Dynasty Warriors: Gundam

"Mobile Suits mixing with Chinese Warriors"

What happens when you take ancient Chinese warfare and combine it with 50 foot tall robots? Well, you get Dynasty Warriors Gundam, and you get something rather original, if not rather unorthodox. Koei, the makers of games like Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, decided to band together with Bandai, which owns licenses for Anime's like Mobile Suit Gundam, but has never really been able to make very good games on their own (exceptions being games like Federation Vs. Zeon, but that was made by Capcom and published by Bandai) to make this odd combination. But does it work?

The story of Mobile Suit Gundam and the other story arcs (such as Gundam Wing, G Gundam, and Turn A Gundam) are all rather large so I wont bother delving into each one. The game is broken up into two modes of play; Official mode and Original mode. In Official mode, you take control of some characters from the main Mobile Suit Gundam storyline, which involves Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam, and Double Zeta Gundam. Characters include Amaro, Char, Judo, Kamille, and so forth. Their missions are all based on their respected series and have you using the suits they commanded in the series. In Official mode, you are thrown into an entirely new story that combines all the characters from these shows as well as others like Gundam Wing and G-Gundam. The story goes that a new and strange planet appeared suddenly in space and has slowly been changing its course towards Earth and is threatening to collide with it. There is also a rumor that whoever can gain control of the planet can gain ultimate power. Needless to say, armies and lone warriors flocked to the planet to fight over it. Good characters fight to gain control of the planet to steer it away from earth, while more seedy individuals are just looking to gain its ultimate power at all costs. Either way, the characters from all the series are scattered once arriving on the planet and are forced to make alliances with former enemies, and make new friends with characters they have never met before.

The game takes most of it's cues from Dynasty Warriors. You pick your character and Mobile Suit and run through missions completing objectives in order to win a map. You usually have to either defeat a particular pilot or capture all the battle zones. The map is split into battle zones, squares or rectangles that are either blue for friendly forces or red for enemy forces. These zones will spawn mobile suits to mill about in the zone to protect it and to send off suits to assault other zones. If a certain number of mobile suits are destroyed in the zone, it will change hands to the side of the attacker, rendering all suits there of that type damaged and able to be knocked out by one hit and soon changing hands to the attacker's side and spawning their suits. Zones defend each other so a zone with 3 friendly zones surrounding it generally are difficult to take down, while a cut off zone will fall quickly. Some zones even have captains, one or 3 mobile suits of higher durability and attack power that must be taken out for the zone to change hands. Enemy suits randomly drop power ups such as temporary boosts to armor and attack, health pick ups, and sometimes even parts. You will always run into enemy pilots who use stronger suits, and they are a lot more difficult to deal with then normal enemy suits.

Fighting and defeating mobile suits earns you experience points that you use to level up. You can level up your pilot, which increases their aptitude towards their melee attack, ranged attack, and defense. You can also level up your suit which increases its speed, attack, defense, total armor (health), and amount of the SP gage and total number of attacks. You start off with just 4 attacks but with a high enough suit level can double it. Your SP gage effects how long you can use your SP attack, a powerful continual attack that causes heavy damage and gets progressively more intense the more filled the gage is. Once you finish the mission and official modes, you can change the suit your character can use, though each suit has to be leveled up individually. Parts gained from battles are broken into different categories for 5 different characters. There are 5 mechanics, two from Mobile Suit Gundam, one from Zeta Gundam, one from G gundam, and one from Gundam Wing. Combining similar parts offers bonuses to stats, as does using parts from the same mechanic. Certain combinations can also offer boosts like increased chance to stun enemies. Parts generally can increase 4 stats; your total armor, defense, ranged attack, and melee attack. Winning battles also nets you skills that you can equip, such as the ability to recover boost faster and gaining more experience points in battle. All suits have melee attacks and a form of ranged attacks (though the Epyon just spins it's heat whip around as it has no ranged weapons) the damage from ranged weapons generally weaker then melee weapons. You can also string together combos of normal and special attacks to unlock special combos.

The game is fun but it has some major flaws that keep it from being particularly great. For one the general enemy Mobile suits are far too easy to deal with. Normally they stand there and do nothing more then move around. They don't attack much and don't really defend themselves, letting themselves get hacked to bits. They only seem to defend or fight back when you need to rush, like when one of your allies is about to get taken out. The only really take pot-shots at you from range which does not do much damage and it's rare when one of them tries to hit you with a melee attack. You usually can clear 4 or more zones before the combined force of the enemies can do more then 20% damage to you, if that. On the flip side, the named enemy pilots can be downright deadly. They are hard to damage as they usually just block and keep blocking. They will not attack unless you are facing away or have reached the end of your combo and are pausing between your last attack, which leaves you open to attack. When they do attack, they juggle you as much as possible, hitting you just so that you get launched into the air and keep hitting you so you never really hit the ground and keep getting damage. They also can time their attacks to pop you as you try to get back up, knocking you right down again. They also have the habit of when they hit you, your suit gets turned so you face away and cannot block. On the other hand, when you try to hit them from behind, they turn immediately to face you and block, and can turn instantly when getting back up so they can block your attacks before you can score a hit. They also learn when your attacking, so if you can get them in a chain, they simply boost away to the side or behind you, the come right back and knock you down from the side or behind where you cannot block. It's very frustrating to go a whole fight mowing down enemy units just to have one enemy pilot utterly kick your head in with little effort on their part. You also have the problem that you have just a few suits to pilot, a total of 19 with some being the same as others, only swapped color schemes, including Puru and Puru Two's mobile suits that are identical to each other, and also to Haman Karn's. There are plenty of other mobile suits in the game but you cannot pilot them, which seems like a waste. The game tries to make up for this by allowing you to play multiple suits for each character but that does not do much to help as its like playing as any other character with slightly different pilot stats. Its also a little pointless as there is no benefit of having a range heavy character like Heero Yuy piloting the Epyon, which has no ranged weapons. You also have the problem of the Official mode being too short, with characters like Judo having a total of just 3 missions for his entire campaign.

With the small number of playable characters and small number of suits to choose from, the game is too short and lacks a lot of replay value. The game also suffers from much variety in the battles other then go here, defeat a bunch of unchallenging enemies, and deal with difficult named characters, and repeat over and over again. If the general enemies were more difficult or there was some change to the general missions, it would be more entertaining, but its not there. The game is not horrible however; it just does what it does and not much else. It is interesting to see how they wrote the characters interacting with each other. It's definitely a laugh to watch someone like Milliardo trying to work as a team with the childish Puru and hot headed Domon. Still, that's not enough to recommend this game to many. I'd mention it only to hardcore Gundam of Koei fans. Everyone else should just try the sequel.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/21/09

Game Release: Dynasty Warriors: Gundam (US, 08/28/07)