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Fox's Review: Dynasty Warriors: Gundam (360, PS3)

Started by Fusion, March 24, 2009, 11:12:23 PM

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Fusion

March 24, 2009, 11:12:23 PM Last Edit: May 06, 2010, 12:27:19 PM by Fox McCloud
On the release of the sequel which I intend to own, I may as well give off my opinion about my first X-Box 360 game that's given me years of enjoyment and also aided me into getting into Gundam a bit more heavily than I was before.  I'll admit, I never was a fully fledged fan of Wing, I guess my life had been a bit too topsy turvy for me to really catch into it.  During the years of 1993-1997 I was pretty much Cartoon Network-less and as such Toonami-less.  I could only be at my Grandmother's every few days and the only TV in the room that had satellite was the living room.  I respected my family's choice of TV and left it alone.  With that said, I did manage to catch DBZ because after their hour was up, DBZ came on and I enjoyed watching that.  But enough about my life, this is a game review, dammit.

(Story 8/10, 5/10):
Why two marks for Story?
The game has two story modes, Original Mode and Official Mode.  Original Mode is an original fanservice meetup of a bunch of Gundam characters and Official Mode takes place in various spots depending on who you play as.  Official Mode somewhat lackingly details the story of the Universal Century era of Gundam. (MSG, Zeta, ZZ)  You're hardly going to get a full anime recap for each saga, just enough to tell you what happened during mission briefings.  But you'll visit some notable places, and notice some of the more famous ships that've come out of the Gundam creator's minds, such as White Base, the Argama... Though interestingly Bandai still chose to include some ZZ storyline plots even though ZZ was never licensed for dub in the US.

Original Mode, on the other hand, is a new story about this red planet that's flying towards the Earth.  This mode has questionable writing quality.  For one, storylines are often recycled, just the main character switched around, and you'll get tired of seeing the Musha Gundam at the end of EVERY plot.  To try and make up for it, though, they included pilots from MSG all the way up to Turn A.  Yes, this includes Gundam Wing's own Milliardo\Zechs and Heero, with Epyon and Wing respectively.  There's a variety of situations that happen during these storylines, though the environments are usually recycled a lot.


(Sound 7/10):

Well, off the bat, I can say that Char has two voice actors.  One is for his original MSG appearance, the other for his Zeta Gundam appearance, which permeates through most of the game.  I prefer the first Char over the second, has a little more attack to him and a little less bad attempt at fake Japanese.

There are also a few voices that aren't the same english VAs that did the original voices in the series' respective dubs:

- Kamille Bidan ( New one is a bit closer to his original Japan voice )
- Domon Kasshu  ( UPDATE: His VA quit VAing and became a doctor )
- Heero ( The newer one actually sounds a bit better )

The soundtrack is fairly okay, though that's considering that all of the original anime soundtracks (supposedly excluding an easter egg with Amuro's Official Mode, kill 1000 enemies during Amuro's first mission) were cut out, and the original tracks of the game were used in their place.  This leads to a bit of music repetition.

Now, what's next is the sound effects.  The sound quality is definitely Gundam with a little energy mixed in.  Every beam rifle has it's original sound just about, and it's pretty much standard Gundam sound fare.  It's alright to listen to, nothing really jarring.


(Graphics 9/10):

Do I have to review this section?

Every mobile suit that's represented looks alright, and yada yada yada...


(Gameplay 7/10):

Okay.  So basically you've got your standard Dynasty Warriors field setup, enemy fields, ally fields and third force fields maybe more (though I've never seen a fourth force).  The standard grunt A.I is usually so brain-dead that they will, literally, just stand there and stare, occasionally attack.  But you'll be so busy going through the bastards with your saber that you'll not realize that they're not really doing anything to stop you but surrounding you.  The Defense Commanders or Guards actually fight a bit more aggressively, but usually they fall pretty easily.  Now the Aces actually fight serious.  These are named canon characters, they mostly pilot mobile suits unique to them except in rare cases where they don't.  These pilots WILL fight back.  It's even more trouble if you spot a flame around the head of their MS, as that usually means their capabilities are increased.

Why this gets a bit of a low mark is, again, repetition.  There's not very many instances where things play out differently, and there are iinstances where, thankfully, you can choose to forgo enemy fields to chase after a high profile target.

After clearing a storyline in Original Mode or Official Mode, you can use other pilots' mobile suits, depending on who you have unlocked, with sometimes short quips from the character, though that seems to work only in Official Mode.  Aside from that, you might get a kick out of Kamille using the Hyaku Shiki while at Gryps 2.  Or having Amuro pilot a Zaku.

There's more to tell here, but it'd be mindlessly dragging on the review if I did talk about it, so I'll cut straight to the...

Overall (8/10):

This one fares a bit better than Federation vs. Zeon, even though this game is hardly in the same league.  It's easily among the best Gundam games America has actually seen, considering that they're like Dragonball Z Budokai in Japan.