If you’ve ever had a desire to save humanity wearing a giant robot suit, it might be time to pick up the latest release from Bandai/Koei - Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3.

Chances are, if you’re a huge Japan anime (Japanime?) fan, you’ve been anticipating this game for sometime. You may have even considered importing it from Japan when it was released there at the end of last year. If you fall into one of those categories, chances are you’re really going to enjoy this game. For everyone else, there isn’t a whole lot to cling onto here.

The premise is fairly simple. You climb into gigantic mobile suits and smash buttons to defeat others robot-wielding bad guys. If you’ve been into anime at any point in your life you’ll probably recognize some of the suits. Gundam is a series that’s been around since the late 70’s and still continues today. The fan base for this series is rabid and since few games get localized for the North American audience, there’s often a lot of excitement around the release. There is a small bit of story here, but I imagine it will only be interesting to fans who are acquainted with the characters.

Press one button and win
The gameplay has a “Battlefield” sort of feel to it in that basically every match consists of trying to take over control of various areas and whittling the enemies forces down to nothing. As long as your team still has forces available, you’ll continue to respawn after you die. The same holds true for enemy heroes. Unlike Battlefield, this isn’t a first person shooter. Its a third person hack and slash and pretty much consists of switching between three different attack buttons to whittle your opponent down.

Most of the enemies in a match are cannon fodder and you’ll mop up large groups with ease. The larger enemy robots aren’t really much tougher, but can be a bit frustrating to kill. The game lacks a lock-on system. There are certain moments when you’re facing a giant boss one on one that you can activate a camera lock, but there is no lock-on for your attacks. The mobile suits allow you to dash around quickly, making it easy for enemies to slip out of view forcing you to turn the camera around as quickly as possible to get after them. There is an arrow which will point out where they are in relation to you, but its one of those things that just gets annoying after a while. I kept saying to the TV “I know they’re over there!! Just give me some way to lock on to them, or make the camera pan faster!”. The best way to dispatch a foe is to try to trap them in a corner and hack and slash away at them so they don’t have a chance to get away. Pretty much every match is like this so it gets monotonous very quickly. There are tons of missions and unlockables here and I can’t imagine doing that over and over again for 100+ hours to get them all.

That’s right - there’s tons of gameplay here for the avid fans out there. You can even take your skills online with a 4 player co-op mode. There don’t seem to be a ton of people playing right now as queueing for matches took a long time, but I found creating my own matches to be the fastest way to get going. You can actually play while waiting for others and earn experience and the mission will simply reset once everyone arrives. Kind of a nice feature - which would have been even nicer were the combat more enjoyable.

You are the cartoon
One of the things that drew me to the game when I first starting seeing visuals from it was the art style. The cel-shaded characters and environments look fantastic. What would otherwise be a dull industrial complex actually comes to life before your eyes. Fans of the series are really going to enjoy playing out these battles that up to this point, they’ve only been able to watch.

The audio is actually pretty good as long as you go directly to the options menu and turn on the japanese dialog. The english voice work is amateur at best and will completely cheese you off during cutscenes and in-game brawls.

If you’re a Gundam or Dynasty Warriors fan, this is pretty much a no brainer as it’s probably one of the best games in the series to be released outside of Japan thus far. Unfortuantely that’s not saying much. The repetitive combat and mission structure will get old really fast, especially if you don’t have any attachment to these characters. It’s worth a rent if you really want to see what its all about, but you won’t find me strapping on my gigantic mobile robot suit any time soon.

Colourful cel-shaded art Combat is fine for a short while 4 player co-op Doing the same stuff over and over again Lack of story for those who aren’t already fans Huge time sink to unlock everything (we’re talking 100+ hours) which I guess could be a good thing if you actually enjoy the gameplay Quote: "If you’re a Gundam or Dynasty Warriors fan, this is pretty much a no brainer as it’s probably one of the best games in the series to be released outside of Japan thus far. Unfortuantely that’s not saying much." Reviewed by DowntownJimmy | 07.25.11