As promised, here we are again with more Dynasty Warriors Gundam, though don’t worry, Koei had an habit of making their old Warriors games in a sub-series obsolete or needed when making a sequel back then, and they mostly kept at it, since they also did this with the Attack On Titan hunting games by Omega Force they published.
So if you never played the first DW Gundam, no need to fret, my boy, as Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 is basically a revised and greatly expanded follow up, with more Gundam series covered properly in Story Mode, improved graphics and performance (while still retaining the same art style, for better or worse), and a revamp to the old content, with new systems added for good measure.
The game covers/retells canonically most of the same Gundam series already featured in the first title, though now with Char’s Counterattack added and the previous anime storylines redone and expanded in terms of events narrated and details, and even more of the non-UC series represented in the non-canonical stories offered in the secondary mode, with Gundam Seed Destiny, Gundam F91 and Gundam Victory and their characters featured in this non-canon mode.
We’ll talk more about that later, as there are some changes and additions to gameplay, one of the more welcome ones is how you can just keep dashing instead of the “start & stop” finnicky dash of the first DW which required you to spam the jump/dash button, balanced out by a fuel/stamina bar that takes a bit to recharge once depleted, and while there are still robots (hence they still have that weight to their movements), the MS feel more fluid to control here, and there are more enemies on screen too.
Clashes with officer level MS now have a QTE sequence to complete in order to win the clash and jump the stunned enemy mecha, the system for the musou attacks is more traditional here, but the major new feature is definitely giant enemies bosses Mobile Suits that resist normal attacks but can be attacks on their weak spots, which are exposed & indicated after certain attacks,or by using the new charged attack move.
This spices up boss fights, makes more useful the jumping attacks and aerial movement abilities of certain MS, even more as removing certain parts will make giant enemies unable to perform certain attacks, even if confusingly the game rewards you with a bonus for beating giant enemies WITHOUT removing their limbs or weapons…
To be honest i wasn’t a big fan of how Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 handled this idea of giant boss enemies, but you’ll get used to it, and it does improve gameplay by giving more proper boss fights in a musou formula, and difficulty is more akin to Dynasty Warriors 7 more than 6 or 8, so these are challenging fights..… pity is that the balance isn’t perfect, and sometimes it’s frustrating and annoying having to redo a level a lot because the ally IA is kinda shit and they’ll always manage to get targeted or eat unblockable AOE attacks from the bosses.
For example, the Four Psycho Gundam final confrontation is frustrating just because you can play it perfectly by having learnt the patterns and doing well…. and you’ll die because Amuro keeps getting hit and you can’t recover ally IA by “aiding them”, wish they did that thing where you could restore/aid the ally health back by running into the green circle they emit when in difficulty, like in PW 3 or Hyrule Warriors.
That is, unless you learn the trick is cornering the Psycho Gundam there, but still, that won’t avoid Amuro (or whoever you have as the IA controlled characters) making a beeline for it and eating most of its attacks, never stopping the advance even with low health.
Again, pity, because otherwise i do enjoy the difficulty balancing that hits the right spot, as even common enemies piling on you will accrue some damage and manage to push you back, even more since they’re mechas and even the grunts can and will simply shoot from their beam guns, so you will rarely feel completely invicible and will have to be more attentive on what you do and how
DWG2 scraps the chips system from the first one and here has you equip/swap Gundam parts you acquired or won during the battle, which you use to power up… but it’s also done in a way less intuive fashion than you’d think: as in, you don’t keep all the acquired parts, you keep only what you decide to take in, meaning you will simply swap an already equipped body part and then the one removed is gone forever.
There’s no inventory of whatever mecha parts you acquired because you simply swap the equipped parts with the ones obtained, if you wish to do so, but in Mission Mode you can buy, scrap/convert and upgrade parts in the lab, and like before, abilities are quite useful but are still mostly unlocked via pure luck, as in, various character have a display percentage of you learning that ability by levelling up, but there’s no clear method to increase the odds, aside.. levelling up the character.
As with the first title, you have a story mode where you can play as the protagonists from each mainline Gundam anime series and follow the plotlines of those in various mini-campaigns, which are more extended and through than before, even with some unvodaible overlap/reuse of some stages due to story reasons.
and a secondary mode where you can play as the other protagonists from the other Gundam installments, but instead of them having their own shortish campaign like they did in the first DWG, you have Mission mode, which combines new original storylines/campaigns with Free Mode.
As in you can choose various characters, starting from those that aren’t available in the story mode, see events, partecipate in various types of missions, including the DLC ones that were made available all for free (as absurd as that sounds nowadays, and yes, they should be all still available), improve or worsen relationship among the many characters, acquire, improve or rework Gundam components via a new workshop menu (gone is the choosing of the MS technicians/repairmen seen in the first DWG, and honestly for the better).
Here is also where you can unlock license to use all the other Gundam mechs, going from the fodder type mass produced MS (which are indeed playable there) to special variants like Char’s Ganymede one or special ones like the Musha Gundam,, which will often require a lot of components or specific ones you can find only by playing battles in this mode, which is MASSIVE and improves upon the issue of the first DWG, its relatively boney content offering.
Heck, even just doing the story mode campaigns will take about what it almost took to complete the first DWG, that alone will take like 20 hours and the secondary mode it’s HUGE to boot, so it’s definitely not a game famished in the content department, at all, heck, did it mention that “buried” into Mission Mode there’s also an original story, alongside the various “what if” scenarios and recreations of the other Gundam series’ storylines?
But there’s MORE, with multiplayer modes, and even a good chunk of DLC missions that were and still are offered up for free, at least they were available on PSN years ago… and still are, as unbelievable (straight up alien) feels to see at one point Koei giving away free DLC, they did.
Like the first game (and all Dynasty Warriors Gundam titles, as we’ll eventually see), it was only released on PS3 and X-Box 360, never received a PC version, but it did get a Japan-only PS2 port, making the last PS2 released title in the Dynasty Warriors Gundam series.
Kinda hard to recommend it nowadays since the other 2 sequels exist, but it also would be unfair to say it’s not worth a punt, as its simply the first game, but better, bigger, way bigger, with various improvements and lots of pilots and Mobile Suits (the roster is 3 times larger, for one), some cool new systems/mechanics, and sadly some balancing issues with the IA and the difficulty at times.
Pretty much everything one would have wanted from the first game.
And even free DLC (yes, indeed, Koei at one point gave that away for free, Tecmo Koei today… heck, even back then would have sold them for 3 bucks a piece, but the merger wasn’t yet made) that should still be available on PSN.
Just in case the enormous amount of content wasn’t enough.
It’s also better enjoyed if you completely skipped the first Dynasty Warriors Gundam, since it basically contains all the story maps and narratives of that (alongside new ones and a fuckton of missions/battles in its “original” mode), sometimes slightly tweaked and redone, sometimes basically the same but with some small new additions, so unless you deliberately waited some time to play this after experencing the first DWG… there’s some inevitable deja-vu, even without the inevitable recycle of some maps due to some storylines sharing the location or the same battles.
Not that you would even consider this unless you were doing a retrospective (or-and were a Musou buff), but you know…
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