Super Robot Wars 2 which I was way past due playing gone through.
It's pretty interesting from an engine sense, coming between 1 and 3 as it does. It's probably closer to 1 in these lines, but I believe it manages to be better than either.
The inclusion of pilots is a joke. The units are just as self-contained as they are in 1. The pilots just add flavour (dramatically needed to be fair). You can't take swap them around or anything.
It uses the same style of stats as 1, although it takes them to a much higher range. Where your units end up with 25-odd defence in 1 they end up with 150-odd here, and suchlike. Interestingly enough items still raise stats by 1, which makes them pretty much completely worthless, and they're not found lying around now, they're purchased. One item raised accuracy by 10 and I was almost stunned into thinking that an accuracy raise might be the most worthwhile item until I found out it only held for one turn. Despite this it still might even be the best >_> The only other thing you have to spend money on is repairs, like that'll ever be necessary, so theoretically a pittance of upgrades is better than nothing, but still not really worth it in my opinion. Especially since the shops are hidden.
Spirit System is a massive upgrade on 1's... like that's hard. Everyone has fixed spirits now like good people. Unfortunately they just couldn't handle it properly... There is no way to see what spirits a person has outside of the spirit menu, and the spirit menu doesn't show whatsoever any spirits that can't be used at the time. This is not so much a problem with spirits that they can't use because they're running too low on SP, but when it comes to things like healing spirits and you can't tell if the unit has any because they're not currently damaged...
Weapons... every unit can have up to two weapons only. They tend to get somewhat upgraded every yay levels which leads to the supers that have a bunch of weapons rotating out their old ones and becoming able to use new ones. Can be somewhat aggravating at times such as when Great Mazinger (which is piloted by Kouji for some reason) rotates out Thunder Break (which can hit air) for Breast Burn (which can't, for god knows whatever reason considering that it can freaking fly).
On that note arguably this game has the best implementation of terrain type weapon damage in the whole series. Each weapon lists the units total attack power for attacking sky, sea, and land. And damage is just power minus defence. It's great. Sometimes it seems like the defender can guard or something and reduce damage, but this rarely happened.
There is no will. There is also no EN or Ammo. Some units really really like this.
Antifans of SRW3+'s doubleaction will be happy to know that it's not around yet in this game. Units do get to do repeated attacks a la Fire Emblem if they have at least 50 more speed than the enemy, though. Interestingly in this game Spirit (2x damage) and Valour (3x damage) stick around for BOTH attacks in these cases. It makes Amuro happy. Guard also sticks around for both the enemy's attacks if you happen to be on the receiving end; unsure about alert.
Something that's freaking annoying is long range attack immunity. Now this is all fine and dandy in 2G where only the Granzon has it and it says so right there in the status screen. But here you get no such warning and a bunch of things have it, including some grunts. It renders some units almost completely worthless against these enemies; thankfully Bian doesn't have it.
Speaking of Granzon I get to add another stamp to my Shu beatin' board~
Man, Cybuster is made of paper. Worst HP on the team; 205 less than the second worst, the Methuss, that it's one level higher than, and 2 more defence!1! Meanwhile it has 44 less SPEED than the Methuss. This isn't so bad as it sounds as the Methuss is freakishly fast for some reason, third highest on the team, but still. It can't dodge. It can barely take a single hit. It may have infinite Cyflashes (and it is the only unit in the game with a MAP attack), but that's pointless if you need to put it near the enemies to use and then have it get mobbed. Interestingly it can single-target Cyflash as a long-range attack while on defence. Aside from Cyflash it has the zephyr sword/vanity ripper which are completely worthless and worse than the Methuss' beam sabre.
It does get mass-heal love! And considering it has no other worthwhile spirits whatsoever it does get some points for that I guess. But Methuss gets it earlier.
Either Getta Dragon or Nu Gundam would have to be the man of the game. Getta Dragon is better while attacking things that Nu Gundam can't double (or hurt), Nu Gundam is better while it's doubling. And both have a couple shots of Valour. Early on in the game it seemed like they were trying to balance Getta a little making Getta 2 stronger against ground enemies than Getta 1 and so on, but by the time Getta Dragon gets Shine Spark they're all OH WE DON'T CARE FOR DOING THIS ANY MORE. Fairly certain that Getta 2/Liger don't get doubleimage in this either.
Anyway yeah. People need to play this for the experience. You know you want to.
My download of Complete Box finished while I was playing through so now I can see how thing were changed up in that version of 2; Subatomic's play log of it seemed to differ from my experience with this a reasonable amount, and I had originally been of the assumption that CB's games were just vaguely prettified ports. Things remain to be seen because I don't really want to play 2CB directly after having played 2 though. I might replay Neo first? I'll figure something out. Of course, after 2CB comes 3CB. Good times ahead.
Started a replay of Mystic Quest because I was kinda overdue on that. Hatbot decreed that I should be playing the JP version so I am unfortunately missing out on the gripping story.
It hit me as I was going through the Ice Pyramid: How would Mystic Quest play if you never got any chests that weren't mandatory? Unfortunately it was kinda late to start doing that, but I'll have to remember it for next time.
