I'm in the UK. I'm hoping to get this game on my PS 4 as soon as it comes up, I mean if it does. I did get Gundam Versus tho, got a nice load of DLC for it except a few bits.
Are explosions science?Funny story, I actually redeemed that link you found for GVS's pre-order suits way back when, and since I got a PS4 the other week, I was wondering if they would still suck since I never played the game before.
Turns out they still do.
It would be cool if we did a few matches together or something. (Though they'll most likely be 1v1, sadly...)
Edited by G2BattleConvoy on Jun 16th 2020 at 7:14:02 PM
"We all fail. We all make mistakes. That is what makes us human."I like how it included units from side games. Most anime properties almost never reference side games after they're done. Good luck trying to get a Naruto game that features any game-originating plots or charcters aside from Mecha Naruto maybe. Meanwhile gUndam can't get enough of Blue Destiny or Cross Dimension.
Are explosions science?And yet I need to sell a kidney to get a goddamn HGUC Pale Rider.
Frickin' P-Bandai.
But it's really weird how much the Gundam Breaker games push the Pale Rider when it's... well, basically not available as a model kit.
Edited by Larkmarn on Jun 16th 2020 at 2:47:26 PM
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.Apparently, something's going on with MBON right now because they made an announcement saying that they have a slight delay in shipping out the beta or something.
Oh, and the beta is apparently up already on the JP storefront.
UPDATE: Gonna be downloading the beta this afternoon.
Edited by G2BattleConvoy on Jun 19th 2020 at 10:30:48 AM
"We all fail. We all make mistakes. That is what makes us human."So I decided to get back to watching Gundam Age for like the... fourth or fifth time, I lost count. Last time I gave it a shot was... jeez, last October. Musings on the first seven episodes here
, I'm just going to pick up from there.
As before, folderizing because my comments are long, rambling, and spoilery.
Ep 9: Madorna's private mobile suit garage is a really neat concept. Grodek spills the beans about not working for the Federation because they suck, and everyone just goes "oh yeah, that tracks". Dique is there too, but no one knows why.
Ep 10: This battle is dumb. The Euba and Zalam mobile suits can't even damage the UE, so the strategy is pretty much literally "well, maybe the UE will get distracted by slaughtering them". Then the Gundam saves the day by pulling out another new upgrade, even though it did that literally two episodes ago.
Ep 11: The Diva arrives at the colony Minsry to regroup and plan the assault against the UE. Flit splits his time between battle preparations and spending time with Yurin, who is there too because of course. As they're heading back to the Diva to launch the attack, Grodeck is arrested by a Federation officer for mutinying with the Diva, who ignores three other mutineers and two known associates. Flit calls in the Gundam, defeats the two Federation Genoaces, and allows Woolf and Ract to rescue Grodeck at gunpoint, who apparently remembered they were armed sometime after Grodeck was arrested. Grodeck demands the Federation party's communication devices to keep them from calling for backup. Immediately after the Diva's crew leave, the Federation officer calls for backup with a communication device. This fucking show, I swear...
Ep 12: A standoff between a Federation fleet and the Diva is rendered moot by a sudden UE attack. Diva comes to the Federation's aid in repelling the UE, and in exchange the Federation officer lets the Diva "escape". Back on Minsry, UE agents show up to take Yurin from her adoptive father, who is also the guy backing Grodek's attack on the UE. Not a terrible episode overall, though the UE attacking out of nowhere is awfully convenient for our heroes, and I have a lot of questions about the nature of the relationship between Yurin's father and the UE. Desil is still terrible and I hate him a lot, despite hime only appearing in this episode for about 10 seconds.
Ep 13: The Diva et al attack the UE base, Ambat. The Diva transforms into the White Base, a new feature which was apparently installed during the two-week stay at Minsry, which is lol. The attack stalls because the allied mooks still can't damage UE mobile suits and no one noticed that this was a problem, but Flit saves the day by embracing his status as a protagonist and just murdering 50 dudes by himself in ten seconds. The Diva's new giant cannon one-shots the main UE battleship, but a section dettaches and tries to ram the Diva. Ract tries to kamikaze it, but Flit stops him with a rather bloodless and rote "you can't sacrifice yourself, you need to survive" speech. The ship is then destroyed by Madorna showing up out of nowhere (seriously, they don't even show a transport ship) with a bunch of souped-up custom MS.
Ep 14: Desil and Flit throw down in a Newtype X-Rounder duel. Desil is also somehow remote controlling Yurin in a mobile suit of her own. It's pink and uses flower-shaped funnels, so you know it's for a girl! Also Desil repeatedly and explicitly refers to her as just another weapon for him to use, so you know she's being objectified! Desil is about to finish Flit off, but Yurin somehow throws herself in the way, even though she wasn't in control of her mobile suit! She dies so Flit can be sad and angry about it, and Flit loses his shit and absolutely wrecks Desil, but leaves him disabled and drifting without killing him. (Why, when he hasn't extended that courtesy to mooks who hadn't murdered his love interest? No idea!)
aaaand that's all for disc two of the bluray set. There's still one more episode left in the first generation story, but it's on the next disc so I'll talk about it later. Most of the episodes in this batch were pretty representative of Gundam Age overall: they've got all the pieces of a compelling story, but somehow they add up to less than the sum of their parts. I don't know if it's just that everything is rushed so nothing has time to breathe, or it's that they're paint-by-numbers checking off boxes without actually understanding what makes those characters and plots compelling, or what. Probably a bit of both with a dash of "also just not very well written" on the side.
That said, I actually like how the simple, clean, almost cartoony style of the character and mecha designs make them unique and striking, even one-off randos like Federation bridge officers and Living Prop characters that don't even get names still have distinctive designs. The fights aren't amazing, but they're not terrible either, and I especially appreciated how they showed both named characters and background randos supporting each other and watching each other's backs. Even if the individual exchanges between opponents aren't super interesting, Age does a pretty good job of giving the audience a sense of what characters are trying to accomplish in any given fight and how the battle is going overall, without just relying on characters announcing it directly in dialogue, which is to its credit.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.![]()
I meant rushed in the sense of pacing, rather than production. They decided to fit three entire story arcs with three different sets of characters into the same amount of space that Gundam shows normally dedicate to one. Would things have been better if they'd had 50 episodes worth of screentime to use instead of 15?
Honestly, thinking about it, I'm inclined to say no, probably not. Plenty of shows manage satisfying, complete stories in just 12 or 13 episodes, and Gundam Age's story isn't exactly complex. The main issue is honestly that Flit just isn't a very interesting character. He has a very straightforward motivation ("use my Gundam to defeat the UE and save everybody"), and... that's it. Nothing that happens tests his beliefs. He doesn't really grow or change as a character (except to become a better pilot), and neither does anyone around him (Emily, Yurin, Desil, etc). It's just banging action figures together until one falls down.
Hell, even Largan, the Diva's redshirt GM Genoace pilot has more of a character arc, where he has to come to terms with the fact that he's not a super ace pilot in a fancy custom mecha, but that he still has a role to play and can contribute to the fight regardless.
In any case, I finished up the first arc of the story by watching episode 15. The base assault is pretty good aside from from some very silly plot conveniences (for example, why are the bridge crew — including the captain — the ones making the infantry assault?). The fact that UE are human is treated like a revelation even though we've already seen that people like Desil are the ones inside the mobile suits, so that's weird. The UE Vagan backstory is hilariously dumb — apparently radiation from magnetic storms caused a communicable disease, which is wrong on so many levels that I don't even know where to start.
But even accepting that at face value, Age seems to be shooting its own message in the foot here. The point of the big reveal seems to be that we're supposed to be at least somewhat sympathetic to the Vagans. They're human just like the protagonists, and they're fighting because they got screwed by the Federation for no reason. This point is emphasized by Woolf finding and comforting a dying Vagan soldier, and the reaction of the Boss Vagan's son to his father's death, both of which are very humanizing. But at the same time, they show us a control room full of Vagan technicians obliviously going about their duties while Grodek threatens to kill them all, which Boss Vagan explains is because they do not fear death (presumably because they're so dedicated to the Vagan cause?), and Boss Vagan himself rants like a lunatic and does weird and unsettling things like grabbing Flit's gun and pointing it at his own skull that kills whatever "they're people just like us" sentiment the script is trying to build. After the base is destroyed, we get a shot of Grodek's dead family congratulating him for avenging them, which also seems to undercut the whole "cycle of revenge is bad" thing that they seem to be going for with Boss Vagan's craziness and Flit's increasingly erratic behavior.
The epilogue for the first generation has Grodek being arrested and imprisoned for munity — including Grodeck testifying in court that he forced the rest of his crew to participate in the attack, so the sole responsibility for the Diva's actions is on home — while the Federation simultaneously takes credit for the operation that destroyed the UE base, which seems contradictory. Also, no one seems to give a shit that the Federation are giant bastards, even though we already know that at least some of the colonies are "neutral", which seems to mean "not part of the Federation but not actively hostile to it". So why does everyone just seem to accept that the Federation is both impossible to change from within and impossible to resist from without? It's weird as hell but people just seem to shrug like "that's the Federation alright, oh well".
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Still checking the PS Store every day, and...
There's nothing. Are they planning to put up the demo literally on the day the access period starts?
"We all fail. We all make mistakes. That is what makes us human."