Quick Super Robot Wars OE impressions:
It's decent, promising, but needs a lot of work. Missions are mostly filler with few interesting scripted events. It's passable, but I'm sure they can do better, and I'd rather have quality not quantity. I hope the missions going forward are better than Ch 1.
Map size and unit counts are too small imo. I suspect the unit count and map size is hindered by the PSP's hardware. It's easy to get slowdown even with a few units on screen. I would really love to see this on Vita instead of PSP with larger maps, more units, less slowdown, etc.
The UI is missing features found in 2nd OG and Z2-2, which slows down combat speed. Menus have transition effects and load times that further slow things down. Some of this can be disabled in the options screen, but it doesn't help much. This is disappointing after the better UI/combat speed of 2nd OG and Z2-2.
The microtransactions and repetable missions do encourage grinding, but the game still keeps track of your turn counts. It also keeps track of both your # of unique missions cleared and your total # cleared, allowing you to tell if the player has repeated a mission. With those three stats you can tell how many missions were repeated and the average turncount, which is a bit better than no stat tracking at all.
You only get one save between intermission and mission quicksave, so if you save yourself into a corner during a mission, there's no way to back out and restart a mission while keeping your previous turn count. I thought that was pretty interesting and forces you to pay a bit more attention.
+interesting NEO mechanics
+better stats tracking
+best animations of any 3D SRW
+lots of series represented
-far too many easy/boring filler missions
-slow combat speed, too many menu transition effects and load times
-missing UI features that were in 2nd OG and Z2-2
-small levels and unit counts, low difficulty, combat can feel repetitive
-microtransactions and grinding encouraged
Finished all 35 missions of Chapter 1 (including 3 skirmishes).
Conditions: No upgrades/parts equipped, low turn counts, no allies defeated
Results: 114 turns/35 out of 35 missions
