Review: Dynasty Warriors: Gundam (360)

It makes you wonder why Koei keep releasing versions of their Dynasty/Samurai Warriors series. Firstly, nobody outside of Japan cares about the exploits of a bunch of ancient warriors, and secondly, they're all really awful. So, with our expectations so low that they’ve ventured into the deepest bowels of hell, we actually found Gundam to be not as bad as we expected.

This time the Dynasty Warriors series has joined with Gundam, which is a Japanese anime series about space and giant mechs (called mobile suits). It's also a series that makes no sense whatsoever unless you're already familiar with it, which in the UK will describe about three people. There are two main stories: the Official mode, which is based on existing Gundam series, and the Original mode, which is all new. Neither makes much sense, with new characters appearing out of nowhere with no explanation as to who they are and what they're doing here.

Whichever story you choose, it's very much your traditional Dynasty Warriors. A bunch of badly-voiced anime talking heads will talk about what's happening and then you'll be thrust into your setup screen. There's less emphasis here on tactics which, in our eyes, is a good thing; instead, you're just asked to install upgrades to your mobile suit, all of which are found randomly in the game. Once you're kitted out, you're sent onto the battlefield and here it's exactly the same as it's always been: hammer X over and over again until everything falls down. You do have another attack (a gun) but this takes so long to fire and has an incredibly slow fire rate that it's borderline useless. It's a shame that it's like this, because the opening CG cut scene makes it seem incredibly epic with amazing sword fights and gun battles, which it clearly isn't.

The battlefield itself looks drab; graphically, everything is appalling with some terrible pop-up, and the whole thing seems like it was made on a budget of 50p. But something happened while we were playing: it became fun. We're not quite sure how this happened but we actually enjoyed tearing our way through the enemy ranks. This, perhaps, has something to do with the fact that we much prefer warring robots to samurais, or maybe it's because the difficulty has now been toned down to an acceptable level. Either way, it's far more enjoyable than the series' last game (which was, what, about two weeks ago?). On the battlefield, you'll also have a number of other key characters helping you. Unlike the basic AI comrades and opponents, these key players will actually aid you in battle. It was a shock because normally we're forced to watch over them like overprotective parents, but now they actually attack the enemies rather than stand there acting as a bullet sponge.

Still, as fun as the game suddenly becomes, we can never forgive it for the series' continued major failing. Boss battles are a common occurrence and are naturally far more deadly than regular foes, particularly when your mobile suit's block function never quite works when you want it to. So when you reach the last boss and get destroyed, it's painful to find out you have to return to the very start of the mission and try again. These aren't short ten minute blasts, either; a mission can last around 45 minutes - long enough to put you off returning to it until the next day. Perhaps you could do something more fun like playing Mass Effect or eating some cake. Is it that hard to add mid-level checkpoints?

We think possibly the low level of expectation we had when Dynasty Warriors: Gundam arrived on our doorstep may have worked in its favour. The series' common faults are still here (poor AI, terrible graphics, etc.), but as a way of releasing tension by constantly hammering the X button it kind of works. Really, the best we can say is that it's better than we expected, which isn't exactly a glowing statement, but it's proven that not all of Koei's hack-and-slash games are mind numbingly awful.

Rating: 5 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver