Has the main features of the original Dynasty Warriors, but lacks some key components that keep you involved over time.
User Rating: 8.5 | Gundam Musou (PlayStation 3 the Best) PS3
First off, I think the official Gamespot review was a little too harsh. I don't consider myself a fan of the Gundam anime series for the simple fact that I haven't watched too many of the shows, but I was easily able to pick up on characters' motivations, personalities, and how they related to each other. There are tons of characters in Dynasty Warriors Gundam, and although it can take some time to get used to everyone it will happen once you have played through the game a couple of times with multiple characters. The game overall did an excellent job of combining the good aspects of both the original series. If you consider yourself a fan of either Gundam or any Koei game (unlike the Gamespot review from what it seems), then this game is for you. Each character you are able to play as is very similar to start out with, but over time the characters become different as you gain pilot and gundam levels. Each character (or pilot) has 30 levels, and each gundam suit has a maximum of 10 levels. Once you have beaten the game with a specific character you are able to have that character control a different gundam from what he starts out with (although some characters also switch to other gundams temporarily during their scenarios). The use of combo moves is what really differentiates each gundam. The combo moves work the same among all characters (the same button combinations for each gundam will produce a combo move), but the combo move created is sometimes very different. Some gundams are very heavy in the different types of attacks (could be either long or short-range), and their combo moves will also reflect whatever their chose area of expertise. While range attacks (like those using guns) can be much less powerful and harder to control than short-range attacks, their are various items and pilot skills you can find that make these attacks much more useful over time. Gaining gundam and pilot levels also helps increase this hard-to-use attack's usefulness.
Some things I found lacking were the ability of unlocking more missions, bonus weapons for each gundam and/or pilot, and the ability of unlocking 'chaos' or 'very difficult' setting. In other Dynasty Warriors games, one of the main aspects that added to replayability for me was doing what was necessary to unlock my favorite characters' special weapons, but this game only allows you to find items in the missions that you can then add to your gundam. These items seem to the exact same for each gundam, so it's random whether or not you find the item you may want for the most part (although higher missions and the hard difficulty level gives you better odds at finding the best add-ons). Each character has five missions each, but many times these missions are ones you already played as another character (although this time you are playing from another angle and many times will see different cut-scenes). The only difficulty level I played this game on was the highest option available (which is hard), and some of the levels are way too easy on that setting... especially after maxing out your levels and add-ons on a chosen character. I've beaten the game three times already, and so far I have seen nothing that shows me a harder setting is available to unlock.
Overall this game is a great initial offering from Koei along the lines of previous Dynasty Warriors games. And for fans of Gundam, I'm sure they will see this game as a good chance to play as some of their favorite characters and gundams. This game is just what was needed to tide me over until Koei releases their upcoming games for the PS3.
