News: Gundam Musou 3 Hands-on Impressions
Posted on : 18-09-2010 | By : Cacophanus | In : News, Videos
Hardware: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
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Apologies for the slightly blurry photo above but we’ve managed to play a fair bit of Koei’s upcoming and now cel-shaded Gundam Musou 3. To give both releases a fair chance, we put some time into the PS3 and 360 versions. The show demo only has two playable units; the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam and the GF13-017NJII God Gundam. You can also pick your partners too, such as Kamille in the MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam and Four in the MRX-009 Psycho Gundam. Our impressions are after the jump.
The first thing that struck us, visually at least, was that the cel-shading is actually quite restrained. Whilst the mecha have surface detailing that lends itself well to the cel-shaded, it’s by no means overt. What is more striking is how all the beam graphics have a decidedly anime flourish to their animations. Both versions were pretty much comparable with one another.
Functionally, it’s very much more of the same and if you liked the previous two games then you’ll like this. Doing aerial combos is a lot easier now too, as the enemies tend to float more once you get them airborne. The TGS demo only had one level, where you faced the GF13-001NHII Master Gundam, RX-93 Nu Gundam and finally the ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom Gundam as opponents. Naturally, these were intermixed amongst a veritable legion of Zeonic mobile suits, from Zaku II’s to Z’Goks.
The Unicorn also came across as a remarkably potent unit, more so than the God Gundam, as even in Unicorn mode your crowd control combos tend to keep most enemies at range. Couple this with the high speed melee focus in Destroy mode means you get the best of both worlds. The shift between modes is launched by your special attack and then this keeps you in Destroy mode until it runs out. Another nice addition was that of the God Shadow, something that wasn’t present previously.
Overall, the game is playing very well already and they’ve definitely improved the combat but not to the extent that it’s become overly complex. It’s still the satisfying game you’d expect it to be and we walked away with a Gundam inspired grin on our face, which is always a good sign.
[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XjefS9dTJI]
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God Shadow was in Musou 2, but, you needed to use your Desperation/True Musou to activate it. It turned GodSlash Typhoon into a veritable blender for bosses
You could also get the God Shadow Musou by doing a Level 3 Co-Op Musou, or by using one of the rarer abilities that lets every Musou use count as being a Co-Op. You could abuse this a lot for the Hard missions, and use your three Shadows of Death to take enemy fields and kill bosses in short order, but I usually just used the same strategy but with the Turn A Gundam’s “nuke throw” instead 🙂
I’m not sure if it was a glitch, or intentional, but there are times when you can move your shadows when the God Gundam itself is forced by the game mechanics to be stationary, so you can kind of set of the Shadows in different formations, or have one attack a boss half a field away, or even have them do different combos from what the real God Gundam was doing. A lot of depth for a feature that most people probably never saw!
I suppose the God Shadow Musou you’re referring to is the attack Domon and Master Asia in the anime refer to as Sekiha Tenkyoken (Sky-breaking, Ground-cracking strike)? I’ve noticed that God Gundam creates two clones of itself and then each of them shoot a large green energy ball outwards, resembling the Sekiha Tenkyoken, so…
The point I was making was that the God Shadow is available from the off now though, it was part of the base combo setup – which is pretty cool!
Now I want to go back and play Musou 2 more. I know all Musou games tend to have a lot of content, but it would take forever to complete everything in that one. And so my backlog grows…