Gundam Musou 3 is the 3 game in the Dynasty Warriors spin off, and you will be seeing the number 3 again later on. Like I do with every game in the series I stupidly 2 day it from . Now I am enjoying myself with the game, already putting in 12 hours this weekend. When you first put the disk in it makes a new game and sends you to a cut scene, what is cool is after it ends it jumps you right in with the 00 Raiser in a mission. Naturally the first thing I did was to see if I could use the Raiser backpack to fly around. Of course I was wrong, which sucks because the backpack is pretty big on his back, which really can obstruct your view, and you can’t use it like it was designed for (to be fair you use it in some combo attacks and your buddy buddy sp attack). The layout of the map is quite different, it is all blocks, like before bases would be different sizes, but here they are all one size. Additionally some have special abilities, one is your base, one is the enemy main camp, which if these are taken then their “battle points” go down to zero. There is one that if you grab it lets you use the mobile suite launcher, but you can only go to certain bases. Another thing that has changed is the art style. Now every thing has a cool “Anime” look to it. I think it works pretty well, though some textures look awfully bland. However they made all the particle effects and what not improved so that is cool to see all those sparks fly when you hit things.

After you beat the mission is starts you off in Amuro’s story missions. But they are not the classics. No this game focuses more on the made up story that the made for this game. Now everyone’s story from the anime is still there, you just have to unlock it by playing the original story for a few missions. Missions are given to you in bucket fulls, I feel almost overwhelmed because they give you all these missions you can do but really I only care about story ones. But like they give you missions for milestones and relationships and stuff like that. Just makes me feel like I am getting no where since I am doing mission after mission and I don’t progress. But you can choose to skip them if you want.

One thing I want to say on the game play is that it feels really slow. I guess maybe I am bias since I just got done playing some Sengoku Basara 3 but just seems like it take forever to get your guy to actually strike. Like these are super advance mecha units, but they look like robots from the 80’s with their sluggish movements. And this really can be bothersome when you are trying to do your special but all the enemies backed up before you actually bothered to swing your weapon and miss everyone.

Relationships have been simplified for the better this time around, now you just have a positive chart. And no one can go down, so just do mission for that person or help that person and they will like you more. Their relationship status can give you, their unlocked story mission or let them be your partner etc. Speaking of partners I really like this new feature. Like skills you can equip a partner and a operator for each mission. The operator just talks to you but some will give special buffs. Your partner can be activated by R2 (when the partner meter is full) and he jumps in and does a special attack then leaves. This can come in handy when you are getting surrounded.

There are some changes to that combat that I like and hate at the same time. Remember when I was talking about Battle Points? Well in this game you can die but if you still have battle points you come back. Now this also introduces a weird health system. You can get hit and lose health but a portion of   that health will come back.  The problem is that it is way to easy to get caught up in an enemies special and go from 100% to 0.  Some times it seems that when you hit enemies you do nothing since that part that you hit regenerated. Now the thing that really bugs me is that when you die you respawn RIGHT WHERE you died. So in some cases bases have defense guns that are really strong and will blow you up. But when you respawn you are dropped right back into those guns so you die again. So you just enter this area where you can do nothing but die and have to wait till you run out of points. I guess this is on a side note, but when you die, it goes through the “your suit has his arm and head come off and blow up” animation, but then you come back good as new. Now that doesn’t really make any sense. Why not make a animation where it shows you retreating.

If you like Free mission mode where you select what suit you want and what area to be in then don’t buy this game since there is NONE of that. Everything is either story or co-op. Also if you like space battles then don’t buy this game since there is none. There are some areas on the moon and stuff but no open space levels. Which I am on the last Historic Armuro mission and have no idea how that is going to work. Speaking of areas none of them look good, or look iconic. Like I don’t recognize anything. There just seems to be generic levels like they were sitting down and said “shit we need an ice level” and just made one.

The additional units are awesome and the upgrading your suit is a lot easier, but it just seems like they took one step forward and 3 steps back. I mean when you release a sequel don’t drop features, make them better.

This is a fine game and I will play the hell out of it, but it wasn’t the improvement I wanted.  

 3 failed char plans out of 5. 

  Gundam Musou 3 is the 3 game in the Dynasty Warriors spin off, and you will be seeing the number 3 again later on. Like I do with every game in the series I stupidly 2 day it from . Now I am enjoying myself with the game, already putting in 12 hours this weekend. When you first put the disk in it makes a new game and sends you to a cut scene, what is cool is after it ends it jumps you right in with the 00 Raiser in a mission. Naturally the first thing I did was to see if I could use the Raiser backpack to fly around. Of course I was wrong, which sucks because the backpack is pretty big on his back, which really can obstruct your view, and you can’t use it like it was designed for (to be fair you use it in some combo attacks and your buddy buddy sp attack). The layout of the map is quite different, it is all blocks, like before bases would be different sizes, but here they are all one size. Additionally some have special abilities, one is your base, one is the enemy main camp, which if these are taken then their “battle points” go down to zero. There is one that if you grab it lets you use the mobile suite launcher, but you can only go to certain bases. Another thing that has changed is the art style. Now every thing has a cool “Anime” look to it. I think it works pretty well, though some textures look awfully bland. However they made all the particle effects and what not improved so that is cool to see all those sparks fly when you hit things.

After you beat the mission is starts you off in Amuro’s story missions. But they are not the classics. No this game focuses more on the made up story that the made for this game. Now everyone’s story from the anime is still there, you just have to unlock it by playing the original story for a few missions. Missions are given to you in bucket fulls, I feel almost overwhelmed because they give you all these missions you can do but really I only care about story ones. But like they give you missions for milestones and relationships and stuff like that. Just makes me feel like I am getting no where since I am doing mission after mission and I don’t progress. But you can choose to skip them if you want.

One thing I want to say on the game play is that it feels really slow. I guess maybe I am bias since I just got done playing some Sengoku Basara 3 but just seems like it take forever to get your guy to actually strike. Like these are super advance mecha units, but they look like robots from the 80’s with their sluggish movements. And this really can be bothersome when you are trying to do your special but all the enemies backed up before you actually bothered to swing your weapon and miss everyone.

Relationships have been simplified for the better this time around, now you just have a positive chart. And no one can go down, so just do mission for that person or help that person and they will like you more. Their relationship status can give you, their unlocked story mission or let them be your partner etc. Speaking of partners I really like this new feature. Like skills you can equip a partner and a operator for each mission. The operator just talks to you but some will give special buffs. Your partner can be activated by R2 (when the partner meter is full) and he jumps in and does a special attack then leaves. This can come in handy when you are getting surrounded.

There are some changes to that combat that I like and hate at the same time. Remember when I was talking about Battle Points? Well in this game you can die but if you still have battle points you come back. Now this also introduces a weird health system. You can get hit and lose health but a portion of   that health will come back.  The problem is that it is way to easy to get caught up in an enemies special and go from 100% to 0.  Some times it seems that when you hit enemies you do nothing since that part that you hit regenerated. Now the thing that really bugs me is that when you die you respawn RIGHT WHERE you died. So in some cases bases have defense guns that are really strong and will blow you up. But when you respawn you are dropped right back into those guns so you die again. So you just enter this area where you can do nothing but die and have to wait till you run out of points. I guess this is on a side note, but when you die, it goes through the “your suit has his arm and head come off and blow up” animation, but then you come back good as new. Now that doesn’t really make any sense. Why not make a animation where it shows you retreating.

If you like Free mission mode where you select what suit you want and what area to be in then don’t buy this game since there is NONE of that. Everything is either story or co-op. Also if you like space battles then don’t buy this game since there is none. There are some areas on the moon and stuff but no open space levels. Which I am on the last Historic Armuro mission and have no idea how that is going to work. Speaking of areas none of them look good, or look iconic. Like I don’t recognize anything. There just seems to be generic levels like they were sitting down and said “shit we need an ice level” and just made one.

The additional units are awesome and the upgrading your suit is a lot easier, but it just seems like they took one step forward and 3 steps back. I mean when you release a sequel don’t drop features, make them better.

This is a fine game and I will play the hell out of it, but it wasn’t the improvement I wanted.  

 3 failed char plans out of 5. 

In terms of favorites I rank the DW Gundam titles as

1 > 3 > 2

2 was really just PURE grind and zero story- it felt like they gave you a box of game mechanics and told you to make a game. While 3 does a pretty poor job with the story compared to 1, at least its there and 3 also gives you different ways to boost characters levels. Also, giant mech fights in 3 are wayyy better than 2. Then again, in some ways 3 feels a little too easy- or maybe ive played too many musou games- DW7 was crazy easy too.

Still, at the end of the day the first game will always be my favorite- the story was great and significant for each character- it had CG endings, didnt have the giant mech fights.

Honestly the only reason I purchased Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 was for Deathscythe and Heavyarms. I was disappointed when they were included in the 2nd game, but when I heard that they were in DW 3 I just had to get it.