For those of you not familiar with the SEED series, I’ll break it down to you as simply as I can. The story revolves around the conflict between two forces, the Coordinators and the Naturals. Coordinators are genetically enhanced humans while the Naturals are pureblooded humans. The Naturals call themselves the Earth Alliance, while the Coordinators have taken the name ZAFT. The story focuses on two young men, Kira Yamato of the EA, and his former childhood friend Athrun Zala of ZAFT. The kicker is that Kira is actually a Coordinator as well, but he feels a larger responsibility to his friends in the EA than he does towards his heritage. Between the two of them we are greeted with an even larger cast of characters who all have different roles within the conflict. If it sounds complicated, well, that's because it really is. . Even though my review of this particular game isn’t exactly glowing, the series really is great, and does warrant checking out. It’s the equivalent of taking a 2-hour movie and condensing it into a series of slides for a viewfinder. You’ll get a few bits and pieces, but not enough for it all to make sense.

The game presents the entire storyline of the series depicted in small anime cut scenes in between missions. The problem is that these scenes are typically brief and won’t make much sense to someone who hasn’t already watched the series before. There’s no way to keep track of who is who, why this is happening, etc. It’s a nice addition to show the storyline, but completely wasted because it’s not done in any way that can make sense to the average viewer. SEED’s gameplay suffers from quite a few things, mainly VERY repetitive missions and horrible framerate issues. You’ll experience a drop in framerate in every mission, at times causing the game to slowdown so much that you’ll actually think you’ve triggered a hidden slow-mo button on your controller. The missions presented typically consist of two objectives, protecting the Archangel (or some other ship) and defeating all the enemies onscreen. That’s it. You are able to play the game from both sides, by either choosing Kira or Athrun, but there’s not much point other than seeing different sides of the broken down storyline provided. The missions remain pretty much the same, and there’s not enough difference in the way the Gundam’s play or control to make it worthwhile. Another issue I had with the game is in how bland the Gundam fights are. You’re given three attack buttons, one for close range combat, one for long range, and one for a special attack. There’s no actual skill involved in close combat other than getting the first hit in, and long range combat becomes a simple matter of juking back and forth while rapidly spamming your fire button. There’s absolutely no fun involved in the battles, which is a shame considering the game is ALL BATTLES.

This isn’t to say that Bandai hasn’t provided plenty of fan-service for the Gundam fans. There’s a ton of unlockables to be found, whether they consist of other Gundam units or “Partners” that can be used in combat to provide you with special boosts. There’s also an unlockable Survival mode and the ability to do small individual missions involving some of the bit characters from the series. You’re also able to level up you partners to provide you with better boosts, but most won’t have the patience to bother. Topping off the available play options is a VS mode, but combat is nowhere near balanced between the different Gundam Units, so it’s hardly worth a couple sessions at most.

The Gundam’s all look pretty nice, but the horribly plain backgrounds and non-interactive environments do not mesh well with the giant mechs appearance, and really hinder the overall look of the game. The sound is also annoying and repetitive, and you’ll quickly tire of the chatter between characters in the middle of your battles. Even the sound effects fail to impress, particularly when involved in a close combat fight where the sound of two machines smashing into each other should drive home a sense of, well, two machines smashing into each other. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even come close.

To Bandai’s credit I would say this game isn’t marketed anywhere near the general gaming populace and only to the devoted fans of the Gundam franchise, and there’s plenty of little bits and extras in here to make them happy. However, once that initial sheen of fan service wears off, there’s nothing left to see than some fairly boring gameplay mechanics and annoying technical issues that create a really lackluster gaming experience.