“Purpose, huh? Is anyone here fighting for a purpose?”

Setsuna F Seiei, the main protagonist from Gundam 00, offers this lament during one of the cutscenes in Dynasty Warriors Gundam: 3. Unfortunately for him and the people playing this game, this question could be asked far more times than the conversation in which it appears.

The problem with Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 isn’t that it’s a repetitive hack-and-slash. Dynasty Warriors is a series that spans over a decade’s worth of games. Anyone who has a problem with the basic nature of this game simply shouldn’t purchase it. Expecting the gameplay to radically shift is the video game equivalent of ordering a chili dog and being surprised that it’s not a filet mignon. Rich, well-prepared food is always welcome, but sometimes, nothing but a chili dog will do. It’s the same reason that wrestling games sell so well year after year, the same reason that the latest The Fast and the Furious dominates the box office while adding little to the series.

For fans of Mobile Suit Gundam, the first game was perfectly sustaining. It offered an “Official Mode” that replicated the stories of the series it portrayed well enough and an “Original Mode” that was little more than fanservice that existed as an excuse for characters from different series to interact.

In Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3, the “Original Mode” has taken center stage as the main gameplay mode. A cosmic entity has brought pilots from various universes to do battle against one another, and they break off into separate factions, attempting to coexist. Some work together perfectly, and some argue for dominance. Fans of the Gundam franchise won’t be surprised when they discover that most of the series’ protagonists spend the majority of their time complaining about how terrible death and war are while mowing down hundreds of soldiers in their superior mobile suits.

If this plot sounds familiar, it’s the same formula that Marvel used in the 80’s with Secret Wars. Take the most popular characters, whisk them away to an arena far removed from civilization, and let the characters interact on the most basic of levels. Dedicated fans of Gundam will enjoy every little nod to the various Gundam series, like Heero threatening to self-detonate Wing Zero while the others try to talk him out of it.

More often than not, all this ends up coming off as very trite, since there’s not a whole lot for the pilots to do. They travel off to battlefield after battlefield, fighting the same fights in the same few areas in missions that feel redundant.

The real problem of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 lies here: What the game contains in quantity, it very much lacks in quality. There are hundreds of missions in this game, dozens of mobile suits, and dozens of pilots to choose, but beyond stat differences and the movesets of each suit, not much is different between each mission. They all follow the same formula of “Take over fields until the enemy’s battle gauge has dropped enough to proceed to the enemy HQ, possibly complete a sub-mission, travel to the HQ, and take out the boss.” With the exception of a few boss fights, every last mission takes place on the same few maps with little more than which characters shout things like “Ha ha! Time to show them how a man does it!” to differentiate them.

These complaints of monotony may sound contradictory to my earlier points about the Dynasty Warriors series, but these missions feel like Koei copied and pasted the same mission over and over, filling in different characters to suit their cutscene scripts. None of them make any reference to what’s going on in the story during the mission, and combined with the audio-devoid visual novel-style cutscenes between missions, the story falls flat, as most time is spent in mission.

Speaking of the game’s audio, not much has changed in this game, and that includes the good and the bad. Most of the original Japanese cast is here, but there are several notable exclusions on the English side. I know it can’t be helped, as Heero Yuy’s VA refuses to voice him, and Domon Kasshu’s VA has moved on from voice acting. Still, the English voice acting rings hollow when the two most well-known protagonists in North America have different voices than their actual series. Licensed background music is still a copyright issue, so don’t expect to hear any themes from any shows. Cookie-cutter rock is the only music present here.

Graphically, the cel-shaded Gundams look very vivid and have progressed in quality quite nicely since the first game. Every mobile suit looks like a model kit constructed and painted by an obsessed Gunpla fan. The animation is smooth and appropriate for each mobile suit, allowing them to fight as they should stylistically. Shining Gundam fights like a martial artist, and that trusty old RX-78 of Amuro’s moves like it has an experienced pilot in its cockpit.

The same can’t be said of the environments. Though hundreds of mobile suits are on the screen, everything looks the same. Each mission takes place in a generic forest, asteroid, mountain, or other equally drab area. There’s not much other than non-descript buildings and boxes to take up space. This takes most of the game’s excitement away when all is said and done.

Online play is a mess. Players can fight in the same missions online, but if two or more players are in the same field, it becomes very clear that the sessions aren’t synchronized. On good connections, one player will attack the boss on his end and appear to be attacking wildly in a corner at an unseen enemy on the other player’s end. To the latter player, the boss character will take damage and blow up at seemingly random times. To make matters worse, after each repetitive mission is over, there’s no option to continue play with the same players. They must be reinvited, and the session must be started anew. Neither the UI nor the in-game experience is even slightly up to par.

All this is a shame, because the gameplay is innovative and streamlines the Dynasty Warriors experience. Players can use an emergency dash to quickly dash out of the way of an oncoming attack at the cost of some boost. Giant bosses now have stun meters to provide players motivation to strike efficiently to expose weak points. Players have additional aid in the form of selectable partners they can call upon in battle when struggling against the enemy.

However, the most interesting change comes in the form of unique fields. Some fields now have purposes, such as strengthening surrounding units, allowing players to travel instantly between fields, or attacking intruders of different factions. In fact, it almost seems like the game designers played a game of Risk: Factions and decided additional structures would be a good idea. Regardless of the concept’s origins, it adds a layer of strategy outside rushing for the closest field in a level.

If the core gameplay were more interesting, then these changes might matter. As it is, the missions all play nearly identically with little challenge no matter what the difficulty rating is, and even the “Historical Missions” are shadows of their former selves and almost serve as insults to the moments they’re supposed to portray. Even the joy of choosing familiar pilots is lost when they say the same three or four phrases repeatedly when attacking. I can only recommend this game to the most dedicated of Gundam fans –namely, those who live for official fanservice interactions between characters from their favorite series.

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