YMMV / Super Robot Wars Judgment

• Awesome Art: Mixed with Visual Effects of Awesome, Super Robot Wars Judgment is one of the best-looking games for the Game Boy Advance, taking full advantage of the system's hardware to emulate the earth-shattering action and over-the-top attacks of the anime series involved. It essentially looks like a pixelated anime.
• Complete Monster: Gu-Landon Goetz is the Representative Knight and the supreme commander of the Fury military. Completely rejecting the idea of peaceful coexistence with humanity, Gu-Landon defies the will of the peace-loving Fury princess Shana-Mia Eterna Fura to wage a war of conquest and extermination against humanity, seeking to remove them to turn Earth into the new Fury homeworld; he sees this as the divine right of the Fury as the ones who seeded life on Earth eons ago, with all the death and destruction inflicted by the Fury ultimately coming from his command. During the final battle, Gu-Landon proves that he is no friend even to the Fury when he, realizing he cannot defeat the Earthlings as he is, diverts the main power of the Fury mothership, the Gau-La Furia, into his personal mecha, the Zui-Gadin, to power it up, uncaring that doing so will mean the death of most of his race, who are suspended in stasis aboard the Gau-La. During this process, the Larseilam overload caused by juicing-up the Zui-Gadin dials up Gu-Landon's murderous rage to the max, turning him into a full-blown Omnicidal Maniac ranting and raving that he will destroy all life in the universe.
• Fan Nickname: Now with its own page.
• Game-Breaker: See here for details
• Goddamned Bats
  • Grand Chers and Battas not only have good evasion rates, but barriers as well ("Chakra Shield"^note Block 800 points of damage for 10 EN and "Distortion Field"^note Block 2500 points of gravity-based damage, 1500 points of beam-type damage and 1000 points of normal damage for 10 EN, respectively). In the case of the former, they possess the "Vital Jump" unit ability^note At 130 Will, gain a 50% chance of evading any attack. This renders "Chain Attacks" less effective and their "Support Defend"^note Pilot can provide defensive support to an adjacent ally pilot skills much better.
  • In some ways, the game overall: compared to its preceding Game Boy Advance Super Robot Wars installments, Judgment loves throwing scenarios with endless Mook reinforcements that, while aren't particularly hard, can be draining and tedious if players are taking their time against bosses.
• Good Bad Bug
  • Mazinger Z, Layzner, Yuu Brain and Zeorymer all have less parts slots when upgraded to the Mazinkaiser, New Layzner/Layzner Mark II, Nelly Brain and Great Zeorymer, respectively. Status-enhancing parts like the "Booster"^note +1 to mobility before the Mid-Season Upgrade event will automatically be sent back to the player's inventory, but a code in the game's programming also gives the upgraded unit the benefit of having said part permanently grafted to it.
  • If a unit with Shield Defense attacks after moving, their shield does not actually reduce the damage of a counterattack against them. As in, the animation for the skill will trigger but it have zero bearing on the attack formula. This bug is particularly notable in a game where enemies love to spawn on the complete opposite corner of the map, leaving them prone to getting picked off as they slowly move into attack range.
  • By unlocking Gai during the first play-through of the game, he returns with double the amount of "Bonus Points" he is supposed to receive (a first play-through exclusive bug, however). Another bug related to a first play-through is if Ahmos Gale is not recruited, his machine will not arrive with upgrades.
• Hilarious in Hindsight
  • Mu La Flaga is Killed Off for Real in this game, despite a previous installment having secret requirements keeping the character alive. However, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny reveals the character actually survived in canon, making this one of the few instances of Death by Adaptation in the franchise.
  • Fans of Jackie Chan Adventures, which concluded three months before this game was released, can spot a similarity between Great Zeorymer taking the powers of the Hau Dragon robots and Drago absorbing the Demon Chi of his aunts and uncles in the show's Grand Finale. In both cases, the eight Elemental Powers represented are Sky, Water, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Moon, Mountain, and Earth.
  • Katia and Melua have names that sound very similar to that of Georgian-British singer Katie Melua and they came across "Tulips" several times in J's story. A year after this game was released, a species of tulip is named after the singer.
  • Both this game and W have the Behemoth re-appearing as a Degraded Boss used by Amalgam in small numbers after the confrontation with Takuma and Seina. Later installments of the Light Novels(and the Invisible Victory anime) would indeed have Amalgam attacking Mithril with multiple Behemoths.
• Improved Second Attempt: In true Super Robot Wars fashion, there're a couple, above and beyond saving some characters from death.
  • Nadesico: Gai Daigouji's sudden, tragic early death might've been an important thematic milestone in the original story, but it was still a deliberate Anti-Climax. Here, he perishes in a dramatic holding action to save everyone else even if the player can also ensure his survival. By the same token, Yurika still causes the deaths of the Mars colonists, but rather than an act of impulsive jealousy, here it's a hard call in a no-win scenario, activating the Distortion Field to save the ship from Gradosian assault since, if she doesn't, both the Nadesico and the colonists will die, and it won't have mattered that she refused to kill them to save herself.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Zigzagged; a common complaint about Judgment is its easy difficulty due to the number of Game Breakers and Good Bad Bugs present (though not to extent as the succeeding Super Robot Wars W), but that doesn't stop the game from being considered one of the best installments.
• Jerkass Woobie: In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Continuity, Calvina has more of her temporary post-reveal phase in Judgment explored further, which makes her Unstoppable Rage more pronounced compared to her original appearance since the destruction of the Ash'ari Kreutzer facility is still fresh in her mind - contrast Judgment where she had time to process the event after years of being hospitalized and out of duty. Even then, she remains the same Broken Bird in The Moon Dwellers who was emotionally wounded at the deaths of her co-workers at Ash'ari Kreutzer and manipulated by the Fury, with the only way she believes she can cope with is to take bloody vengeance, yet be anti-social and cold to her allies.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Touya Shiun; in Judgment, he can hook up with any of his three female co-pilots and, depending on the choice, gain a different final attack for whatever Humongous Mecha he's piloting. Downplayed in The Moon Dwellers when the girls don't go as far as Ship Tease, yet it expands on additional chemistry between Touya and Princess Shania-Mia Eterna-Fura, who was no more than a Non-Player Character in Judgment. Some fans also like to add Calvina into the mix for good measure and Al-Van, often joked as the Gay Option, since saving him is something that only happens if Touya is the protagonist of Judgment and players maintain a Balanced Harem with the co-pilots.
• Low-Tier Letdown: It feels that the Skygrasper's forms and performance in the anime were swapped in J where the commonly used Launcher Grasper is the worst to use compared to the Memetic Loser Sword Grasper. The Sword Grasper has a powerful free attack post-movement attack with good range which only has slightly less range than the Aile Grasper's ammunition-based beam rifle and the strong but non post-movement Launcher Grasper. The Skygrasper is focused on dodging but the Launcher Grasper decreases the evasion of a Fragile Speedster unit. Unless the player is a fan of Gundam SEED or want to play the stages lore accurate, the Skygraspers are better off replaced by the likes of the Blue Earth or even Boss Borot as the latter two have multiple pilots and can both heal and resupply while the Skygraspers can only do one or the other.
• Narm Charm: From the Fan Translation, sometimes generic enemies say this when they die.
  "I-Impossible! This isn't possible...!"
• Player Punch: Think the same method of keeping Mu La Flaga alive will work as it did back in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 (that is, keep Mu in the Mobieus Zero even after he can pilot the Strike Gundam)? Nope; the character dies just as they did in the TV series.
• Stock Footage Failure: Bolt Gundam, some of the Hakkeshu robots, and Great Zeorymer have attacks which sunder the earth beneath their enemy's feet, even if said enemy is in midair or the vacuum of space. Ditto with the late-game explosions visible from space...that are clearly taking place on Earth no matter where you are.
• That One Boss: With great evasion, a strong barrier, and enough firepower to One-Hit KO the Great Mazinger, Gauron in all appearances for Judgment should be approached with caution.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The original Shuffle Alliance appear in this game but only as map sprites with no battle animations. It would have been interesting having a playable guest version of them considering that this is one of the few Super Robot Wars games where Master Asia is not playable in any capacity. A playable Schwarz Bruder was a missed opportunity as he was a guest character in Super Robot Wars Advance but in J, him and his Gundam Spiegel are relegated to being background characters where the most it gets is a map sprite with no battle animation.
• Unexpected Character: Tekkaman Blade, a series focused on Henshin Heroes and Powered Armor instead of giant robots, started the trend of introducing "unorthodox series" entrants for subsequent installments throughout the franchise.
• Values Dissonance: The Fan Translation, while otherwise high quality, shows its age by having the characters reference words or phrases that are socially unacceptable by the standards of The New '20s, such as the word "retard" being said multiple times, and Baron Ashura being called a hermaphrodite.
• Wangst: Akito Tenkawa, Kira Yamato, Masato Akitsu, Touya, and Calvina all suffer from this in the early parts of the game to varying degrees and with varying levels of justification. They all get better over time.
• Woolseyism: In the original Japanese version, the first two characters speaking in the game's prologue make references to ka no mono. This is a very archaic Japanese phrase that means roughly "that man" or "that person". Since this is almost impossible to get across in English, the translation team decided to refer to the person being referenced as "the Converted".