Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2

"Most issues are remedied, but where's my Chaos difficulty!?"

I was looking forward to this game since I played DW Gundam. I thought DW Gundam was very fun but had several big drawbacks, and thus hoped that DW Gundam 2 would remedy these problems. The main problem I had was not addressed, but all the others were. In summary, if you liked DW Gundam then get DW Gundam 2.

Overall Ratings:

Gameplay - 9/10
Some things have changed from DW Gundam, but most of them are the same. Regardless, I will cover everything anyway.

Some things never change. Like any Warriors game you will be fighting on a large battlefield among hundreds or thousands of allies and enemies. You will have to conquer fields to gain more territory and a better fighting position, defeat enemy generals (or Aces) and complete different objectives throughout the course of a battle. Battles can last anywhere from five minutes to half an hour.

Battle mechanics are fairly simple. You have an attack, charge, dash, jump, block and musou (eh, I think they call it SP in Gundam versions) button. String together your attack and charge buttons in different orders to perform different combos. Also there are dash attacks now, which allow you to execute even more combos and additionally longer combos. Dashing requires the use of your boost gauge, which lasts longer as you gain levels and automatically replenishes when it isn't being used. Blocking does just that, and in addition allows you to strafe or center the camera. Musou usage is based on a gauge that you fill up (it fills as you deal damage and take damage), and is generally just an extremely powerful attack. Each mech has around a dozen different combos and two different musous that can be executed.

Now, if you're not familiar with Warriors games then you'll want to know that while these mechanics sound simple the game can become both fairly intense and complicated at times. Clearing a field consists of going into a fairly small area with exceptionally thick enemy density (around 50-150 enemies) and killing all the enemies in said area. At this point you will either gain the field, have to fight defense captains or have to fight enemy Aces. Defense captains are much more powerful than regular grunts, and come in packs of three. Aces are even more powerful than defense captains and most often come by themselves, but can sometimes be fought in groups of two to five. Upon defeating the defense captains or Aces you will gain control of the field. From this point enemies will try to take any of your fields back with assistance from their Aces, while you continue to achieve your objectives.

Battles can be hectic and sometimes confusing, which is how they ought to be, in my opinion. In DW: Gundam 2 you'll often see three factions on the same battlefield, and none of these factions will be assisting the others. Also, objectives come in a decent variety which range from capturing a designated field to defending an allied Ace to defeating a specific enemy Ace and more. Furthermore, you may be almost finished completing your objective when the enemy receives reinforcements and your objectives are instantly changed. This means that while you're locked into a serious battle with a powerful enemy Ace, you may need to hasten your efforts in order to double back and protect an allied Ace. With the chaotic nature of combat, you might not notice your objectives have been updated as well, which effectively leaves you with less time to complete these new objectives upon noticing them.

A new feature in Gundam 2 is the giant robots. From time to time you'll enter an enemy field only to be locked inside. You won't have to look far to notice the giant robot meandering around in the field. These robots are literally four to five times the size of your mech, and can be outrageously powerful. You'll need to utilize new smash attacks or musous to either destroy certain body parts of these giant robots or knock them on the ground where they'll be vulnerable to serious damage. Giant robots have a decent variety of attacks and can easily devastate you in just a few attacks. They are very fun to fight, and are a welcome addition to the franchise.

Collecting parts has been changed from DW: Gundam to Gundam 2. Rather than collecting parts from different manufacturers and attaching them to your mechs, you will actually collect parts of the mechs you use (such as arms, legs, and a torso). Once you've acquired all the parts for a mech it becomes available for use (including generic mass produced mechs), and you can replace any part of a mech with any better part you pick up at a later time. Each part can increase your melee, shot, defense and thruster stats. Torsos are different, and dictate how many musou gauges are available to you (up to three), as well as your armor and overall mobility. This new system cuts out a lot of hassle, and simplifies the customization of your mechs.

Another change is the skill system. Each mech will have four different skills available to be learned from it. Depending on your pilot's level you will have a certain percent chance of learning the different skills on each mech. This means that you'll need to use different mechs for each pilot in order to obtain a wide variety of skills. Also, you can now only have three different skills equipped on a pilot at a time. Since there are many great skills you can learn you will be torn many times on which skill you'd like to take.

Several new pilots and mechs have been added to this game. Almost all of the new mechs are exceptionally good, and the pilots aren't too shabby themselves. Overall there are about 30-50 mechs, and about 20 different pilots to pick from. None of the old content has been cut, so you can look forward to enjoying that Hyaku Shiki again, or any other mechs you enjoyed from the last installment.

Game modes have changed slightly from DW: Gundam. You'll have official mode still; where you'll pick from missions that correspond to the plot of Gundam. In addition to official mode, though, is Mission Mode. I have mixed feelings about mission mode, mostly stemming from my two issues I have with this game. Mission mode allows you to pick a pilot, their mech, and choose from a variety of mission groupings. There are story missions, collection missions, friendship missions, license missions, and free missions.

Story missions contain the main missions for a pilot, and generally consist of five to eight different missions. Collection missions allow you to try and collect parts for mechs; these are extremely easy and not very fun. Friendship missions utilize a new friendship system (which is a big hassle) where you'll gain and lower friendships with other pilots basically for the purpose of unlocking additional missions. License missions allow you to obtain a license for another pilot's mech, and generally require you to have a good friendship level with the desired mech's pilot. And finally free missions contain a variety of missions that aren't really connected to each other in any way.

While in the mission mode menu you will have access the the Mobile Suit Lab. At this spot you can submit certain collected mech parts to the lab technician so that they can be upgraded, have special abilities attached to them, or traded for parts you may not have. The Lab has it's own tech level, which raises the more you use it. Gaining additional tech levels allows the lab to work on more parts at a time, and improves the variety of special abilities that can be attached to parts you own.

Special abilities that can be attached to your parts come in a wide variety. These can increase the power of your combos and the like, increase thruster gauge recovery, increase musou gain rate, and many other things. Almost all of these special abilities are highly useful, and there are about twenty five total. Each part can have one special ability, meaning you can have five different special abilities on each mech (one for each part: left leg, right leg, left arm, right arm, and torso).

Do note that while the Mobile Suit Lab is kind of a cool addition to the game, it's also somewhat of a hassle. You will not get to choose which parts can be worked on, this is done randomly by the lab technician. When I played the technician had an obsession with the Strike Freedom Gundam, and worked on several parts of it every time I visited him. Even when the mech's parts were maxed out and could not be upgraded anymore the technician would still want to work on them. This is annoying, since they won't be taken off the list until they've been submitted for alteration, and submitting them means they will not be usable. Even then, it was highly likely that the technician would request more parts from the same mech during the next visit, or even work on a fully upgraded part several visits in a row.

Now, there are a few things that need to be addressed for the hardcore Warriors fans. First and foremost is the map situation. If you're like me, then you were scorned by the lack of maps in the last game. Regardless of how good the game was, it's play time and replayability suffered massively because of the lack of different maps. DW: Gundam 2 doesn't have such a severe problem. There are new maps, and sometimes you will be fighting on an existing map, but only a portion of it is available. Meaning your mission might take place entirely and only in the northeastern quarter of the map. This adds a lot of flavor, since the mission will be more fast paced and hectic due to the small map it takes place on. In addition, despite the fact that it's a portion of a map you've already played it will feel much different, as well as give you the opportunity to fight in an area of the map you previously hadn't fought in. Overall, I would say the lack of maps has been remedied, and any new maps included in Gundam 2 were very fun.

Secondly is the multiplayer. Yes, there is still multiplayer and yes it is still fun. However, several of the free missions and friendship missions will not allow you to play them with a second player. This can be a drag, but it's really not that big of a deal. Since these situations come in such a low quantity it really is nothing to worry about.

Thirdly and lastly is the difficulty. I am sad to say that Gundam 2, much like Gundam, does not include Chaos or Very Hard difficulty. It seems like the Hard difficulty in DW: Gundam 2 is a splicing of previous Hard and Chaos difficulties. Very much related to this is the absence of level resetting. You are not able to reset your character's levels and keep existing skills/licenses to keep the difficulty challenging. Between a lack of chaos mode and level resetting you might find yourself whining about the lack of a challenge as your favorite pilots level up. This greatly diminishes the play time and replayability of this game, as well as the joy you'll get from trying to complete all of a pilot's missions or collect all the licenses. By the time Master Asia had obtained several licenses and completed his story missions he was already level 25 to 30ish, which made any remaining missions of his such a ridiculous joke there was no point to playing any of them (or using Master Asia at all). In my opinion, this defeats the entire purpose of obtaining licenses to use different mechs and collect different skills. So beware that you might have to sacrifice certain features of the game (the Mobile Suit Lab and License collection) to preserve the difficulty. Furthermore, the level cap in this game is apparently level 50 (or so I read), so once you're level is too high to enjoy any difficulty the game provides you'll have no chance of bringing it back to par.

Overall, this is a great expansion of the already existing DW: Gundam. Many of the problems I had with the first one have been remedied, but the glaring difficulty flaw docks a point from the gameplay. The giant robot battles, improved parts system, better thrusting capabilities, more pilots, mechs, maps and combos are some of the greatest improvements from the previous installment.

Play Time/Replayability - 3/5
For a hack-n-slash, or beat-em-up or whatever everybody's calling them these days, DW: Gundam 2 has a lot of play time. Sadly, several serious flaws diminish the play time and replayability drastically. Between playing each of the Official Missions and Story Missions for each pilot you can spend something like forty hours on this game. No doubt the play time and replayability are still good, but they're not anywhere near as good as they should be if two core features hadn't been cut from this long standing franchise.

Story - Nil
The story for official mode was pretty decent looking, as it included background information on what happens between battles (which can sometimes be a several year gap). Overall, though, if you're looking for a great story then play an RPG or variation thereof.

Graphics/Sound - Nil
The graphics are pretty detailed, and draw distance is just fantastic, much like in the previous installment. Animations for combos are really sweet as well.

Sounds are decent. They're by no means the greatest, but you'll likely have to listen to them in order to know what the hell you're doing on some of the more hectic battles. There's nothing too annoying about them, but likewise nothing too great about them.

Final Recommendation - 8/10
This is a good game. As I previously hinted at, anyone who wants to be brutalized by chaos difficulty won't get their wish. Points were docked mainly because of that and the lack of level resetting, which both impacted the gameplay and the play time and replayability of the game. Even still, if you're a Warriors fan or a Gundam fan you should check this out (especially if you're a Warriors fan). It's one of the best Warriors games ever released. But seriously Koei, where's the Chaos difficulty?

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/03/09

Game Release: Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 (US, 04/21/09)