Shoot em up, RTS and tactics game combo
The Japanese always had their very own manner of tackling strategy, by including a lot of very different elements in their games and trying to pack all these disparate elements together in a way that kept them different but somehow managed to jell in the end. The game puts you in command of mechs as well as an assortment of spaceships, all of which managed to subside in a two phase type game. On one end you have to arm yourself, get as many different units as possible, while making sure that they make sense in a rock paper scissors kind of way, and on the other end, during a combat phase, arrange these units so as to have a tactical advantage over your enemy. The nice thing about the game is that it allows you to take units that managed to make it through to the end in a skirmish and to use them later on. Thus, making sure that you don't waste your units during fights will insure that later skirmishes will pan out better and easier. Of course, you can't rely solely on these surviving units, you have got to make sure that later on in the game you get new and powerful units to tackle the increasingly difficult challenges that will come your way. So, if you want a hybrid strategy/action game, this is it, a uniquely Japanese game from the get go.
