YMMV / Supa Robo Gakuen

• Broken Base:
  • The fact this game exists, to the point where most people that do know it was released will say it carries the Super Robot Wars moniker In Name Only and try to forget it ever existed. It does however have a few fans that like because of it's absolute wackiness.
  • From a gameplay standpoint, the way the AI uses Glass Cannon characters tends to leave players with certain tactical habits from the main series losing time after time - Detonator Orgun and Bonta-kun are two units that got a lot of hate on forums for this.
• Demonic Spider: Cost 1 and Cost 2 units are largely Mooks from the featured games, units you could not previously control - which can now equip parts and use Spirit Commands. Unlike the regular installments, all characters have exactly five units, plus passive and active bonuses for high Will or winning combat rolls. This makes Zakus and the various enemies from Overman King Gainer a nightmare to fight since they can whittle high-tier units down before the opponent rolls out Game-Breaker reserves, simply by stonewalling you with No-Sell Spirit Commands.
• Game-Breaker: AP-reducing items. Sure, the second one is a reward for the final boss, but there's still a bunch of sidequests to go. Slap it on a Cost 5 or 6 unit like Gil-Barg to negate the one weakness he has, slap the other on Dangaioh itself and you can autopilot through most battles that aren't using Zoids exclusively.
  • The Zoids themselves, high-tier ones in particular. Their shields proc differently (they block both energy and physical attacks), so with the way damage diminishing and damage bonuses work now, and since Mana Burn works differently as well, this means all but the strongest Super Robot attacks or attacks boosted by damage enhancers will deal Scratch Damage at best. Since their shields use 5 EN instead of 10 like most other robots AND energy pools are shared between teams, you literally can't burn their shields out anymore. Compared to how the Fafners' shields were nuked (in K they could tank most Gundam attacks with nary a scratch), this is a real bad case of They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.
• Moe: A good chunk of the cast, at least those that have character portraits.
• The Scrappy: The aforementioned problem with Glass Cannons, but also Fragile Speedsters; on the other hand, this is highly subjective as veteran SRW players argue how they can overcome their advantages with liberal application of the "Strike" Spirit Command^note Increase accuracy to 100% for one turn, though it remains a problem if surviving team members do not have it, as the game does not include the "evasion decay" mechanic^note As a unit is attacked, its evasion rate decreases every time it is targeted from the main series.
• So Okay, It's Average: Those who have played Gakuen usually admit the game features some interesting attempts to shake up the traditional SRW formula, but lacks the things that made progression through the plot - or through growth as a player - worthwhile (Pokémon, for example, uses the sense of attachment to Mons or its human characters on the screen as its biggest draw). The repetitive music and direct focus on elements from Super Robot Wars K (whenever a robot appeared in multiple featured games, including K, its this version that's used every time) didn't help. Note this was during the time when K was a considerably largely divisive installment.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The entire soundtrack consists of these for the licensed music they replaced. It's like a game's worth of Re-Release Soundtrack due to ridiculous licensing costs if the traditional SRW approach was used for licensed robots, while the Original Generation was nixed in light of the Plagiarism scandal from the two preceding Nintendo DS SRW games.
  • More precisely, each robot type or franchise group has its own track. There's a specific track for Mazinger Z and similar Super Robots, one for the Mobile Suit Gundam SEED units, while King Gainer and GUN×SWORD share another theme for most of their robots.
  • On top of the game's Re-Release Soundtrack situation, the tune that plays as the turns are resolved is pretty close (as in "only missing the distinctive guitar solo") to the basic battle theme from the first GBA Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) game. Given that it's all Banpresto, and the stylistic similarities with K, it's probably another offshoot of its plagiarism problem.
• That One Boss: Any boss fight that uses Orgun or units from Mobile Fighter G Gundam (see They Changed It, Now It Sucks!). That said, the first story boss to use Orgun grants him as a reward if you didn't have him yet.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: All the combat balance changes have received hate, regardless of whether they improved or worsened the experience.
  • Evasion decay was removed, making evasion-oriented characters (most Zoids, many of the Virtual-ON lightweights, the dreaded G Gundam units and so on) ridiculously hard to beat unless players are using a pilot with passive aiming bonuses (anyone with "SEED Mode" or "Overskill" will do) or have Spirit Points left over to use appropriate Spirit Commands.
  • The in-series Power Creep, Power Seep nerfing super robots and boosting Mooks. Mazinger is less devastating, as are the Fafners, while Zakus ascend to Demonic Spiders rather than the Experience Points fodder they are in the main series.
  • The lack of licensed music is understandable, considering the sheer number of series featured in Gakuen, yet the lack of original Leitmotifs from the featured games is confusing (triply so since it uses K's engine and instrument samples), as is the absence of their Original Generation mecha.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Raise your hand if you would've preferred Gakuen as a High School AU Massively Multiplayer Crossover instead? Or an Otome?
• Unexpected Character: To be fair, nobody expected Gakuen to not have Original Generation mecha at all, with the exception being the one obscure unit on loan from an older Banpresto-developed series The Great Battle. And a Valsione cosplay.

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