but like other skills, these aren't dropped often.

I feel little changes could go a long way with this game, but the list of "little changes" would get very long. For instance:

• Enable replaying previous scenarios without having to lose them. Just another slot on the pre-scenario menu would do the trick here, call it "Replay" and bam. That way, you can grind to your heart's content, and try again against boss mechs that were impossible to kill before due to low levels, or lack of firepower.
• Give more money to players after beating each enemy. You can use the money to upgrade your mechs (HP, mobility, energy, armor), but you only get good amounts of money from killing bosses. In many stages, bosses escape when their HP gets somewhat low. Plus, every mech has a Full Upgrade Bonus, so it sure feels like you are supposed to fully upgrade mechs as you play through the game.
• If you're not supposed to get so far into the game via beating each scenario in one shot, then actually make your scenarios challenging. There are some where you are supposed to keep an AI ally from dying, and others where you have to prevent the AI enemies from stepping on a base. Those are a decent challenge, although the AI allies aren't very smart. My personal favorite as far as challenges go in this game are the ones where you have to kill all the enemies in X amount of turns. In fact, the final scenario is almost exactly that, except you only have to kill the nearly untouchable boss with ridiculous HP.
• I really, really don't like that some high HP bosses can also dodge a lot. It really doesn't help that past a certain number, the game doesn't show you the HP number and decides to show question marks. You might think "well, they're supposed to be difficult" but a really high HP enemy is just plain annoying to deal with. Don Saucer is by far one of the worst examples. He might not dodge so much, but he has a partial HP regen ability that kicks in after every turn. What ends up happening is that you slowly, but surely realize that beating him is impossible with your weak units. You can find that out the hard way, by wasting spell after spell, wasting a lot of time. This isn't good game design.
• Let pilots Support Attack/Support Defend by default. For fuck's sake. What a stupid idea to make this such a limited ability.

The best part is that the lack of Support Defend also hits the AI for several scenarios. In fact, the design of Haman Karn's battle is ruined because the enemies surrounding her mech don't have the Support Defend skill. Thus, they just sit around her, for no good reason. In the original GBA version, they all defended her with their lives, so you had to destroy those 3 bulky mechs first, and then Haman's mech was open to all attacks.

When the AI in Porta-potty does take advantage of having the Support Defend ability, it's very annoying, and the only way past that is the use Combination Attacks. Some units have that due to storyline reasons involving the anime they're from. For example, Great Mazinger and Mazinger Z can launch Double Rocket Punches if they are both sortied into a scenario, and they're next to each other on the grid. Using such attacks bypasses the Support Defense any enemy has.

I'm sure anyone reading this now can tell that there's a lot to this game. The soundtrack is great, it includes instrumental remixes of iconic songs from numerous anime. Graphically, this game makes the GBA version look like a joke. Hell, in the GBA version, the animations for attacks were laughably limited, even compared to the sequels that had come out on the same system.

The problem is that the design of these scenarios is just straight up lousy. It's like the developers simply buffed the enemies without thinking too much about how to help players with dealing with the extra bulk. I would replay the hell out of this game if it gave players the proper amount of money, parts and skills in every scenario. Instead, I was left headbutting my PSP (figuratively) in frustration at scenarios I had to replay. It's not that you have to replay them just once, sometimes these fuckers can take several replays until you finally buffed your units enough.

There are some minor details that annoy me, like Mecha Tekkouki's pilot having the most broken Ace Pilot bonus (i.e. if you get 50 kills or more with a pilot, you get the Ace icon to light up and its bonus) - the bonus with him is that he suffers no Evasion decay. Thus, if you increase his mech's mobility to the max and increase his Evasion stat...yeah, you get the idea. Also, you can give every pilot the Counter skill...but due to a bug, only the few pilots that actually innately learn it (via levelling up) can get it. Someone screwed up there.

As for the main plot, it's not too bad, either. I'll just spoil it after the next paragraph, so stop reading if you don't want details spoiled. Overall, this game starts decently, but with how ridiculously buffed enemies get in later scenarios, and an AI that knows it can totally screw you over via ganging up on one of your units, it's a struggle to keep playing this. Combine that with generally lazy scenario designs (many scenarios are just "beat the grunts and then the ones with ridiculously high HP lol"), and you have a game that fizzles out. It can fizzle out fast if you are not a fan of mecha anime and are totally unfamiliar with the series. I am familiar with many of the Gundam anime represented in this, and the original GBA game did introduce me to many other series, so I have a sense of loyalty to this. Unfortunately, I can't recommend this game unless you're already aware of what a "Gundam" is or if by any chance, you know more than just about Gundams.

By the way, if you happen to beat the game, after the credits, you will save the game once more, enabling a New Game+ run where you keep the money and kills you picked up in the previous playthrough. This includes a large lump of cash you get for beating the Zweizergain.

As stated earlier, the plot starts with a crew somehow finding the protagonist stranded with memory loss, if you chose the Super Robot. Said protagonist seems somewhat aware of some of the abilities enemies have. For example, some Nadesico enemies can teleport with an ability known as the Boson Jump. Axel/Lamia anticipate this happening, even if they shouldn't know about that due to their amnesia.

Some of the allies get suspicious - how the hell does the protagonist know about things like that? As it turns out, the protagonist was sent on a mission by a group known as the Shadow-Mirror. Their boss, and indeed, the game's final boss, is Vindel Mauser, who pilots the Zweizergain. Along with him is Lemon Browning, who pilots the Weisssaviour, and the protagonist that was not chosen (i.e. if you picked Axel, Lamia is the 3rd main antagonist, and viceversa).

Shadow-Mirror's idea was to send Axel/Lamia out to infiltrate the Londo Bell (the name of the player's crew). They did not anticipate the protagonist having memory loss, and this causes confusion when Axel and Lamia finally find each other at Scenario 13. I chose Axel on my first playthrough, so I saw the conversation where Lamia thinks Axel is merely keeping up an act in front of the other Londo Bell members, who might be monitoring their conversation.

Note: If you chose a Real Robot, the story starts in space and the protagonist has no amnesia. Instead, the protag manages to somewhat blend in with Londo Bell, but there still are suspicions.

After a while, Shadow-Mirror finally realize that the protagonist is not just keeping up an act - he/she is also an enemy now. At around scenario 25, the protagonist finally remembers everything. To help Londo Bell, your character will try to blow his/her unit up to destroy Lemon and Vindel's big mechs, but this doesn't work beyond just scaring them off for some stages.

By scenario 27, the protagonist is back to help Londo Bell, and his/her battle lines become more serious upon returning to the team. Everyone there makes peace and they all team up to take on Shadow-Mirror and other enemies. Scenario 38 has Londo Bell kill the protagonist character that was not chosen (i.e. if you picked Axel, Lamia dies here, and viceversa). Lemon is supposed to die in Scenario 39, but you do not have to kill her. Either way, it seems like that is where the story is headed - the chosen protagonist says that Shadow-Mirror's vision of the world they want is the wrong one, and tries to get Lemon to see that. She only seems to realize it right before her death. Ultimately, peace was never an option with Shadow-Mirror.

Despite what ends up being a brutal battle for players, even lowering the Zweizergain's HP to 0 isn't enough. The protagonist takes matters into his/her own hands and self-destructs to finish the job.

Vindel is defeated, and the protagonist lives, floating around in space. The Londo Bell find the protagonist and every mech on the crew arrive at the scene for an uplifting finale.