Title: Super Robot Wars Y（スーパーロボット大戦Y）
Genre: SRPG
Platform: PS5, Switch, PC
Developer: Bandai Namco Forge Digitals
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Release date: 28 August 2025
Official website: https://34.suparobo.jp/
Ever since debuting on the original Game Boy in 1991, the Super Robot Wars series has been a staple for fans of robot anime for over three decades. While strategy RPGs are not an uncommon genre, and SRW never laid claim to the crown in terms of gameplay, its crossover stories have always been incredibly fun, featuring ensemble casts of heroes teaming up long before the MCU Avengers movies popularized the concept in the west.
Though the games used to come out at a frequent pace – between 1991 and 2019, only 1992 saw no releases at all, and many years saw multiple entries – the supply of SRW has been dwindling in recent years, and so Super Robot Wars Y, coming four years after the 30th anniversary title Super Robot Wars 30 in 2021, was long-awaited by fans. But does it live up to the expectations?
Series list:
- Reideen the Brave
- Chōdenji Robo Combattler V
- Aura Battler Dunbine
- New Story of Aura Battler Dunbine
- Heavy Metal L-Gaim
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack
- M-MSV (units only)
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam
- Mobile Report Gundam W Endless Waltz
- Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury season 1 (new)
- Mazinkaiser: Shitou! Ankoku Dai Shogun
- Getter Robo Ark (new)
- Ginga Kikōtai Majestic Prince
- Macross Delta (units only)
- Macross Delta: Gekijō no Walkure (new)
- Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion III — Glorification
- Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re;surrection
- Godzilla S.P Singular Point (new)
- SSSS.DYNAZENON (new)
Super Robot Wars has a simple premise: a turn-based strategy RPG featuring multiple robot anime series in a single extravagant and intricate crossover. And while many crossovers simply put characters in close proximity and call it a day, SRW is particularly known for having them work organically, with the stories of multiple different series intertwining and becoming part of the same world. The games also commonly make changes to the plots of the source materials, saving doomed characters, redeeming antagonists, or even giving proper endings to series which were canceled.
Super Robot Wars Y continues in the same vein of 30, T, X and V, again taking place in a new world and setting with no significant ties to previous games.
Unfortunately, the story here leaves much to be desired: The protagonists essentially wander the world fighting the same recurring enemies in long stretches of what feels like little more than filler, and what passes for the (largely uninteresting) main plot develops very slowly, with most significant events both for the main story and included series clustered towards the very end. Also, many of the included series are set after their original stories have ended, which means they bring almost no story relevance, and many of the ones that do are handled poorly either way.
A particularly egregious case is Reideen, which technically does have some of its show’s story in the game, but shows up at an extremely late point in its source material’s story after almost every major enemy has been defeated, yet is stretched out across the game’s length. Meanwhile, The Witch from Mercury season 1 (with only season 1 included) feels like an especially cynical inclusion, barely integrated and seemingly present only as bait for newer fans, given the show’s popularity – the fact that only season 1 of the show is included should speak volumes to anyone who has watched it, and to make things worse the game does not even include the last two episodes of the first season.
The story pacing issues also do not help. Most of the game feels like padding, with countless repeated encounters with the same villains – for example, Toenko, an inconsequential “enemy of the week” from Getter Robo Ark that was defeated in an instant and never brought up again in the source material somehow becomes the face of that series’ enemy faction in SRW Y, showing up innumerable times and even after the series’ story is supposedly concluded in the game. There is also very little narrative payoff, with only a couple of moments very late in the game that truly feel interesting. As a result, SRW Y often feels like it is just wasting the player’s time. What should be an exciting crossover ends up being a meandering mess, broken only occasionally by sporadic highlights that are overwhelmingly outnumbered by mediocre filler.
That said, not all is disappointing. Some crossovers deliver memorable moments: Jet Jaguar from Godzilla Singular Point stands out as a great character, and the Kaiju Eugenicists from SSSS Dynazenon are improved significantly from their source material, showing growth and even joining the heroes, albeit far too late to really matter gameplay-wise. Smaller but thoughtful touches, such as Macross Delta’s Makina Nakajima referencing the Bird Human from Macross Zero in a conversation about Reideen show the writers still know how to connect series in clever ways. Though Combattler V shows up after its show’s conclusion, Garuda returns and has some decent moments (though one cannot help that his angst about being a robot is a bit under-explored, considering how Jet Jaguar is right there, and also stretched out for far too long).
Larger-scale ideas, like tying Godzilla Ultima (Singular Point) and Getter Emperor (Getter Robo Ark) together as singularities, work surprisingly well, and Code Geass’ villains being tied to Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz is a not particularly inspired but still effective crossover. Getter Robo Ark even gets something close to an ending, complete with a voiced sequence for the point where it diverges from the show, though this reviewer felt that while better than nothing the attempt was a bit underwhelming.
Unfortunately, the gameplay and design also suffer from many issues. The UI is an absolute eyesore, and also has several bizarre decisions and changes that make controlling the game more cumbersome than it should, and every story sequence ends with a frustratingly slow fade to black that feels like it lasts four times longer than it should. The auto-battle system, returning from 30, is for some reason also tied to the auto skip function for dialogue as well, making it unusable for players who want to skip the combat and get to the story, as it inevitably skips story as well. The text log is useless here, as there is no way to bring it up while in battle until more dialogue is activated, and furthermore the log is separated between map and ADV sequence dialogue – if you let the auto mode skip all the dialogue on the map, there is no way to go back to it short of replaying the stage or at least the last turn before the dialogue that was missed.
Game balance has never been SRW’s forte, and to its credit Y does make an attempt, with upgrade caps in the early game and no easy ways of pumping out ridiculous numbers allowing the player to defeat bosses in a single hit the way 30 did. Nevertheless, the game is still skewed heavily in the player’s favor, with rudimentary understanding of the systems making it trivial to defeat the final boss on the first turn of its stage, before enemies can even move.
Worthy of note is the game design around reinforcements: enemy armies can spawn directly next to the player’s ships on the enemy turn and immediately move, meaning a single unlucky stage placement or under-upgraded/under-leveled ship can result in an instant game over (this reviewer cannot think of anything as bad ever happening since Alpha Gaiden from 2001, and that only happened once in that game while this happens continuously in Y). Veterans of the series may be able to anticipate and play around this, but one can easily see how unfair this could be for new players. This does not feel like a design choice aimed at increasing difficulty, but an amateurish mistake made as a result of insufficient consideration.
There is otherwise nothing close to a difficulty curve in the game – it remains easy throughout, and while the player is given more tools to trivialize it later on, it is questionable if this can be considered as the difficulty becoming “easier” rather than options to skip tedium becoming more available.
The game does, however, include a couple of interesting “challenge” missions where the player has to achieve tough objectives with limited resources (such as having to fight a boss with only one unit, or having to take a boss down in one turn), and these actually do require some thought and planning on the player’s side.
On the production side, the game is a mixed bag. The animations are relatively competent with nothing being standout bad, though quite a few are still a significant drop from the baseline older fans might have, and the completely different styles being used for different units can be particularly jarring for anyone who remembers the polished animations of the first Z game, MX or the OG series. At the same time, though, the majority of animations are recycled, and there are no real new highlights.
Audio-wise, the base soundtrack feels extremely and deliberately neutered and this can be seen in examples like Zeta Gundam – in many older games, the Zeta would get the track Sora wo Kakeru – Zeta no Hatsudou for its wave rider attack, but in SRW Y the entire series has only one track. And the reason for this neutering is immediately apparent: Zeta no Hatsudou can be added with the purchase of the add-on music pack for 4400 JPY. Combined with the upcoming additional 10 units for another 4400 JPY (split into two purchases of 2200 JPY), this adds up to 8800 which is more than the cost of the game itself, and feels downright exploitative. This can be circumvented to some degree on the PC and PlayStation where players can import their own music to be used, but this is not available to Switch players.
It should be noted that the inclusion of many series which have sequels lead to fans speculating about SRW Y being the start of a new multi-part SRW series like Z, which would make it the first non-standalone mainline SRW game since the conclusion of the Z series in 2015, but aside from the bizarre treatment of Witch from Mercury, nothing in the base game itself suggests that it might lead into a sequel. (This could, of course, change once the additional stages from the DLC are out.)
Super Robot Wars Y is not a bad game, and not anywhere close to being one of the worst SRW games. However, it is also very clear that it is also nowhere close to being one of the best.
The Good: Some crossovers deliver excellent moments, with occasional clever inter-series references and interactions.
The Bad: Ugly UI and unbalanced gameplay; story is padded, meandering, and often uneventful; many series have little to no relevance or impact to the story (Witch from Mercury being an especially bad example).
Conclusion: Super Robot Wars Y has a few sparks of the clever writing and crossover fan service that make the series beloved by lovers of robot anime, but they are unfortunately buried under a weak story, dodgy game design, and aggressive monetization. New players might be able to glean some enjoyment from the sheer novelty value of the crossovers, but longtime fans may see it as just another step in a slow decline.
Score: 70/100
