Super Robot Taisen is a great example of truth in advertising. True enough if you know some Japanese, at least, and recognize "taisen" as a word for "war." There are robots, they are pretty super, and they don't just gather dust in their hangars.

It's not that great a game, though. The Robot Taisen strategy series has been popular in Japan for ages, but gameplay has never been the keystone of its success. As it happens, this Taisen has not much but gameplay to carry it, and the results don't stack up to Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance Wars, and the rest of a crowded genre on handhelds.

In Japan, the series has always traveled on the back of its geek appeal. The gimmick is that it crosses over characters from dozens of popular giant robot cartoon shows -- recent games have mashed up four decades of Japanese animation history. It's kind of like the team-ups you see in comic books, except instead of Superman and Batman, it's more like Superman, Batman, the X-Men, the Avengers, Scrooge McDuck, Betty, Veronica, the Blackhawks, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, and the entire Marvel Family.

Not Quite Original

Atlus, however, picked up an example of the series called Original Generation. That means no licensed fanboy favorites. Instead, it stars Banpresto's original creations, both humanoid robots and humanoid humans.

To someone who isn't a fan of them Jap'nese guns-'n'-hooters cartoon movies, this isn't any big thing. One giant robot is much the same as another, ditto one cartoon chick with humongous...pupils. For someone who is a fan of those shows, though, and the series has drawn a fair following among geeks in America, that's a big chunk of the game's appeal gone.

Banpresto's cast and mecha designs aren't bad-looking, but their aesthetics can't compete with 30-plus years of the animation industry's very best work, and they don't have the emotional weight the classic characters bring with them from the cartoons. Fans will recognize the "original" story as a dumpster out back of the cliché factory, while non-fans will just wince at all the cheesy jokes and wonder why the plot makes no sense. The plot, on that note, is impossible to follow, with or without a scorecard. It might have worked if players came in familiar with the characters -- that's how the licensed Robot Taisen games get away with it. We don't, therefore it doesn't.

Welcome to the Game Grid

So the game system shoulders the load left over, and it hasn't evolved too much since the early Robot Taisens 15-plus years ago. Stripped of the famous characters, this is just another turn-based strategy game. There are options for developing pilots and customizing robots, but they aren't as deep or flexible as what the Front Mission titles offer. Final Fantasy Tactics has more interesting character development, too. Advance Wars boasts a more impressive variety of terrain effects, opponents, and scenarios, while Fire Emblem manages to tell a story that makes a lick of sense.

To its credit, the game is paced well -- most encounters are short enough to finish in a sitting, but long enough to offer a challenge. Compare that to Front Mission's painful two- and three-hour marathons. But for the most part, anything Robot Taisen can do, somebody else has done better. It also tends to recycle scenario designs, re-using similar enemy layouts and scripted events, and the campaigns are padded with cakewalks that only serve to advance the incomprehensible plot.

Even in tougher, more complex encounters, the enemy AI is often rather dim, especially when it comes to picking targets. Set up a robot with the right defensive attributes to "tank" for the squad in a key location and the bad guys will cheerfully waste their attacks on an opponent they can hardly scratch.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Back on the subject of pacing, Robot Taisen rolls out some pretty graphics here and there, but chances are you'll try not to look at them after a while. The best visuals are reserved for the cutscenes where one robot takes on another -- the attacker announces his special attack, the defender delivers a tough-guy retort, and damage resolves once the demands of machismo are satisfied. Between the splashy character art and the cute dwarfish mecha, it looks cool enough...and unfolds...very...slowly. Leave the cutscenes on for an entire battle and you'll watch them unreel all afternoon.

Turning off the cutscenes renders a lot of the dialogue invisible, and that's too bad as well. Despite a few typos and some unfortunate gags that come out of the translation process dead as a doornail, it's still a respectably readable script, and sometimes very funny. Sometimes unintentially funny -- you too may wonder what Japanese word translates to "Honcho" -- but funny is funny regardless. Given extenuating circumstances, like the character limits that hamper Japanese-to-English translation on the GBA, Atlus handled this about as well as anyone could have.

Super R***t Wars

One wonders about the title on the box. For simplicity's sake the existing fanbase usually calls the Japanese games "Super Robot Wars" anyway. It's not like "Shin Megami Tensei," which sounds neat in Japanese and turns to mush in English no matter how you try to rejigger it. "Super Robot Wars" sounds perfectly cool. Why leave the title untranslated? Even if copyright conflicts came up, there are many synonyms for "war" in our violent language.

Considering what's ins the box, though, it's an academic point. This is a game for two very small groups: min-maxing old-school strategy fiends (who've burned through every other game available in the genre) and fanatic giant mecha fetishists (who love their big robots, licensed or not). Those who aren't obsessed with the genre or the subject matter won't find a lot to entertain themselves. In other words, if you didn't know what "taisen" means, you can probably give it a pass.

Article by: D. F. Smith
Video produced by: Jonathan Solin