Yeah, the more I think about it, Z3 Tengoku as a game is fine, but the OG plot (which is the story of the entire game) has to be the most disappointing finale to a long running series since MGS4. Everything was wasted potential. I mean 2 Sphere Holders were freaking ships that just shot some lasers or goo beams.
And don't even get me started on the budget issues of teasing units with having them show up on the map as unit icons, but then have them leave before you can use them or they can attack you, so they don't have actual sprites :| Game is so undercooked. I feel like if they released a director's cut a year later you'd have these units be actual real units.
I really hope they give the next mainline game sufficient time to cook and re-energize. I remember how excited Terada was leading up to Z2's release and then how deathly silent and depressed he was leading up to Z3's. By the release of Tengoku Terada just sounded tired like "finally finishing up these long ass series with Coffin of the End and Tengoku-hen" and his blogs about BX have mainly just been "ok, here's a new SRW, here's a new trailer, here's how the systems work" which don't really inspire me a lot. I want to see Terada excited for something again. I think he's pretty burnt out (and maybe a lot of the SRW team), so maybe it's time to reboot SRW with the next mainline game. Like actually change shit up and let the team do something that excites them and include a bunch of anime that they're excited to have included and make sprites to.
But nah, realistically speaking Namco will be Scamco and will keep pumping them out, cutting budgets, slave-working staff and will drive the series into the ground until it's completely dead and gone.
But it's nice to be optimistic.
