This reviewer is a Gundam newbie. I have never played a Gundam game before nor did I ever watch the Anime when it was on Cartoon Network. Oddly enough, these factors made me the perfect person to review Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn as I had no prior biases, which may have sullied my thoughts on the game. The perfect game for a first timer, the game includes six campaigns that go through the the history of the Gundam universe. The first campaign puts you in control of Amuro Ray and the first Gundam ever, RX-78-2 Gundam. What is a Gundam you may ask? Think of it as a giant robot that can be piloted to fight. Think Pacific Rim, but with only one pilot and instead of fighting Kajui, you are fighting other Gundams. The campaigns up to Unicorn all take place during the Universal Century, the rest in their own universe. This adds both continuity and diversity in the game, once you grow weary of the Universal Century you can play in other universes with different Gundams and different enemies to fell. Dynasty Warriors games have always been filled to the brim with content and Gundam Reborn is no different.
There are two modes to this game: Campaign and Ultimate. Campaign mode is pretty straight for ward, you are given the aforementioned six campaigns to play through and these are short snippets of story from the anime. Ultimate mode is where you can pick Gundams from any universe and play missions to gain bonuses and unlock other Gundams, people, items and so on. As stated earlier, you get bang for buck with any Dynasty Warriors game. After playing through the campaign missions, if you have a friend who is as into Gundams as you, you can co-op the campaign. The same goes for Ultimate Mode, every level you beat you unlock in online co-op and add hours more onto the already over 40 hours of content. However, this game does get repetitive as you go through the same maps to accomplish the same missions, so that can get very tiring. If you have extreme game OCD though, this is definitely a game you need to get on your shelf.
As you go through both modes you begin to gain Plans that upgrade your Gundam, with some of them upgrading things such as armor, weapons and speed and you are allowed to combine them to make your Gundam the most powerful on the playing field. The more enemies you kill means more loot dropped to upgrade you Gundam. Also make sure you leave no crate whole for they hold skills, materials and plans to make you even stronger. You can also pick up material while battling and these materials are used to upgrade your weapons. The more you pick up the better you can make your blaster rifle or your sword, so keep an eye out. All of these upgrades make the levels so desirable to replay because you want to become the strongest Gundam you can be.
The controls of this game are simple and very easy to master. Tecmo Koei was very smart to make them simple, if they were more complicated it would make the campaign mode a chore instead of a treat. Circle is the standard attack button and you’ll find yourself mashing that button a lot, sending hundreds of mechs to their doom. Triangle shoots your long range weapon, X is run, but you don’t really need to run as you can use your boosters to traverse the games’ map quicker. R2 activates your special move that is different for each mech you have and for the different partners you will have, R1 is float, which allows you to take out the pesky enemies above you and R3 is lock on, which comes in handy when you are fighting a boss as he won’t be able to hide from you in crowds of other mechs. A huge glowing arrows shows you his location so that you can take him off the field. This game is very easy for beginners to use and for seasoned players to enjoy.
The graphics that welcome you into this world are great, the detail on the Gundams really pop off the screen and that screen fills up fast with enemies you need to slay. Sadly the enemies all look alike with just color variations, so that’s disappointing. However, the Gundam bosses you fight look pretty good as you battle. The cut scenes are pulled directly from the anime and look a bit dated at times, some of the cartoons featured date back to the 70s. However, Retro isn’t a detriment to me, I love the old stylish look of the cut scenes, it makes the game stand out. When you play Ultimate mode though it is quite funny when they match up older anime with newer anime, you can totally tell the decades that separate the actual characters.
If you are new to Gundam the universe, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn is a great starting point for you. Seeing that I am one of those newcomers, the more I play the more I want to find out about this anime and the world. For fans of the Gundam series this is a great game that takes you through important story points throughout the anime. It is a win/win for both parties. The only two negative factors that I could find with this game is the fact that it is downloadable only in the States. This means that if you hard-drive is almost filled, you won’t be able to enjoy smashing Gundams. The other detriment is the fact that when they localized the game they didn’t record English voice-overs, so you’re stuck reading the translation as you listen to Japanese. This does make me want to learn Japanese, but I don’t like having to battle while also reading what my next objective is because it’s being barked to me in a language I don’t understand. These two little problems should not stop you from purchasing Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Reborn though, I knew next to nothing about Gundam when I fired up the game, and now I want to know as much as I can. Every day I find myself being pulled away from other games in my library just so I can see what happens to Amuro next.