Rating

D

Specific Ratings

GraphicsB+
SoundB
GameplayC
Replay ValueC+
Learning CurveC

Pros and Cons

Pros
  • It's always fun slicing through hordes of enemies
  • Co-op play for two people locally
  • Up to four players for online-exclusive missions
Cons
  • Poor mission variety
  • Mission progression can be incredibly obtuse
  • Bad close quarters camera
  • Throwaway story and horrid dialogue

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 (PlayStation 3)

Reviewed by:
Reviewed on:

Summary

Gun...damn, is this game repetitive!

Images


Description

Last year I had the great experience of playing Hyrule Warriors, a Dynasty Warriors style game on Nintendo Wii U that featured The Legend of Zelda. Its gameplay and content were both quite excellent. Perhaps I should have lowered my expectations when entering another game with the Dynasty Warriors moniker, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3. Instead of a game that could easily be played for 50+ hours without complaints, I received a game that just would never end. I constantly wished for the massively boring and worthless story to be over, that the game could screw itself, with fake ending after fake ending. Sadly, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 is a turkey of a Dynasty Warriors game.

Its story takes all of the familiar and even unfamiliar plots and characters from numerous Gundam series and puts them into a parallel world. The player's goal is to find their way out of this world, forging new alliances and participating in battle after battle, until things get horribly repetitive and the experience wears out its welcome. I couldn't tell you much else about the story, other than I was more than glad to just mash the X button to fast forward through the insanely cheesy dialogue. That was only after subjecting myself to some of the most inane discussions I've witnessed in quite a while. I know this is anime and all, but seemingly every conversation led nowhere, or was the same thing just with different characters.

"Oh! You're in this parallel world, too? How did you get here?"
"I don't know. I'm going to tell you the last thing I did before I was transported to this world, and it's going to be similar to the fifty-six other characters' tales. Now, let's have forty more lines of dialogue that is positively aimless in order to annoy Phil."

The story and especially the dialogue are better left for a high school drama student's audition. But the presentation of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 gets points for being visually interesting, if only for the mobile suits, the real stars of the game. The amazing cel-shaded look of the mobile suits really is eye-catching and looks brilliant. Sure, everything else isn't very compelling, especially texture-wise, but at least the characters you control and destroy look great. The music borrows some themes verbatim from past Dynasty Warriors: Gundam games, but that music wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. If it ain't broke, right?

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 is a cruel temptress. It promises a game packed with countless missions to complete, but they end up being so similar to one another that one has to ask what the point is. Mission Mode from past Dynasty Warriors: Gundam games returns to the spotlight with this third installment, with a smorgasbord of mission types to pick from. History missions focus on reenactments of battles through assorted Gundam series, like Mobile Suit Gundam, G Gundam, Gundam Wing, Turn A Gundam, among others. In Collection missions, clearing these unlocks rare mobile suit designs to add to your arsenal. Memorial missions unlock after achieving certain in-game goals such as taking down 100 ace pilots, for instance.

There are plenty of others too, like the more difficult Challenge missions, Friendship missions, Relation, and Special missions to do. You'd think with all of these mission types there would be a lot of variety in battle. You'd be wrong, however.

Most battles in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 play out in a similar fashion. There are different areas of the map to capture for your side, such as repair hangars to replenish health of allies, mobile suit factories to replenish your forces' gauge, and catapults that can send you across the map in an instant. The aim of a typical Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 mission is to get the enemy group's control gauge down to zero by capturing their controlled areas and defeating rival ace pilots. The former is performed by destroying enemy mobile suits within a given area; thus lowering the control gauge. When it hits zero, your side has taken over that area.

When the enemy group's gauge empties, the commander of the forces enters battle. Defeating him or her results in victory. The same thing happens for your side's defeat as well. If your gauge hits zero and you or your commander are destroyed, it's game over.

It's only when you hit certain History missions that Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 offers any semblance of variety. Sometimes you'll be asked to take down 1,000 mobile suits. Others require the capturing of certain bases, while others are time limit oriented. These are so few and far between that you can't help but feel tedium rears its ugly head into the picture.

Additionally, the progression of missions is often too confusing or worse yet, totally obtuse. It's not a good sign when there's an interface that shows what missions are available to proceed in the game, and it isn't always the most up to date and helpful. Many times I'd be cycling through my assortment of Gundam and mobile suit pilots, hoping I'd pick the right one to advance the story.

The actual gameplay of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 is done well enough. Mobile suits control tightly, and each have a nice sense of, well... mobility, about them. You can use a suit's thrusters to speed along the battlefield, though it can run out if used too much, requiring a quick cool-down period. Essentially only two buttons are used for attacks, square and triangle, and these need to be alternated to perform the more visually interesting and powerful combos from each mobile suit. In addition to regular attacks, you can utilize a super-strong special attack or call in a partner for some temporary destruction by sacrificing some energy from your mobile suit's special gauge. Heaven help you if you end up in a battle in a close quarters situation, though. The camera is not well suited for these types of engagements.

After each battle, your pilot earns experience and can level up to a maximum level of 50. Each level earned grants higher stats like melee strength, shot strength, and armor strength. You also get mobile suits based on ace pilots you defeated and what suit you were piloting in that mission. Each boast different stats, and if you find a suit you really like, you can upgrade its slots with higher stats benefits for a price (each suit has a different amount of slots, and doing harder difficulties can grant you suits with up to 10 slots). This makes it where you can pilot immensely powerful mobile suits that can take down ace pilots like they were butter. It's pretty satisfying like much of the gameplay in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3.

That's why it's just a shame that the mission structure is so obtuse and the missions themselves seldom change things up. It makes Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 such a chore to play in extended sessions or even after a set amount of hours of total play time. Yes, the gameplay is still the good old fashioned Dynasty Warriors that fans of the series can enjoy, but the lack of mission variety hurts the game tremendously.

Mission abort!

Review Page Hits: 0 today (515 total)