Dream is Destiny (Day 274)

Keeping track of all the pilots and robots in Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden is quite the ordeal, especially since the in-game glossary is unfortunately not translated. I keep thinking I have a good idea of the characters I'm going to be using consistently but each episode I get cool new units thrown at me. I'm surprised at just how many of the characters in the game are original creations. It's possible the earlier games in the SRW series had a lot of them, but in the case of SRWJ, the only original character is your protagonist.

I'm on Episode 9 now, the first mission were you're given the opportunity to have Masaki Andoh pilot his trademark Cybuster. This was one of my absolute favorite units in SRW: Original Generation and I imagine the same will be true here because his moveset looks to be identical. He has evidently been a part of the series since Super Robot Wars 2; which gives me hope for playing that game sometime in the future. I attempted to play the original SRW on Game Boy but I found it extremely dated, and that's coming from someone who just recently played through the first two Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles.

Quite a few of the original characters from this game went on to appear in Original Generation or Original Generation 2, including the aforementioned Masaki--but also Viletta in the R-Gun, Ryusei Date (who is currently piloting a Grungust but may acquire the R-1 later?), Ryune (Lune) Zoldark in the Valsione-R, and of course Shu Shirakawa in the Granzon, again an important antagonist. I imagine (hope) that Rai and Aya will show up in the R-2 and R-3 to complete the mighty super robot SRX. I'm intentionally not looking that up so as not to be disappointed or spoiled.

The Cybuster is so cool.

I'm trying to maintain a good variety in choosing which robots to field. In a typical mission I'm given about 15 slots for robots, so it gives me ample room to experiment. It's clear that some robots are just stronger than others, but I'm not trying to restrict myself to only the robots that are subjectively the most powerful. I'm using a combination of robots from series I'm familiar with and others whose designs (and attacks) I like. I wanted to use Duo Maxwell from Gundam Wing in his Deathscythe Hell Custom but unfortunately he only has only two attacks, neither of which are extremely powerful. His fellow pilot Quatre from the same series exhibits the same issue, with Wufei in Altron Custom not far behind. Heero in Wing Zero and Trowa in Heavyarms have a huge number of attacks at their disposal, on the other hand, including attacks that hit multiple enemies on the map. I suppose it's accurate to the anime in question, but it is a little disappointing.

I always liked Trowa's Gundam.

Although I've been watching a little of Mobile Suit Gundam recently, I know very little overall about the first few Gundam series. Super Robot Wars features characters from these series very frequently, with Alpha Gaiden featuring characters from no fewer than eight Gundam series, most of which I'd never heard of before. Amuro Ray, the protagonist of the original series is a playable character in Alpha Gaiden, although he's older than the character I recognize. I'm assuming it's the version of Amuro as he existed in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, whose protagonist, Kamille Biden, is also a playable character. I still think it would be cool to watch all of those series but I'm not sure I have the free time/focus to get it done.