Super Robot Wars Operation Extend impressions

How’s the latest 3D Super Robot Wars holding up now that we’ve actually played it?

Well, after playing the first 10 stages or so, the game feels more G Gen than Super Robot Wars. Even though the 3D animations looked alright in the intial PVs, the overall direction of the animations just can’t compete against 2D sprites. The pilot cut ins though, look pretty damn good.

The game is also designed around grinding. Stages are replayable, meaning you can play any missions you’ve already completed over and over for money to upgrade your robots as much as you want. There is a catch though, and Banpresto have introduced the concept of EC2 points, which are an additional resource needed to purchase upgrades for robots. This means you might actually find yourself in a situation where you’ll have enough money for an upgrade but not enough EC2. I assume Banpresto have gone this route so to entice players in purchasing various DLC microtransaction boosts such as the EC2 multipler.

Various features from more recent SRWs are also missing. There’s no animation fast forward feature, and multi-seishin casting. The UI is also horrendously clunky and laggy, and the load times are pretty noticable too, making the game feel like an absolute chore to play at times.

Still, this is only the first expansion of a game that’s supposed to have 7 more, so maybe with the new missions and series, things might get a bit more interesting as time goes on. For more impressions, see TBSTactics MJemirizan’s thoughts on the game.