Watching two giant bipedal mechas going toe-to-toe on the field of battle, what’s not to love? The concept of massive robot battles might be commonplace in the realm of anime, TV and movies with the likes of genre greats like the Gundam and Transformers franchises, but when it comes to video games, not many titles have successfully captured the same thrill of mech combat, let alone built a vast franchise spanning over 70 mainline titles and spin-offs such as the Super Robot Wars series.
Tracing its roots back to 1991 with the original Super Robot Wars for the Game Boy, the franchise has largely stuck to the same formula over its many iterations, offering strategic grid-based combat with a heavy emphasis on spectacle and flashy battle animations, alongside being a celebration of all things mecha, steadily adding new playable robots to its roster spanning a massive range of IPs like Gundam, Evangelion, Grendizer, and Macross.
Developed by Bandai Namco Forge Digitals (formerly known as B.B. Studio) and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, which took over the franchise from Banpresto in 2019, Super Robot Wars Y marks the next chapter in the cross-IP mech-battling epic, and based on our time with a roughly 20-minute gameplay preview demo, will feel instantly familiar to returning fans, albeit with some minor but noticeable improvements.
Fundamentally, Super Robot Wars Y remains identical to other games in the franchise, with players having to undergo grid-based battles and complete missions to recruit new pilots and mechas spanning multiple mech-based IPs across anime and manga, steadily building up their roster to handle increasingly tough encounters. The game boasts an impressive character assortment from 21 different robot series, with notable newcomers including Godzilla Singular Point, Mobile Suit Gundam the Witch from Mercury, and SSSS.DYNAZENON.
And it’s this clash of multiple IPs in a single title that led to the main inspiration behind the game’s naming convention, as even though the “Y” in Super Robot Wars Y might seem like the team has run out of ideas and has begun throwing random letters behind their titles, the use of this alphabet actually has a rather interesting meaning behind it, revealed game producer Toma Kota during an accompanying interview with Geek Culture and other media from Southeast Asia.
“It’s been four years since the previous title in the franchise, and we wanted to signify a new series with a particular alphabet. The alphabet Y stood out because it can have two meanings, the first being that it looks like an intersection of three different lines,” explains Kota, who notes how this perfectly symbolises the franchise’s rich history of bringing multiple different IPs and fanbases together, something that makes its games so well-loved over the past 34 years.
The other meaning ties directly to one of its newly added gameplay systems, the increased emphasis on player choice.
“When you look at the shape of the alphabet Y,” Kota adds, “it looks like you are actually choosing two different paths when you look at it from the bottom to the top of the alphabet, and the Y kind of shows the decisions players have to make as they play the game.”
The addition that Kota is referring to isn’t so much a literal fork in the road tasking players to make black or white choices, but more giving players the options and freedom to craft their journeys however they see fit. This comes in the form of the title’s adjusted mission design, with players able to freely choose which storylines to tackle and in what order, so they can focus on unlocking the characters and mecha that they want to build their dream team sooner.
This feature isn’t completely new per se, as its predecessor, Super Robot Wars 30 (2021), also offered the same freedom, albeit to a much greater extent, which resulted in some unintentional setbacks. “Because players were able to choose so freely [in the previous game], sometimes they felt lost in terms of the storyline and when they were in it,” Kota explains, adding that this was one piece of key feedback received following the previous title, and something the team took the opportunity to improve this time around.
According to Kota, Super Robot Wars Y will now feature a level of freedom in its mission choices that gradually lessens as the player progresses through the main storyline, meaning players have a large number of options to choose from at the start, offering the same opportunity for roster flexibility as in Super Robot Wars 30, but once they go through the paces and build up their teams, the game will gradually narrow down its mission choices to ensure that they don’t venture too far off track and begin losing the plot. Additionally, the game also introduces a chapter categorisation system to further help players identify where they are in the narrative at any given point.
Alas, due to the curated nature of the gameplay demo, we weren’t able to properly grasp how this new campaign progression system would work, as our time with the game was limited to a single battle encounter. What was shown off, however, was the game’s other major addition, the Assist Link system. In past Super Robot Wars games, players only had control over two aspects of combat, directly controlling both the actions of mechas and their pilots, but now, side characters, which were left to the narrative sidelines in the past, play a much more crucial role in the moment-to-moment action.
Before heading into battle, players can now choose an Assist Crew, a supporting group comprising various side characters, which can provide gameplay buffs in combat. For every enemy defeated, the player will now earn Assist Counts, which can then be used during a player’s turn to trigger special effects such as enhancing a unit’s attack power, healing life and energy points, or granting various buffs to selected units.
In addition, members of the Assist Crew also gain experience when using such support abilities, gradually increasing in rank and unlocking new passive abilities and effects that can benefit a player’s entire team. Furthermore, players are also encouraged to build their Assist Crews tactically, as each assignable character falls into one of three categories, and when there are three or more members in the crew that match, this will also grant a team-wide boost known as a synergy effect.
The Assist Link doesn’t just serve as a way to freshen up battles, however, as Kota states that this was another way for the team to enhance the game’s narrative, as ranking up certain side characters can lead to the formation of something known as Assist Groups, extra conversations between various characters that help to expand upon the lore of each of the character’s associated mecha universe. Although this particular feature was also unavailable during the preview, his comments allude to there being some sort of relationship system between the various characters, allowing a player to build bonds within the team that, while optional, can help to add flavour to the title’s overarching narrative.
While not much is currently known about the game’s main storyline, it will feature a new trio of main characters and their accompanying mechs. These are Cross and Forte Tsukinowa, siblings in a group known as the Special Stealth Forces Haze, and their mechs, the Lunedrache and Lunedrache II. The pair are joined by Echika Y. Franburnett, the owner of a massive mobile city known as the A. Advent, with the trio designed by returning artist Wataru Watanabe, and each original mech design made by mecha illustrator M Ganzy.
Apart from its various new additions introduced to shake up its familiar core design, Super Robot Wars Y will also feature minor tweaks designed to ease newcomers into the franchise, such as a reworked user interface (UI) for a cleaner, more coherent look that helps players better navigate its menus and in-battle commands, alongside what’s described by Kota as a “Super Casual” difficulty mode, which is specifically designed for new players to the grid-based combat genre.
For returning players, gameplay progression has also seen an improvement in the form of Mission Experience Points (MXP), a dedicated currency earned after clearing missions that can be spent on a new branching skill tree, offering increasing benefits across combat, survivability and skills that serve to help players feel increasingly more powerful as its narrative progresses.
These changes might certainly help garner more interest from franchise newcomers, but one thing has always remained the major appeal of the game, and that’s watching mechas from different well-known franchises go head-to-head with foes in flashy combat animations and here, it looks better than it has ever been, with crisp 2.5D graphics interspersed with scenes that look straight out of a character’s associated anime, making each battle a marvel to witness, although an Auto Battle Mode is provided for players who want to resolve battles as quickly as possible, which does help lessen some of the grind when choosing to replay encounters to level up characters.
There’s a reason why the Super Robot Wars franchise has stood the test of time as one of gaming’s most lauded mecha battling titles, and that’s the confidence to stick to what works and what fans expect out of the series. By keeping its fundamental concepts intact with every entry, and instead focusing on introducing new mecha IPs and meaningful gameplay changes, the series caters to not only its specific target audience of grid-based combat aficionados who have been with the franchise from the very beginning, but also an ever-expanding group of mecha fans with every new IP added.
Super Robot Wars Y will go into battle on 28 August 2025 for the PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
