Bulbagarden

Thanks! Have you watched the show then? I think you're the first person to have recognized what my avatar is from haha.

No prob. Thinking about watching it, though haven't, no. But I am familiar with it from playing Super Robot Wars UX. Kazuki ended up my unit with most enemies shot down. Not just because I needed him with a lot to recruit Shouko and Misao either, but because he was fairly strong, and I enjoyed the series' music as well. Especially Azure.

Ah, gotcha. Funnily enough, I've been wanting to get into SRW UX or SRW K for the Fafner stuff (and Gundam Seed/Destiny) recently (actually mentioned that to my sister who's a big mecha fan like two days ago). If Kazuki is anything like he is in the show, I can imagine what a powerhouse he must be in the Mark Sein. Yeah, the series does have a great soundtrack, Azure is great and similarly Mark Sein is a cool one during battle. The OP and ED themes are pretty great too. If you ever end up watching it, hope you like it! It's one of my absolute favorite anime series.

I heard Fafner can get pretty depressing at times, and that it starts slow, but picks up about a dozen episodes in. In regards to SRW, my advice...if you can actually get past the hurdles to play UX, definitely play that over K. K is infamously bad for a number of reasons including bad gameplay mechanics, the featured series aside (and it's a wash since UX has unusual ones too). Kazuki is pretty great in UX. It was fun watching him dodge stuff, tank the hits that got through, then retaliate. I wasn't even trying to get him kills after he got the 200 he needed so Misao survived, but he still got 80 more because enemies loved suiciding on him.

UX also treats GSD better, it's skeletal and brief in K even though it has formal plot. But they actually tie Shinn and Luna into Fafner seamlessly in UX, the former acting as sort of a mentor to Kazuki and the rest of the Fafner kids.

Yeah, it absolutely starts slow. The first 10-11 episodes have some good stuff, but it gets much better after that. Though it might be okay for you if you're somewhat familiar with the show already since a lot of the complaints about the early episodes are about them being confusing not knowing what's going on. And it does get depressing, several deaths throughout the series got me good.

I'll look into ways to play UX then; I've got a second 3DS so I might be able to deal with the "issues" involved. Kazuki being that good in UX definitely makes it appealing since he's one of my top 3 favorite characters from Fafner. I've heard about the way Shinn fits into being a mentor to the Fafner characters and would love to actually see that, especially since Shinn got ripped off pretty hard in his own show and him getting the chance to be a mentor seems very nice. Thanks for the info about K and UX, it's very helpful for someone new to the SRW franchise!

Noted about the show! Am somewhat familiar with it already, so that'll help going in for sure.

No problem. Hope you can get by said "issues", I have a second 3DS for that myself. SRW is a cool franchise, and you can even discover new series through it like I have before. There's also an ongoing Let's Play of UX if you can't read Japanese and/or can't get it to work. And yeah, that's one of the nice things I like about SRW - they can do series justice, clean them up, or just have interactions/tie-ins with other ones. Notably, Shinn's VA said that the version of him in Super Robot Wars Z (which has an LP on lparchive) is the version he had wanted to voice, or something to that effect.

One piece of advice - you probably want a guide for it, or most SRW games really. There's lots of secret characters you'll probably miss if you don't follow the steps right.

Oh, I didn't know there was an LP for UX that's ongoing! That's good to know as a fall-back, and I'll have to give the LP of Z a read if that's the one that adapted Destiny well. As much hate as Shinn gets from the Gundam fanbase, it must've been nice for his voice actor to have been able to portray him in a role that was better received haha.

Thanks! Having up a guide for the characters sounds like a must then, especially since I think I read before that Kouyou from Fafner is a secret one in one of the games, and he's my #1 favorite.

Yup. From the same guy who did Z too (W, MX, and L for that matter too). To contrast it's neat for me seeing the plot of a game I've actually played. And yeah, people give Shinn a bit too much hate. He has his flaws, but he's not a bad character. Z is the indeed one that adapted Destiny well, most notably giving Shinn the option not to go along with things. Z's plot itself is pretty good too, so worth a read in any case IMO.

Kouyou is a secret in K. He's not one in UX, but you get "him" back (the Mark Vier) as part of the movie plot - no way to save him properly, sadly. But you can save Michio, Mamoru, Misao, and Shouko - and tons of others from other series as well. A site called Akurasu has a secrets guide that should help, specifically. Just watch those killcount requirements...almost feels like there's too few to go around, especially if you want other secrets. Least you can game over grind them.

Fun thing related to Mamoru in UX too - if you save him and swap him into the Mark Funf, you can use a movie version of the Triple Dock attack. It's pretty awesome.

That makes sense, being able to enjoy the plot in peace after having played through it already! Totally agree with you about Shinn, it's weird how much his character seemed to really bother people. Lots of flaws, but that was actually what made him interesting to me, and that poor kid really needed someone as a mentor or something (and Athrun didn't work out there). I'll probably start reading through some of Z tonight!

Aww, I was hoping there might be a plot divergence there that let him show up in a human form rather than just the Mark Vier's core for the Heaven & Earth section, but as the Mark Vier is all right too. Thanks, I've got that site bookmarked now; saving Michio in particular sounds great!

That's pretty cool that Mamoru gets the chance to do something neat like that attack even though he canonically couldn't be there for the movie! Stuff like that makes me hope that Fafner Exodus gets to be in a new SRW game (especially with them having official English translations for the Asia market).

By the way, which SRW game do you think is the best overall, like regardless of which franchises are included in it?