I’m a firm believer that you should only play a Dynasty Warriors game once every 25 years, or else you risk summoning Ygglethorpe, the demon god of repetitive gameplay and storylines. Koei’s historical tactical action series has made a name for itself as the game where you murder thousands of faceless troops all in the name of liberating China in the era of the Three Kingdoms. The Gundam spinoffs follow the same pattern, but substitute in thousands of faceless mobile suit pilots in the name of liberating the space colonies. Of course, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 continues this formula, but Koei has done enough here to try and spice it up — first by sneaking in an action RPG and second by providing a Story Mode for super fans of the Gundam mythos.
DW: Gundam 3‘s Story Mode brings together almost 80 Gundams and characters from various Gundam series into one tale which is pretty incomprehensible to anyone not familiar with the various Gundam series as it seems to be drawing on past relationships between characters and their varying personalities. The story unfolds over four campaigns that focus on factions of characters, each unveiling a bit more of the plot, as well as allowing you to play your favorite characters from either side. This is where the bulk of the game lies, as there are hundreds of different types of missions you can partake in. Every time I finished one, it felt like two more opened up. Missions can be anywhere from the campaign missions, missions that allow you to replay memorable moments in certain Gundam shows, or play special missions when you reach milestones, like destroying 1000 enemies.
Yet, all these mission pretty much boil down to the same exact thing: Drain the enemies’ morale and kill their boss. You’ll drain their “battle gauge” by capturing enemy bases and fields (i.e. Kill everyone) and then finally capturing their main base. After this, the general appears and you have to take them out. Once you do that, you win. To Koei’s credit, they have amped the tactical aspect of these games, as capturing certain bases will grant you tactical options like launching missiles for support or repairing your Gundam, but they are shallow options. Capturing bases exists to drain the gauge and draw the general out of hiding. They may grant your benefits, but they aren’t nearly effective as jumping into the crowd and slashing away.
This part, as with all Dynasty Warriors games, is still the one fun guilty pleasure in gaming. Watching as a crowd of enemies fall under one slash of you laser sword is definitely empowering and being in possession of a massive mobile suit amplifies the combat with tons of explosions, air dashing, and anime style action. It also taps into the old school gaming, high score mentality as you watch your kills count up and flash on screen when you reach every hundred. It’s a cathartic experience at best, but a repetitive one at worst.
When you’re not playing missions, you’re diving into the RPG part of DW: Gundam 3, where I had the most fun. As you destroy enemies and bosses, you’ll gain the plans to their mobile suits. You can then develop those plans to add the suits to your inventory. Each plan has different attributes and upgrade slots, even though they can be the same suit. You’ll spend the gold you earn to add parts and upgrade stats, letting you customize what you want to focus on when in battle. You can even level up the individual pilots and buy skills for them too, adding a few hundred different pilot/Gundam combinations for you to play around with and experiment. It’s quite addicting to get new plans, collecting Gundams like Pokémon, developing them further, and then being able to take them online and play co-op through missions with your friends or enter an offline mission and cutting through hordes that troubled you before. It’s odd when a Dynasty Warriors game gives you the same feeling as Diablo, but DW: Gundam 3 conveys it well.
Graphically, the cel-shading makes everything look close enough to their anime counterparts while not looking too cartoonish or out of place. The game renders all of the enemies on screen without stuttering or slow down, even when I chained multiple explosions together to take out huge groups of enemies. The environments on the other hand, are just flat out boring and uninteresting. Low resolution buildings, empty spaces, and cities that look like ghost towns are what you get with the levels and it was a shame when you have a series where epic battles and space combat is par for the course.
DW: Gundam 3 is probably THE game for the ultimate Gundam fan. If you love any and all Gundam and want to see all your favorite characters together in one game, then it satisfies that and then some. Leveling up your robots and reliving classic moments will keep you on cloud nine, but will leave all others scratching their heads at the repetitive combat and nonsensical story. It’s not for everyone, but it kept me entertained enough to keep upgrading my Gundam Unicorn.
