Super Robot Wars 3



Super Robot Wars 3 was the first Super Robot Wars for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and compared to its Nintendo Entertainment System predecessor, it's still quite good to date. Unfortunately, compared to anything afterwards, it pales in quality. However, most people are willing to forgive it for this because whatever quality it does have is evident in the obscene amounts of (very well done) shout outs to most of its series, ESPECIALLY Gundam.

Tropes prominent to SRW 3 are:

 * Alas, Poor Villain (The death of the True Final Boss )
 * All There in the Manual (Partial subversion: you'll meet the Inspectors eventually and deduce who they are at any rate, but it's possible to wind up skipping their introductions and motivations speech, thus having no clue what their real motivations are for most of the game)
 * Bag of Spilling (The Federation just strip all the upgraded mecha from your team without justification)
 * Canon Ending (There are three possible routes in this game: the one where decides it'd be the smart thing to join you, the one where  decides to help you out via NPC for a level or two, and one where neither of these things happen. Super Robot Wars 4 establishes the  route is the canon one)
 * Combat Pragmatist (Paptimus Scirocco's perfectly willing to tip off his enemies to your location for Enemy Mine benefits)
 * Crowning Music of Awesome (The title theme "Time of Destiny", which also plays during several Big Damn Heroes moments and the ending sequence, is pretty inspiring for a midi style soundtrack)
 * Deadly Upgrade
 * Degraded Boss (While common to SRW as a whole, this game elevates it to an art form. The same badass mooks who handed you your asses will be returning the favor a few stages later. This gets ridiculous when you realize this is S.O.P. to the ENTIRE GAME, with little to no variation, regardless of whether you're fighting the Divine Crusaders or the Inspectors)
 * Enemy Mine (The only reason why most of the Divine Crusaders are willing to get along (despite fairly major series canon incompatibilities). In short, they all hate you)
 * Subverted somewhat by some internal power struggles, but considering the DC is run by the Universal Century Gundam Big Bads, that's not really much of a surprise
 * Excuse Plot (Daitarn 3 has no plot role whatsoever, especially since none of its story is utilized, not that most fans care, however. To a lesser extent, the Combattler V and Brave Raideen stories are rushed to make them available without plot attachments. Getter Robo and Mazinger Z are slightly better off, but most of their plot outside of a few levels is totally ignored, though Mazinger at least gets enough of its own plot in to be recognizable. Getter's main plot points are and the Getter Robo G upgrade: that's it. The Dinosaur Empire mooks are enemies, but none of the actual leaders like General Bat or Emperor Gore show up. Dr. Hell from Mazinger's absent, as is Archduke Gorgon. The majority of the screen time goes to Universal Century Gundam, more or less)
 * Fan Service (Of the non-sexual kind: Gundam fans were totally geeked out of their minds by being able to recruit . Also, most of the dumbest character Face Heel Turn moments (like ) can be averted or given a Lampshade Hanging on its sheer idiocy . death is totally avoidable, and the GP-03 Dendrobium Orchid/Stamen is obtained by means that don't force General Synapse to a  event. Also, the depressing endings of Zeta Gundam, Gundam ZZ and Chars Counterattack are totally Retconned)
 * Face Heel Turn
 * Flanderization (Henken Bekenner's attraction to Emma Sheen is way overblown to a point of making him a Stalker with a Crush. The Super Robot Wars Alpha series is way more mature in this regard, and tones it down appropriately)
 * Fix Fic (Minor instance of this: if Kamille Bidan defeats Scirroco in their final battle, Scirroco will do his usual Mind Rape on Kamille. However, the instant he hears Four Murasame's voice, he snaps right out of it)
 * Four-Star Badass (The Inspectors)
 * Game Breaker (Scirroco's one of very few non-Original Generation characters to pilot the, an Original Generation-based machine.)
 * Heel Face Turn
 * Humanity on Trial (The Inspectors seek to destroy all Earthlings before they become too much of a threat. Of course, with the Inspectors, there's a slight subversion: )
 * Intrepid Reporter (Kyra Soon does this to Mashmyre Cello, to his hilarious consternation)
 * Joke Character (Bernie Wiseman and the Boss Borot)
 * Laughably Evil (Mashmyre comes off as even more of a lovable doofus than he was in Gundam ZZ. In his case, any possible Flanderization is a good thing)
 * Magikarp Power (Kou Uraki)
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero (One of the bad endings is basically this)
 * Nintendo Hard (Even harder than 4/F/F Final, due to its limited gameplay mechanics from a limited game engine)
 * But not as much as Super Robot Wars 2. To be fair, part of the difficulty comes from having to finish the game in a limited number of turns to fight the True Final Boss, otherwise you could abuse the game over trick to power up and make the bosses run out of ammo. The principal factors of difficulty are you don't deal enough damage overall, Real Robots can be hard to hit for Super Robots to a point you might need to use weaker, but more accurate attacks and lots of end game opponents have protection against (or even absorb) beam attacks. Oh, and there aren't enough powerful Gundams for all of the pilots the game gives you... well, on your side, anyways...
 * Original Generation (Lune Zoldark, the Valsione, the Inspectors and the )
 * Quirky Miniboss Squad, Wolfpack Boss (The Inspectors)
 * Schizo-Tech (Justifed since its a Massive Multiplayer Crossover, but it just gets insane how many "one-of-a-kind" mecha the bad guys can use to kill you)
 * Scrappy Level (Any level where the battleship needs protection. These usually suck because the ship cannot move, has poor armor and barely any chance of evading attacks)
 * Shout-Out (Common to the series, but this title almost completely runs on this)
 * The level recruiting Lune are copied almost directly from this game and pasted into the first Super Robot Wars Original Generation game.
 * Spotlight-Stealing Squad (The Gundam shows pretty much dominate the plot)
 * True Final Boss
 * That One Level (Let's go for a classic: the final scenario "Ragnarok". You're on a map with a grand total of only THREE enemy units, two of which are the infamous Valsion (the Final Boss mecha of Super Robot Wars 2), and the other being the . Now count the facts that in this game, Focus and Valor were RARE Spirit Commands, you couldn't upgrade either the mobility or the weapons of your units, morale raising Commands had a prohibitively large cost and the two Valsions were weak enough to die in a few hits without effectively raising your pilots' Will. Add that the True Final Boss can raise his Will by at least 15 each turn due to your characters attacking him (not counting any allied units shot down), he could fire TWICE each turn (as did your units, but it was more like a "get twice the chances of getting shot down"), had insanely high HP and armor, with a Will cap at 200, whereas your untis hardly exceed 150. In other words, EVERY SINGLE ATTACK WOULD KILL YOUR UNIT RIGHT AWAY...)
 * Part of the difficulty comes from not paying enough attention to how morale works. In short, bunch of weaklings ganging up on a badass uber robot = scrap metal. It's true during the whole game but it is the most apparent in this level.
 * Zerg Rush (This game's notorious for sending huge waves of enemy mooks at you, almost to the point of absurdity. In one level, presuming you decided to be honorable to and help him out, the game throws you a bone and he  to make your job easier. It should be noted the Zerg Rush factor in future games is toned down to varying extents.)