Dai-2-Ji (2nd) Super Robot Wars is the second SRW game to be released. 2nd SRW was a great game for its time in 1991, and certainly one of the best NES turn based tactics games. Despite being released in 1991, it bears a lot of similarities to modern SRWs. Major differences from the 1st SRW include named pilots, repair robots, motherships, quicksaves, revamped seishins, and robots surviving a battle if defeated. 2nd SRW picks up the SRPG standard of a steady cast of characters that progress through story based missions. There are 26 missions with no branching paths, making it a relatively short game for tactics vets.
2nd SRW sticks to the fundamentals of ranged vs melee, healing, focus fire, efficient seishin use, and carefully placed AOE attacks. All units are limited to only two abilities or attacks, although later in the game most of your robots can transform and use a different set of weapons. Unlike 1st SRW, almost none of your units get ranged attacks for the first half of the game, so they are frequently taking damage. This also makes it more difficult to surround an enemy for a fast kill. To make up for the extra damage you're able to use repair robots, motherships, or seishins. About half way through the game you'll get more ranged units, but they have their own drawbacks as well. Enemy AI isn't very good at focus fire or acting in a group, so it's pretty easy to divide its attention to avoid casualties.
You'll occasionally face large numbers of enemies attacking at once, making it tricky to keep everyone alive. It's fairly difficult to avoid repair bills while keeping a low turn count in some late game missions against bosses with very high stats and frequent double attacks. In several missions it's possible to finish before certain scripted events are supposed to happen, which I doubt the developers intended. The difficulty curve is fairly uneven, which probably owes to the development teams inexperience. You'll often find yourself surrounded and/or facing nasty bosses right after a bunch of relatively easy missions. Most maps can be completed in 7-9 turns. Quicksaves are available so it's much easier to recover from mistakes than in 1st SRW, or reload for better combat results if you are desperate. There's no grinding available, so if you play poorly you may find later missions difficult if not impossible.
Items and funds are not implemented effectively in 2nd SRW. You barely get any funds and items cost a ton. Even if you avoid repair bills you'll only be able to pick up a few items throughout the game, and they are more or less insignificant anyway. Your pilots levels are far more important than upgrades.
Controls are better than 1st SRW with an added unit list, quick stat screen button, and better menus. You still can't turn off battle animations or tab between units, unfortunately. Graphics are decent, but not animated. They could certainly have put more effort into it, considering there are Game Boy SRW games with better animation.
2nd SRW is a good representation of SRW's transformation halfway between a simple Game Boy game towards a modern franchise that has spawned dozens of releases. Note that while the Famicom version shares the same name with the Playstation version, that version is a remake with altered maps and gameplay.
Strategic Depth: Low.
Strategic Difficulty: Medium-high. If you speedrun and avoid repair bills, you're in for some fun.
Overall Score: 6.8
Reviewer's experience: Finished the campaign with no units destroyed, 243 turns.
0 comments:
Post a Comment