Mobile Suit Gundam's free-to-play multiplayer team action game is now available on Hong Kong PlayStation Network! Originally available on Japanese PSN only,
The game is a little similar to the online multiplayer counterpart of XBOX360's Operation Troy (aka Mobile Ops: The One Year War), where you can fight in MS as well as on foot, with the latter taking more of a role of taking control points and destroying objectives. Overall the gameplay can be compared to the popular Battlefield series.
Each team (Federation and Zeon) start out near their base and work their way to capture control points (for spawning and scoring points). Apart from taking down enemies and capturing control points, one can also set a timed bomb and destroy the enemy's main base, which will score a great amount of points. The battle ends when the time is up, and the side with more points being the winner.
As more games are played, more points and schematics can be obtained for new MS, parts, and weapons. Once a particular schematic is completed you can use the points to unlock it. The new content will then be available for customisation.
However, there are restrictions for free-to-play. There are restrictions on how many times you can go on a battle: There are 3 "energy slots", and one gets used up per battle. They will get recovered over time, or one can pay money in order to play more games consecutively.
I played a few games on the beginner-friendly battles. Combat system takes a small time to get used to (as I suck aiming at enemies with an analog stick), but the game does offer a fair amount of customisation as you play more. The only problem I have at the moment is how it is not easy to start a game, as a room has to be full with all players ready before the game can start. There are several occasions where one cannot join any rooms, or that the wait for the last player to get readied takes too long and people come in and out indefinitely. Hopefully this will get fixed soon.
Here is the official trailer for the Hong Kong version. Don't worry too much about the Chinese if you cannot read them; the video is fairly self-explanatory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCnxENdOu3g
Official Hong Kong website:
http://bo-asia.ggame.jp/zh-HK/
Official Taiwan website:
http://bo-asia.ggame.jp/zh-TW/
I love gundam based action RPGs myself, but I'm not liking the base format of this game. I really wish it could be made more like Gundam Senki where you can just buy the game and play offline along with online option... online play can be fun, but like the issues you mentioned already, I find that one spends more time waiting then playing. And the restrictions with free play is just too much, just let me buy it out and play all I want. I don't even mind paid DLCs at times, but this is too much of a rip off I think.
ReplyDelete"Freemium" games tend to be quite questionable in the way they are run, and what you said about potentially having to spend a lot of time waiting with relatively short play time is a valid point. These are the restrictions with playing freemium games at no cost, whereas those playing at a premium will often (but not always) be at an advantage. Ironically it's this kind of format that apparently earns more than retail games, according to one of the financial reports from Bandai Namco Games last year.
DeleteI would love to see this hit the US, but not sure it will. This RPG looks wicked cool and the graphics are top notch.
ReplyDeleteGraphics aren't shabby for free-to-play game! Possibility for Gundam games to be localised for the US may seem low, but one can always hope. On the other hand if you are good at Japanese you can always make a Japanese PSN account and play there instead.
DeleteI recently learned how to access the Japanese PSN by making a Japanese account, so I can finally try games like this myself.
ReplyDeleteThough, from the look of the videos, the movement looks incredibly sluggish and I worry that it will be flawed like so many previous Gundam games. I'll have to see for myself though. I like the idea of a free-to-play Gundam game with extra purchases
Japanese PSN often offers a lot more games than other regions. I made an Asian account in the beginning, so I'm just sticking with it.
DeleteCompared to Gundam Senki (0081), the movements of MS do look a bit slow, especially with melee combat, and one has to aim manually too. This does compensate with the increased requirement of skills. However, it's also incredibly easy for any battles to become very one-sided because of that.
I'm so lazy in creating a Japanese PSN... It does look good and I'd love to play it... Just... Lazy...
ReplyDeleteWe are all lazy or busy with various things, so it's understandable; I still have a lot of models to build, photos to take, and anime on backlog to watch... ^^;
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