Genre: RPG
Publisher: Bandai
Developer: Bandai
Release Date: February 22, 2006

MS Saga, sadly, is not the bittersweet tale of Richard Pryor's final years, but a story of generic teenage rage centered around some evil guys blowing up an orphanage for no discernable reason other than it being there. Sappy, I know, but never mind the major flaw of absolute, inhuman evil – which is totally out of style in RPGs these days – it's all an excuse to throw together a universe containing almost every mobile suit (MS = Mobile Suit, you see) from every important Gundam universe/storyline so far.

And that, dear reader, is how you make a Gundam RPG.

MS Saga is compounded with flaws and should rightfully be overshadowed by other recent releases like Shadow Hearts: From the New World (although maybe not by Suikoden V). MS Saga lacks any strong innovations to modernize it, as well as lacking in the solidity of Dragon Quest VIII, which seems to be the only role-playing franchise that can completely get away with polishing antiquated concepts halfway into the current decade.

So I won't try to sugarcoat it one bit: MS Saga could have played exactly the same on a 16-bit console, or as a Game Boy Advance game. The sappy cut scenes probably would have been easier to stomach on one of those platforms, too. They currently play out like two-bit re-renderings of some of the more ... boring scenes from Xenosaaga, character designs, graphical style and all. It's easy to tell which development studio this Bandai team seems to idolize! (Monolith, for those of you who aren't hotshot videogame journalists/pathetic losers who need to remember these sorts of useless details.)

The Bandai guys distance themselves from their graphical source by taking a page out of generic SNES RPG number X for the battle system, and throwing in some fairly interesting ideas to justify the various intricacies of turn-based battles with giant robots. Close range attacks are the strongest, as per the Gundam franchise requirements (sword clashes between mecha were always the climactic moments of ... just about every episode), but leave the player open to counter-attacks if the enemy has enough action points left over during the assault. The general strategy of the game is obvious, but different: "poke" from afar with projectile weapons until the enemy is weak enough to succumb to your melee, or has wasted all of their action points on some fancy special attacks.

These are the basics, but there is much, much more to it; the problem is, any tweaking only has an effect during boss battles. Normal fights come too often and are rarely a threat unless the player's tired eyes forgot to keep an eye on the HP meters. Worse, they offer so little experience points that I'm sure it would be possible to finish this game with random battles turned off via Action Replay. The boss battles are the only place where this title really gets to shine – and the only time it really seems like a Gundam game.

To prepare for the tougher battles, intense customization is needed. That means picking the best captured mobile suits for each pilot and equipping them with weapons most appropriate for the pilot's skills and the mobile suit in use. Everything but the core mobile suit and, for some Gundams, a single, mostly useless built-in weapon, is completely optional. Of course, in a turn-based RPG like this, the highest damage-dealer is always the best, but the counter-attack problem changes this. Questions quickly arise: Should a blast shield be equipped on this Zaku II, or should it rely on an armor upgrade and go for a heavy two-handed weapon? Should heavy firepower be forsook for as many small weapons that are compatible with as many different special boost attacks as possible? As long as the items can be organized to fit into the equipment grid – not unlike the attaché case in Resident Evil games – they are good to go.

Every ounce of the battle system has to be squeezed out for the incredibly fun and challenging boss battles, but to what end? Another field full of worthless, exp-bereft battles? The progression of this game is boss fights ... and everything else (the filler and a handful of near-classic battles). So what does MS Saga boil down to? Who should buy this game, if anybody?

To mirror my past Gundam game review: Gundam fans.

There are enough great PS2 RPGs to last for years to come, and here's that list, just in case you've been playing Final Fantasy X this whole time: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2, all three Shadow Hearts games, and of course, Dragon Quest VIII. Even the ever-growing pile of mediocre RPGs have something on MS Saga: Grandia III, Star Ocean III, Suikoden 3, 4 and now 5, Xenosaga 1 and 2, and there are quite a few I'm forgetting. Any of these games is a better overall experience than MS Saga would offer, although none of them can challenge the boss battles. Bosses alone aren't enough to justify an entire game, and the amusement of collecting as many mobile suits as possible will be lost on everybody except the biggest Gundam fans.

The super-deformed mobile suits that seem to be in more Gundam games than the properly proportioned machines will probably annoy a good portion of the angst-ridden teens who live to watch Gundam Wing over and over and over and over .... So many U.S. fans, weaned on that series, will be turned off from the start. This is one of Bandai's better Gundam efforts ever, but it still doesn't play like a full-featured, real Japanese RPG. Let's hope for a sequel, I guess.

Score: 6.0/10