Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier, The sixth SRW game available in English Options

[MorriganAensland]

Well, Atlus has done it again, folks; they have, when nobody else cared, decided to bring a Super Robot Wars game to America to fulfill the needs of a minimal niche market with this newest installment of Super Robot Wars, Endless Frontier, available on the Nintendo DS.

Endless Frontier is, well, there's two things that make it really stand out. First of all: fanservice. I've barely stepped into the crazy world of Endless Frontier and I've already run into five women with bust sizes large enough that their backs should've snapped in half years ago. The game is nice enough to give us at least a few normally proportioned women, including two who join your party, and the game is at least shamelessly recognizes and mocks itself for its practice of giving women who are the epitome of an anime fanboy's dreams.

The other big factor is that Endless Frontier is a departure from the traditional turned-based strategy a-la Fire Emblem, and favors an action-RPG flavor that's based partly on the Tales Of- games (fair enough since Banpresto is owned by Namco who made those games) and partly based off of old-school Final Fantasy games. There's also some Super Robot Wars elements thrown in, like Support Attacks and the like but I'll get to those later.

Our hero is a dashing cowboy by the name of Haken Browning, who works as a bounty hunter along with an attractive android named Aschen Brodel. The game starts with them basically scouring a wrecked ship for supplies and stuff and end up meeting the princess of a kingdom from a different reality. This is treated as something mundane in Endless Frontier, with a number of realities intersecting and you travel through them. So you run into a lot of different settings, like Western, Buddhist/Shinto-inspired mythology with demons, and currently Alice in Wonderland and some cross breed between the Little Mermaid and Peter Pan. Joining Haken, Aschen, and the princess Kaguya is another princess named Suzuka who is a demon Shiki-Oni and commands a human-sized robot to do her bidding. Later on two other characters from the Namco game Namco X Capcom , Reiji and Xiaoumou, show up to help out out too.

And eventually KOS-MOS from Xenosaga will drop on by and be the last character in your group. Don't understand why just yet.

Anyways, the game I guess aims more for the Chrono Trigger approach with the Overworld map; not a lot of size on each one but each adding up to a much larger picture. I've jumped through three worlds so far and stuff is pretty fun, so far. The enemies gradually grow to become run-of-the-mill with time and then you go to another plane of reality to get a lot of fun and excitement fighting entirely different things with entirely different strengths and weaknesses.

And now... combat. And let me tell you this right now, Endless Frontier has a very punishing learning curve. You're gonna learn to Level Grind and *like it*, otherwise, your pocketbook is going to take a hit when you keep buying supplies to use, and even then you can't spam everything in one turn.

Combat has a lot of things working for and also against you. The battle order is pre-decided, and you command each character separately. You can have four people out on the frontlines whilst everyone else hangs around in the back to play support if you call on them. You hit the "A" button to attack, and your character will start to perform their length attack while you hit "A" again every so often to keep up the combo. This is important since enemies can "Force Evade" if they touch the ground during this combo, wherein the rest of the damage for that attack gets reduced to zero and your turn ends. It takes practice laying out your character's attack line up, but it's relatively worth it.

You can attack up to five times a turn, and if another one of your characters is going to attack next, you can summon them in to chain the combo. This is nice if you want to get a nice long combo which has perks (I'll get to those in a second), but it also means that character can't stop and find time in his or her busy schedule to run maintenance on everyone else. Support attacks where people from the back line help out are similar, except they just jump in for attacks and then leave.

Fueling not just attacks but also using items is the "COM" bar, which decreases with nearly every action you take. If you use an item, you lose some of your COM energy. The stronger the move, the more of the COM bar you lose, up to 100% with some items. COM does recharge a little every turn, but you'll often need items to restore it further and/or do chain attacks since you'll get an extra boost for that.

There's also Spirit Points, which primarily are just fuel for your Spirit commands. These are kinda like the magic spells of normal RPGs and carry over from other SRW games, although unlike most RPGs they serve mainly healing or support purposes. None, if any, are useful for offense.

Lastly there's the Frontier Gauge, which increases whenever you attack or get attacked by varying degrees. Some attacks boost the Frontier Gauge more than others, so you'll have to balance you attacks between how much damage they do and how much they add to this Gauge, while also taking into account the COM bar too. Chain attacks also help boost this up too. Once maxed out people can use special attacks which typically do a lot more damage than your normal ones do, and it's advisable to finish battles with these whenever you can if only for the experience bonus you'd get at the end.

Now, I mentioned before that the game is hard. Partially because you have to manage your SP, your COM, and your attacks every turn and pace yourself. The enemy is under no such stipulation and will frequently spam powerful attacks at the get-go, and even with good armor and defenses, expect to take serious damage each time an enemy gets to attack you. Bosses are very, very hard, and even with proper grinding you'll find yourself reviving fallen allies *a lot*. Thankfully money is fairly plentiful and revival items are relatively cheap and you get them early on in the game.

Also, expect a lot of Japanese. Atlus and Banpresto opted to not dub over the Japanese voice actors, so during battle scenes and when browsing through shops you'll hear a lot of Japanese and have no idea what they're saying. Normally this isn't a problem, but it does make me feel I'm missing out on some great inside jokes or something considering how often Banpresto has fun with those. The actual voice actors themselves are all fairly good, like Haken being voiced by the guy that did Gai Shishioh in GaoGaiGar and Teppei Takamiya in B't X, so if you watch a lot of subbed anime you'll hear familiar voices.

Well... this is a bit of a long review so I guess I better wrap it up.

Super Robot Wars Endless Frontier is not a game for the casual gamer or one that is easily offended. The battle system takes a while to get used to, you can't skim through areas and expect to get away with it, fights are hard even when you do train up, and again, the endless fanservice. Be that as it may, giving the game a try is advisable if you want to try something new and different. The writing is top-notch, the game relies as much on your overall skill in battle as it is on just stocking up on powerful weapons so if you know what you're doing you should be fine, the plot is expansive and crazy but it eventually calms down, the main SRW plotline is tertiary at least at first, you don't need to be familiar with any actual anime to follow the plot, and besides the large breasts some characters sport the artwork is stellar.

So yeah; if you want something new, something different, something a bit more quirky, and something that'll shake up the status quo that Square Enix has been forcing down our throats for years on end now, I highly recommend Endless Frontier.

[Asher Omega]

Addendum:

how KOS-MOS is brought in is that She's from Reiji's and Xiamou's World, but from their future.

and I cannot stress the fact that the game is filled with references to Animes and likes to sneak in some of other media too. (example, False Third Eye {gives better accuracy} item description is "Apply Directly to the forehead".)

and Morrigan isn't kidding when he said that it wasn't for those easily offended. one of the best lines I've read so far is "you want me to pull her dress down to get her attention?" its kinda chock full of innuendos and lots of lamp shading. about female "assets".