Dynasty Warriors Gundam is broken up into two main modes: Official and Original. In the Official Mode, battles are set up to re-create key moments from the actual Mobile Suit Gundam canon. The storyline centers around the original Universal Century timeline and takes key elements from the Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and the Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ anime series. In the game’s Original Mode, players take on roles from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Mobile Fighter G Gundam and Turn A Gundam in a completely original storyline that centers around the sudden appearance of a new planet flying through space on a collision course with Earth.
What makes Original Mode unique is that, over the course of the story, players will interact with other pilots from all of the different Gundam series. The developers even found a spot for the Musha Gundam from the SD Gundam series, though this one is a whole lot meaner and scarier-looking than the super-deformed cartoon version from SD Gundam.
Despite the number of different pilots and mechs made available over the course of the game, the truth of the matter is, there’s really not a whole of variety. With the minor exception of Domon Kasshu’s Burning Gundam, all of the other Mobile Suits are basically the same. So, whether you’re Heero Yury in Wing Gundam Zero or Amuro Ray in the original RX-78-2 Gundam that started the whole craze, there won’t be any noticeable difference in how the character moves or handles. Variations in actual gameplay instead come from parts and skills picked up in battle and equipped before each stage.
New skills are earned by the pilots as their experience increases, and parts are generally dropped by the more powerful guards and commanders faced on the battlefield. These little extras add things such as stat bonuses or unique special abilities, but still nothing that seem to make an immediately noticeable impact on the battle itself.
Visually, the combat in Dynasty Warriors Gundam has a bit more flair than previous Dynasty Warriors games. It actually looks cool slicing through hordes of robots with your energy sword, cutting through the tin cans like a hot knife through butter. The character models aren’t bad and they faithfully re-create the various Mobile Suit models. The attention to detail, sadly, can tend to be overlooked after you’ve fought the first couple hundred of a particular grunt.
The environmentals in the game could have done with a major overhaul. The battlefields are anything but lush, coming across instead like a barren, bland wasteland. Dynasty Warriors Gundam tries to add a little something new by including some periodic space missions, but these deep-space missions actually feel more sparse than the land-based variety. Instead of giving you a full range of zero-gravity motion, the game sticks you on a large, flat, uninspired plane of emptiness.
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