Super Robot Wars J/YMMV

• And the Fandom Rejoiced (Nadesico fans were delighted to know they would finally get the chance to kill Complete Monster Karma Houdini Haruki Kusakabe)
• Awesome but Impractical: The Shuffle Alliance Attack deals a lot of damage and has an impressive animation, but takes energy from five characters at once and requires that they be near one another. The two person attacks from the series are much more efficient and easier to set up.
  • The "Love" spirit command, although giving out a number of buffs at a lower price than you would otherwise spend on all of them, is the most expensive spirit command in the game at 90 points (for point of comparison, by the end of the game you'll usually have about 160-200 TOTAL on the average pilot), and you'll rarely need ALL of the commands at once.
• Boring but Practical: Aside from exact stats, pilot spirits, and Nanga's air support, eight out of ten Brain Powerd units have the same abilities: Good dodging, a barrier, grade A performance underwater, and long range team up attacks. Their practicality is only limited by low energy reserves (which they regenerate quickly)
• Complete Monster (Dr. Hell and Baron Asura (though they at least pay lip service to Well Intentioned Extremism), Masaki Kihara, Muruta Azrael, Gauron, Haruki Kusakabe, Duke Bergan, Gosterro, Michelo Chariot and the Big Bad of the game, Gu-Langdon Goetz. Also, Rau Le Crueset is also depicted as being a lot more cruel and despicable than he was in the series proper)
  • Ja-Mu Dalby is also pretty monstrous. He was at first just a normal fanboy of Al-Van, but once Al-Van got demoted, he takes a swing in Ax Crazy and becomes even more active and vocal in mass-slaughtering humans, and is unreasonable on the level of Gu-Landon (or maybe even more). By game's end he's at Kefka-levels of crazy.
• Crazy Awesome (Gai after returning, TO THE EXTREME.)
• Fan Nickname: The Powerpuff Girls for the support trio, for obvious reasons.
• Game Breaker:
  • Zeorymer, but Great Zeorymer takes the cake...and HOW! To balance it out, the process for getting the latter is utterly complex and bars you from getting a lot of other secret characters and units. It also has two problems: Its pilot has terrible stats and it eats energy like crazy despite having regen.
  • Zeoyrmer tends to be over exaggerated by the fans. The overall most useful unit in J is probably the ARX-7 Arbalest. First, Sousuke is an awesome pilot with high evade, and the Arbalest has high evade as well. Second, all it's attacks except for the Urzu strike combo use ammo, and have a lot of it. Third. It gets the Lambda driver upgrade that gives it the strongest barrier in the game and powers up its attacks that both power up based on how much Will the pilot has. (At 150 it gives 150% damage to attacks and blocks 2000 damage). And even before getting that upgrade, it has ECS, which combined with Souske's high skill stat gives him a good chance to dodge an attack no matter what the hit percentage is. On top of all that it's an S size unit which boosts its evade even further, to where only the strongest enemies can hit it.
    • While the Arbalest is your go-to guy for bosses, (Great) Zeorymer starts to pay for itself in the later stages of the game. Have a whole bunch of enemies gather around it and beat it up for morale and maybe Potential, 150 morale next turn, cast Strike, Luck, Valor, and then MEIOH. Really awesome if you want to farm money for New Game+.
  • The mechanic that lets you swap extra units can be exploited to deploy more guys than you're supposed to have if you use it correctly. Simply seperate Pegas from Blade and Black Wing from Dancougar(they deploy as one unit), upgrade the battleship's swap ability 2 bars, then switch them for other units.
  • All of the Original Generation mecha are obscenely powerful, but Granteed is an absolute monster in this game. Due to the AI attack priority, more often than not the enemy will always go after the giant robot punching its hands through the Mecha Mooks. Upgrade its armor a bit, assign Mellua as its sub-pilot for the bonus armor, and watch it rack up a dozen or so kills every scenario. And the best part? You have it with you from the first stage (second, if you're playing as Calvina), and it only gets better.
  • Much like Granteed, OG Glass Cannon Bellzelute has a very high dodge rate, which combined with Touya's Focus command can force most Real Robot enemies to have a hit percentage under 20%. Throw in Festenia's Fury spirit command and it not only dodges every attack, it always scores a critical hit when it counters.
  • In fact, all of the original mecha after the Mid-Season Upgrade. All of them have an Orgone Cloud that reduces (or negates via auto-dodge) damage and grants teleportation after 130 Will, not to mention that they all come with energy regen. That makes ALL the originals Lightning Bruisers.
  • The "S-Ranks in All Terrain" Full Upgrade Bonus for both movement and weapons. There's a reason this game was the last to have it available.
  • The last scenario has unlimited enemy reinforcements. If you're feeling patient, go ahead and rack up lots of cash for replay mode.
  • Boss Borot. No, this is not a joke. Its attacks all lower morale, and it has four slots for equipment parts; combine the right things together, and it becomes an unstoppable engine of destruction.
  • Speaking of Mazinkaiser, Kaiser itself is a broken unit, having the highest armor value amongst Supers in the game, surprisingly good evasion, and decent mobility, and at the same time capable of dealing absurd amount of damage without relying too much on Seishin. Combine this with Mazinger Z being available to use from the first stage, and its Combination Attack with Great Mazinger, which is an awesome unit in its own right and its a solid choice throughout the entire game.
  • The Freedom and Justice with METEOR packs have the damage bonus of size L units, high mobility and health, strong weaponry with a hard hitting Combination Attack, and Kira and Athrun's excellent stats and friendship bonus (on top of Athrun's Leadership ability), making for the best Lightning Bruiser pair available.
  • Tekkaman Blade is quite strong to begin with, thanks to his small size, extra spirits from Pegas, and Blaster Mode, but to top it off, if you save Tekkaman Rapier, the two of them get one of the strongest Combination Attacks in the game.
  • The Nadesico becomes pretty powerful. Aside from arbitrarily assigning five pilots (including Jun...who seemingly does nothing in the series), the battleship has powerful attacks and massive energy regrowth, allowing it to spam the Gravity Cannon/Phase Transition Cannon attacks multiple times. The host of Aestivalises you get with it aren't bad either as they can spam various CombinationAttacks.
• Good Bad Bug Mazinger Z, Layzner, Yuu Brain and Zeorymer all have less equipment slots when upgraded to the Mazinkaiser, New Layzner/Layzner Mark II, Nelly Brain and Great Zeorymer. Status-enhancing parts like the Booster (+1 to mobility) before the Mid-Season Upgrade event will automatically be sent back to the player's inventory, but a code in the game's programming also gives the upgraded unit the benefit of having said part permanently crafted to it.
  • Also if you unlock Gai your first time through, he gets double the PP he was supposed to.(First time through only.) Another bug related to first time through, if you dont get Gale you wont get his mech to come with upgrades.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Ru-Kain leads the Gradosian Empire in striking an alliance with the Jovian Federation. This is completely antithetical to his in-series beliefs, where he views all humans as inferior. It is partially justified by it playing to his Might Makes Right philosophy, however. Though several characters do point out that the Grandosians would never see the Jovians as equals and are simply using their alliance to make their invasion of Earth easier before turning on them, to the point of aggravating the war so that the Earthlings & Jovians will wipe each other out.
• Player Punch: Think you can use the same method of keeping Mu La Flaga alive as you could in Alpha 3 (that is, keep Mu in the Mobieus Zero even after he can pilot the Strike)? NOPE. He'll die just as he did in the TV series.
• That One Boss: With great dodging, a strong barrier, and enough firepower to One Hit KO Great Mazinger, Gauron should be approached with caution.
• Villain Decay: The Great General of Darkness appears in only two scenarios late in the game and only if you pick the right route (it's possible to miss him entirely). In the first of these he attacks while you're fighting someone else, something the Gradosians and Boazanians have already tried. In the second he gets his ass handed to him by the Reclaimers before you even arrive on the scene. He puts up a fight, sure, but his late, brief appearance, unoriginal style, and the total failure of his plan just don't convey badassery.
• Wangst: Akito Tenkawa, Kira Yamato and Calvina Coulange all suffer from this in the early parts of the game. They get better over time.
• Woolseyism: In the original Japanese version, the first two characters speaking in the game's prologue make references to "ka no mono". This is a very archaic Japanese phrase that means roughly "that man" or "that person". Since this is almost impossible to get across in English, the translation team decided to refer to the person being referenced as "the Converted".