Super Robot Wars T

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Super Robot Wars T (スーパーロボット大戦T Sūpā Robotto Taisen T?) is a Tactical RPG developed by B.B. Studio and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It is the eleventh standalone entry to the Super Robot Wars series and the third installment of the "International Era" series, with the game's continued focus on the massive crossover between different mecha anime series released in Japan. Released for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, It was released in Asia on March 20, 2019.


Tropes used in Super Robot Wars T include:
  • Apocalypse How: Humanity is in the middle of a low-grade Class 1 version, in which the economy and technology in a rut but the situation could turn around. Various threats are attempting everything from glassing most of humanity all the way to glassing all of reality, and the job of the heroes is to prevent all of these events while also jump-starting the revival of humanity out of the Class 1 event the game starts with.
    • The expansion pack raises the stakes a bit higher, the villains of that want to bring several universes down with an attempt at a Class X-5 event if their plans reach their logical conclusion. A more localized version that will affect at least three interconnected dimensions occurs during the main game.
  • Break Out the Museum Piece: Done literally in some cases by both heroes and villains, and it's a testament to both sides that the museum pieces can hold their own with top quality current generation tech and in some cases even puts it to shame.
  • Colony Drop: Like Super Robot Wars A, one is featured prominently very early in the story. While the worst of it is averted, it has major implications down the line thanks to the inclusion of Magic Knight Rayearth. Said colony drop scares the people of Earth so bad due to the very near miss it provides the monsters that later invade from Cephiro power due to feeding off their fears and also helps Debonair appear later on.
  • Compressed Adaptation: Magic Knight Rayearth is not a very mecha-centric series on its own, so they had to compress the non-mecha related parts down to three stages while still finding excuses for you to fight them (filled in by the Byston Well cast who allied with Zagato). This also resulted in Eagle Vision showing up during the events of Season 1 of MKR's story, the attack upgrades of the Magic Knights got tweaked into being given out for various plot reasons to their mecha, and Lantis gets their own Original Generation Mashin.
    • Cowboy Bebop is another series adapted that they had to work around its non-mecha focus by altering portions of its plot to be refocused in a mecha crossover friendly sense while still adhering to all the notable plot points. They managed to do this by adapting various Bebop episode events to SRW based equivalents and gave Vicious and the Red Dragon Mafia a peripheral but vital connection to the main plot to justify their inclusion to preserve the main plot progression of the Bebop overarching plot.
    • Captain Harlock got some more modest changes based on the Arcadia SSX 1982 anime plot, albeit with a lot of elements compressed to their essentials and reconfigured to all take place in the Sol Solar System. They still reference how Harlock has traveled past that point in the past to explain things like how La Mime is part of his crew and managed to incorporate aspects of the Vichy Earth and his rivalry with Fader Zone in a modified form as well.
  • Degraded Boss: Black Noir has a pitiful role in this game. Having already been defeated in the backstory, they show up in one level only to be killed off again and are far less deadly than in SRW V and X. Justified since they basically were teleported through time before they truly died originally and thus were already weaker as a result, despite The Power giving them a slight boost.
    • The Dark Gundam plays second fiddle to the Gun X Sword villains, but this is deliberate, as the original was destroyed and the villains were only able to create newer yet weaker copies because Rain had a remnant of the original left inside her body from the original story.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Specifically, you get to punch out Wiseman, Black Noir, The Z-Master, the STMC, the Invaders, Infinity, Debonair, System Nevalinna, and Ende
  • Dub Name Change: While the English versions of SRW V and X were translated fairly literally from the Japanese sources, this game opts to use American dub names for any series that got an American showing in the English translation. This, unfortunately, obscures a plot connection intended for Magic Knight Rayearth and Mazinger: Infinity to a degree.
  • Expansion Pack: In a first for the series, the expansion pack is not a game unto itself, but a story that takes place after the main campaign that follows up on the secret levels where the SRW V and X cast debuted. On top of being much harder that the regular game, it also fleshes out some dangling plot threads teased in the main campaign, and serves as a way to resolve certain things like the ambiguous ending of Cowboy Bebop the main game leaves vague.
  • Everyone Went to School Together: Or rather, served together at one point or another. The UC Gundam, Getter, and Mazinger casts explicitly served together in the backstory. Captain's Bright Noah and Harlock both were regular Federation officers who knew each other at one point, and the Original Generation characters Ame Presbund and Dyma Goldwin both served in the Federation as well, and said early service plays a role later in the plot. In fact, it even jump-starts it, as Dyma's VTX corporation is trying to get a unit mass-produced for use by the Federation military as their mainstay unit, as Dyma is someone they have more faith in as a former soldier than the more amoral Anaheim Electronics. Said testing of the candidates is what gets the plot off the ground.
  • One Nation Under Copyright: The UND is an odd cross of this with a military. They have control over entire planets and they function with all the equivalent powers of galactic government, but they also double as a brand name and run their operations like an actual corporation with a military background. Their primary business is being an intergalactic private army for hire that also will expand its own markets for mercenaries on its own hook to remain in the black in terms of having a business. The main conflict of the game story is based on them seeing Earth's people as prime mercenary recruits.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: While they still left a few parts of the Gun X Sword plot on the cutting room floor, they did a more faithful take on it than was done in Super Robot Wars K, to the point of being an Author's Saving Throw version. While still moving the events of that to the Terran solar system as K did, they moved most of the events to Mars to avoid issues K had with placing it on Earth, and they still managed to work in the "takes place in another galaxy" trope the story worked with due to some creative connection to Armored Trooper VOTOMS, specifically The Claw is from the Astrageius system, managed to find Earth via a wormhole that connected the Terran and Astrageian systems, and those from that system who discovered Earth prior called it the Endless Illusion, which preserves the original story while moving it to the Sol system with few issues. They also used Martian Successor Nadesico to good effect to smooth over any remaining issues like how Mars had so much advanced tech and mecha running around.
    • Since so much of the story is tied to the characters, and the lack of many of them actually hurt the story presented in SRW K, they found ways to work in characters like Joe Lutz (whose absence in K created a Plot Hole) by modifying what story scenes they did include to logically reinsert them where the plot needed them.
  • Reality Ensues: Much like in Super Robot Wars Z, there is understandable friction between the more button-down military cast and the more independent-minded lone wolves and mercenaries from the various series represented. The good guys work around these difficulties by having Harlock take on their less formal team members while the more military cast handles other things. This fades away by the midpoint of the game, where circumstances make them realize they are more effective working together despite any personal issues they might have with the arrangement.
  • Schizo-Tech: Discussed. Your team is a hodge-podge of the latest current tech and some things that would be in museums, but even the museum pieces can hold their own due to the regression in Sol Solar System's technological prowess leaving them just as good if not superior to some of the latest tech available.
  • The Bus Came Back: Much like Super Robot Wars V brought back the Huckbein and Grungust, and Super Robot Wars X brought back the more classic version of the Cybuster, this game brings back the original black Gespenst, which can be made available for use on the team early on via DLC. Otherwise, it joins much later.
  • Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The game reconciles the Schizo-Tech and, in a rarity for SRW games that usually play a bit vague with the exact year or use a fictional calendar, even allows the player to nail down fairly precisely when the story takes place. Due to using the backstory of Aura Battler Dunbine, whose mass world devastation and destruction of Tokyo Tower is explicitly mentioned, combined with an exact amount of years given due to Maito Senpuji who explains he helped rebuild Tokyo Tower in Nouvelle Tokyo and gives an exact amount of years since the original version was destroyed, this allows the player to figure out the plot takes place around 2650 AD, give or take a few dozen years. This also allows Magic Knight Rayearth to take place since the teleporting of the main characters to Cephiro takes place at Tokyo Tower in the present day. As for the actual tech disparity, that is explained as to how humanity barely was getting out of the regression of tech they were in about twenty years prior to the present day, but by the start of the game, several events kicked humanity back into a stagnant technological rut.