I don’t think Mobile Suit Gundam needs an introduction, given its one of the more popular and old mecha franchises that are still around, arguably THE mecha franchise if there ever was one.
You know it, you love it… i mostly kinda experienced it via osmosis, as i never fully bothered to be invested in any of its many iterations, be it the classic 0079 original, the Z Gundam one, the super deformed Three Kingdoms ones, the ones about milfs and kids building Gunplas.
Or the space tomato lesbian one. Or whatever the new Gundam series that will come out in the meantime of me posting and you reading this will be about.
I didn’t even plan to ignore Gundam, i just never really went deep into any of its iterations, as it happened, and – as i think i’ve said before – i’m actually way more familiar with frigging Sgt. Frog (yes, Keroro) than actual Gundam, so it both kinda counts and not really counts at the same time, meaning i’ve been told the series is about the horrors of war more than the cool robots… but the robot do LOOK cool, there’s no anti-memery (or counter arguments, and so on) to argue that at simple skin deep fact, them mobile suits design are legendary stuff.
So in a way i’m really not “qualified”… or i was, because this did serve as a gateway entry for me, sure i love them Dynasty Warriors, make them cool looking robots instead of superhero fantasy warlords, just as good, or even better, i will finally learn what the fuck the original Gundam and some other of its series are about with Dynasty Warriors Gundam, why not?
And its pretty cool stuff, as this first punt at a “Gundam X Warriors” crossover by Koei (and actually their first licensed crossover, Warriors Orochi doesn’t quite count) does cover many of the hystoric Gundam series/iterations, these being the original Mobile Suit Gundam, Z Gundam, ZZ Gundam, Mobile Fighter G Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, and Turn-A-Gundam.
As expected, the stories told here are fairly summarized and go through the various events in a fashion to better fit the Warriors/hack n slash format, but they do strike a decent balance between being faithful and not being overbearing in terms of narration, as this expects – reasonably so, i might add – most people coming into it to be a Gundam fan that knows his stuff, though thankfully they did include the usual encyclopedia for terminology, cronology, characters and such.
It’s nice to have, i’ve said that before but it’s especially true in cases like these.
This being the first licensed crossover of the Warriors formula with an anime franchise, it’s not that surprising this basically set up a series of familiar design choices that while didn’t originated here specifically, will be found again and again after this, especially in the crossover subseries like Pirate Warriors or Hyrule Warriors: bigger bases working like in the Empires spinoffs, with their guardians/keepers showing up only after reducing the “base’s health” by killing peons in them, often connected or not necessarily tied to a building to exist, etc.
Basically here the “Warriors X something anime” blueprint was already crafted with efficiency.
Obviously there are some differences, since you control giant robots (or more properly, you command people commanding the giant robots) and most characters/MS have a ranged weapon attack instead of a heavy attack, there’s the now usual dash/dodge manouver AND jumping, with some MS that can actually transform into jets or whatnot to travel faster around around the map, all tied to an energy/stamina bar of sorts for balance purposes.
Though i will admit i wish you could just hold the jump/dash button to boost and keep boosting, it’s quite annoying to keep mashing X just to keep boosting, even more as it’s the main way to properly cover more ground/move about fast.
You fight on planets and even outer space, but obviously the latter stages do not change the gameplay formula in any, for better or worse, but overall difficulty and challenge are akin to the older DW titles, meaning capturing connected bases can change things around for your troops, as the enemy IA is quite aggressive and proficient, though your allies are no push-overs, as they can also capture bases on their own, but will eventually need to be rescued/helped occasionally.
And while the map design it’s good, the IA at times can be a bit too good, even on Normal, especially with bosses often dealing just insane amount of damage with a single hit, forcing you to either grind or just play a game of unleashing the near death true musou, retreat immediatly until you can charge it up again, rinse and repeat, only to be killed off by a stray bullet or a distraction.
There are weapon clashes, which here just leaves both opponents vulnerable while also giving an attack boost, and you can also have musou attacks clash, but these here work work akin to older Samurai Warriors titles, meaning you can chain them when a nearby ally is “linked” with you, and the more musou bars you have while using it, you activate a stronger, longer and different musou attack, with the “true musou attack” also activating while near death.
In terms of character progression, you have the character and MS level separatedly, abilities that can be obtained and unlocked (usually levelling up improves the chances of it unlocking at the next level up), some unique to a character other more universal/generic in use, and you can also swap components into the MS to improve its stats (with bonuses for using more components alongside or from a specific mechanic), and as you progress you unlock more MS and make them usable by other characters outside of the canon ones.
Opposite to what one might assume, the movesets aren’t tied to the characters/pilots, but to the MS, but the pilots also have their own speficif stats so that it’s simply more convenient to pilot a certain MS as an apt character: for example Domon is the more powerful one for straight close up melee, so it logical to use MS suited for that specific purpose.
Don’t expect an extensive, Armored Core style mech costumization, because it simply isn’t here.
On the technical side of things, it looks fairly good, as good as it could from a Koei licensed musou game of the era, there are some mediocre textures but otherwise it does look quite good, the music is quite decent, and you can tell the developers really like Gundam, to the point the various characters portraits are retained in the original looks they had from each respective series, instead of trying to go for some honestly impossible “compromise art style” in order to unify their looks.
Also, there’s both the original japanese and the english dub available, because Koei (or TK) wasn’t yet cutting every corner imaginable with their releases. Small mercies, i know, but still…
While it’s not the most barebones of these early releases of what are now entire DW subseries, you can tell this what i call a “foundation title”, as in this is basically setting up the formula and not stuffing the game with too much content, because otherwise what are we gonna do with the sequels? We paid for this license, so we’re gonna get the most out of it, boy’re we gonna!
And mind you, for this very reason you could (and still can) find so many cheap copies of this around, i remember seeing so many copies of this first DW Gundam in GameStops and whatnot.
The game offers an Official Mode, where you can revisit the canonic storylines with the canon characters in a series of mini-campaigns, and Original which offers well, non-canonical campaigns with new maps and characters not playable in Official, acting also as a Free Mode of sorts, and there’s also a Versus mode, with 3 different types of match, all which i didn’t care, since there’s no online multiplayer. Or any DLCs, this time around.
While both Official and Original offer a good selection of characters, Official suffers because some mini-campaigns are really, really short, and often for story reason conveniently recycle the same maps, and while Original compensates greatly in terms of new characters, battle and overall content and replayability (definitely better than the first Pirate Warriors in this terms, as ), that also suffers from the same 7 maps being reused over and over (i have Jaburo’s memorized by now), even if it adds new stuff to the map design and shakes thing up enough.
On the positive side of things, you can play both Official and Original mode in local 2 player co-op, and there’s no DLCs.
On a less positive but overall minor note (since there’s also a physical X-Box 360 release), is that the PS3 version is old enough to preceed the trend of PS Trophies,
Overall, for their first attempt at a Dynasy Warriors-anime crossover, Dynasty Warriors Gundam (that’s a name to cut to the chase if there ever was one) does mostly deliver, having all the elements now typical of the Warriors crossover/licensed spin off titles, even if a bit rough compared to more refined, better and often more experimental latter entries like Hyrule Warriors, Pirate Warriors 3 or the Dragon Quest Heroes titles, and overall a decent amount of content, despite this being clearly more of a proof of concept to be properly fleshed out/expanded upon in every way in the sequels, which indeed happen, 3 in total.
While we will looking at Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 later this month, the first one remains an affordably and solid entry in the Warriors series, and obvious match made in otaku heaven, which also does serve as a good entry point for Warriors fans that might not be THAT into Gundam.
So if you’re interested but not willing to fork out the notable price the sequels now ask for in the second hand market, you might wanna consider this one, as it’s still cheap and very abudant as it was before, despite the used videogame market being way worse than ever.
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