Gundam Musou is somewhat of a mixed bag. While the gameplay is initially kind of fun and it’s great to see tons of Mobile Suits on screen at once, the whole button mashing experience gets stale pretty quickly. Although if you’re a fan of the Musou (Dynasty Warriors) series and a Gundam fan this is most likely an instant purchase. Just don’t be expecting any kind of revolutionary combat, amazing customizability, or engaging cutscenes.


A taste of the entire game.
Gundam Musou has two separate story modes named Official Mode and Original Mode. Official follows the core Gundam storyline while Original is a new story which takes place on Mysteric planet and crosses over with the original Gundam storyline. Entering either mode from the main menu will give you access to a pilot selection screen. After that you’ll enter a mission select screen, a Mobile Suit customization menu, and then you’ll head into battle. Once a pilot’s storyline has been completed in Official Mode he or she will then be unlocked in Original Mode. The number of missions each pilot has varies and can range from 2 to 4+.


The pilot select screen.
It was kind of odd completing my first pilot’s Official story as he only had two missions and each of those took less than 30 minutes to complete. After a few seconds of fearing that I had just beaten the game I realized that everything is split into pilot storylines and not one large main storyline. I then proceeded to play through the pilot’s 4 Original Mode missions which took quite a bit longer to complete. All in all that one pilot’s missions took around 5 hours to complete and unlocked two new pilots each with their own missions. Although that may sound like a ton of content, a lot of the missions overlap between pilots. So you’ll have to beat the same mission over and over again with different pilots and Mechs to unlock every mission and to complete every storyline. Doing all of this could easily put you over 60 hours of gameplay so if you like the game and don’t mind reuse of missions, there’s plenty to go around.


Taking on the masses.
Once inside a mission your main goal is always to gain control of fields. Fields are rectangular sections of the map that are controlled by you, the red Mech force, or the yellow Mech force. You essentially move to a field, destroy retarded drone Mechs in mass, and watch as the field’s hit points lower. When the field’s hit point bar runs out of red or yellow you’ll either gain control of the field or a guard will show up. Guards have a ton more health as well as actual combat tactics; these guys actually want to kill you. Once a field is under your control the enemy drones will leave and drones from your side will show up to protect things. Sometimes a General Mech will even show up to guard things. Generals are pretty much your counterpart and are extremely tough to kill.

From time to time a section of the mini-map will flash and this will indicate where you need to go next. You’ll also be constantly hearing from other Generals in the field via text and voice. So then you head to the next area, clear things out and take control. Do this to the entire map and you win the mission. Some missions require some minor tactics to keep fields under your control and some require you to keep someone or something alive, but for the most part you just fly to each area and destroy everything in sight until you control the field. I guess the best overall tactic is to destroy enemy generals first as they can and will move around and take control of your fields.