Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2

We all love a good mashup every now and again. Take Disney and Final Fantasy coming together for Kingdom Hearts or Marvel vs Capcom providing one of the most beloved fighting game series on the market. Well, this approach was taken by the creators of the Dynasty Warriors and the Gundam series. Coming together and mesh high octane hack and slash melee combat with the mechanical mastery of the Gundam series. This initially came with mixed success and the creators deemed this enough grounds to make a sequel titled Dynasty Warriors Gundam II.

This game aims to play like any of the Dynasty Warriors titles that you can find on the market today. However, thanks to you playing as a giant mech, the game does have some similarities to games such as Armoured Core or Robot Alchemic Drive.

Falls at the same hurdles

When the initial Dynasty Warriors Gundam title hit the shelves, it was a much-anticipated title between the two sets of fans from the respective series. So when it turned out to be a solid but unremarkable game, it’s fair to say that each set of fans would be unconvinced that a sequel would deliver what they initially hoped for. Sadly this scepticism was not ill-placed. The game falls at the same hurdles as it’s predecessor, offering decent combat mechanics that mirror that of the Dynasty series but not quite matching its quality or charm.

The combat looks complex on paper with various combos, special moves and alternate mech transformations to play around with. However, the sad fact of the matter is that it isn’t all that cohesive and simply equates to mindless button mashing with no real benefit to forming combos as you’ll manage just fine without them.

Bare Bones Fanfare

If you’re going to make a title to draw in fans of an anime, you would think you’d really ham it up to serve them well. Alas, this is not the case for this title. You can play missions and campaigns that make reference to the events of the anime but it all seems wedged in. Within these modes you move from hollow space to hollow space, fighting a series of enemies and the occasional enforcer as you do in most Dynasty games, yet this one just seems off. The emptiness is more poignant and the lifeless, forced plotlines for missions do nothing to help this.

In its defence, there is a wide range of playable characters to choose from, each with their own personal stories and abilities to upgrade. However, the cynic within us believes that this was a move to simply elongate the playtime on a game that really doesn’t deserve your time and effort to play over and over again.

If you really want to blast through it for a second time, you could make use of the multiplayer options that are available that essentially mirrors the single-player mode. So at least you will have some company as you run through the hollow spaces.

The broken and the Gundamned

The game feels like for all the world that it should work as a series. Yet upon the second attempt, this one feels like another swing and a miss. The gameplay is fine but not remarkable, the visuals are fine but not memorable, the soundtrack is again, fine but nothing to write home about. Then you have very little of substance that will appease the Gundam fans that have filtered over to the Dynasty series.

Pros

• A variety of game modes and content
• Serviceable visuals and soundtrack
• Sticks to the usual Dynasty Warriors format

Cons

• Lacking in fanfare for Gundam Fans
• The gameplay is repetitive and lacks substance