Dynasty Warriors: Gundam

Written by James Dauer  on August 10, 2007

Hands-On Preview: Like you needed any more proof that Milliardo Peacecraft is a punk?

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Dynasty Warriors is one of those franchises that gets a lot of flack for not changing much between iterations. While it is true that Dynasty Warriors hasn't seen much of a change since Dynasty Warriors 2 (the original for the PSone being a fighting game), the newest addition to the franchise, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, could shake things up quite a bit.

The game still features the familiar one-against-a thousand slug fest to which the fans have grown quite accustomed, but this time it is flavored with a heaping dose of Gundam awesomeness. Players will get to choose between Official, Original, and Versus modes. Official mode recreates scenarios from several Gundam continuities, while Original mode gives players an entirely new scenario which combines every series in the Gundam franchise together to fight against a mysterious planet which is on course to run into the Earth.

In the hands-on demo, I was only able to play Original mode with Heero Yuy, from the Gundam Wing series. Of course, just like in the other Dynasty Warriors games, players can expect to play as several of the major characters from the various Gundam universes. Enemies consist of every type of grunt Mobile Suit from the entire franchise. All characters come with their respective mobile suits. In this case, Heero comes with Wing Gundam. Players will get to equip various upgrades to their Gundam, giving different stat boosts.

The battles take place on large maps. In the case of the demo, it all takes place in a rocky volcanic looking area. The map consisted of a series of large areas connected by smaller paths. Each large area belonged to either the blue team (player) or the red team (CPU). In order to convert an area to a different team, players have to kill a specific number of enemies in that area, or clear the area of specific enemies.

As usual, both sides have their leaders. Killing off an enemy officer grants the player a decent EXP boost. In the case of the demo, most officers are easy enough to kill, but once Zechs shows up, it's pretty much game over as he is overpowered and can kill in a few hits. Could Zechs be this game's Lu Bu?



The controls are a little different than the previous games. The X button attacks, Y uses projectiles, B does the Muso attack, and A dashes. Jump has been moved to the right bumper, and block has been moved to the left bumper. The right trigger zooms in the mini-map so players can see where they are and where they are going. Dashing only works briefly, but it lends itself to different combinations of attacks. Combos are performed by hitting some combination of the X and Y buttons.

Graphically, the details are sharp and crisp, with bright colors all around. Everything looks the way it should. The only downside was that the playable level was a bit empty featuring the sparse looking volcanic terrain and horde of enemies, with little else to distract the eye.

As far as the audio is concerned, the game can be played in both English and Japanese, which is nice if you don't care for English voice acting. The actors in the game seem to be the same as in the shows, at least as far as the English cast is concerned. The music and sound effects are also very true to the franchise.