I am Sanger Zonvolt! The Sword of Magus!
– Sanger Zonvolt
Greetings, everyone! For today’s review, I shall talk about one of my favorite strategy RPG series of all time. The Super Robot Wars series (or SRW for short) is a series that features crossover from various mecha-based works from various franchises, be it from an anime, manga, light novel or even from other games. From Mazinger to Gundams to Macross to Evangelion to works such as Dunbine, Zambot 3 or even Brain Powerd, the series is really popular in Japan and has had a long list of games produced across various platforms throughout the series history.
SRW Alpha Gaiden is my first venture into the series, and it quickly left a big impact on me. Featuring the debut of:
- Turn A Gundam
- After War Gundam X
- Combat Mecha Xabungle
- Galaxy Cyclone Braiger
the game was released in 2001 for the Playstation and it is a side story that is set after the events of SRW Alpha. Despite not knowing anything about the series nor the plot, the demo reel showcase from my local game store is enough to attract my attention towards the game. With only some small knowledge of Gundams, Xabungle, Macross and Reideen thanks to their model kits, I braved on towards the game despite my absolute zero knowledge of Japanese language at the time.
Starting the game, I was quickly introduced to the Getter team from the Getter Robo series. Their catchy theme plus Ryouma’s (the main pilot of Getter Robo) hot-blooded yell quickly capture my attention and I knew I am in for a good ride. For a person that have zero knowledge of most of the series involved in the game, I absolutely enjoyed discovering all these new units and pilots and getting to hear their themes, seeing their attacks and just trying to figure out who belong to which series.
My lack of Japanese knowledge back then has given me a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to the series involved. For example, I thought the Mazinger series are a baseball-themed mechas. On stage 2, I thought Ple in the Qubeley is a princess and that the ZZ Gundam, Sandrock Custom and Daitarn 3 are her royal bodyguards. I thought the Grungust Nishiki is a breakdancing mecha…. Viletta and Alan looks like they are gonna backstab me anytime, I thought Voltes V is a duck, and I definitely thought Kamille is a tomboyish-girl. It wasn’t until a few years later that I was finally convinced that Kamille is, in fact, a boy.
…..Those were fun times, yeah. Moving on to the game itself, the game features a standard turn-based, grid-style strategy where you moved your units and reach the objective of the stage (mostly by destroying enemy units). Alpha Gaiden is often lauded as one of the harder SRW games if you’re playing in hard mode, but it is still doable as long as you utilize the pilot Spirits accordingly. As a newcomer, I played that game without using the Spirits command due to not knowing what they do. With just weapon and stat upgrades to rely on, I was able to go all the way to the late 30s stages before meeting a major roadblock in the form of Turn X in one of the route splits. At that point, accuracy is a major issue because you’ll be having a really hard time hitting the boss while the boss can destroy your non-tanky units within 1-2 hits. Knowing what the Spirits do and utilizing them properly helps reduce the overall difficulty of the game, though you still have to deal with high HP enemy mobs in late-game. This is particularly annoying when you have enemies Support-Defending each other, or worst, Support-Defending a dangerous boss that you need to take out quickly.
One of the elements that are present in many SRW games are called the “SR Point”. The SR Points are rewarded when you achieved given conditions in a stage, such as clearing a stage within a certain amount of turns or defeating a boss before it runs away. These SR Points will affect the difficulty of the game, such as having more enemy reinforcements or enemies having higher stats and HP. Prior to the next stage, the game will check your SR Points total and will determine which difficulty you’re in, which are usually divided into Easy, Normal and Hard. An interesting to note about Alpha Gaiden is that certain stages will play out differently depending on which difficulty mode you are in. This keeps subsequent playthroughs feeling somewhat fresh since you’ll never know what kind of scenarios will play out on different difficulty modes. Even the final battles will play out differently depending on your difficulty mode.
Speaking of difficulty, Alpha Gaiden is infamous for its major difficulty curve that it throws at you in stage 9. Normally around that stage you’ll see bosses around 12k-15k HP range on average, but here in Alpha Gaiden you’ll be forced to fight a superboss with 35k HP that has a barrier, a MAP attack and a long-range strong attack. It also comes with HP regen, because why not, right? Needless to say, for someone that does not know about Spirits command at the time, I lost over half of my roster just to take down the superboss. Daitarn 3 and Reideen were my MVPs, while the smaller units can do nothing against the superboss. The Valkyries? Dead weight. Hyaku Shiki? Absolute dead weight.
One of the things that made Alpha Gaiden stood out are the pilot battle sprites. In this game the pilots are all wearing their helmet in their battle sprite, whereas in other games they are usually helmet-less. Personally I enjoy the aesthetic of seeing the pilots in their full suit as I find that it makes them stand out more than usual, so it’s a bit saddening to see that Alpha Gaiden is the last game to feature that helmet style in the pilot’s battle sprite.
Alpha Gaiden (and its predecessor Alpha) also have a feature that allow combiner units to separate into their respective smaller forms. For example, the unit Dancouga can separate into four smaller units – Eagle Fighter, Land Cougar, Land Liger and Big Moth – with each smaller mechs being piloted by their respective pilots. While smaller separate units are generally considered weak (the Dancouga units being an exception), having the option to play around with them is always a good thing and can be considered a fun challenge. The feature sadly only last for two games, as we are no longer able to play with the small jets past Alpha Gaiden.
Plot-wise, the game did a good job at putting the focus on debuting series. Turn A, Gundam X and Xabungle casts got a lot of love, while the Braiger cast get to show how cool they are. Some of the returning series from Alpha got their spotlight on some stages, while others mostly play a supporting role allowing the debuting series to really shine.
If you are a fan of mechas or you want to listen to good soundtracks in general, don’t be afraid to try out the Super Robot Wars franchise. Alpha Gaiden is a good entry point that does a good job in highlighting the series involved while providing a nice challenge for those that just wants to tackle a strategy-RPG. As a side note, Alpha Gaiden is never translated outside its native Japanese language. However, there is an English fan-translation patch released courtesy of Aeon Genesis group. If you have even the slightest interest in trying out the game, be sure to grab the patch to save yourself a lot of hassle in navigating the menus. Who knows, you might fall in love with the franchise like I do years ago.
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