Even though I like giant robot/mecha srpgs like Super Robot Wars, I'd avoided trying the G Generation series for a long time because of my deep hatred for pre-rendered sprites. I always felt they looked really cheap and I figured I could get my Gundam srpgs through the Super Robot War games.
But with the output of licensed Super Robot Wars slowing down these past years, and wanting to play as Gundam Unicorn and Gundam QUAN[T], I picked up a copy of G Generation World PSP on ebay and have been playing it over the last 1.5 months (playing it casually, 1 or so 60-80 min map a day for 46 maps; total playtime was around 54 hours) and just finished it today so I thought I'd give my thoughts on the franchise.
Basically it plays like a typical SRPG meets Pokemon. The main difference is there is no story connecting the maps. It's literally: TIER A MISSION 1-10; BOSS MISSION; TIER B MISSION 1-10, etc...and then when you finish the final boss mission of the last tier you get a YOU WIN THE DAY 10 second fmv and the credits roll. It's the first time I've played an srpg that's all gameplay and no story. Then again it probably makes it much easier for people importing!
It gets around having no story by having each mission be your free-form party of whoever (think pokemon but with 800 gundams and gundam-related mechs to pick an srpg team of 16 to bring into a map) show up at a major battle from some Gundam anime/manga/movie and help one side. So there is self-contained story for each mission, but it's usually just a few lines because you come in when the battle already started and it's just "OH NO, WE'RE GOING TO DIE" and then you join their side and save them and get STAGE CLEAR.
The gameplay is moving your pieces (units) toward the enemies and using attacks on them that cost EN and do HP damage. Then you end turn and they do it back. You heal EN/HP by going back into the hanger of your mothership for a round. The game has all the usual SRPG stuff like support attacks, support defense, combo attacks, etc...
What the game has that is ORIGINAL and brings to the genre is when you kill a unit you get ATTACK CHANCE that lets you have another turn with that unit. Every unit gets at least 3 attack chances in a turn, which means if they keep killing units they can have 3 turns in a turn. Better units have up to 5 attack chances, meaning 5 full turns in a turn.
Then there is the KI or AURA system. Basically when you do damage or dodge attacks your AURA goes up for that unit. Get enough AURA and you go into SUPER AURA MODE where you are flashing and all your attacks do critical damage. Get one more kill while in that mode and you get into ULTIMATE ONE HIT KILLER FLAMING UNIT MODE where you do super critical damage that one hit kills basically anything the game, including warships. If someone hits you though you cool down back to starting KI/AURA.
So the combination of getting a unit to ultimate flaming aura and then having them get 5 turns a turn means they can fly around the entire map and kill everyone. A couple of units like that and you win. It's kind of unbalanced, lol. But getting to that Aura level takes a while unless you're killing 5+ guys a turn (some units have multi-enemy hitting attacks; some have map attacks as well). Still pretty unbalanced.
The OTHER original system is the "GENERATION BREAK" system. Each mission is actually 3 mini-missions, which are 3 major battles from 3 different gundam series. At the start of each mission you're given a challenge that relates to the plot from that battle like "Lead X character to safe zone in 3 turns". If you accomplish that, the dimension breaks and another battle from another gundam appears on top of your map and new units come in with another challenge, accomplish that and you get break 3 and a 3rd wave comes in. There's also a SECRET challenge in every mission, which is just a harder version of the normal challenges (like you'll have 2 turns to do instead of 3). Accomplish the SECRET version and not only will the 2nd wave come in, but a single obscure secret unit from the Gundam verse will show up to fight you. You don't need to do any of this stuff and there is no reward for getting all the breaks and secrets other than medals on the mission select screen, but if you want to see all the battles and fight all the cool mechs, you'll want to do it.
For the lack of balance in the game (which there is very little or none because the game is so free-form and open), the BREAK and SECRET challenges are what save it by putting pressure at all times throughout the map to do specific objectives.
Meanwhile you're leveling your UNITS and your PILOTS by killing things in the map. You can even capture grunt enemy units that the enemy motherships dispatch by killing the mothership afterwards and moving your mothership near the enemies dispatched who now hold a white flag and do nothing.
Then after the map it's the pokemon side. Your mechs all have upgrade paths. So like at lvl.2 they become a different mech, at lvl.3 a different one, at lvl.4 maybe 2 different ones. Etc... through about lvl.5 usually. So when you gain a few levels you can upgrade to a better or different mech. You can also combine mechs to get new ones and trade mechs to get different but equal power ones. There's also a shop, like the demon book in SMT where you can rebuy any mech you already had. Unfortunately, unlike SMT where you can register them with their upgraded levels, you can only buy them all back at lvl.1, which is a bit tedious. But still, through all this you go from a team of 4 no-name characters in no-name original grunt mechs to a team of 16 of the ultimate badass Gundams from across like 30 gundam series. It's very addictive and fun collecting Gundams and taking them out to the map to blow up stuff.
The only annoying thing is that the units don't come with their respective pilots. And when you go into battle with a new unit it'll play the music from the series of the pilot, not the unit and only the actual pilots from the series will tend to yell out the correct attack names for each attack when you do it. So if you want the original pilots, you have to buy them at lvl.1 and by the time you get their unit, your no-name pilot whose been upgrading the unit that become it, is probably lvl.10 and has way better stats. So you gotta downgrade into a weaker unit just to have a cooler mech. Likewise when mechs level they let you put upgrade points into their stats, so when you do upgrade to a new mech at lvl.1 it's often a downgrade to weaker stats that takes a few levels to get good again. Kind of lame.
The other lame thing is maps are physically BIG. Sometimes taking two planes that you can switch between with your unit (like SKY ABOVE and GROUND LEVEL). Often when you finish a wave, the next wave will start on the exact opposite side of the map and it takes 2-3 turns of moving 16 units each turn just to get to the enemies. This is boring, even if it's only 10 mins of moving in an 80 min map.
So that's about it, it's a pure gameplay SRPG with no real connecting plot of single cast of characters that you level up and grow throught the game until the final boss. Instead you're just jumping into battles with a team that's constantly changing (both units and pilots) as you build a stronger and cooler and more fun group of mechs out of a set of like 800. The gameplay part is very addictive because of both the leveling/upgrading and racing for the constant challenge objectives the game throw at you. It's not perfect as the maps are kind of long and the pacing can be a bit slow, and the balance is zero. But it's an enjoyable game/series. I don't see myself playing every entry at this point, but once in a while when they've added 50 or so new mechs/stages I'd give it another run.
Oh and one of the big draws is that it has almost EVERY GUNDAM EVER. Not just all the TV series/movies, but novels, manga, spinoff models, etc... it even has completely original stuff, like BLACK HISTORY ERA TURN A (picture below, evil Turn A is pretty cool in my book). As someone personally whose seen all the Gundam anime (save part of V, working on it!) but only the Crossbone and Astray manga, playing out scenarios from spinoffs like Gundam Sentinel, Hatheway's Flash, even the Gundam games like Blue Destiny or PS3's Gundam Senki 0081 is really cool to see their stories (at least parts of them) and their mechs.
Visually it's ok. They've improved the pre-rendered sprites a lot and the newer fancier attacks (like Unicorn down below) have cool angles and look very cinematic. Unfortunately 95% of the attack animations in the game are a pre-rendered model sitting still going pew pew pew with a rocket or beam or guns and then it hits the enemy and they don't visually react. So outside the major attacks I kept all the animations off.
The music and voices are good. Game has a lot of voice clips and anime cut-ins when new major units appear in the story. The music is all BGMs from the show (as opposed to Super Robot Wars which uses the OPs/EDs vocal songs from the shows), but Gundam as a franchise has some really great BGMs, so that's actually pretty cool. I especially love how they give manga characters their own canon BGMs and some are really rad like Tobia from Crossbone and Pray from Astray X.
That's about it! I'd give it around an 8/10 and would recommend it for people who want a Gundam based srpg and don't mind that there's no plot and it's just playing out battles from the franchise.
Some random screenshots:
A couple of videos for animation/music quality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwNkOn0XR4s (Unicorn in Destroy mode attacks)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmvcq4Fw8dg&feature=related (montage of best attack animations; I have no audio on my computer so I dunno what the audio is; beware)
