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YMMV / Super Robot Wars Z

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  • Anti-Climax Boss
    • Big Fau is probably one of the most pathetic bosses in franchise history, rivaling the Evangelion Unit-01 in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, due to having fairly weak attacks and such a low accuracy stat that players won't need to use "Spirit Commands". The only hard part is destroying the Overdevils which can be done easily, so long as players are careful. He's followed by another easy battle with unlimited turns in the scenario to get the SR Point.
    • Despite being a Duel Boss against whom only Setsuna F. Seiei and the Exia are available, Alejandro Corner in the Alvaaron can be made into this in Hakai-hen. It only has around 20,000 Hit Points, and if the Exia's weapons have been decently upgraded, Setsuna has his "Ace Bonus" unlockednote , and players cast his "Soul" Spirit Commandnote , he can easily deal damage in excess of 30,000 with a single strike.
    • In the same spirit as the above, Saisei-hen gives us Wiseman as a boss for the second half of the final Armored Trooper VOTOMS scenario between him and Chirico Cuvie. The anti-climactic part is not one super-unit, but rather a mob of Blood Suckers with about 12,000 Hit Points each, yet no special features; these Blood Suckers can be finished in one attack. Of course, this is what Wiseman wants to happen.
    • Shikū, the Post-Final Boss in Jigoku-hen has half the Hit Points of Granzeboma. Justified since the scenario takes place in an epilogue, while the actual Final Boss for the story's climax is the Anti-Spiral King's Granzeboma.
  • Awesome Music
  • Awesome Video Game Levels
  • Broken Base: Now with its own page.
  • Character Rerailment: Awakening of the Trailblazer-era Setsuna's characterization, at least when compared to his Flanderization trend followed by several of the games he was previously featured in, as those prefer to default his lines and behavior to those from when fighting the ELS - thus making him sound more hesitant and pacifistic towards any enemy he encounters. Here, Setsuna's characterization matches his post Season-2 side-stories and Movie appearances much more closely, especially because most of said movie's events take place during Tengoku-Hen, giving Setsuna a whole game and a half worth of screen time and development before that.
  • Crossover Ship
  • Demonic Spiders
    • "DAMONic Spiders", as the case may be: "Dimensional Beasts" have high Hit Points, barriers, can inflict Status Effects, good accuracy/evasion rates (and will only go higher due to their "Prevail" pilot skillnote ) and HP/EN regeneration. As one user on Something Awful put it, "It's like someone decided the Ghost X9 should be more annoying".
    • Saisei-hen Scenario 15 introduces the "Axio Burglars", each equipped with a "Jamming Device" which makes allied units two grids around them given accuracy/evasion rate increases by 10%, and these bonuses stack if they're adjacent to one another. This makes evasive Real Robots like King Gainer or a Scopedog very prone to their strong attacks (their strongest even reduces Will), while it's almost impossible to hit them without using Spirit Commands. Marilyn Catto in her Axio Burglar (later "Pearl Fang") only makes it worse, since she's always there to lead them and boosts their/her accuracy/evasion rates with her "Command" pilot skillnote  and her unit's own "Jamming Device".
    • One Saisei-hen scenario pits players against a large number of Blood Suckers. Unlike the ones Chirico faces later (see Anti-Climax Boss), these Blood Suckers are surprisingly accurate and agile, especially if players make the mistake of not taking them down in one shot, allowing their "Prevail" to kick in. The fact the scenario takes place indoors, rendering any unit bigger than a size "M" non-usable, doesn't help.
    • In Jigoku-hen, this honor goes to the mass-produced Bigs: while most Mooks in the game can be dealt with a One-Hit Kill by a strong enough unit, the Bigs easily endure attacks from fully upgraded ones thanks to their large size, enormous armor rating and their pilots' defense stat. They also come in hordes, particularly in their last appearance for a play-through.
    • For Tengoku-hen, the "ELS" have the same assimilation mechanic as the "Festum" from Super Robot Wars UX, where each successful attack reduces a pilot's Will by 10. Those unlucky enough to have their Will reduced below 80 are automatically destroyed without respect to Hit Points. Finally, they have the natural ability to bypass barriers and the "Ignore Size Modifier" pilot skillnote .
    • A few scenarios before the mandatory "Shinka" event in Tengoku-hen pits players against a number of Angeloi Arcas. These aren't quite the prior Mook units fought from time to time, as they are now piloted by level 75 pilots, with each Angeloi Arca boasting an armor rating of 3200note . Unless offensive-based Spirit Commands are used, destroying one will become difficult, as all the while players are getting smacked by these units' astounding accurate and damaging attacks.
  • Difficulty Spike:
    • Until Scenario 15 of Saisei-hen the game's a cakewalk, especially if it's imported a save data from Hakai-hen. However, this stage pits the player against Marilyn and her Firebug Squad. Not only are they powerful, accurate, and mobile, Marilyn has a high level of the "Command" pilot skillnote , granting adjacent enemies immense accuracy/evasion boosts. Several other scenarios also qualify, particularly ones where Geraud Garce Bantail appears.
    • The space route in the first route split of Jigoku-hen offers players Zeta Gundam units (who typically are some of the weakest units in franchise history) sans the Zeta, Heero and Duo Maxwell (using Leos instead of their Gundams), Hibiki, and Shinn. One scenario in this route pits the party against a bunch of real robots with conspicuously high HP and evasion rates escorting the Kshatriya (who must be defeated in a set number of turns to receive the "SR Point") and Haman with her trademark Quebeley, alongside her having the "Leadership" pilot skill, making the fight against the Mooks even harder.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse
  • Fan-Disliked Explanation
    • One of the reasons for the divide of whether Tengoku-hen was worthy of a Grand Finale installment like Alpha 3 or not was that many characters killed in previous installments returned for this game, most without much explanation and/or Hand-Waving. Naturally, the latter is seen as lazy, shoddy writing, earning the writers flak for skimping out on Crossover material.
    • Background information regarding Asakim Dowin had been rewritten in Tengoku-hen, so much that it has little to no relation to the description seen in the character's profile back in the first game, particularly the "sins" he mentions throughout the saga. The fact that this character's final line of dialogue is a parallel to the opening lyrics of "Neppu! Shippu! Cybuster!", the Leitmotif belonging to Masaki Andoh, triggering an abundance of Wild Mass Guessing and Mind Screw for many players, has led them to point towards Writer Cop Out for neglecting built-up origins in favor of Retcons.
  • Fan Nickname: See here for the entries.
  • Fanfic Fuel: What were the missing Z-BLUE members doing in Tengoku-hen? According to Gain Bijou, who sent a letter to Rand Travis off-screen, they're busy fighting the Sidereal faction, providing plenty of Fanfic material.
  • First Installment Wins: The first game is widely seen as one of the best games in the entire Super Robot Wars franchise with very few noteworthy complaints. The sequels are typically seen as good, yet lesser games for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the growing pains from swapping platforms with each numbered entry.
  • Goddamned Bats
    • In Saisei-hen, any enemy faction aligned with the Earth Federation will get "Mobile Dolls" with the "Support Defend" pilot skillnote  and most have barriers like "Planet Defensors"note . Attacks will constantly be blocked if players haven't been upgrading their units' weapons, not to mention the Dolls hit hard with the "Ignore Size Modifier" pilot skill.
    • During the last scenario resolving the Shin Mazinger and Mobile Suit Gundam 00 plots, Missile Mechanic Beasts and Gaga, respectively, appear by the numbers. While they aren't particularly hard to destroy, their Suicide Attacks are quite accurate. In fact, players won't earn any Experience Points or credits if they're destroyed this way.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • The first Z has an audio glitch where certain characters' voice lines play back at incorrect pitches. By far the most notable one occurs when performing a TRI attack with Kei, Maaie, and Lieea, as Lieea's voice is lowered and slowed down to the extent that it sounds demonic.
    • Saisei-hen has two that trivializes the game: the first is available so long as clear data from Hakai-hen is present, and players choose to start a new game via data linking. Progressing to the screen where it asks if players want to continue, then back-tracking to the title screen causes 500,000 credits to be added to the link data credit total; this can be repeated indefinitely.
      • The second one is a minor, but significant bug: in the Second Z, it's possible to leave space on the sub-order menu before enacting sub-orders for party members who are not sortied out into combat, thus players are allowed to go back and fill those spaces and activate orders for them if they wish to. In Hakai-hen, filled rows are locked out, but in Saisei-hen, it's possible to visit an unfilled row, switch to a filled row (by pressing the L or R buttons while holding down the triangle button), then swap out one pilot for another who hasn't been given orders yet. This means the player is no longer forced to choose who gets sub-orders when the cast becomes too large.
    • In Tengoku-hen, it's possible to use the D-Trader part "Insalaum's Treasure"note  twice in one scenario just by having Hibiki in the Genion use the item, then immediately transforming into "Genion GAI" and the item is now usable again. The same result will occur when changing from the Genion GAI to the Geminion Ray.
    • On the bad side of the bugs, if players use the "Try Again" song from Basara Nekki on Nono, then transforming Nono's EVO-4 to Buster Machine No. 7/Diebuster, the Status Buffs are removed.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: If Stella was obtained, she has a support attack for Shinn where she says she will protect him. In the film SEED Freedom, Stella's spirit appears to protect Shinn from the Black Knights. Whether it is in life or death, Stella will always try and protect Shinn where she can.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight
    • An image from Z made the rounds during the game's initial release, showing a man in a black and gold outfit with a full face mask, talking to Gilbert Durandal and saying "They call that man 'Orange'." Guess what series makes its SRW debut in Hakai-hen?
      • Likewise, Famitsu magazine once posted a hoax article for a fake entry called "Super Robot Wars U" as an April Fools' Day joke. Among the series listed was Dai-Guard: cue the cast listing for Hakai-hen.
    • Hakai-hen included a "Fire Bomber" music CD as an equippable part, serving as a Continuity Nod to the fact several Macross Frontier characters (particularly Ozma Lee) are fans. Players get to see them Squee in person since Macross 7 is in Saisei-hen.
    • The term "Char's Counterattack" has always been a bit of a misnomer in that movie, since Char Aznable and the "Neo Zeon" are the aggressors. The spin on this in Jigoku-hen makes this no longer a case.
    • This◊ Yonkoma from Super Robot Wars Judgment features the Tuataa De Danaan. Again, this is no longer the case in Jigoku-hen as it is converted into a flight-capable, space-faring battleship.
    • Aquarion EVOL made the interactions between the casts of the original show and EVOL ironic: while Tengoku-hen has Apollo and Kagura on pretty good terms right from the start, Aquarion Love had the two hate each other at first smell, which triggered the fight between Apollo in the Solar Aquarion and Kagura in the Aquarion EVOL.
    • After Saisei-Hen, the series might have ended up predicting Code Geass' future involving Lelouch's survival through their own take on it. The announcement of such might have also fixed a potential plot hole regarding the use of Celestial Being's technology in return.
    • The casting choice of Daisuke Hirakawa as the bug-nut crazy, Gratuitous English-spewing The Edel Bernal proves to be hilarious. One of the Gratuitous English word of choices he used was "World"/"WARUDO". Years later, the voice actor was chosen to voice Noriaki Kakyoin, who's infamously killed with an ability known as "The World"/"ZA WARUDO", which makes that particular Engrish by The Edel Bernal even more hilarious. For further hilarity, one of the characters you recruit has the same voice as the guy who had that murderous ability. (Neo Roanoke/Mwu La Fraga), so you can 're-create' an inversion of that death by having him deliver the finishing blow against The Edel Bernal.
    • Setsuna's "YOU ARE ALSO GUNDAM" line to Ple-Twelve in Z3 Tengoku-hen now becomes this, as in SD Gundam Battle Alliance, Marida does a Call-Back ("I too, was once a Gundam").
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: Due to it being split between two games as well as being released only on the PSP, Z2 is incredibly difficult to get ahold of due to both the fragility of the PSP after considerably use and the uniquely-formatted mini-discs being very finicky after too much use. Even finding music or gameplay of Z2 is a challenge, entirely because both games were on the PSP.
  • Memetic Badass
    • Once VOTOMS got in beginning with Hakai-hen, Chirico began ascending into this with little more than a simple Scopedog. This reaches the point where Jigoku-hen showed players how Chirico can use the Scopedog and beat a Physical God effortlessly.
    • Likewise, Tengoku-hen with "Bonta-kun": most bosses are essentially ineffective against it.
    • See Memetic Mutation below. Godmars can kick everyone's ass without even moving.
  • Memetic Mutation: Now with its own page.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Shikuu crosses it when he kills the pregnant Annalotta Stohls, causing the Geminides race to go extinct. Mitigated slightly when Tengoku-hen revealed he spared her twin offspring.
  • Most Wonderful Sound
  • Narm: Take a look at the Sazabi's "All Range Attack" when it uses its beam sabers. While faithful to a segment of its fight from the movie, it looks like a child throwing a temper tantrum at the robot.
  • Never Live It Down: Mixed with Memetic Mutation - in Tengoku-hen, Sumeragi has a one-off line excusing a bunch of non-returning characters by way of saying "No, let's split our forces to keep the enemy busy". Unfortunately, the Mecha board of 4chan turned this line of dialogue into one where it essentitally states "Sumeragi gets rid of everybody".
  • Nightmare Fuel
    • The ultimate attack from The Edel Bernal: he creates a rip in the fabric of space-time, briefly showing off a rather ominous looking eye before a massive, rainbow-colored horde of evil...somethings...burst out in a massive stream, with the Chaos Lemures leading them like some demented band leader, and with the horde making a cacophony of creepy impish giggling. They swoop up, grab the hapless victim(s) and carry them into a dimension of pure rainbow insanity. They get swarmed by a mass of blobs, which is then assailed by "giant sperm", then eaten by a much larger one-eyed blob, colliding with MORE one-eyed blobs. The camera zooms out, until suddenly the mass is blasted by at least a dozen frickin' laser beams, until Chaos Lemures looms large and the real Edel makes a rather wiggly Super Move Portrait Attack, complete with a disturbing expression of pure elation. With a word of "Bye-Bye", he ends the madness by ramming a gigantic spear into the whole mess. Definitely a contender for creepiest attack in the franchise, tied with the Big Bad in Alpha 3.
    • The physical appearance of the Dimensional Beasts, including their origins, increasingly become this.
    • Supreme God Z's Supreme God of Death's Light attack in Tengoku-hen: bombarding the enemy with horrific visions of universal death and destruction rivals that of Keisar Ephes and his "End of the Galaxy" attack.
  • Nightmare Retardant
  • Player Punch: Esther Elhaas becomes a Dimensional Beast in Saisei-hen. She gets better, though.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap
    • Mixed alongside Author's Saving Throw and Took a Level in Badass: when The Big O debuted in Super Robot Wars Destiny, it was near useless by that game's broken standards and many players were pleasantly surprised after seeing it in action in Z, where it's one of the best units and becomes better through weapon management, making it a nigh-Game-Breaker with its high defense, range, and high stats from Roger Smith (more accurately, his skill set, allowing him to make use of the "Attack Again" pilot skillnote ). It seemed like the developers were issuing an apology for its sheer shafting in Destiny.
    • Like the previous example, Godmars was a scrappy unit in Destiny due to the same bug and if it was destroyed, it was an instant game over. Although the same "game over" situation is in Hakai-hen, Godmars is rendered as an ass-kicking tool of destruction that's nearly unstoppable and memetically worshipped as an unmoving God that does not need to move or get animated a lot to lay down said destruction. One fan on the GameFAQs board described it as "two trucks duct-taped together with an atomic bomb", which is an oddly accurate description of Godmars itself. It also helps that after the Godmars finale, the bomb is disposed of safely and there's now no game-ruining risk involved with using it.
    • If there's one pilot and unit people ragged on the most out of the Gundam 00 pilots it's Allelujah and the Kyrios Gundam for not being quite up to snuff with the other Celestial Being Gundams. Cue a 180 with the Arios in Saisei-hen winning fans over with better specs, having what many consider the best opening "TRANS-AM" animation, an eventual ability to unleash Hallejuah and watching the machine jump between jet/robot configurations in detailed animations.
    • Nena Trinity in the Second Z duology: while she's still an evil psychotic bitch, what made her so hated in her home series (killing Louise Halevy's family at a wedding on a total whim) is altered: she and her brothers bomb a political party Louise's parents happened to be at, apparently under orders. Nena's still the culprit, but doesn't hold sole culpability, and it being politically-driven rather than done For the Evulz makes her come off as less reprehensible.
    • Quess Paraya loses most of her Yandere traits in Jigoku-hen, while Gyunei Guss doesn't take to his Dragon with an Agenda situation from the film as much, even having him assist Z-BLUE with pushing Axis back.
    • In its prior Z appearances, the Gundam X and Gundam Double X can only use the "Satellite Cannon" so long as the moon is out in scenarios. Unfortunately, the games neglect to tell players whether the moon appears or not. Tengoku-hen retools this mechanic by allowing the weapon's use so long as its pilot hits the Will requirement. Provided the moon appears in the scenario, the weapon takes one turn to charge; if not, two turns. After Scenario 33, regardless of whether the moon appears or not, the attack can be used every turn.
    • The cast and story of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny received such a huge Fix Fic treatment that people that once reviled them now looked at them with more positive light at least in the Super Robot Wars continuity. Ironically however, the director Mitsuo Fukuda vehemently disagrees.
  • The Scrappy:
    • "The Four Angels", sans Sacrifi, are hated by a lot of players. Doctrine and Tempti have one-dimensional personalities and barely interesting plots that don't tie into the overall Myth Arc, and are also over-hyped as the ultimate villains for the Z series, only for them to have a lot of the Villain Ball moments when they are hardly in the game.
    • Then there's Advent, whose appearance in the any of the final stages is usually synonymous with a massive nosedive in the writing, confusing and conflicting motivations, committing an exhaustive list of horrific atrocities and yet still getting to be on good terms with Hibiki in the end, and the Supreme God Z's design being unimpressive with only a single attack with proper animation.
  • Scrappy Weapon: Gurren Lagann's "Dreidel Burst" MAP attack consumes a lot of EN, can only hit five enemies at most, cannot be used post-movement, nor is it available in space-based scenarios, and can't hit enemies in the air unless the Gurren Lagann has an equippable part that gives all of its weapons a terrain rating in the air (having flight alone won't cover it, since it's canon flight upgrade doesn't change this attack's properties). Unfortunately, most players feel the machine performs sub-optimally in the air, regardless. Fortunately, Dreidel Burst is replaced by "Giga Drill Maximum" in later games.
  • Shocking Moments:
    • A playable Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in Jigoku-hen already set the tone following its reveal in the promotional trailers, but to transform into the "Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann"? WOW.
    • The entire Axis Colony Drop event in Jigoku-hen: sure, multiple SRWs have used it before, but to see Char reveal he's not the one dropping the asteroid, but rather use Axis to perform space-time recovery, lead all of Z-BLUE in stopping its descent, AND pull a Xanatos Gambit in case the drop does happen? All this is done as "Beyond the Time" plays in the background.
    • Geminion Ray's "The Over Riser Arc" attack in Tengoku-hen. How much? Oh, nothing short of splitting the Earth in half.
  • Spiritual Successor:
    • The first Z to Alpha Gaiden, due to similar series used (Gundam X, Turn A Gundam, Xabungle), overall difficulty and the use of a "bazaar" to purchase playable units.
    • The Z trilogy is one of the Mass Effect trilogy, if it took center stage for Super Robot Wars - the Supreme God Sol/Z is a parallel to the Reapers, an In-Universe force with Nigh-Invulnerability that has been wiping out civilizations for millions of years. Both entities feature a cycle of destruction and rebirth on a cosmic scale. The ability of Advent to brainwash characters by being in close proximity to them is similar to Reaper "Indoctrination" and the fact that he pretends to be an ally of Z-BLUE and plans to use the Supreme God for his own agenda is a slight nod to "The Illusive Man".
  • Tear Jerker
    • Setsuko's life plummets to hell in a rapid rate that you can't help to just feel sorry and wanting to hug her. During the Break The World event, the mysterious Asakim Dowin swept in and then killed her chief Denzel in front of her. The next time he appeared, he killed Setsuko's only friend Toby Watson... and proceeded to inflict unspeakable pain towards Setsuko, who, after all those traumas, were reduced into nothing but screaming for help to no avail. We don't want to indulge to what really happened there. She still survived those, but then realized that she's the Sole Survivor of the Glory Star team. All of this before even halfway of her story. No one's blaming her when she curled up and sobbed "Why me...?" She's later seen crying in the beach alone, and while she managed to get encouragement from her friends, she ended the scene with crying herself until she's all out of tears.
    Setsuko: Toby, Chief... I'm now the only remaining Glory Star member... I'll carry on your will and the name Glory Star... but for now, let me just cry it out for awhile...
    • Many from the various franchises, but especially the death of Aki, which can be averted through Guide Dang It! by getting invisible "points", putting her in stasis until a method to stop the bomb in her is discovered. Also doubles as Player Punch, as many players mercilessly slaughter "Gaizock" forces responsible for it in revenge. Kappei even changes character portraits from his usual smile to an angry expression for the rest of the scenario, along with a change in character description in the encyclopedia.
    • Kamina, Euphemia and Neil in Hakai-hen. The worst part is while Aki can be Spared by the Adaptation (which is canon in the Z games) and Euphemia is alive in Saisei-hen (provided players take the "Trust Zero Route"), Kamina and Neil remain Killed Off for Real.
    • Before heading off to fight the Final Boss in Jigoku-hen, Z-BLUE uses the teleport/warp points inside the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren to go home and visit their friends. Everyone gets to have what could be their last time with the people they love, the exception being Noriko. Although the party is quick to brighten her spirit, it's still a sad moment considering Kazumi Amano isn't present in Jigoku-hen.
    • Rengoku-hen pulls one with Setsuko after acquiring the "Virgola Glory S": her Sphere of the "Sorrowful Maiden" is going into a form of overdrive. For the entire scenario this happens, Setsuko sounds almost suicidial.
  • That One Boss
    • The Overdevil, Turn X and Dewey Novak's flagship Ginga-gou in Z
    • Hakai-hen has the dreaded big three of Emperor Zul, Moon Will's original Dancougar and Lord Genome's Lazengann. All of them can and will deal a One-Hit Kill on allied units if players aren't careful.
    • Level 99 Gaioh in Saisei-hen, provided players are progressing on hard difficulty and picked the second of a particular conversation choice.
    • Haman Karn in Jigoku-hen during the "Day of the Unicorn" event, thanks to god-like evasion rates and having no one on the allied roster with accuracy-increasing Spirit Commands at their disposal.
    • Gauron, as usual in Jigoku-hen; he may be worse this time if simply due, but not limited to, the fact he has the "Ignore Size Modifier" pilot skill.
    • Leonard Testarossa in the Belial for Tengoku-hen in Scenario 16, due to his machine's "Lambda Driver" reducing damage by a whopping 90%, effectively giving him more than 150000 Hit Points. If players are on the hard difficulty, Leonard will also unlock his "Ace Bonus".
    • The El Millennium in Scenario 20 of Tengoku-hen, if players choose to withdraw from the area Leonard was fought in, due to the Origin pilot and the dragon itself carrying all of the destructive stats of the Angeloi Arcas (see Demonic Spiders above) while boasting more than twice the HP of a single Angeloi Arca, at 42000. If you don't upgrade your units, train your pilots, or use the Simulator Sub-Order to generate EXP, expect it to No-Sell all of your basic attacks.
    • All enemy Sphere Reactors are this, but once Straus gets serious in Tengoku-hen, he ascends to be a level 70 boss when most allied pilots are just hitting their mid-40s. Worse, his unit contains an eleven-ranged ALL attack with incredibly high accuracy and can perform three actions per turn.
  • That One Level
    • The final scenario for Rand Travis on EX-Hard Mode is insanely annoying, both because of its length and the sheer Difficulty Spike the Big Bad is compared to the previous scenarios. Save Scumming is almost a must to avoid an Unwinnable situation.
    • Some of the special scenario requirements are near impossible to beat without a great deal of luck and Save Scumming. The only real way to beat Z on EX-Hard Mode while getting the SR Points and hidden ending points and such is Level Grinding repair units (making Rand's route a little easier since the "Gunleon" has this ability) to high levels as soon as you get a scenario without a time limit.
    • Just about any stage in Hakai-hen with Dimensional Beasts is a pain in the ass, especially Scenario 50. This doesn't get any better when Artificial-class Beasts present themselves anywhere in Saisei-hen.
    • Scenario 35 of Saisei-hen (of both routes, no exception) begins with all allied characters getting their heads messed with through an event, starting them off at 70 Will, no use of Spirit Commands while hordes of Artificial-class Dimensional Beasts close in, dealing high damage to units while taking paltry amounts in return due to the low Will.
    • Any stages containing enemy Sphere Reactors in Tengoku-hen due to their unit-exclusive "Sphere Act" abilities that affect all allied characters.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!
    • The Second Z duology being on a handheld attracted a large number of complaints, as well as the removal of the "TRI-Battle System". A combination of these two things has also limited returning series to their key cast members and units only. Additionally, the fact it was planned to be a PlayStation 2 game had some fans upset, as the Sony PlayStation Portable is seen as a downgrade in terms of graphical capabilities.
    • Replacing the Eureka Seven TV series with the not-so-well received movie in Hakai-hen had fans crying it was ruined now that the Nirvash is no longer broken, since many consider the film version of the machine as garbage. With Eureka Seven totally removed from Tengoku-hen, nearly all players agree this is not a step in the right direction regarding the Z series.
    • Macross Frontier units are rendered size "M" rather than "S" in Hakai-hen, and no longer have their "Pinpoint Barrier" unit abilitynote  from Super Robot Wars L, which means they're no longer Game Breakers. Naturally, people complained; however, the barrier does return in Saisei-hen.
      • What's funny is L got the size wrong, too: the "VF-25 Messiah" is roughly the same height as medium-sized mainstays Mazinger Z and the "RX-78-2 Gundam", making it too large to be considered "small". L worked them in due to a lack of small units (it only had the Jeegs and the Iczers), but Hakai-hen has enough small units to restore them to their original size.
    • Part of the fanbase complained "Tori no Uta" and "LION" (and by extension, the entire soundtrack of Macross Frontier) is much better in L than it is in the Second Z duology. Don't even try to mention "Absolute Nova Beast Attack" for the Dancougar Nova; likewise, Macross 7 gets a bit of a flak for not including some of their songs, mostly "Angel Voice" and "Holy Lonely Night". This may have been the reason why Jigoku-hen began allowing custom BGMs.
    • Jigoku-hen wasn't kind to Heero Yuy when they made his quotes to bosses and enemies as generic as possible, lacking the entire "Target, X enemy" that fans loved both in the Second Z duology. Fortunately, this was brought back in Tengoku-hen.
  • Too Cool to Live: Although Advent and his Asclepus wind up rescuing Hibiki in dynamic moments, he pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to imbalance the "Sphere of the Quarreling Twins", allowing Hibiki to acquire it for himself. Subverted when it's a Thanatos Gambit for Advent to become the vessel for the Supreme God Z to recreate the universe in his own image.
  • What Could Have Been:
  • The Woobie
    • Setsuko, though Uther might've surpassed her for this status in Saisei-hen.
    • Hibiki: his mother was manipulated into killing her son, but is Driven to Suicide because she wouldn't harm him. One of the Four Angels murders Hibiki's father and sister in front of him just to see the boy's reaction. In Jigoku-hen, Hibiki loses his friend Advent when fighting Gadlight, except Advent turns out perfectly well in Tengoku-hen, only to betray him and Z-BLUE since he was Evil All Along. To make matters worse, Maki the nurse is one of Advent's subordinates AND Advent was the culprit responsible for killing his family. Fellow Genion co-pilot Suzune Saijou has her hidden personality "Ambriel" emerge and takes over, pulling a Face–Heel Turn. Finally, Ambriel reveals the Genion was intended for Suzune's use, not Hibiki, making everything up to that point in Tengoku-hen basically an accident on his account. Fortunately, Hibiki does toughen up, and turns into an Iron Woobie at the core.

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