YMMV / Super Robot Wars Advance

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Vindel Mauser truly a downright evil warmonger who got the "But Thou Must!" position in the Eviler than Thou against his universe's The Federation, or really a misunderstood hero trying to save his world from the corrupt government, but got beaten on the way?
• Awesome Music
  • Axel Almer's and Lamia's Leitmotifs "Dark Knight" and "Ash to Ash", respectively
  • "Chaos", Vindel's Leitmotif: here's the Original Generation version and the A Portable version, for a small sampling.
• Character Tiers: A Portable, thanks to its revamped system like Evasion Decay and high damage calculation, inadvertently created such tiers for players:
  • High Tier: Mechas that has innate evasion skill such as Open Get (the Getter machines), God Shadow (God Gundam) and having high damage output. Slightly below this is Supers that are more of a downplayed Glass Cannon: Less tanky than usual, but have very high damage output used to get past boss units' HP retreat threshold early game with or without Support attacks, such as Great Mazinger and Daimos.^note This is also a game where availability time matters; Daimos joins early game and is pretty much the quickest to learn the Spirit Command Valor amongst Supers, making it a dependable choice for early game bosses that retreats on certain HP, whereas Super units past Great Mazinger suffer Late Character Syndrome, when damage output has skyrocketed and bosses rarely try to retreat after certain point of HP.
  • Low Tier: Any units that used natural stats to tank/evade or hit, even with Guard. The evasion issue can be alleviated a bit by bringing units that have EWAC trait (raising accuracy to 15%-30%) with either items or naturally (battleships, Dragonar D-3, Galva FX-II). However, tanking issues cannot be helped, so either normally tanky units couldn't do its job properly, or normally evasive units get hit with Evasion Decay eventually and had to take big damage when fully focused on (or get unlucky by the RNG).
• Demonic Spiders: Any enemy from Martian Successor Nadesico as the Distortion Field ability provides a flat 50% decrease in damage taken unless they are hit by a beam attack exceeding 3000 damage or a gravity attack exceeding 5000 damage. If the attack does not reach that threshold, the attack will be completely negated. The player may have access to the skill but except for the titular battleship and the Daitetsujin, all the units are a Fragile Speedster where the 50% decrease in damage would not mean much.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Before immigrating into Original Generation, Axel pairing up with Lamia was common, but with the former's Flanderization in Original Generation 2, fans largely abandoned that; Continuity Reboot fixed some of it, especially when Axel survives into Original Generation Gaiden and discusses with Lamia in the ending about telling her whether he finds his "paradise" or not someday. This pairing has largely tapered off since the Original Generation narrative decides to pair him off with Einst Alfimi by turning them into a Battle Couple for the Sequels.
• First Installment Wins: Amongst the GBA Super Robot Wars games, despite being the most archaic (and considered very very difficult even for SRW standards) and having tons of Early-Installment Weirdness, it is by far the most popular of the GBA games, with the originals (both Axel and Lamia) usually first in line in making appearances in other SRW media (the only one that comes close is D)
• Funny Moments: Axel's "Ahoseru" persona - imagine him as a Casanova Wannabe extraordinaire, failing to hit any ladies and trying to blend in awkwardly. A noted example would be during the time Kaine Wakaba gets a good luck message for his departure by Linda, while Tapp and Light note that it must be nice to being wished luck by their own love interest. And then...
  Axel: Well, in that case, I should do my best as well! (pseudo-seductively) Tapp~! Light~! Good luck~!
  Tapp: ... Suddenly I feel sick.
  Light: Go to hell.
  Axel: Ouch. Meanies.
• Fridge Brilliance: Post-Continuity Reboot in Original Generation, Axel turns into one of the most tenacious characters via Determinator with matching piloting skills to boot and an instance of No One Could Survive That! in Original Generation Gaiden. It should come as no surprise that he became The Rival to Kyosuke Nanbu when the latter is famous for similar traits, turning Axel into more-or-less an Evil Counterpart and/or Foil to him.
• Goddamned Bats: Ironic how the Metal Armor Dragonar enemies are introduced as Fragile Speedster types by their own word, yet appear later in the game as the very definition of a headache - Dragonar Mooks start appearing en masse with medium-sized units sporting armor values as high as Super Robots, but remain as evasive as Real Robots. The worst part is that this also translates to the same Mooks having access to a single-use MAP Attack, which they'll prefer to use immediately against players once their units are within range.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This game came out only two years before BattleTech debuted the "Project Phoenix" sourcebook, also introducing new mech designs to replace ones the company couldn't use due to copyright issues. What makes this especially funny is that the "Valkyrie" series mechs take design cues from the very same ones that would be the source of Battletech's infamous legal woes.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Contrary to most Super Robot Wars games, this isn't directed at A Portable's graphics — despite being a visibly thrown-together flip of PS2-era assets, Banpresto's admission that the game would be low-budget allowed fans to set their expectations accordingly. Instead, this applies to the game's music, which recycles BGM from MX, Alpha 2, and Alpha 3. Not only is the reuse itself seen as disappointing, it introduces the opposite problem where BGM from the original A that wasn't in MX gets replaced by MX BGM, such as Great Mazinger and Grendizer using their ending songs instead of their openings. This is exacerbated by the fact that the game does have newly-composed BGM for Mobile Suit Gundam, 08th MS Team, Zambot 3, and Nadesico instead of using their GC or Impact tracks.
• Memetic Badass: The High Mobility Zaku, due to its raw potential in the first play-through, becomes one of the best Real Robots in Advance with a few minor tune-ups. In the early space route split, it's possible to take down Char Aznable in his cutting edge Zeong with this unit.
• Memetic Loser: The Angelg is a very good Super Robot to use in its appearances and thematically linked to Lamia as her exclusive unit in Advance and Original Generation. However, the Vysaga is often considered statistically superior with the visual flair to back it up, such that fans will favor it over the Angelg by having Lamia pilot it (even Axel is able to use the Vysaga since it isn't a character-exclusive mecha like his Soulgain). Post-Continuity Reboot for Original Generation, this trait started to accentuate the Angelg's "flaws" - in The Inspectors, the unit suffers Badass Decay via The Worf Effect, to which Lamia looked better when she uses the Vysaga; Spin-Off Infinite Battle and Super Robot Wars X-Ω featured Lamia, but only gives her the Vysaga to use, thereby rendering the Angelg as a machine "only good for gathering dust in the hangar".
• Memetic Mutation: See its entry here.
• Narm Charm: In A Portable, the Sekiha Kyuukyoku Tenkyoken Combination Attack - Master Asia and Domon Kasshu use the normal technique and their victim is sandwiched between two giant fists. It gets smashed completely and the two fists collide, resulting in what can only be described as "bro-fisting, Undefeated of the East-style".
• Nightmare Fuel: While less so than any other 'terrifying final boss attacks' this series is famous for and it was also awesome, Kazuya's beatdown on Miwa is implied by the texts to be much more terrifying than the original. At least in the original, Kazuya just beat the hell out of anywhere he could on Miwa's body. In here, Trowa noted that Kazuya specifically aimed at Miwa's vitals and hit them with extreme precision, even Duo is unnerved at the brutality even if Miwa deserves it. By the end of it, Miwa looked like he's coughing a lot of blood after the extremely brutal beatdown (the original show didn't show any blood), if you happen to be on Miwa's position, the amount of pain you receive will be utterly unimaginable. Bottom line, you wouldn't like Kazuya when he's utterly angry.
• Scrappy Mechanic: In the original game, the minor problem of being unable to skip combat animations makes this game much longer than it needs to be. Subverted in A Portable which got an option to turn them off after every attack, as per the norm of the series for the modern era. A major problem present in A Portable is that Mobility is not linked to accuracy, making it difficult to increase hit rate chances without the use of EWAC and parts. A poorly received mechanic in both games are how some attacks have negative accuracy modifiers in a game where accuracy is hard enough to increase. The only upside is that this can affect the less accurate enemies too as A Portable is one of the few games where the player and opponent can consistently dodge using battleships.
  • One of the most unusual mechanics is how each unit has a limit to how much an individual stat can be upgraded rather than having all stats be increased equally. This caused in-game tiers to be even harsher than it already was and discourages players from using their favorite units while some of the choices in which stat can be increased more than others are quite unusual. The Nu Gundam can have its EN upgraded higher than the God Gundam and Shin Getter Robo, despite the Nu Gundam having no attacks that use energy. This mechanic would be present in other handheld titles like Super Robot Wars Judgment and Super Robot Wars W but the "Favorite Series" mechanic slightly alleviates this issue to allow the unit upgrade to be increased equally as per normal.
  • The Getter-One and Getter Dragon gain a new attack Missile Machine Gun and Getter Laser Cannon respectively and three more bars to increase EN once they become their single-pilot versions. On paper this is to make them be on par with later units but in practice, the attacks would have been more helpful if they were available on the units from the start. What is worse is that the single-pilot Getter Robo and Getter Dragon as they cannot transform and the pilots available are either support-based (Miyuki, Michiru, Lisa), have terrain issues with using an aerial machine (Musashi) or are a secret character (Tekkoki, Kochoki).
  • Pilots that increase their skills naturally cannot use skill parts to increase their pilot skills. This means that units that do not get the pilot skills can easily become an early Game-Breaker in New Game Plus while pilots that gain better skills by level-up cannot benefit from the parts.
• Spiritual Successor: Not only are the original mecha of this game lawyer-friendly copies of the mecha from Super Robot Wars 64, but this game helped establish the Combination Attack from 64 as a staple SRW mechanic. Additionally, the Shield HP system can be seen as an attempt to make lightweight enemies such as Mobile Suits more dangerous, much like the ill-advised Dummy system from 64. One of the companies that worked on 64 were brought in to produce the Game Boy Advance Super Robot Wars games, hence the number of similarities.
• That One Boss: See its respective page for details.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A Portable switched the soundtrack of the Mazinger team from their opening themes to their ending themes (or in case of Mazinger Z, the insert song). For those who likes the openings better, this can be a sore point for the remake. Likewise with Mobile Fighter G Gundam which gets the Super Robot Wars MX soundtrack instead of the opening, "Flying in the Sky", or if one prefers "Fly! Grendizer" instead of "King of Space Grendizer".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: It would have been an interesting plot point for Londo Bell to have entered the universe Shadow Mirror came from although it does get explored in Original Generation 2.
• Woolseyism: The Japanese version of Original Generation 2 gives Lamia broken grammar - to resolve this in the localization, given her nature as a Ridiculously Human Robot, Atlus went with the easier approach of stuttering. The translation patch, on the other hand, gave her tendencies to combine two words into a ridiculous one.

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