When I finished Super Robot Wars 30, all 100+ hours of it, I was so burnt out from the experience I wondered that if they did announce another one whether I’d bother or not… silly really, because a few years later SRW Y is announced, and able to be brought legally in the UK no less, so of course I was in, DLC season pass and all. So what’s it like? It’s like the other 4 SRW games I’ve reviewed on the site but with slight UI changes, a new mechanic that’s a lot like existing mechanics, and some new featured series. Review done. … Oh okay, fine, I’ll go into more detail then…
Background:
The answer to “when do you know a screenshot is from a Super Robot Wars game?”
Super Robot Wars Y was released, for the first time worldwide, on August 28th 2025 for the PS5, Switch and PC. Sadly outside of Japan and Asia it was digital only and while I prefer my games physical I wanted to make sure Namco Bandai saw the series was popular here so I sprung for the UK digital version, including the Season Pass. I haven’t brought the Expansion Pack or Anniversary pack because I’d reached my limit at 100+ hours already, but you never know, I might get the itch for a bit more SRW before the next fully fledged game comes along.
As for featured series, from Gundam you have Zeta Gundam, Char’s Counterattack, Mobile Fighter G Gundam, Gundam Wing Endless Waltz, Gundam SEED Destiny and the debut of The Witch from Mercury (only Season 1 mind you), plus the usual two main suits from the Beltrochika’s Children novel are part of the Expansion DLC. That’s a lot of Gundam! I guess they were aware this would be available to more English speaking markets this time around. Then we have Reideen the Brave, Super Electromagnetic Robo Combattler V, Mazinkaiser vs. The Great General of Darkness, the debuting Getter Robo Arc (so no more classic Armageddon team, though they sort of return in the DLC as the crew from “Getter Robo: The Jet-Black Drifters” game-original story), the Macross series finally returns to SRW with Macross Delta and its related movie, Aura Battler Dunbine and its Tales of Neo Byston Well sequel, Heavy Metal L-Gaim, Majestic Prince (Again? Damn it…), Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion III: Glorification and Lelouch of the Re;surrection, Godzilla: Singular Point and SSS.Dynazenon,
You also have Galaxy Cyclone Braiger, The Big O, Fuuto PI: The Portrait of Kamen Rider Skull, Steel Jeeg, The Brave Fighter of Legend Da-Garn, Space Runaway Ideon, Idolmaster: Xenoglossia, Star Driver The Movie, Cross Ange: Rondo of Angel and Dragon (there’s a throwback to the first two SRW games I played!) and Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution as DLC, along with Getter Robo Black I already mentioned and the protagonists from SRW V, X and T along with the usual Masaki with Cybuster from older SRW titles (but has appeared in so many of these modern SRW games that he may as well be from here…) This brought a smile to my face, especially the pilots, suits and music from V as that was my first full SRW experience and Soji still pulls off that “cool protagonist” vibe perfectly. So no shortage of both classic and new series by the time the DLC was done, plus the additions of such classic series as Macross, Kamen Rider and Godzilla, it’s quite the mix!
Gameplay:
The Variable Fighters from Macross finally appear in a modern SRW game! It’s a shame Delta’s plot is so… weird as it turned out, but hey-ho.
Gameplay is the same as ever, but in case this is your first SRW review of mine you’ve seen: it’s a turn-based RPG that I hesitate to call “tactical” given it’s lack of difficulty, though I do always play on the standard difficulty so that may be entirely my fault. You place your chosen mechs/super robots/mobile suits/transformable jet planes/Kamen Riders on the map with each unit having a limited amount of squares they can move, with each of their attacks having a limited amount of reach. When you hit someone they can counterattack, and likewise when you’re hit you can counter, plus your pilot might have an ability where they attack first when attacked or even attack twice in one move. Each unit has health and energy, with bigger moves naturally using more energy, and each pilot has Spirit Points that go up the better your side is doing in the battle that can be spent on SP actions like doubling your XP or attack damage for one turn, or giving you an 0% chance to be hit, or a 100% chance to land your hit, both of which are extremely helpful for later bosses!
New to Y are non-combatant operators that you can assign a certain amount of and they have their own point system that goes up during battle and they also give you the same kind of power ups as SP skills, though sometimes they give the power up for your whole squad with the caveat that they take a lot longer to “change up” the right amount of point to use. So it’s a new system but in reality it’s just SP abilities again but not tied directly to a single pilot. For each kill you gain XP for your pilot and at the end of battle you gain money that you can spend on upgrading each of your unit’s stats like health, armour, speed, etc. You also get points to upgrade the main ship once again, which can include permanent stat boosts to your whole team and such. There are also equipment you can put on each unit (though how many pieces varies between units) that raise stats and you can also buy SP moves and assign them to your pilots as well as up their stats too. It’s a lot of different screens in between battles but really it’s just stat buffs and assigning skills, just done in four or five different ways at once!
Look at that UI… so much information, so little of it is of any relevance at all…
The vast majority of missions end when you wipe out the other team, sometimes you get a “get this specific unit to this specific tile in X amount of turns” one, but very rarely. Just like in SRW 30 you now have some side missions along with the main ones, though honestly they’re normally quite important, plus some special missions that are often like puzzles where you have to kill five units with three units in two turns, that sort of thing, which net you special equipment, and you also have area missions where you can just defeat enemies on a specific map purely for farming XP, money or stats. That’s about it, not that’s it’s not a lot! Once again my playthrough clocked in at over 100 hours and this time that doesn’t include the final two DLC packs worth of missions plus lots of fast-forwarding or skipping through some of the attack animations towards the end…
Graphics and Sound:
Lovely detail on the artwork during some moves, even when it’s just a rather large running tackle!
Much the same as ever, clean 2D sprite work with some good animation for attacks, some basic but pleasing enough 3D backgrounds for maps, and super-clean character art during the often long cutscenes. Nothing ground breaking or that’s going to tax your system’s memory, but does the job.
Sound is fine, voice work is good, the licensed music is great (even without the full vocal versions pack the instrumental versions often do good enough!) sound effects accurate to their respective series/time periods, and the non-licensed music do their job, though some of them are reused from SRW 30, including common menu music, which is annoying when you’d already listened to them for 120 hours only to then have to do it all over again!
Story:
Is it? Oh I hadn’t noticed… (As per usual this is the only screenshot I took before the standard SRW block on all screenshotting, despite putting the massive copyright message at the top left anyway!)
As typical with these games it has its own original story with storylines from featured series woven into it, but in this case they’ve gone the extra mile and woven a world where these series have already existed alongside each other, including a big war mentioned several times across the series. Normally a few old events are mentioned by other characters, but this went a bit further than normal, closer to how they did the X Zone games, like for example Shinn from Seed Destiny being a former student of Doman from G Gundam, that sort of thing. Anyway, not including the DLC every featured series actually gets a good chunk of their plot adapted, either directly as the game goes on or just the final third of their plot. Even the likes of Combattler and Reideen, older shows that tend to just get the main Super Robot, have full stories and cheesy 70s villains on tap. My only disappointment is that in SRW 30 DLC characters you have will chime in during conversations, normally with a question that isn’t really relevant that someone will answer leading into what was clearly the next line anyway, but it still made it feel like they were there, this time the DLC characters only appear in DLC missions relating to them and that’s it. For the old V, X and T characters this meant they hardly appeared at all, even when pallet swap enemies from their games were shamelessly reused they only had a single line. Ah well…
As for the overall original plot, it focuses on Echika, a young girl who inherits a city to run, which then turns into a floating city that can freely fly across the globe and into space! Blimey. She is protected by Haze (that’s an organisation of ninjas) as they send either Cross or Forte Tsukinowa, depending on which you pick as your protagonist. Cross is an experienced ninja with a personal connection to Echika, where as Forte is an inexperienced ninja who ends up as a fun sister relationship with Echika. As I alternate male-female each game I went with Cross after playing as the female protagonist last time and I have to say it worked out much better, by the sounds of it. As the A. Advent (as the city is called) becomes its own state able to give power to struggling locations it amasses a large army of Super Robots, mobile suits, etc etc but also becoming a target of their enemies. They also encounter an alien race known as Ra Val, who wish to conquer Earth for their own reasons, first appearing as a “terrorist group” called VAL-X before being revealed by their leader Re Seivas. As the story progresses he starts to soften, leading to his colleague Re Sistis taking over, and then eventually Ra Val’s leader Ra Valbelm appears. They’re also obsessed with a Protoculture that existed millions of years ago which ends up tying into several show’s backstories, which was fun.
*Spoilers from here until the next bolded sentence!*
This picture isn’t a spoiler, but it breaks up the text! The original mechs in this game are all ninja themed, if you couldn’t tell…
It turns out that Ra Val is from an alternate timeline where Char won the war prior to the game starting and sent humanity down a path where it became a galaxy-wide civilisation that was on the verge of wiping Ra Val out, so they went back in time to stop them from achieving that kind of power… or so it seemed. As its revealed towards the end Ra Valbelm wanted to take control of the Earthlings and the Getter Emperor they eventually used to conquer the galaxy and conquer it himself instead. On another note Echika it turns out is a clone of Izana, a “superhuman” who tapped into the “Willforce” and become super powerful but unable to control her powers. This evil Willforce becomes the main villain of the story, as does that ancient “Animas Clan”, otherwise known as the Evolvers, that once sought it for themselves, and their old relics and ruins end up allowing the Ra Vallians and their anime villain allies to tap into their power. Tetsuro, Echika’s “father” created her because he couldn’t control Izana herself and is also the father of Cross and Forte, being impressed with Cross’s rising in the ranks (much to his disgust as he understandably hates him) but being disappointed in Forte for being “useless”, basically being an arsehole in every way possible. I’ll also mention the DLC packs come with their own villains, each separate from the main plot and with their own boss fights, including a gentleman in a charming hat that turns out to be some other-dimensional entity that literally eats evil, and an AI controlled Super Robot that took its directive to stop anyone doing wrong too literally. They’re fun enough, but again, entirely optional.
In the end (or at least in my end, there are two different ending paths) Ra Valbelm is killed trying to drop Axis on Earth, Char-style, and Echika manages to get through to Izana enough that she expels the evil Willforce inside her, leading to it becoming the final boss thanks to Evolver hatred in the air giving it form, or some such. Everyone defeats the millennia of hate bundled in a powerful shadow and the world is once again free to make its own future, with the new leader of Ra Val, Re Sistis, shaking hands with Echika and creating an alliance. Now since later DLC takes place after this I assume there is a further epilogue villain force just like in 30 but I can’t comment on that at the moment! Overall it’s fun enough, I especially like how it’s all tied together and each series get a bit of plot mixed in.
*Spoilers end here!*
Downloadable Content:
Ryoma’s classic voice actor returns to deliver his classic “BEEEEAMMMUUU!” line. Thank goodness for that!
I’m not going to relist the units that came in the DLC, but at the start there was a pre-order bonus of the V, X and T plus Cybuster characters, and then a music pack where you can have the actual songs play during missions rather than instrumental versions, and a Season Pass that got you two packs of characters and missions. Later on they added a third “Expansion pack” with more characters and missions, before a final “Anniversary Pack” that added a bunch of new missions that apparently take place post-game and some new team up moves between units not from the same show, which is fun. Quite pricey though, I guess that comes with the licensing costs…
Thoughts Now:
Mmmm… Not sure what to make of Jet Jaguar and the Godzilla Singular Point stuff, but at least Godzilla Ultima was fun!
If Super Robot Wars Y is your first SRW, which may be the case given it’s the first to be so widely released in English speaking territories, then you’ll have a great time I’m sure. Even though I always start to feel some burn out at the end it only takes a few months for me to look forward to the next one, I really do enjoy the crossover storylines and the simple but visually rewarding gameplay loop. As easy 4, like many of its fellow games, even though I likely won’t be playing through it again and instead just play through the next one!
