Gameplay-wise, Super Robot Wars 4 adds equipment parts and gives players more flexibility during enemy turns by asking whether they want to counterattack, dodge, or defend every time an enemy unit attacks. With these changes, Super Robot Wars 4 creates the foundation that almost all future Super Robot Wars games would follow. Also new to the game is the ability to select an Original Generation protagonist, with a few customization options such as their portrait, name, and the mecha genre they represent.
Sega decided that they wanted a Super Robot Wars game on their platforms, and convinced Banpresto to bring the series to the Sega Saturn by offering to share the video game license to the insanely-popular Neon Genesis Evangelion.note Banpresto first considered an even-futher-enhanced port of Super Robot Wars 4 but figured that they couldn't do Evangelion justice that way, so they decided to remake the game entirely. The result is a duology: Super Robot Wars F (1997) and Super Robot Wars F Final (1998). While some series from 4 are dropped, the game is greatly expanded with an increase in writing quality and even more voice acting. After time had passed, the games were ported to the PlayStation, where they continued to sell moderately well.
The Inspectors have been defeated, but this is still not the end for the Earth and its hostilities with extraterrestrials, as the "Guests" of the Zuvorg Alliance have arrived to finish what the Inspectors have started. Excluding what occurs in the second half of Masou Kishin: The Lord of Elemental, the story of 4 marks the end of the "Classic Timeline".
Series present in Super Robot Wars 4 and Super Robot Wars F/F Final (Bold indicates entries that debuted in 4)
- Mazinger Z (Includes the movies)
- Getter Robo
- Getter Robo G
- Shin Getter Robo (manga)
- Mobile Suit Gundam
- Super Electromagnetic Robo Combattler V
- Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3
- Warring Demon God GoShogun
- Aura Battler Dunbine
- Heavy Metal L-Gaim
- Super Beast Machine God Dancougar
- Banpresto Originals
Series exclusive to Super Robot Wars 4 (Bold indicates debuting entries)
- UFO Robo Grendizer
- Brave Raideen
- Invincible Super Man Zambot 3
- Brave Leader Daimos
- New Story of Aura Battler Dunbine (Units/Fairy only)
- Gundam Sentinel (Units only)
Series exclusive to Super Robot Wars F and F Final (Bold indicates debuting entries)
- Neon Genesis Evangelion (Debuted in F)
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam (Appeared in F)
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (Appeared in F)
- Mobile Suit Gundam Compilation Movies (Debuted in F Final)
- M-MSV (Debutes in F Final)
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz (Debuted in F Final)
- Space Runaway Ideon (Includes Be Invoked) (Debuted in F Final)
- Gunbuster (Debuted in F Final)
- Mazinkaiser (Banpresto version) (Debuted in F Final)
Tropes common to Super Robot Wars 4 are:
- Arrested for Heroism: In 4, Jamitov Hymem tries to have Londo Bell hauled in and dealt with after he gains control of the Earth Federation forces. In response, the heroes end up going independent for a dozen or so missions.
- The Artifact: The option to have allied units act in a preset way on enemy turns (counterattack/defend/dodge) is still here, but there's very little benefit to using anything except the new Manual option.
- Art Evolution: 4 is the first game in the franchise to feature Humongous Mecha looking remarkably well-drawn with a more modern, less "cartoony" look, despite it being Super-Deformed as per formula. Future games simply refined on this aspect even further.
- Although Super Robot Wars EX did this to a larger extent, Banpresto went whole hog with 4
- Bag of Spilling: The excuse that 4 uses to downgrade the player's army is that the increasingly Titan-controlled Earth Federation distrusts Londo Bell following their sudden disappearance during the events of Super Robot Wars EX.
- Breakout Character: Out of the eight originals in 4, only Irm and Ring reappear in Alpha and Original Generation. Doubles as a source of
Epileptic Trees due to the absence of the other six. - Canon Immigrant: Go Nagai was asked by Banpresto to create an exclusive Mazinger Z Mid-Season Upgrade for Kouji Kabuto. Not only was the Mazinkaiser lauded for its design by fans, the positive reception was enough for Nagai to quickly incorporate the unit into Mazinger canon, later giving it its own series.
- Character Customization: Unlike Super Robot Wars 2 and 3, 4 allowed the player to manually select from eight original characters, each with a specific character archetype, to be the protagonist of the story - male/female, who their Love Interest is, and whether they will use a Real Robot or Super Robot. (Though, funnily enough, for the first half or so of 4/S and all of F, you are instead in a "Type R" or "Type S" Gespenst, depending on choice, meaning even super pilots are in a "real" for part of the game, albeit one that can do very convincingly super things.) F then expanded the system further, allowing you to pick one of the appearances as your own for the character, define their name, birth date, blood type (the two of which determined your spirit commands) and personality (which chose their vocal set), and allowed you to customize their (mandatorally opposite-sex) partner. The pre-set profiles remained if you didn't want to fiddle with this.
- Continuity Cameo: Mixed with Continuity Nod - if players had been following Hero Senki: Project Olympus at the time of release, they would recognize Gilliam Yeager, having made his debut Super Robot Wars appearance, albeit as a cameo, in 4. This includes the Gespenst, which is based off of Gilliam's original machine, the "XN Geist" from the same game.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Daimos' finishing move, "Hissatsu Reppu Seikenzuki", does not work in space. This is actually a surprising bit of realism, as the move is set up by the wind-based "Double Blizzard" and that obviously wouldn't work in a vacuum, but future games would file it under Acceptable Breaks from Reality instead of depriving Daimos of its strongest attack.
- Though not as weird as the series' barebones implementation in Shin Super Robot Wars, all five members of Gundam Wing's main cast require steps to be taken to recruit them in F Final.
- Earn Your Bad Ending: In F Final, taking the Earth route at the penultimate route split while allowing Eva-01 to go berserk five times and failing to recruit Quatre at any point will cut the game short, as Shinji is forced to put down Kaworu and, without positive memories of Quatre to keep his head above water, falls to despair as Instrumentality is implied to occur.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: The ability for all playable units to be upgraded an extra five ranks gained ten scenarios before the end of the game.
- Fake Longevity: The inability to skip battle animations and the fact that these battles take a very long time to resolve, combined with the nonstop 2-3 second load times on mundane things such as swapping music, add hours of downtime to F and F Final.
- Final Boss: Three of them for F Final - Shapiro Keats, Paptimus Scirocco and Kaworu Nagisa.
- Game-Breaking Bug: The Saturn versions of F and F Final are known for deleting players' saves seemingly at random.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: In one incredibly iconic scene for the SRW fandom, Shinji Ikari gets "Bright Slapped" by the man himself in F. The scene plays word for word as if Shinji is Amuro Ray during the One Year War.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The Fifth Angel shows up during the tail end F during the Earth Route in a battle between the Evangelion pilots and the Mikene Empire, annihilating the latter's forces before turning on the former.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Treize Kushrenada and Zechs Marquise attempt to stop Scirocco with this at the end of the Divine Crusaders Route in F Final; unfortunately, they fail. Jerid Messa does this to stop Shapiro in the Guest-Poseidal Route.
- Jerid will only do this if Treize dies before doing the self-destruction himself, otherwise he ends up as a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere the player needs to beat.
- How Unscientific!: F would be the Trope Namer - after Master Asia takes out several military Humongous Mecha using nothing but his own martial arts skills, Asuka Langley Soryu says this word for word.
- Negative Continuity: Remember how Four Murasame got brainwashed and shoved into the Psyco Gundam during the last two games? Guess what happens again.
- Nintendo Hard:
- 3 was harder than this, but 4 features even more enemies with the "Beam Absorb" unit ability that completely nullifies beam-based attacks. This made it an annoyance for early gamers sticking mostly with Gundams, who are affably religious beam weapon users.
- F and F Final are quite manageable outside of Guests or L-Gaim units.
- Multiple Endings: It depends on whether players fight Shu Shirakawa or not.
- Downer Ending: Shu Shirakawa is defeated, but Mekibos thinks that humans are power-hungry, thus canceling the negotiations with Guest & thus leading to a Hopeless War. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
- Bittersweet Ending: Masaki decides that Shu Shirakawa is Not Worth Killing, Zezenan is defeated, and the peace negotiations with the Guests are a success.
- Old Save Bonus: Clearing F allows players to carry over completion data into F Final via the Saturn's internal memory or from a Playstation save card.
- Original Generation: All eight selectable protagonists, the Guests, the Gespenst (which would be a recurring mecha in subsequent installments), as well as the very first Huckebein (what would specifically come to be known as the "Huckebein 008L" in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation) and Grungust, and Gilliam.
- Purposely Overpowered: Ideon's strongest weapons, most notably the Ideon Gun, are outrageously broken and can single-handedly clear entire maps if properly set up. Unlocking them requires the player to place Ideon in harm's way, but not to the extent where it can be shot down or have its Ide Gauge overloaded.
- Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: EVA Unit-01 on the cover for the PlayStation version
◊ of F is the only robot on the cover to be pointing a gun directly at the viewer. - Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: At best, 4 is set only three months after the last game, but Hathaway Noah, the son of Bright Noah, is all grown up and a playable character. No one else seems to have aged that much to make this plausible.
- Masaki comments that Amuro Ray has aged somewhat since the last time they met, a couple of months ago (during the events of Super Robot Wars EX); Amuro notes that he's been doing administrative work he isn't completely suited for. It's that kind of game.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Although it's still a fairly subpar unit overall, the GP-01 "Zephyranthes" is very useful for extended battles with Aura Battlers thanks to its decent accuracy from Kou Uraki and a lot of ammo for its vulcans. Even though there are better units for taking down one or two Aura Battlers, they usually run out of ammo too quickly.
- Villain Team-Up:
- Learning from the Inspectors' mistakes, the Guests decide to align with Poseidal.
- In F and F Final, the Titans align themselves with Drake Luft. Londo Bell finding out about this is precisely what causes the Titans to turn on the heroes.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Exclusively to 4, each playable character get an explanation of what they're doing after the war with the Guests are over, to conclude the end of the Classic Timeline.
