Super Robot Wars, as a franchise, is a goofy idea. Take a bunch of well-known mecha anime properties, mash them up, and enjoy the "What if Amuro fought Koji?" fun is the premise. Some games in the series are goofier than others, and the new console title--Super Robot Wars T--is one of the goofier ones.
My man Zengar started his first playthrough the other day, and from the start this game shows its goof. The mashup timeline alone is goofy. A few years before the game starts there were several apocalyptic events within months of each other, taken from the sources of the game's mashup, starting with the relatively benign dropping of Axis from Char's Counterattack and including the Kill All Humans/Kill All Life events from Gaogaigar and Getter Robo Armageddon.
And our protagonist? A samurai salaryman named "Saiko", so gung-ho for his company that it reads as parody; his co-pilot, the new girl on her first day on the job, is the comedy half of this comic duo and their interactions are played for laughs quite effectively. (The other choice shows up as Saiko's rival; she's a Rotten Girl, a boozehound boorish tomboy who somehow can't get fired for her behavior.) They pilot the respective Original Mecha--Tyrando and Gespenst--and don't suck in actual play.
So what happens right out of the gate? Tetsuya and Great Mazinger not only become playable and join the roster, but are formally transferred to the protagonist's corporation and joins his team. That's some goofy shit; imagine Batman--as Batman--taking a dayjob at your mercenary/weapons manufacturing firm because he's bored and you get an idea of how ridiculous this is, but we roll with it because it's funny.
By the time my facility lost its Internet connection last night, we had Captain Harlock, the core of the Crossbone Gundam crew (Tobia and Kincade), Spike Spiegal (with Faye and Jet showing up), Tetsuya, Van (from GunxSword) who apparently has plot-driving duties early on, Akito and the Nadesico B from Prince of Darkness, Domon and Allenby from G Gundam and a few others already in the mix. Take a second look at that roster and the series they're from and you can see how goofy this has to be, yet it isn't totally absurd.
Yet.
We have the girls from Magic Knights Rayearth to come yet, along with both leads and mechs from Aura Battler Dunbine and New Story of Aura Battler Dunbine, all of the gang from Getter Robo Armageddon, the Brave Express Corpse from Mightgaine, the entirety of Armored Troopers VOTOMS, and everyone from between Zeta Gundam to Char's Counterattack yet to come.
Think again on how different those sources are, and you can see how goofy this mashup is. V made sense; everything tied together without straining things too much. X relied on "Outsiders drawn to the same Other World" schick to make its mashup work, but it did work. T? T doesn't give a fuck; this is the sort of thing I came up with 30 years ago, and it's done in that same earnest spirit that made such a thing work for 14 year old me then. It's absurd, doesn't try not to be, and doesn't apologize for it. I wasn't looking for this goofery; it found me, and I am glad for it. I can't wait to play it myself; for my fellow tabletop RPG people, T (like V and X) is RIFTS Done Right and yet different from others in the series.
T handles the cross over elements much better than X did in my opinion. Ryoma, Kouji, and Amuro are all old war buddies who fought Zeon and Doctor hell, Gai, Gaine, and even Trider's protag, grew up on stories about those three and idolized them as heroes. Gai giving Black Might Gaine over to the El Dorado Five to tutor him in the ways of justice, etc. It's all great fun. Not to mention all the jokes and references. Pilots shouting out lines from the OPS of their shows, VA jokes, etc. They even have a line about Cham being more popular than the main characters of Dunbine. Not even in the intermission, but snuck into the main plot.
ReplyDeleteThere are some issue with the translation, but it's decent enough.
If you are enjoying how goofy things are, you'll both love and hate the final boss.