After much anticipation, the new and updated promo video for Another Century’s Episode R was shown in Akihabara today. This is the longer promo that stores use to promote game and as such is over twelve minutes long and features predominantly gameplay footage – something that hadn’t been seen until now. There are a fair few interesting developments but the first major one is the open inclusion of the Original Generation of Super Robot Wars mecha, such as the Cybuster, Alteisen Riese and ART-1. Admittedly these aren’t the first OG mecha to be featured, as the Gespenst Mark II appeared in the original ACE back in 2005, but these new OG mecha are featuring full characterisation for their pilots and haven’t appeared in an ACE game before.

Moving on from that, there are a fair few important functional clarifications to be made. Notably that the “chase mode” is actually an on-rails shooter section and that the boost gauge is ominously absent throughout much of the footage – to the extent that much of the encounters seem to be heavily scripted from a camera and lock-on perspective. This is something that does concern us, as the original ACE games afforded a large amount of freedom in terms of movement and removing that would be a functional regression really. This could be easily explained due to the selection of the footage in the video however, as it mostly shows the more flamboyant aspects of the mecha rather than full-on moment to moment gameplay. It also seems that each series also has its corresponding base ship too now, from the Argama to even the Macross Quarter. In any case, the new promo shows the game to be incredibly impressive and we’ll be eagerly picking this game up on its August 19th release. Don’t forget that you can also pre-order the game here.