The Cutest World War! Let's Play SD Gundam G Generation World!

Or, The Littleist Mecha Shop.



SD Gundam G Generation World is the latest in the long-lasting series of Gundam strategy games made by Banpresto. It was released for both the Wii and the PSP in February, with very little difference between the two versions. For those who are not in the know, Gundam is a very long-standing (over 30 years!) anime series about giant robots, the people who pilot them, and the wars they fight in. Gundam is commonly considered to be part of the "real robot" camp of giant robots, because the stories told are commonly about people in war, though the mobile suits they pilot may be absolutely fantastical in power. G Generation games draw upon this history, and allow players to take part in the battles that define the series.

Though it has had many types of gameplay in the past, modern G Generation games are generally split into two main styles:

The first style is the "handheld" style, which was first seen mainly in a title called Monoeyes Gundams for the Wonderswan. The "handheld" style of games generally follows a single plotline that the player goes through, and allows them to capture enemy mobile suits and either break them down into special parts, or upgrade them using these special parts into new mobile suits.

The second style is the "console" style, which probably started around G Generation Zero, but the one that really tied this style to me is G Generation F. In this style, the game is really more of a "Collect 'em all!" type of game: You get presented with a set of series that you can play through (for example, in G Gen F, you can pick to play through the Mobile Suit Gundam storyline, or the Zeta Gundam storyline, or the Gundam X storyline, or so on), and while you can still capture or purchase new mobile suits, you primarily get more by "leveling up" your existing MS and then "evolving" them once they reach a certain level into other models. You could also choose not to evolve the MS, in which case leveling up gives you more stats, making the MS more powerful.

G Gen World is a bit of a mix of both of these styles; the primary gameplay in G Gen World is to choose series-related missions from a list, as well as evolving your MS into new models in order to fill out the mobile suit catalogue. however, the missions are not actually alligned by series, and are instead grouped into 4 sets based on a "theme". Each mission is still GENERALLY focused on one episode of the appropriate anime, but if you complete certain things then the mission will change. I'll go into more details about this when I get to the first mission.


As I mentioned, G Gen World is not really very different between it's Wii and PSP versions. I'll be playing it on the Wii because it's easier for me to record, but from what I can tell the main differences seem to mainly be screen resolution; there isn't even additional voice clips because of the larger disk size! Unlike my previous LPs here, this one will mainly be picture oriented, though I do have a number of video clips to accentuate the scenes as necessary.

Proactive disclosure: I don't actually speak Japanese. I can understand enough of it to play this kind of game (especially since I've played a lot of G Gens and Super Robot Wars), and I also understand the plots of just about all the missions because I've seen all the appropriate shows. However, if I happen to misread any of the dialog, please let me know!

So, with no further ado, let's hop right in!



Table of Contents

Introduction Mission
Menus
Mission A-1
Mission A-2
Mission A-3
Mission A-4
Mission A-5
Mission A-6
Mission A-7
Mission A-8
Mission A-9
Mission A-10
Mission A-Ex
Mission B-1
Mission B-2
Mission B-3
Mission B-4
Mission B-5
Mission B-6
Mission B-7
Mission B-8
Mission B-9
Mission B-10
Mission B-Ex
Mission C-1
Mission C-2
Mission C-3
Mission C-4
Mission C-5
Mission C-6
Mission C-7
Mission C-8
Mission C-9
Mission C-10
Mission C-Ex
Mission D-1
Mission D-2
Mission D-3
Mission D-4
Mission D-5
Mission D-6
Mission D-7
Mission D-8
Mission D-9
Mission D-10
Mission D-Ex
Mission Final-1
Mission Final-2

One of the biggest things advertised about G Gen World was that it was the premiere of Gundam Unicorn, the newest Gundam animation, into... if not ANY game, but at least the G Gen series. And you can tell from the introduction video, as it focuses almost 100% on both Unicorn and Gundam 00 S2.


After starting a new game, you get thrown right into the action! While the first stage isn't really a "tutorial" per say, it features just about every special ability you need to be introduced to, and isn't really that difficult of a mission as well, so it works well at easing newer players into the game.



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 2: Strike

One thing that sets G Gen apart from Super Robot Wars, beyond G Gen focusing entirely on Gundam, is that G Gen will commonly use battle or personal themes instead of show themes. Which is pretty nice, since Gundam has a LOT of very good battle themes that often get left out of SRW.

Anyway, with that music playing, it should be obvious who will show up...



Yep, the introduction mission will start us off with the boys from Celestial Being.

(To make things not massive, I'll be placing dialog screenshots into spoiler tags) (Nope, the board code doesn't support that.)


They seem to be looking for someone or something called "Aphrodia". It doesn't seem to be here, so they wonder if their contact, Wang Liu Mei, might have given them bad intel. However, they don't have much time to ponder this, before the alarms start blaring.



The sensors have picked up some enemy forces approaching fast!



They start with a few Geara Zulus, but then...



... this garrishly painted mobile suit appears as well.



The pilot is Angelo Sauper, commander of the Royal Guards in the Neo Zeon forces of Gundam Unicorn. Angelo recognizes Celestial Being as Gundam pilots right away, and the members of Celestial Being recognize the Geara Zulus. And with Angelo here, that can only mean one thing...



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: Mobile Suit

OH SHIT, IT'S THE RED COMET, WE'RE SCREW... oh, no. That's just the unfortunately named Full Frontal. Also known as The Second Coming of Char, he is the main villain of Gundam Unicorn (at least, so far).

(This following dialog segment occurs in the middle of the above linked video.)



Setsuna F. Seiei was not tricked; he recognized the mobile suit instantly. Regardless, though, Full Frontal introduces himself before demaning any information Celestial Being may have about something called "Laplace's Box". The members of Celestial Being either don't know, or wouldn't tell him anyway, which doesn't seem to please Frontal. If Celestial Being doesn't have the information he's looking for, he'll just have to get rid of them!

Then, suddenly...




Music: Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: Unicorn (The part used in World is the last 90 seconds of the song, pretty much.)

Banagher Links and the Unicorn Gundam show up to save Setsuna from Frontal.



Banagher has a few words to say to Frontal, and both he and Setsuna decide that they're just going to beat Frontal up.

And with that!

Alright, since the introductions are now in order, let's go over the game mechanics.

G Gen World is not too dissimilar from your typical turn-based strategy game. If you've played Super Robot Wars, Fire Emblem, final Fantasy Tactics, or even just Advance Wars, you have a pretty good idea about how to play G Gen World.

Now, in G Gen World, there's 2 main types of units that you get to control: Your own units, and Guests.



Guests are units that the level have given to you as part of the plot. Guests have a few benefits, but a larger number of drawbacks. Firstly, Guests are based on the plot of the mission, so sometimes that can be more powerful units then you have (but they're generally not). Guests also have a small passive HP and EN regeneration. However, Guests are almost always in level 1 mobile suits, and have level 1 pilots (though the enemy forces do as well), so they will almost always be weaker then your own forces. As well, the fail conditions of a stage will generally include the destruction of your Guests. And lastly, Guests don't gain levels, so killing enemies with a Guest deprives your own units of XP!

Master Units also regenerate a bit of HP and EN each turn (more so then Guests), and have other benefits.

Since this level is an introduction level, the only units you have are Guests, though. Don't be surprised if I don't tend to use a Guest much in any subsequent level.



For unit commands, there are a few common ones, as well as some ones tied to special abilities.

In the first image, Kyrios Gundam can Move, Attack, Transform (a unit specific ability), and End Turn. Unlike SRW which gives you Unit Details as the last option, G Gen World lets you just say "Nope, I want this unit to do nothing", which can be... annoying if you're shifting from one game to the other.

Transform lets you shift your unit from one form to another, if it has multiple forms. You can also make use of this command while your MS is docked in a Warship. Alternate forms usually give you a benefit of additional movement range, or higher mobility, or even better weapons, but have a drawback as well. In Kyrios' case, you have more movement and agility, but you lose out on some of Kyrios' best weapons.

In the second image, Seravee Gundam has the same commands, except instead of Transform, it has Separate. Separate is like Transform, but it's one-way. In this case, the Seravee can purge it's outer armour to become Seraphim Gundam. Separation abilities have their own drawbacks, though; In some units, if you dock or end the mission, you can reattach the outer frame for free. however, there are a number of units where if you Separate, you have to relevel the unit back up in order to use the combined form again.

Generally, though, Separate is a handy ability because it means that if the unit is destroyed, you don't lose it entirely. In G Gen World, if you lose a unit in a mission, it's gone for good (though the pilot is fine).



Lastly (for now), we have the commands of a Warship. Warships are the most important aspect of your team; they may not move very far, and may not really be able to attack any enemies, but your units dock in them to repair and resupply, which is highly useful. Other then the normal Attack, Move, and End Tun commands, this ship, the Ptolemaios 2 has 2 Warship-specific commands, plus a special one for itself.

The first one is "Deploy", which lets you send out any unit that is docked with the Warship. As a special note, the only units that can dock with a Warship are the ones that have been assigned to it before the mission. So this means that if you have a Guest, you can't shove it into one of your ships and ignore it.

The second one is "Rotate". Ships and other super-huge units have to specify their facing, which affects how they can move and the ranges of their weapons. And adjusting your facing takes up your turn. Generally, a unit will have the largest move range in the direction it's facing, and the least in the opposite. Sincei t takes a turn to reposition your ships and other super-huge units, you need to make sure you arrange them as necessary.

The third one is "Special Ability". Some Warships have unique abilities, and this command activates them. For example, the Ptolemaios 2 can activate Trans-Am, which increases the ship's movement rate by 3 for the turn it's activated, but on the next turn it LOSES 3 movement.





Of course, abilties won't win you the mission. You need weapons for that! Unlike Super Robot Wars, G Gens work on a very simple resource system: Everything costs EN. Except for some things that cost MP as well. MP, also known as Tension, also affect your pilot's combat effectiveness, so using weapons that cost MP is a double-edged sword. I'll go over Tension a bit more later.

The entries on the weapon list are pretty much self-explanitory. The image shows the type of weapon it is, with the list as follows:

• Melee: Standard physical attack.
• Special Melee: Ignores Abilities (such as Phase Shift Armor or ABC Mantle).
• Beam Melee: Can be affected by abilities that apply to Beams (such as ABC Mantle).
• Shock: The damage caused by this weapon is unaffected by anything, and will always deal exactly the listed damage.
• Flame: The damage varies greatly.
• Shooting: Standard ranged attack.
• Rapid Shooting: Damage is slightly variable.
• Special Shooting: Ignored Abilities.
• Beam Shooting: Can be affected by abilities that apply to Beams.
• Beam Rapid Shooting: Damage is slightly variable and can be affected by avilities that apply to Beams.
• Scattering Beam: Deals more damage to larger units.
• Penetrating Beam: Damage cannot be negated by Abilities, but can be reduced.
• Special Attack: Ignores abilities. Almost always costs MP.
• Awaken: Accuracy, range, and damage are based on the Pilot's Awaken stat.
• Special Awaken: Ignores abilities, and Accuracy, range, and damage are based on the Pilot's Awaken stat.
• Hissatsu: Damage is affected greatly by the pilot's Tension gauge.
• MAP: Always hits, always deals the listed damage, and ignores abilities other then those that specifically apply to MAPs. Enemies killed with MAPs also don't give XP.
• Special MAP: Always hits, but does not actually deal damage. Ignores abilities other then those that specifically apply to MAPs.

So, there's a pretty wide variety of different types of weapons there are in G Gen World.



Here, I choose to use Kyrios' GN Twin Beam Rifle. It's a multi-hitting weapon, so it actually has a slightly different way that it's damage and accuracy is calculated. Multi-hitting weapons are almost always better to use then a single-hit, however because of these penalties it may not always be the best move to use, for example, a 2500 x 2 attack over a 5000 attack. For example, all effects that benefit weapon damage are slightly reduced when applying to a multi-hit weapon. As well, you get an accuracy penalty on the attack, but that's counterbalanced by the fact that the listed accuracy is per hit. So in this example, Kyrios has a 92% chance to hit with each rifle hit. If I was using a x 8 missile weapon, and it listed an accuracy of 50%, then each individual missile has a 50% chance to hit the enemy.



Now, back to the Seravee, you can see that it has two different notes on it's weapons: One says Lock 3, and another is a MAP. I'll go over Lock weapons a bit more another time, but for now I'll just comment on the MAPs. You'll notice it has a cross through it as is faded. That's because you can't use a MAP after moving, and must do it before you take a movement action.



One of the nice things about G Gens is the ability Chance Step. When a unit kills an enemy, it gains a Chance Step that allows it to take another turn. In World, this ability has a limit on it based on your level; From levels 1~9 it's 3 actions a turn, and this increases by 1 until you reach I think it's level 40 after which you can take infinite Chance Steps. But don't think this means that you can just Step your units across the battlefield killing everything; your weapons still use EN, so you can quickly run out even if you have infinite Chance Steps.

And since I'm talking about it, I have a bit of a challenge for any mathemagicians we have here at Talking Time.

Weapon damage in G Gen World is very formulaic. There is no randomness in the calculation at all, so it's possible to determine how much damage you'll do before you even attack. However, I have not yet found the formula for World, and it seems to have been changed from the previous game in the series, SD Gundam G Gen Wars. So, I'll give you all the appropriate details, and I'd like to see if anyone can divine out the way the formula has been changed.



Here is all the appropriate stats for the next attack I'll be making. Back in G Gen Wars, the formula should have been:

In this case, there was no Critical, and the Tension modifier was a 1, so the last two fields can be ignored. However, something doesn't seem to add up, since if this formula is right, the weapon should have done about 5415 damage, so there must have been something that was changed between Wars and World. Let's see if you foks can find it!


Before I carry on, I'd like to go back a moment and also show another feature of G Gen World



It's probably very hard to tell, but there's two sets of faded purple squares, and one set of yellow squares. It's also not shown, but there is also a set of blue squares if you select the Ptolemaios. These are the Command Auras. Master Units, Warships, and Squad Leaders all have a Command Aura, which have the effects as follows:

• Purple Aura: Master Unit. A Master Unit can have any unit that's within it's Aura join in on a Support Attack as long as the other unit can actually attack the unit the Master is targeting. The other units must not have taken their turn yet, as well. If a unit is killed in this fashion, the Master Unit is considered to have gotten the kill, but the XP is spread to all units that participated.
• Yellow Aura: Warship Support Fire. A Master Unit or Squad Leader that is within this aura, that is attacking an enemy that's within this aura, can have the Warship join in with a special support attack weapon. If the enemy unit is killed in this fashion, the Warship gains a cut of the XP, but also gains a bonus.
• Blue Aura: Squad Leader. And unit that belongs to the same Squad as the Leader they wer within the Aura of can have any other unit within the same Squad join in on a Support Attack, with the same restrictions as a Master Unit. In addition, units within the Squad Leader's Aura can also have their squadmates Support Defend them.

After wiping out some of the enemy forces, I end my turn. At the start of the enemy turn, the remaining Geara Zulus sacrifice themselves uselessly against the Unicorn Gundam, except for Angelo.

(Any voiced dialog sequence will be recorded and displayed as a video instead of just an image)



Unicorn is one of the few series in World that I don't know all thst much about, as I haven't watched it yet. Being as it's ridiculously expensive.

Anyway, Angelo gets bruised but not beaten by Unicorn, and Full Frontal decides to hang back. However, when the second turn begins...



The sensors pick up additional enemy forces approaching!



It's the A-LAWS, the main villains of Gundam 00 Season 2. These guys are real bad news, and will stoop to anything to terrorize and maintain control over the world. Why, they sound just like another organization.

But there's more arriving then just some Aheads.



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 2: Masurao



First, we have Mister Bushido, Setsuna's rival in Season 2. Though he's TOTALLY NOT Graham Aker, Mr Bushido has a strong sense of rivalry with Setsuna and the 00 Gundam, and will stop at nothing to defeat him in a fair duel. He has a strong sense of honour, and has even been known to leave the battle early when he knows that Setsuna isn't ready, or if he's not even there at all.

The next guy is almost the complete opposite, however...



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 1: Counterattack



Ali Al-Saachez, terrorist for hire. This guy is just scum, and exemplifies everything that's bad about the A-LAWS. He also killed Lockon's brother, and manipulated Setsuna into becoming a child soldier, so naturally they're really angry to see him appear.

However, some good news also comes from this...



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny: Kira, Sono kokoro no mama ni (also sometimes translated as "Kira, just as he pleases". Which is basically the theme of the show.)

Kira Yamato and the Strike Freedom appear and wipe out the rear group of A-LAWS mobile suits.



Kira is quickly accompanied by his friend Athrun Zala and the Infinite Justice. With this kind of firepower on our side, we're sure to mop up whatever's left.

An interesting to note about this scene is that Kira is unnaturally angry. Typically in his series, by the time he got Strike Freedom he was mostly either just resolved to do what he had to, or was depressed about the whole thing. So it's interesting to see the writers make him fired up for this mission.


So, now that we have the Strike Freedom, I'll use it to show off those Lock attacks, since the game conveniently deploys Kira just in range of them.



Lock attacks allow you to choose up to the specified number of enemy units that happen to be within the firing range of the weapon, and it deals damage to all of them. The primary target (the one you choose first) has the ability to counterattack or make use of any special abilities, however the others can only make use of any passive features that may affect the weapon damage. Lock attacks can be incredibly useful for weakening or even destroying huge swaths of enemies, but are generally VERY expensive. As well, multi-hitting Lock attacks spread their hits across all the targeted units (for example, if you have a x8 missile attack and Lock to 2 enemies, then each one gets x4 shot at them). As well, the primary target needs to be the one to die to trigger a Chance Step; if you kill a secondary target but the main one lives, then your turn ends.



After Kira weakens one group and Athrun engages the other, Banagher finishes off Angelo, who escapes.



Banagher then goes to to engage Full Frontal, who's been hanging back so far.

Before engaging Mr Bushido, Setsuna finishes off the weakened Aheads from Kira's attack, which brings him to full Tension.

In G Gen World there is 6 stages of Tension, and all pilots have different ranges for each stage. The stages are as follows:

• Panic: Tension is at 0. Your unit cannot attack.
• Low: Tension is within the blue area of your pilot's bar.
• Normal: Tension is within the green area of your pilot's bar.
• High: Tension is within the red area of your pilot's bar.
• Critical: Tension is at max. You will always critically hit.
• Super Critical: You killed an enemy after getting max tension. You will always get a Super Critical, but if your unit gets hit you will "cool down" and return to 50% Tension.

As well, your weapon damage is modified based on your Tension compared to the enemy's Tension. Should your pilot's Tension be below 50%, then it will return to 50% if the unit docks with a Warship. Every pilot has their own ranges for the Tension based on their personality, and some units have special abilities that give you different Tension bars. An example is the Wing Zero and Wing Zero Custom. The Zero System in both of them cause the pilot to have Low Tension for about 80% of the bar, when it instantly jumps up to High Tension.

So now that he's at Critical Tension, Setsuna attacks Mr Bushido and the Masurao.



Music: Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 2: 00 Gundam

Though it's not enough to finish him off, it was pretty badass.

With that, I end my turn. The enemy's turn starts off with Frontal attacking Banagher, because the AI for World has all enemy forces act in a specific order based on the order they deploy in. Since Frontal is the last unit of the initial enemy forces, he acts before all of the A-LAWS.

After Frontal attacks, Mr Bushido attempts to defeat the 00 Raiser...



... however he gets defeated instead. Appologizing to his fallen comrades, he retreats from the battlefield.



And that puts Setsuna into Super Critical Tension.

Meanwhile, Ali and Athrus get into a kicking match with their mobile suits' foot-based weapons, and then Athrun weakens the remaining Aheads and GN-XIII. After that, the enemy phase ends.



At the start of my phase, Athrun and Kira exchange... something. Also, they're still pretty angry.




And then Banagher finishes off Frontal with a support attack from Tieria Erde, but Frontal escapes to fight another day. This puts Banagher into Critical Tension.

Kira and Athrun finish off the remaining A-LAWS, and then weaken Ali, because I want someone else to finish him off...





Lockon gets some measure of revenge by defeating Ali, but he still manages to escape.




With the last enemy defeated, suddenly the world starts to emit a strange glow.



Everyone seems quite confused about this turn of events...



.. but just as suddenly as the pulsing starts, it stops and a strange music starts.




Then, the image of a woman appears. Calling herself Aphrodia Neuro, she asks the Gundams (or the player?!) to gather power in order to stop the ruining of the world. She also either says to look for or to defeat a mobile suit names Halphas Gundam (but you'll do both either way).



And with that, the screen shatters, and the world gets covered in a strange green fog...

MISSION COMPLETE!

Now, this is the first place where I'm looking for some input from YOU the readers!

I already talked about Master Units a bit ago, but now we get to choose one for ourselves! When starting G Gen World, and after playing through the tutorial mission, you get to choose one notable pilot (hero or rival) from most of the Gundam series in World. Over the course of the game we'll be able to pick a total of 4 Masters out of this selection of 25. The chosen Master and a Basic version of their mobile suit will be given to you in addition to the default units that you get for starting a new game. I'll go over those units in the next update, but first let's look at our choices for the Master.

As a note, Basic suits are pretty much First Episode representations of the appropriate mobile suit. They have very similar stats, and are generally missing many weapons or abilities. However, they can evolve into not only their normal version, but also provide access to other suits within their series. I'll give some brief descriptions of the units and pilots for each entry.





Series: Mobile Suit Gundam
Pilot: Amuro Ray
Mobile Suit: RX-78-2 Gundam
Starting Skill: Agile (Increases Unit Mobility)

Amuro is the one that started it all. The hero of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, Amuro is pretty much the face of Gundam. The OYW version of Amuro can pick up some good skills like Lonewolf (increases damage and accuracy when fighting without support), but his unique skill, White Devil, is pretty limited. I'm not EXACTLY sure what it applies to, but it only gives bonuses to Unit Attack and Unit Mobility in "specific units", which likely means anything Amuro piloted (Gundam, Dejeh, Zeta Plus, ReGZ, Nu Gundam). Really, though, Amuro is a fairly strong starting Master, especially since the Gundam manages to get pretty powerful weapons when it finally evolves. It even has the best weapon on any of the Basic mobile suits, even if it has a hard range to use.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam
Pilot: Char Aznable
Mobile Suit: Char's Gelgoog Commander Type
Starting Skill: Red Comet (Increases Unit Mobility and Unit Attack in specific units)

Char is the rival character in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, and set the theme for all future rivals (notibly, the use of masks and red being three times faster). While Char is one of the first Newtypes in Gundam, he was never really shown to be a strong one, instead relying on his natural piloting abilities. His starting (and unique) skill is basically the same as Amuro's, but it may not be as limited since Char has piloted a lot more units over his career. Series-wise, the Gelgoog is just as strong as the Gundam, but gamewise it doesn't quite manage it due to the weapon disparity. It can evolve into some nice things, though.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory
Pilot: Kou Uraki
Mobile Suit: RX-78GP01 "Zephyranthes"
Starting Skill: Potential (Unit Attack and Unit Defense goes up when HP falls below 50%)

A lot of people don't like Kou, but I don't really agree much with the hate. Kou was a test pilot for some new model Gundams, and ended up chasing some Zeon remnants after one of them stole the test suit designed to shoot nuclear missiles. you could probably say that the whole OAV was based on people making some questionable decisions. Kou's starting skill is not useful since you shouldn't be sitting at under 50% HP... but then you need to look at what Kou's unique skill is. Phantom Ace is quite seriously one of the most busted skills in the game, since it gives like +4 Unit Attack/Unit Defense per level, as long as you're piloting a unit that's Size XL or higher. This makes Kou actually an amazingly great Master Unit, since normally XL and XXL units take up more then one deploy slot in your ships, but they only take up one slot when put in the Master slot. And since Masters also regen HP and EN...! The only downside is how often you'll find great size XL or XXL units, especially since most of them are only usable in Space.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory
Pilot: Anavel Gato
Mobile suit: RX-78GP02A Gundam "Physalis"
Starting Skill: Ghost of Solomon (Reduces MP cost of Awaken weapons)

Gato is the rival of Stardust Memories. He is probably one of the weakest of the choices you can take, since even though the GP02 has the highest weapon damage of all the Masters, it can only use it once, and only if it hasn't already attacked. Amusingly, his unique starting skill is actually not REALLY that good for him, though you could get a customized version of his unit that can use funnels.

Gato is also a jerk.




Series: Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
Pilot: Kamille Bidan
Mobile Suit: MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam
Starting Skill: Rage (Critical rate goes up as HP falls)

Kamille is the hero of Zeta Gundam, and is really sensitive about his name. In fact, right at the start of the anime, he ends up stealing a prototype mobile suit and joining an anti-government militia because someone said it sounded like a girl's name. The Zeta Gundam is a solid mobile suit, and actually has a good powered weapon even in it's Basic form. It can also evolve into a bunch of nice suits later on. His starting skill is not that useful for the same reason Kou's is, however Kamille does pick up some good ones later.




Series: Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
Pilot: Quattro Bajina
Mobile Suit: MSN-00100 Hyaku Shiki
Starting Skill: Newtype (Increases Awaken and Special Awaken weapon attack power)

Quattro is one of the ace pilots of the anti-government militia AEUG, and is Kamille's mentor. He's also TOTALLY NOT CHAR AZNABLE. NOPE. NO WAY. The Hyaku Shiki is a pretty solid mobile suit, but mainly evolves into grunt suits. Though that's not a bad thing, but we'll be able to got those easily anyway. Quattro's starting skill amusingly doesn't help in in any of the units he's supposed to be piloting as Quattro, but it does open up his choices.




Series: Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
Pilot: Jerid Messa
Mobile Suit: RX-178 Gundam MkII (Titan's Colours)
Starting Skill: Bad Luck (Reduce damage taken and increase Evasion when HP falls under 50%)

Jerid is the main rival of Zeta Gundam, and is, in fact, the one who insulted Kamille at the start of the series. Whoops. Jerid's starting skill is actually kind of useless, but he DOES pick up one of the most useful skills in the game: Elite. Elite increases the amount of unit XP the pilot earns, which allows you to level up and evolve your mobile suits faster. Other then that, though, Jerid isn't amazing, but he's not terrible either.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ
Pilot: Judau Ashta
Mobile Suit: MSZ-010 ZZ Gundam
Starting Skill: Shangri-la Spirit (Increases Shooting/Melee/Defense/reaction by 5 at High Tension or higher; Decreases EN cost of all non-Hissatsu weapons)

Judau is the hero of Gundam ZZ, and is the kind of guy who is looking to make a quick buck. He starts off the series trying to steal the Zeta Gundam, until finally being roped into helping out the AEUG against the threat of Neo Zeon. The Gundam ZZ is a very powerful mobile suit, but though it has a lot of power behind it, it also isn't very mobile, and can run out of EN fast. Generally, you want your units to be dodging attacks insted of tanking them, though there's a few units that are capable of it; the ZZ... isn't REALLY one of them, but one of it's evolutions can.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ
Pilot: Haman Karn
Mobile suit: AMX-004 Quebely
Starting Skill: Newtype

Haman really, really hates Char. And she is excessively protective of Mineva Zabi. She is very manipulative, and generally just isn't really very nice. Maybe because of Char.

She gets some alright skills, but the Quebely isn't really that great due to a heavy reliance on MP weapons, and doesn't evolve into much either. I would only pick her as a Master choice because if you want to buy her later, she's one of the most expensive pilots at 50000 credits.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack
Pilot: Amuro Ray
Mobile suit: RX-93 Nu Gundam
Starting Skill: Newtype

Though Amuro has grown up and increased his skill as a pilot... he also became more of a jerk. Really, a lot of what Amuro does in Char's Counterattack is just be an asshole to people. He is, though, still a great pilot, and uses what was one of the most powerful mobile suits until SEED came out. The CCA version of Amuro has pretty much the same skills as the OYW Amuro, though they get unlocked at different stages. The Nu Gundam also evolves into some nice suits.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack
Pilot: Char Aznable
Mobile Suit: MSN-04 Sazabi
Starting Skill: Newtype

Char, though, also got shoved through the jerkwringer. After being a mostly nice guy in Zeta Gundam, he gets pretty pissed off because people in general are terrible, so he wants to drop asteroids on Earth to make it uninhabitable. Which is pretty jerkish. CCA Char has pretty much the same skills as Quattro, and the Sazabi is an alright suit, and can evolve into some good things. Sazabi has enough stuff with it to use instead of the Awaken weapons if you want to be building Tension.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn
Pilot: Banagher Links
Mobile Suit: RX-0 Unicorn Gundam
Starting Skill: Rigid (increases unit HP)

Banagher is pretty much an analog for Amuro, much like the Unicorn Gundam is an analog for the RX-78. Banagher has some pretty solid stats and the Unicorn is definately a powerful mobile suit (as you get to see in the intro mission), but Banagher doesn't get much in the way of skills (and what great ones he gets are actually much more appropriate for a different mobile suit), and in fact ends up a lot more appropriate as a Warship crewman instead of a mobile suit pilot.

Series: Mobile Suit Gundam F91
Pilot: Seabook Arno
Mobile Suit: F91 Gundam Formula 91
Starting Skill: Vigor (Tension increases faster then normal)

Seabook is a very solid pilot. He's the child of the tech who created (part of) the mobile suit he pilots, which is kind of a theme in Gundam! Though he doesn't have great skills, he does have ones that work really well with his signature units. And the F91 is not only a great mobile suit in it's own right, but it can also evolve into some other great mobile suits. Seabook can also be converted to a Warship crewman, but doing that to combat pilots is generally a waste. Vigor is a great skill to get on anyone, since having high Tension is really useful.




Series: Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam
Pilot: Tobia Arronax
Mobile Suit: XM-X1 Crossbone Gundam X-1
Starting Skill: Pirate (Increases Pilot Melee and Unit Attack; increases Evasion if piloting a unit that is Size M or smaller)

Tobia was a student who ended up getting wrangled in the middle of a pirate attack, and shanghaied into joining the Crossbone Vanguard under Seabook Arno Kincaid Nau. He went on to become an amazing mobile Suit pilot, and he shows it in World. Though he doesn't get some of the really amazing damage skills, he does get a bunch of all around awesome ones. And the Crossbone X-1 opens up access to a lot of nice suits.




Series: Mobile Suit Victory Gundam
Pilot: Uso Ewin
Mobile Suit: LM312V04 Victory Gundam
Starting Skill: Newtype

Uso was probably one of the least likliest Gundam heroes, and his series was a strange mix of olden Tomino and crazy Tomino. He basically went around the whole series either being molested by women, or having them killed in front of his eyes. Uso is also strongely hinted at being the grandson of Char Aznable. The V Gundam is a respectable line of mobile suits, and does open up some evolution channels.




Series: Mobile Fighter G Gundam
Pilot: Domon Kasshu
Mobile Suit: GF13-017NJ Shining Gundam
Starting Skill: King of Hearts (Increases the power of Melee and Special Melee weapons)

Domon is pretty hurtful. At 20 years old, he's also one of the oldest Gundam anime protagonists. He's pretty geared towards approaching the enemy and punching them in the face pretty hard. The only problem with that is that most of the G Gundam units cost MP for the majority of their attacks. And the hero ones only get worse when you get them into high Tension and their special modes activate. That said, Domon does still get a LOT of bonuses to standard melee, so he could be useful in just about any melee focused unit.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
Pilot: Heero Yuy
Mobile Suit: XXXG-01W Wing Gundam
Starting Skill: Taciturn (Increases Pilot Defense and Unit Defense)

Heero is probably most North Americans' first exposure to a Gundam hero, and it's not really that representative of the others. Heero and the rest of his series buddies aer actually very good at fighting enemies without using Support Attacks, and gets quite a few bonuses for doing so. As well, the Wing Gundam evolves into some of the best units in World, so it's certainly worthwhile to break into that at some point.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
Pilot: Zechs Merquise
Mobile Suit: OZ-00MS Tallgeese
Starting Skill: Chivalry (Increases Accuracy and Critical Rate during 1v1 battles)

Zechs is also, likewise, probably much of North America's first look at the Char-alikes that Gundam likes to use in their series. Zechs gets some of the best solo-combat skills AND he gets Elite, which makes him a VERY good pilot for grinding unit XP. However, there is a problem. Zechs is one of a few pilots you can purchase that have two "forms", so to speak; you can either have Zechs Merquise (the OZ pilot), or Milliardo Peacecraft (the Preventor). The thing is that both form gives you a different starting skill, and Milliardo Peacecraft gives you the much superior Cool-Headed, which is a critical skill towards making absolutely ridiculous damage numbers. That said, there's nothing wrong with taking Zechs as a master and then just buying Cool-Headed afterwards.




Series: After War Gundam X
Pilot: Garrod Ran
Mobile Suit: GX-9900 Gundam X
Starting Skill: Positive (Reduced MP loss after battle)

Garrod is a scavenger, and while Gundam X is patterned a lot like what if the One Year War ended badly, he's not really written to be another Amuro. In fact, he's probably more like another Judau. The Gundam X line evolves into some great mobile suits, and the Gundam X itself (one it evolves into the normal version) has a very powerful Lock weapon, while Garrod himself has some nice skills for boosting his MP or keeping EN costs down.




Series: Turn A Gundam
Pilot: Loran Cehack
Mobile Suit: SYSTEM ∀-99 ∀ Gundam
Starting Skill: Diligent (Increases Pilot XP earned)

Loran is kind of a confused guy. So, he's from the moon, and comes to Earth to try and bridge the gap between the two nations. And he does this by dressing as a girl and piloting a mobile suit. Yep. Seriously, though, Loran himself is actually pretty solid of a pilot, gaining some amazing skills to boost his role as a Master Unit or a Squad Leader, but he doesn't get very much in the way of damage boosting, so relies heavily on the unit he's piloting. And the Turn A itself is pretty solid, and evolves into some other nice units.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED
Pilot: Kira Yamato
Mobile Suit: GAT-X105 Aile Strike Gundam
Starting Skill: SEED (Increases Pilot Shooting/Melee/Defense/Evasion; Increases Awakening at Critical Tension)

Kira is basically a much better written Amuro. That was, until you get to SEED Destiny, but that's another matter. Gundam SEED is really the One Year War rewritten to not be quite as bad, but it still ends up being kind of messed up at the end. But it's partially (mostly) due to issues with the writer and director. In any case, Kira is a fairly solid pilot, but foces almost entirely on evasion, and not much on boosting damage dealt. The Aile Strike, though, acts as a helpful stepping stone all throughout the Gundam SEED units... but you also start with some purchasable units that can do that as well.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED
Pilot: Athrun Zala
Mobile Suit: GAT-X303 Aegis Gundam
Starting Skill: SEED

Gundam SEED did something kind of strange with the way it distributed the Gundam tropes, and basically split it's Char into two people. Athrun got the rival aspect and the "it's red, so it's three times faster", while the main villain got the weird mask. Unlike Kira, Athrun is a bit more geared towards taking hits instead of avoiding them, and again doesn't have much in the way of damage boosting. And you can easily get the Aegis from evolving other SEED units, as well.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny
Pilot: Shinn Asuka
Mobile Suit: ZGMF-X56S/β Sword Impulse
Starting Skill: SEED

Due to the... trainwreck of a way SEED Destiny's plot is written, Shinn is: The Hero, The Villain, AND The Rival. At once. Shinn is a very angry man, who really hates Kira because he might have killed Shinn's sister by accident during a battle. So Shinn becomes a ZAFT mobile suit pilot pretty much just to get his revenge. Unlike Kira and Athrun, Shinn is actually a bit more melee focused, but he's also meant to be more defensive. He's also the easiesy way to break into the SEED Destiny mobile suits; ESPECIALLY the Gundams. If you try to evolve the SEED Destiny Gundams from SEED units, you end up having to jump through more then a few hoops to do so.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam 00
Pilot: Setsuna F. Seiei
Mobile Suit: GN-001 Gundam Exia
Starting Skill: Gundam Meister (Accuracy and Evasion increased when piloting a Gundam)

Setsuna wants to become Gundam :|. He was originally drafted as a child soldier in some not-Afghanistan, and ended up seeing the 0 Gundam as it wiped out most of the militants. Surviving the attack, he resolved to do anything in order to have that kind of power, and eventually ended up in Celestial Being. Exia is the best and most direct route towards getting the absolutely most broken unit in the game... but this version of Setsuna isn't REALLY the best one you could use. Oh, for sure he's got a lot of REALLY great skills for fighting solo, and the Exia is an incredibly solid MS, but there's ones with slightly better skill distributions we can get later.




Series: Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Second Season
Pilot: Mister Bushido
Mobile Suit: GNX-704T/AC Ahead Sakigake
Starting Skill: Sure Kill (Chance for a normal attack to be a Super Critical at any Tension level)

As was already mentioned, Mister Bushido is all about getting revenge on Setsuna, and fills in as the Char for Gundam 00 Season 2. Mister Bushido is really, pretty much just straight out power. He even starts with a skill that, at level 1, gives you a 5% chance to have any attack be a Super Critical. The Ahead Sakigaki is not really that good of a mobile suit, but it does evolve into the amazing Masurao later on (though I actually prefer to go all the way through Graham's personal mobile suits, because there's some other amazing ones in there).


And that's all of the Master Units you can choose from! I'm going to leave voting and questions/commentary going for a bit because I have to take care of some personal things the next few weeks, but I'll see if I can hash out at least a smaller update if people seem to have a starting Master they're keen on~.

Well, this shows how much of a lot this is going to be... the only thing that disappoints me is the fact that we're on season 2 of Gundam 00, but at least the presence of everyone else compensates for it. (Except for no 08th MS Team... mou.)

I'll put a vote for Garrod and the GX.

What are you trying to do with the [S] tags? [SPOILER] or [STRIKE]?

Anyways, is this really even a choice? Domon.

Absolutely. G Gundam is the best Gundam show.

I don't know who I'll vote for when the choice comes up again later, though. The other best Gundam show is missing, as AKEACS pointed out. Three Chars sounds kind of appealing.

I'm going to cast a vote for Uso and the Victory Gundam. Someone needs to stick up for this show!

Also, I put something like 90 hours into this game. Still recovering.

I'll probably be the only one, but I gotta vote for Zechs/Tallgeese.

I haven't played this particular game, but I have played and loved a decent chunk of G Gen SEED and Generation of CE, so it's nice to see another one of the games here. This one reminds me that I do still probably need to watch Unicorn at some point though. =X

As for Master choice, Seabrook or Tobia both sound like decent options, and I think we really should get a Char iteration or expy at some point on principle, though not necessarily right off the bat.

I'm kind of sad Gato's not really a great character game-mechanically, because while I slept through most of 0083, he is the basis for one of the best characters in School Rumble. Though really at least half the characters in School Rumble are one of the best characters in School Rumble.

Also going to vote for Uso and the Victory. It's criminally under-appreciated.

Strikethrough, because I'm used to it being [s] from IPB!

The site that I use for most of my game details doesn't actually have character entries down for Gato yet, for some reason. I thought it did at one point, but the site was also reset a long time ago and some people never recovered all the data. So it's actually quite possible that Gato gets some great skills later. It's just especially weird that his starting skill (and unique one) is a skill he would have never actually used, going by his canon units.

Of course, we're not likely to have people using just their canon units...!

Ah, alright. That's fair; I took your blurb as implying he's fairly weak overall, but apparently I misunderstood.

Oh, and for the record.

Master Units are not the only way to get canon pilots. World has SO MANY purchasable pilots in it. Once I get into the game proper, I'll let you guys keep a running vote on who I should hire, though I'll also throw in my two cents about a few of them that I really liked from my previous playthrough.

By the way... does picking a Master actually change the stages we go through? (For instance, if one picked Haman right now, we'd get some Zeon-allied units.)

I really want to see a bunch of these guys in action, but I think Loran would be a good start.

Unfortunately no. All a Master does is give us a bonus unit in addition to the default units we start with.

I'll vote for Garrod and Gundam X.

I'll admit that I don't know anything about Gundam or mecha shows in general, having never watched them, but this looks pretty interesting. The music is pretty nice, too. Anyway...

Might as well go with this!

Well, owning the PSP version of this, I will note that the V2 Gundam is one of the strongest units in the game, and you can get it pretty early.

I picked up a G Generation SD Shining Gundam model the day this started without even knowing. Clearly this is a sign that Domon is my vote.

Welcome back to Let's Play SD Gundam G Generation World!

Today I'm just going to do a small update to show the intermission screens in the game. It seems that Domon is the leading favourite at the moment, but since I won't be able to put up the first mission for 2 or 3 weeks, I figured I should put up this first so that if anyone wants to suggest pilots to purchase or evolution chains to follow!

In between missions, you have a set of menus to allow you to do things like arrange your team, check out the gallery, or see what units you've discovered.




To begin with, this is the menu you would be using more often then not. This is the Team Management section, which allows you to do things like purchase new pilots, purchase skills for your pilots, purchase mobile suits, evolve mobile suits, and arrange your pilots and mobile suits in your ships. This menu is further broken down into a number of sub-menus.



First we have the Group menu. This is the location where you arrange your mobile suits and pilots into teams on your ships. It also has shortcuts to allow you to do things like manage skills or evolve mobile suits.



And this is how the group screen looks like. Over the course of the game, you will be able to create 4 Groups (one for each Master Unit). Each Group is comprised of a Warship, a Master Unit, and 2 Teams of up to 4 units. Any unit that is size L or lower takes up one deployment slot, while XL units take two and XXL units take 4. The unit piloted by the Master can be any size.

As a note, the pilot in the Master field doesn't even have to be our chosen Master! We could put any pilot or unit in there, and they deploy as the Master. So in the end, our choice of Master only determines a free pilot and free mobile suit.

You'll notice that both the Master and the Team 1 fields indicate an area and a number. This is showing the size of the aura that unit projects. The first unit in a Team is always the Leader, and that pilot's stats determine the size of the aura. There's a number of ways to increase this aura's size. The first is that all pilots have a stat called "Command" that increases the size of the aura at certain values. In addition, there's a number of skills that you can purchase that also give fixed increases, such as Champion, which gives up to +3 Aura as well as a bonus to Unit Attack.

Of the characters I've used, two of the best pilots for maximizing your Team Leader aura are Sergei Smirnov and Rolan Cehack. Sergei actually has two awesome +Leadership skills: His unique (and starting) skill Wild Bear of Russia which gives +15 UA (at max level) and +3 Aura, AND he gets Champion, as well, for a delicious +27 UA! That's a LOT of bonus damage. Rolan, on the other hand, has the utterly ridiculous Laura Rola as his unique skill (referencing his cross-dressing self which is also an alternate form for Rolan), which gives +6 Aura, as well as increasing MP gain of all pilots within his aura. You could also give Rolan the Mood Maker skill which increases weapon accuracy for all pilots within his group.

Anyway, in addition to the Master Unit we chose, G Gen World also starts us off with a free ship, some mobile suits, and some G Gen Originals, so we can at least do something in a mission. We also start with 50000 credits to purchase another pilot and mobile suit, if we wish. Which I will, but we can get to that later! As for the units and pilots we start with, well...




We start off with a Carry Base. It's not the WORST ship we could use, but it's really not very good. It'll be enough to get us on our feet. It has a decent range of weapons; basically showcasing a variety of weapons you will normally see on Warships. It's also usable in both space and atmosphere, which is good! Because it'll be a very long time until we can afford another ship...

As for the crew, they're also basically showcasing the various positions you have in a Warship. As starting G Gen Originals, they're not GREAT, but they're good enough, especially since Warships shouldn't really be part of the fight (though they do need to be near it). Over the course of the game, I will likely be replacing these characters with... much better choices. And since this is a good opportunity for it, let's go over these pilots and the positions of a Warship!

Warships have, as you can tell, 6 slots for pilots, each one filling a different role. In the end, the combinations of these roles makes Warships a lot more powerful then a mobile suit by pure stats, but they are still hurt by poor weapon ranges, lack of movement, and an inability to be upgraded. As a result, though a ship may have the best pilot stats, they will be very quickly outclassed by mobile suits.

The positions on a ship, what they affect, and who is currently slotted there are as follows. This order is going from left to right, top to bottom in the above image.

Captain
Current: Zenon Teagle
Affects: Everything. All of the Captain's stats apply to everything the ship does.
Starting Skill: Leadership (Increases aura when placed as the Captain of a Warship)

XO
Current: None.
Affects: Everything. All of the XO's stats add (to a smaller degree) to the Captain's.

Operator
Current: Junal Liam
Affects: Weapon Accuracy; Operator's Ranged stat is added to the Captain's.
Starting Skill: Information Analysis (Increases pilot ranged stat when placed as the Operator of a Warship)

Helmsman
Current: Ernst
Affects: Ship evasiveness; Helmsman's Reaction is added to the Captain's.
Starting Skill: Helmsman Sense (increases pilot Evasion when placed as the Helmsman of a Warship)
Special Note: Helmsmen also get a skill that boosts the power of "rapid fire" weapons on a Warship, such as the first weapon in the Carry Base's weapon list.

Mechanic
Current: Kay Nimrod
Affects: Warship defense and repair/reload rate of docked mobile suits; Mechanic's Defense stat is added to the Captain's.
Starting Skill: Mechanical Skill (Increases pilot Defense when placed as the Mechanic of a Warship. Increases HP and EN recovery of Warship and docked units.)
Special Note: While the Mechanic apparently affects the HP and EN recovery of docked mobile suits, I've never actually seen a unit NOT be repaired to 100% after one turn of being docked in a ship. So I don't know if I just always had an awesome mechanic or what.

Guest
Current: Rachel Ransom
Affects: MP Recovery for units within the ship's Aura.
Starting Skill: Charisma (Increases Charm when placed as the Guest of a Warship. EXP gain for all units belonging to the Warship increased as long as they're within the Warship's aura)



In addition to a free ship, we also have 3 free starting mobile suits and pilots. They're not terrible mobile suits, but they're not great either. Enough to get us started and not be outmatched by our enemies.




The first mobile suit we have is the GGS-000 Phoenix Zero. The Phoenix Zero is a new version of the old GGF-001 Phoenix Gundam that could be said to basically be a mass-produced version of it. In previous G Generation games, the Phoenix was basically the most powerful unit in them. But the Phoenix is also a staple of the "console" style games, so starting in G Generation Spirits, they introduced this Phoenix Zero as a version to be able to give to players at the start.

The Phoenix Zero is pretty solid, boasting a decent set of cheaper weapons as well as a nice x4. It also has decent mobility.

The startng pilot of the Phoenix Zero we get is Mark Glider, who is also a G Gen staple. He's not a bad pilot; very solid for the start of the game. His starting skill is Proficient which gives a 5% reduction to EN costs, and also increases weapon accuracy. He does get some good skills later on, including one G Gen Original unique one that gives extra bonuses if he's piloting a G Gen Original unit.

The best thing about the Phoenix Zero, though, as I'll cover later, is what it can evolve into.






After the Phoenix, we have two Tornado Gundams. Tornados are ancient G Gen staples, and are... historically really terrible. Because they're starting units. They're better then grunts, but that's not saying much. That said, it seemed to have gotten some love in World, since it's Scattering Mega Particle Cannon is actually very good for how much it costs.

To pilot these Tornados, you get two more G Gen Staples; Ranlow Shade and Ellis Claude. Again, they're both solid pilots and have a decent selection of skills. Ranlow starts with Aggressive that gives a bonus to Unit Attack and to Pilot Reaction, while Ellis starts with Diligent.

Like the Phoenix Zero, the Tornados also benefit mostly from evolving into some good units.


Now, you probably noticed that we have an empty space in this starting squad, and the second squad is grayed out. Warships also have a stat that determines how many squads can be equipped in them; in this case it's only one. There is an item you can install on a Warship, though, to give them a second squad, if they only have one. Generally, though, there's no reason to not buy new ships that have two team slots, especially since it's only the low level and REALLY CHEAP ones that only have one.

That's it for the Group menu for now. It'll be very heavily used by myself during the course of the game, but that's enough details for this overview.




The next section is the Planning menu, and this is one menu where all of the various ways to convert one Mobile Suit into another are stored.




The Development menu is where you can see and select all units you own that are able to evolve into another mobile Suit, and manage these evolutions. I'll go more into evolution in a later section.



Some Mobile Suits can be "combined" so to speak with others to unlock different units in the in-game store. This does not consume the Mobile Suits used, and this menu even has a check to see if you can perform multiple combinations at once and will unlock all the new units in a single go.



Lastly, there's the Exchange. The Exchange lets you take any unit that is at least level 2 and replace it with one of 4 other units of approximately the same worth. you still need to pay some amount of credits to do this, but it's generally a bit cheaper, and can help you move into different series lists if you're having trouble breaking into it for evolutions.




Backing out of the Planning screen, the next option is the Character menu. This is actually a terrible menu. There's another one later that does the SAME THINGS, but is actually more fully featured. So there's no requirement to use this one ever.




Next is the My Character menu. In addition to having a ton of canon characters in the game, G Gen World also lets you make your own faceless grunt pilots based on one of 6 archetypes.




You can choose the name, gender, what archetype they'll be using, what pilot suit they'll use (from a wide selection ranging from all over the Gundam franchise, but generally limited to generic ones. There are no unique pilot suits, like say Banagher's or Domon's.), what voice type they'll use, and finally what their personal theme song is from all the songs in the game.

As was mentioned, there are 6 archetypes for the Create-A-Grunt. They are Universal (Good at everything), Fighter (Good at melee), Shooter (Good at ranged), Awaken (Newtype), Defender (Tank), and Leader (Team Leader or Warship Captain). If anyone wants to have a Create-A-Grunt made, just give me the details! These characters are free to use, but, uh. They're actually pretty terrible. But they're also faceless grunts you get for free, so, hey!




If you manage to capture any units during a level (and I'll let you know about that when it comes up), they'll be found in here after the mission. I'll go into more details on it when it comes up.

Lastly, we have the List menu. List has sub-menus to allow us to look at the 4 different types of things we need to be managing, and generally gives you more options then any of the previous menus do.




The first is the Unit List, which lets us see all of the units we currently own, as well as do any management on them. There's very little that we can do right now, however I can take this opportunity to take a bit about Evolution.

As was mentioned before, the big gameplay of G Gen World is to fill out the MS collection by capturing and/or evolving mobile suits. You evolve a unit by using it to kill enemy units to gain XP, and once it reaches a certain level, it's able to be evolved using this menu to one of a number of other units based on it's tech tree.



Here's an example of the evolution menu. All units will have a maximum of 4 potential evolution targets, which are predetermined. Each one has a specific level that you need to reach in order for your current unit to be able to evolve. For example, you can see that our Shining (Basic) needs to reach Level 5 in order to evolve into normal Shining Gundam. If you have not yet seen one of the mobile suits that you are evolving to (and thus it's not in the Collection yet), then the unit will appear in silhouette. Now, I'll ask you all: I can just tell you what each unit we get can evolve into, and let you give suggestions, or I can leave it as a mystery for those who don't know. Please let me know which way you want me to go!




Next we have the Phoenix Zero's evolution options. I will, though, say one thing about the G Gen Originals. Tornado Gundam and the Phoenix line only evolve up through themselves, and the other 3 options on their evolution list are other Basic Gundams. For example, that Shining we see there is actually Shining (Basic).



And lastly we have the Tornado Gundam's. We have two Tornadoes, however one of them will be evolving to Phoenix Zero, because we need to add it to the in-game store as it isn't in there by default. The other one can evolve into one of 3 more Basic Gundams.




As well, in the Unit List, we can access the store. We can access this from any time we see the unit collection, but this is generally the best place to access it. In the store you can, of course, buy new units that you have unlocked access to. The game gives you access to 27 by default, and I'll list them below. But these are basically really weak grunts that give access to the appropriate series for evolutions. You can sort the shop by price, by size, or even by series, if so desired.

Our starting units are:

• Type 61 Tank
• Dopp Fighter
• HT-01B Magella Attack
• Type 74 Hover Truck
• RB-79 Ball
• MP-02A Oggo
• MS-05B Zaku I
• MSER-04 Anf
• Geze
• MRC-U11D Walking Dumpling "WaD"
• MSM-04 Acguy
• MS-06 Zaku II
• RMS-006 Jenice
• RGM-79 GM
• JMS60 Busshi
• OZ-06MS Leo (Space and Land as seperate units)
• DT-6800A Daughtress
• ZGMF-1017 GINN
• AMX-003 Gaza-C
• VMS-15 Union Realdo
• AEU-09 AEU Enact
• OZ-07AMS Aries
• RGM-79(G) GM Sniper
• FX-550 Skygrasper
• MBF-M1 Astray
• ZM-S08G Zolo
• Tornado Gundam

So, it's mostly grunts, but there's a few there that are individually pretty good and/or evolve into really nice units. The first mission is in space, but later on I'll be picking up the AEU Enact and evolving it up, because it has some GREAT units in it's path. GM and GM Sniper also can evolve into really great units, and are actually pretty good to start with. But again, if there's any units people want me to be using, just let me know! I'll be keeping a running vote on this, so any time a unit is mentioned, or some kind of evolution is discovered, just let me know what you want to see.





Next is the Warship List. Here you can arrange and buy new Warships. Unfortunately you can't do anything with a Warship other then install items on them, so this menu is only needed to buy new ones.

For the record, unlike the unit store, the Warship store is populated from the start with every ship we can possibly get. There ARE some ships in the game that we cannot purchase, but for the most post those are really specialized versions of ones that already exist. Or are really not ships at all, but the game considered them one.

In any case, there is WAY too many ships (59 in total), so I'm not going to list them all. Let's just suffice it to say that if there's a ship you want me to use, I can get it. Anything from the White Base to the Throughbred, Ptolemaios to Mother Vanguard, Ra Cailum to Archangel, and everything in between.





Next is the Character List. This is the best place to go to do any kind of management on your pilots, though some of the management can also be done well from the Group window. The main thing to do here is to purchase skills for your pilots with collected Ace Points.



Here is Domon's skill screen for example. Ace Points are used to upgrade the pilot's stats as well as purchase or upgrade skills. Each box costs 80 Ace Points to fill in, and the cost goes up as you reach certain levels (for example, after 5 stat increases, the cost goes up by 10. Skills have their costs change based on the skill). Pilots can only have a maximum of 5 skills, though you can delete unnecessary ones for space. Skills also are unlocked at 10 level intervals, with the last ones you can acquire unlocked at level 40. Theoretically pilots can level to 99, but that's pretty much unnecessary; when I beat the game on the PSP, my highest leveled guy was L40, and he was 5 levels ahead of the second highest leveled guy, who was about another 10 levels higher then the AVERAGE level of my squad. Pilot levels are great for unlocking skills, but are not so required for actually killing things.

That said, there is one flaw with the way this system works: Gaining Ace Points is DREADFULLY SLOW. Pilots gain 1 Ace Point for every kill they make, and if they are one of the top 3 kill counts for a level, they get a bonus of 30~65 Ace Points based on the stage and their ranking. So if you are doing nothing but blasting through the levels, you can likely end the game with having not enough Ace Points to buy ANY skills at all! There is a stage that's great for farming Ace Points, and I'll likely be (ab)using that so I can fill out my guys. I would PREFER to go straight from level to level, but that's going to be a bit unlikely. So since I'll have to do some grinding anyway, this is where suggesting evolution routes comes in handy!

You can also purchase pilots from this menu. There are a LOT of pilots; just about every named character shows up here! Even some who are not actually pilots, like Mariemaia Khushrenada or Kid Salsamille! Due to the way the skill system works, just about any character can be good eventually, even if they have shitty stats. It's mostly the skills they have that make the difference. So, if there are any pilots you guys want to see, let me know! There's a few that I'm going to take as a given, but many slots will be open for reader suggestions.





Lastly, we have this menu for purchasing and managing out Option Parts, or OPs. OPs are basically items that you can equip on your units for various effects. All units have 3 slots for OPs to go into, as well. The effects of the OPs range from consumable items that restore your HP or EN (we start with 3 that repair HP), to increasing the amount of XP you earn from killing enemies, to increasing the damage of certain weapon types, to adding passive regeneration. You start off with a small list, but unlock more as you complete levels. A random OP is unlocked each time you beat a level until they're all unlocked.

With the Team Management screen done, we go back to the main menu!



The Mission menu is where we choose a level to attempt. I'll go into that more in the next update. The EX thing allows us to switch between normal difficulty and HELL difficulty once we've beaten the game.




The Collection menu lets us go through the MS Collection and show us the things we've seen and unlocked, as well as what we need to evolve to every unit in the game. The silhouette is because at every 5% interval after 10%, we unlock a special pilot, and the silhouette is just showing us an example of who that person is. Most of the ones we unlock through this are... not GREAT, but good in special ways. For example, there is a batch near the end that have their Tension bar as entirely High Tension.





Next is the Gallery, where we can also view all the mobile suits we've seen, but also all the ships and pilots (not all of which are purchasable). As well, we can view battle videos from various series showing off their stuff (like one which has the Gundam 00 Season 2 mobile suits doing their Trans-Am Attacks against the Endless Waltz Gundams), the various video clips that can be seen in-game, listen to the music, or view the credits.





Next is the Options Menu, which has about all the options you are expecting from a game like this.






I have no idea what this menu does. I'm sure that one of our readers that is fluent in Japanese will be able to answer that, however!




And lastly we have the standard Save/Load Game menu.


And that's all there is for the intermission screens in SD Gundam G Generation World. Come back next time in which I'll take a final tally of the Master votes, look at suggestions for our first purchases, and then tackle the first mission! See you then!

The menu is named "Data Share", and the prompt says you need to set a nickname for it (and then proceeds to you getting to set it), so I assume it's some sort of data transfer to/from other people sort of deal.