YMMV / Super Robot Wars W

• Anti-Climax Boss: After defeating the first phase of the battle against the Great General of Darkness, players will fight him three-on-one with the Mazinkaiser, "Shin" Great Mazinger and the Shin Getter Robo. All pilots' Spirit Points are restored to full and Will is maximized. The fight itself (thanks to the brutally overpowered Combination Attacks of the former two) can be ended in roughly two to three attacks, even on a Self-Imposed Challenge run.
• Ensemble Dark Horse
  • The Ardygun family, largely due to their tightly-knit relationship with one another without any kind of dysfunctional baggage between them. Fans have been clamoring for their inclusion in a future Super Robot Wars: Original Generation installment; that they also have one of the most standout Game-Breaker mecha in the franchise helped elevate their popularity (alongside Epileptic Trees below).
  • W is by far the most popular of the Nintendo DS Super Robot Wars titles, and was the most popular handheld-based installment in the franchise until the Second Super Robot Wars Z duology for PlayStation Portable, with some having gone so far as to consider it the best installment period when it was released. The only real complaints regarding W concerned the lack of animated Super Move Portrait Attacks (everyone gets a total of one, even if they're laughing/sad/flipping out/etc.) and the game could be a tad easy compared to previous titles (mostly due to certain units or unit groups being surprisingly easy to "break" simply through competent, average play^note GaoGaiGar and the Original Generation units being the biggest offenders in this regard).
• Epileptic Trees: A lot of the abilities from the Ardygun's "Valzacard" is Hand Waved with no explanations at all, chief among them the appearance of "Solomon's Triangle" in the final attack animation. As a result, fans tend to believe the Valzacard will fulfill the role of the Ideon if Original Generation gets to the events of Super Robot Wars Alpha 3.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • In Scenario 12 (only on New Game Plus), Sosuke Sagara "defends the school festival from rival delinquents" by wiring the soccer pitch with enough bombs to destroy a Robeast outright (discovered when a pair of Robeasts attack the school, step on the pitch, and are annihilated outright by the blast). This seems like overkill, even for Sosuke, but keep in mind that in this Massive Multiplayer Crossover, his baseline for "delinquent" is Boss, who, as crappy as it may be and look, did single-handedly build his own Humongous Mecha Boss Borot out of what amounts to junk and scrap metal.
  • In the series, Gai Daigoji is rather pointlessly shot dead by fleeting Federation officers. In this game, however, that incident, which would've happened in the epilogue of Mission 3, doesn't even happen at all. Instead, he falls protecting the Nadesico as it escapes from Mars(and as noted below, he survives even that). Martian Successor Nadesico was made to subvert many Super Robot(and even Real Robot) tropes, but in a Super Robot Wars game, those tropes are all meant to be played straight(if lampshaded to heaven and back). Thus, Gai gets a more suitable "death".
• Game-Breaker: See here for details
• Goddamned Bats: The Radam Tekkamen are not only durable, but have high mobility and offensive weapons. Later, these units gain a second Hit Points bar using units similar to Tekkaman Blade's Pegas; this also applies to the Eyds. However, due to the amount of Game Breakers and W being mostly an easy title, these units are generally annoying and cumbersome rather than actual threats any time they appear.
• Ho Yay: The whole David Kruegel/Tekkaman Dead ordeal is commented on, but it's mostly "don't let Hikaru Amano find out about this!"
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Shortly after launch, W took heat for being hilariously easy even by the Super Robot Wars series' low standards for difficulty. It didn't take very long for the game to be Vindicated by History, with the difficulty becoming less and less of a complaint as the series in general went through an overall difficulty drop.
• Older Than They Think: This game had a blatantly-plagiarized BGM from Warcraft II, predating the composer being busted for using plagiarized music in Super Robot Wars K.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: W cleaned up the negative reception of Tekkaman Blade II by ReTooling it into a Midquel. This allows Tekkaman Aki, Hiver, Sommer and Vesna (and later Dead) to partake in fighting the more famous Tekkaman like Evil or Omega, and be a part of the original Tekkaman narrative (and also blatantly promotes Blade and Aki into Battle Couple for a longer time). Also, one of the points that made the fans furious with II was the death of Noal Vereuse before the events of the show^note Within II canon, Noal was arrested and executed for attempting to stop the federation to drop a nuke to Prague, his failure resulted Tekkaman Dead hating the federation. In W, this background didn't happen, so Noal lived; whereas Dead's hatred is directed more into Tekkaman Blade since he failed to stop the Radam from robbing his humanity, enough that he didn't care if he looked hypocritical in joining the Radam that was responsible of his Tekkaman state in the first place.; this does not happen in W. Coupled with many Tekkaman allied units encompassing the game's pool of Game Breakers, if Tekkaman Blade fans are looking for positive things to say about II, they'll most likely refer to this version.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: Downplayed. Great Mazinger and Mazinger Z have access to their combination attacks Double Burning Fire and Double Rocket Punch which debuted in Super Robot Wars Judgment but was unavailable as Great Mazinger and Mazinger Z were mutually exclusive in availability.
• That One Boss
  • Gauron, Gates and Takuma: in short, if it's a named male villain from Full Metal Panic!, facing them will suck.
    • While these aforementioned bosses with their "Lambda Drive"-equipped units are deadly later in the game, they fail to keep up with the incoming Game Breakers received. As dangerous as Gauron is by being able to take two actions during an enemy turn, use Spirit Commands and have weapons fueled by the Lambda Drive, he still can't keep up with a heavily upgraded "Valguard".
  • The Great General of Darkness, provided players want to gain a Secret Character: not only does he bring multiple sturdy Mooks, each with Status Effects weaponry, he's extremely resilient and powerful. To make matters worse, players cannot use Big Volfogg for this scenario (only normal Volfogg). This poses a challenge for a player doing a "No Upgrade Run" where the only way to destroy The General in five turns is to fully abuse combining mechanics of the Ryu robots.
• Tough Act to Follow: W being widely a fan favorite, from its line-up of licensed series, well-liked Original Generation to a Crossover narrative worth investing in, made this Super Robot Wars installment nearly too difficult to surpass for its successors on the Nintendo DS. Super Robot Wars K and its myriad of problems, from increased difficulty, standardizing many gameplay mechanics to an unlikeable protagonist, made many players felt unsatisfied when they thoroughly enjoyed W. While Super Robot Wars L managed to fix some of the misgivings from K, most players still preferred W, having set too high of a bar for the franchise on the DS.
• The Woobie: Tekkaman Blade, so much that even Kotaro Taiga is outright terrified by his life experiences.

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