Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 (Koei, 2009)
Purchase from Amazon: Playstation 3 | Xbox 360

Koei’s powerhouse, Omega Force, returns with its second installment of the Dynasty Warriors Gundam franchise, adding all new characters, bosses, missions and online capabilities (but no online co-op — lame, right?). They’ve also really touched up the game’s AI to make even the weaker enemies very difficult at times at the harder setting. It almost reminded me of how hard Dynasty Warriors 3 XL was back in the day. There are several modes to play through, multiple stories, and if you’ve never played a Dynasty Warriors game before, a whole crapload of stuff to acquire through grinding.

Grinding? I know what you’re thinking: sounds boring, right? Well it is usually, but in this title they’ve really gone out of their way to help curb that. Sometimes, when trying to build relationships with one of the game’s many pilots you’ll find yourself doing the same map over and over — but to help change it up for you, different enemies will attack you every time, the terrain will change, and so will the objective (even though you’re running the same mission). This may not sound like much, but it really helps.

One of the new things you’ll find from the last installment — aside from the 43 new mobile suits — is the very large boss battles. When these occur, you will be locked into the battle area, and the camera will be locked onto the boss — which helps keep track of them, since they’re faster and usually have large area attack specials. This also gets a little annoying, because if you get low on health you can’t really change the camera angle to help locate some. The AI gets a little weak here too; one boss has several small limbs that you must attack before you can take a whack at the main body. The problem is your team members don’t seem to understand this, and also don’t even bother trying to evade the enemy’s attacks. So you can find yourself racing against time trying to defeat the boss before he defeats your friends. (more…)