YMMV / Super Robot Wars

• Adaptation Displacement: Thanks to No Export for You until late into The New '10s, this franchise was not well-known outside of Japan (including parts of Asia); not even the Super Robot Wars: Original Generation games on the Game Boy Advance made a sizeable presence on the international market, yet it unwittingly became a Gateway Series into the franchise proper. Many newcomers who knew of Super Robot Wars via Original Generation were surprised to discover that it is primarily a series of Massive Multiplayer Crossovers instead of focusing entirely on original characters.
• Broken Base: Now with its own page.
• Catharsis Factor: Take a look at the series listing of a Super Robot Wars title - is your favorite series in? Check one for having the enjoyment of controlling your favorite Mecha piloted by a character from that property you want and having them kick ass; does your favorite series have a despicable villain? Check two for the satisfaction of having said favorite unit or squad of Hot-Blooded heroes beat the crap out of that villain! Was the villain a Karma Houdini from their respective series? Jackpot for having the series' heroes revoke the villain's Karma Houdini Warranty!
• Character Tiers
  • An inevitable outcome in most installments due to a variety of invaluable pilot skills and unit abilities, pilot/unit statistics, attack power for weapons, etc. The likes of the Ideon in Alpha 3, Zeorymer in Super Robot Wars MX and Super Robot Wars Judgment, and GaoGaiGar and Tekkaman Blade in Super Robot Wars W stand at the highest tier, while Sol Tekkaman in Judgment are part of the lowest. Note that much of this also stems from each games' mechanics and systems in place that might influence how tiers respond, alongside whether Good Bad Bugs are present.
  • Zigzagged with the Boss Borot: depending on the game, it ranges from either Joke Character (bottom-to-low tier) to Lethal Joke Character (high tier upwards to Game-Breaker status).
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Much of the challenge of the mid- and late-90s entries comes from a combination of armor becoming useless by the late-game and a general lack of funds to go around, often leading players to load up on Fragile Speedsters (who can avoid getting hit) and Glass Cannons (who can wipe out enemies without having to face a counterattack), each with only two or three weapons upgraded.
  • Modern games, especially after Pilot Points and their equivalents became a shared resource, do almost nothing to stop players from loading all of their resources onto a handful of their favorite units and watching them crush maps on their own.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Demonic Spiders: Ghost X-9s in Alpha, the Katana clones in Endless Frontier, Dimensional Beasts in the Second Z, certain Elemental Machines throughout Masou Kishin
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: There are a number of fans who will readily admit that they find the strategy gameplay So Okay, It's Average and merely a vehicle for attack animations and crossover narratives. Those who go into the games with the opposite mindset tend to be put off by that fact that these games have so many ways to manipulate stats, yet ultimately require very little strategy at all.
• Fan Nickname: A hefty amount by the fandom, with the trio of Gundam, Mazinger and Getter Robo being dubbed as the "Holy Trinity".
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Modern Super Robot Wars games get flak for their Final Bosses often having one or two non-MAP based attacks, yet Keisar Ephes, the Final Boss of the Alpha saga, who's viewed as the progenitor of the "Nightmare Fuel-inducing Final Boss attack" for the franchise, had only two such attacks to his name ("Gospel of the Emperor" and "The End of Galaxy"). In his case, the attacks were so well animated and so terrifying that people didn't care, considering it a case of "Quality over Quantity". However, having few attacks would become a common trait for any Final Boss from the HD era, and while the animators are clearly trying to compensate by giving those attacks elaborate and high-quality animation, Keisar Ephes ended up being a Tough Act to Follow. Some fans also think that having too many bosses with so few attacks in a row makes them look unimpressive as a whole, regardless of how good their animation is.
  • The franchise has never been shy about Fanservice, with many female characters having voluptuous bodies and Stripperiffic clothes, and once Super Move Portrait Attack became a common trope in the games, a lot of women got animated portraits that bring attention to their breasts bouncing. For a long time this wasn't seen as a huge issue as the franchise wasn't crazy about it: there still were modestly designed girls, and even those who did have eye candy in their designs weren't exaggerated about it (Excellen is The Tease and a buxom, but is usually seen in an uniform that covers most of her skin, for example). However, a common complaint about Super Robot Wars X-Ω is that it goes too far on the Fanservice. The title has a large number of original female characters, most of which are given Stripperiffic or skin-tight clothes, and the body proportions of some of them are seen as Fetish Retardant due to how unnatural they look. And even those outfits managed to became more and more Stripperific with flimsy justifications through the game's lifespan. This lead to many complaints that the games are acting as if the players are there for the sexy girls instead of the robots that are supposed to be the main appeal. Some fans were also wary when the following mobile game already started its life with lots of Stripperiffic girls and added even more later on.
  • Super Robot Wars Z splitting the series' backstories between multiple Earths was seen as a novel change of pace and the best way to incorporate Super Dimension Century Orguss into Super Robot Wars. The usage of alternate Earths in subsequent games was met with complaints, mainly because, with Orguss never returning, each title has to come with their own reasons for why dimension-hopping is happening, with varying results. It's also seen by many as an excuse to make things easier for the writers, since each individual Earth has a smaller number of series that need to have their settings and backstories connected with each other. Those opinions are common enough that Super Robot Wars T was praised for going back to having everything except isekai and deep space series take place on a single Earth.
• Game-Breaker: See entries here
• Hilarious in Hindsight
  • Any time Fanart or a parody video depicting a Humongous Mecha series that hasn't made a Super Robot Wars appearance yet, then makes its debut for a new installment, will be this. Case in point, this 2006 video showcases Demonbane, Overman King Gainer, Franchise/Patlabor, GUN×SWORD, Godannar and Gaiking: Legend of Daiku Maryu, while this 2010 one includes Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Armored Trooper VOTOMS, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, and Code Geass.
  • Scramble Commander 2 might not be one of the most well-received games, but it had Macross Zero and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. In other words, two series where the protagonist was named "Shinn". One could say this is an area where it gets a leg up - twice - on the other games.
  • Using the names Kazuma and Aqua for the protagonist names in separate games sounded normal for its time, but when mentioned in the late-2010s and early-2020s, during the isekai boom, those two names would end up bringing a hilarious duo to mind instead.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: While fans generally don't want a game to be unfairly difficult (as evidenced by It's Hard, So It Sucks!), a common complaint about the "International" games (V, T, X, and 30) is that they've swung too far the other way. The games have been streamlined to the point that there's no difficulty or strategy. Gamebreakers aside, terrain isn't an issue, there's no strategy to using Spirit Commands since they can be activated during an enemy attack, players get Money for Nothing and there's no monetary penalty for losing units, the game rely on waves of weaker enemies, and as such combat can feel rote rather than dynamic. Additionally, games since X offer multiple difficulty modes (with 30 having six in total) but basically none of them are seen as adequate for fans who want a challenge — most just inflict Early Game Hell that goes away less than halfway through the game, and even 30's Super Expert Plus mode gives broken items to mitigate the heavy upgrade restrictions.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The general opinion among the fandom seems to be that a game seen as "too easy" is preferable to a game that is deemed to have "unfair" difficulty. Installments that are difficult beyond a handful of troublesome scenarios tend to elicit complaints. Masou Kishin III - Pride of Justice is an infamous case, having caused an uproar resulting in a number of players returning their copies due to its difficulty; A Portable is another notable instance, due to the enemies' unusually high evasion rates, "evasion decay", and several other balancing choices combining to create a surprisingly Nintendo Hard game. Common arguments against more difficult titles are that one-sided battles allow players to run their favorite units, and that animations and cross-series interactions are more important than challenging gameplay.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Recycled animations have historically been met with derision from the fanbase. With the developers well aware of how the fandom feels about recycled graphics, the HD games make a flimsy attempt to avoid this trope by tweaking a couple of attacks for each recycled series' protagonist (typically a standard attack that can be shown off in trailers and the Finishing Move), only to leave everything else the same.
• Just Here for Godzilla: It should come as no surprise that some players only become interested in a given Super Robot Wars title based on certain licensed series making the cut, which is understandable given the nature of the franchise. This became noticeable during the midst of the Super Robot Wars Z saga when popular series such as Code Geass and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann made their debuts. By the time Super Robot Wars X-Ω was released, this became literal when Godzilla himself made an appearance.
• Memetic Mutation: See examples on its own page.
• Player Punch: If a character's death was a significant impact on the overall story from their original series (as opposed to a gratuitous or base-breaking death), Super Robot Wars will often punch players by not averting that death at all, forcing them to experience the heart-wrenching event from the cast's perspective. Some examples include Mu La Flaga in Judgment^note Irony ensues when Mu survived during the Mobile Suit Gundam SEED debut in Alpha 3, Takashi Shirogane in W, Kamina and Neil "Lockon Stratos I" Dylandy in the Second Z and Princess Emeraude and Zagato in Super Robot Wars T.
• Scrappy Mechanic
  • "Classic" games featured a unit stat called "Limit": intended as a nod to Mobile Suit Gundam, where Amuro Ray's Newtype abilities become too potent for his Gundam to handle, Limit throttles a character's accuracy and evasion rates if their level is too high for the unit they're using. This forces players at spending credits for additional upgrades just so units can perform as they're supposed to. Limit lasted all the way up to Alpha Gaiden before being quietly discontinued.
  • Early games also have individually-upgraded weapons, as opposed to a unit's entire arsenal being tied to a single upgrade bar in later games. Individually-upgraded weapons effectively force players to choose two or three weapons to focus their upgrades on, since there's not enough money to upgrade everything. This upgrade system, combined with the Limit stat, the Rocket-Tag Gameplay caused by armor becoming irrelevant later in the game, and a whole host of Low-Tier Letdown units, heavily encourages Min-Maxing instead of exploring unit variety.
  • 2010s and later titles have a nasty habit of giving protagonist units from series with interchangeable pilots (like Universal Century Gundam series and Aura Battler Dunbine) finishing moves that are exclusive to their canon pilots, such as "Waverider Crash" only being usable by Kamille Bidan. This defeats the purpose of granting the ability to change pilots in the first place. It's doubly frustrating for the aforementioned series as they already have tiered Newtype and Aura Power pilot skills that could be used to make it challenging, but not outright impossible, for supporting characters to use these finishing moves — which Dunbine units already utilize to make most incarnations of "Hyper Aura Slash" a mid-late game upgrade. The Waverider Crash is a standout example as its debut in Alpha Gaiden started it as an attack any pilot could use to becoming locked to Newtypes only and lastly where it is exclusive to only Kamille Bidan.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: With very few exceptions (A Portable perhaps being the most notable one) the average difficulty of Super Robot Wars has, and continues to, drop with each new entry. The death of the "Classic" games' Early-Installment Weirdness is a major contributing factor, as is the introduction of mechanically-diverse pilot skills and unit abilities, new gameplay mechanics, increasingly powerful items, and slowly but surely eliminating unit flaws (such as a tendency to slap Alpha Strike finishers onto units that don't have a Signature Move) that caused separation in Character Tiers.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: There are numerous examples of players feeling that the developers had missed opportunities with utilizing certain series' characters and plot elements. One multi-appearance example that deserves special mention is Daitarn 3. Beginning with the Super Robot Wars Z saga, Daitarn 3 often ends up consisting of just its protagonist Banjo Haran and the titular Super Robot without the series' plot or villains. This has led to all manner of theories as to why the series is kept around, such as nostalgia for older Super Robot Wars games, for the sake of having a 1970s Humongous Mecha series around, and/or for Banjo's In-Universe wealth to be used as a convenient narrative crutch.
• Vindicated by History: While the general attitude is that Super Robot Wars is not meant to be particularly challenging, this wasn't always the case. W and the original version of MX were derided for their non-existent difficulty upon release; in response to complaints, the PSP port of MX famously inflated enemy HP across the board. Nowadays, both titles are known more for their well-regarded narratives rather than being total cakewalks.

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