At Last, not only a good Gundam game, a good $20 game, a good non Capcom fighter, and most important, a good Bandai anime game.

It would be hard not to dismiss as another Bandai fighter, after all, it not only follows up on mediocre fighter, but also comes from a company known for mediocre anime games.  In general, any fighting game based on a movie, or anime has never been worth the money, not even $20. Does Battle Assault 2 fall into this category...

Well, no it doesn’t.

Battle Assault 2 is a fun, entertaining fighting set between the deliberate pacing of games like SF3 with crazy Marvel Vs. moves and does a good job emulating what a mobile suit fight would be about. For the price of $20. Not a bad deal.

It’s actually hard to not to gush about how good BA2 is. Even moreso since I do like Gundam. Aside from the occasional localization error here and there (Can you find the ‘Gundum’ somewhere on the game), BA2 sports a feature list and cast list that makes the game easily worth $40 but it’s only $20. For starters, you get the street mode, which acts as the games’ story mode, and provides the crux for unlocking stuff.  Street mode is actually based off of 3 different Gundam sagas: the original Mobile Suit Gundam ,G Gundam (which I haven’t seen yet) and Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz (the 3 part OAV series taking place after Gundam Wing). In this mode you initially start with 5 suits to choose from (Gundam Wing Zero Custom and Deathscythe Hell Custom from Gundam Wing, Burning Gundam and Gundam Maxter from G Gundam and Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam). As you play through with each character and fulfill certain conditions, you unlock three other suits to play through. So in total that’s eight different stories to see, once you’ve done you’re homework.  Yeah, I know eight suits surely doesn’t sound like enough, and well it isn’t...but that’s what versus mode is for. Versus mode (in Vs. Com and Vs. 2P flavors) starts off with 12 suits, including the 5 suits in street mode. As you play the other game modes, eventually you open an additional 18 mobile suits for use, yeah that’s 30 mobile suits for you to use and abuse to you hearts content.

And that’s the beauty of this game.  I can think of one other game (Marvel vs. Capcom 2) that has more hidden characters than playable ones from the onset. Furthermore unlocking them all requires you to play through all the game’s modes (two time attack modes and survival mode) which you also have to unlock. Yeah, that’s why I like this game, so much stuff to unlock. In addition the unlocked characters are every bit as playable as normal characters.

Speaking of playability, how does this game behave?  Sluggish, but in a good way. See, mobile suits are far heavier than mere humans and so take longer to recover from attacks, with exceptions of course.  So you can’t start flailing on buttons, otherwise, you will continuous leave yourself open. Special moves take on the Street Fighter school of though, although executing DP type moves require you to do a D,F,D motion, rather than stopping at DF. Not a negative by any means, just a warning. Also, moves that go from down to forward, have to start at down, oddly enough if you start at DB, the game will read the whole motion as a 180 degree back to forward motion. Again, not a negative, just a warning. But rarely do special moves fail to come out unless one of two thing happen: first you don’t have ammo to pull the move out. See some moves require use of machine guns, cannons and missile and whatnot and all of those moves take ammo to use. Rely on these move too often and you may be like Trowa: “Out of ammo. Surprise, surprise”, except you have no Quatre to save you. Secondly you try to pull of mega special a 4th time.  Like any fighting game, you get mega specials to inflict a mess load lot of damage to the opposition, however that catch is you get 3 to use the entire match and like ammo, there’s no way to replenish it. Thrusters act like the game’s take on super jumps and yes they to have limits, you have to lay off them for a while as they recharge. Furthermore there’s a special “Vernier mode” that gives you suit the ability to fly for a limited time. Thrusters also control you use of dodging and shields. Some suits can move into the background at a cost of 1/3 of a thruster meter and be completely immune to attacks for a moment. Others employ a shield that gives longer protection, but doesn’t make them immune to all attacks.  And the expert player will exploit each and every one of these features, and quite frankly work out just as if you were playing a Capcom or SNK game.

In fact, the fighting engine is as solid as any of Street Fighter game or SNK brawler. Although some huge MS (like the Byg Zam) get extra perks.

The game takes a Darkstalkers 3 approach to fighting, which is to say there is only one “round” per se. Each suit gets 3 life bars (although big boss characters like the Byg Zam get 5), when a life bar expires, a MS “overheats”. Unlike DS3, a suit can still take damage on the new life bar, although until they full recover, attacks made on them will not be as strong.

As far as graphics go, BA2 is a good looking game for a PS1 title. Each of the Mobile Suits are constructed of several polygonal “sprites”, which give every mobile a fluid-like animation and furthermore, this game never stutters, never. And when you figure some suits are about 2 screens in height, it’s actually amazing fighting Byg-Zam and not having any slowdown occur. Another nice touch is that the screen scales in and out depending upon how far you are from you opponent. Unfortunately, the game takes a MvC2 approach to vertical orientation, scrolling along the higher mobile suit and using an arrow to point out the lower mobile suit, it would be nice if vertical orientation was handled in much the same way, but no biggie. The character select screen is impressive, looking like a 3-D chessboard with miniature representations of the mobile suits.

From a sound standpoint, BA2 doesn’t linger there either. The music in the game isn’t greatest, but at the same time, it doesn’t grate your nerves either, it’s just sort of there. A nice touch is the fact that Bandai  used the actual US voice actors for Gundam Wing and Mobile Suit Gundam. However the only times you can here the voices well enough is during Street Mode when you pop a super out, in which case the game really reminds you of MvC2 with a giant picture of the pilot showing up on the side of the screen. However, it does get tiresome hearing Heero say “I’ll kill you” or especially Duo saying “Slash, slash, slash” after about the 15th time. Mercifully, this doesn’t happen in vs. mode. The announcer this time proves to be semi-useful, announcing the type of attack and the various states of the Mobile Suits, too bad you can’t here him well enough during battle.  A female voice announces the name of the mobile suit you have selected at the character select. However, she just sounds muted, if you listen hard enough, you can hear her, but sometimes she just sounds like she mispronounced a Mobile Suit name, like instead of saying Gundam Wing Zero Custom, it almost sounds like she’s saying Gundam Wing Hero Custom (like back in the day when everyone thought Ryu and Ken said “All-you-ken!” with their Dragon Punches), you assume she’s saying it right and someone just didn’t do good job with the sound engine. Hell, she sounds crystal clear at the game save screen, the latter is more than likely the culprit.

So, long story short, is this even worth your time, especially if you’ve better on the DC and PS2? Actually, yes. This is a solid game that improves upon everything the prequel had and winds up not feeling like another fighting game. Bandai exploited everything they could on the PS and even though the game’s sound need a little more work, it shines through. You get an admirable amount stuff to unlock, not just unlock the unplayable boss gimmick, and most importantly, you get a good time trying to unlock the goodies.  If you tire of the current crop of fighters and need something new in your diet, give this game a try, you probably won’t be disappointed.