Have you been working out? You look bigger.

Flit get’s his second upgrade from the AGE system.  It’s emphasis is on armor and limb power at the expense of looking really damn slow and has no ranged weapons to speak of.  Has the AGE system delivered another miracle of “adaptive technology” or is it a dud with a shiny red coat?

The armored UEs are a straight forward upgrade to the standard ones.  Heavy armor with many of the same weapons, they can even deflect the new DOTS rifle!  So what does the AGE system come up with?  Basically, a freaking copy of their design!  Gundam Titus is just as heavily armored and has crushing limb power which I supposed would be used to smash the tougher armor but in practice is highly impractical.

Super punches, these are not

The UE here is just knocked down… yeah that’s it.  It was a one shot kill, it didn’t cripple the suit, it was just knocked down.  I will note that it does have “beam spikes” that can come out of should and knee joints and a has a retarded “beam lariat” (seriously Japan, pro wrestling is fake) but doesn’t use them when he has superior positions (which he gets by pure luck).  Instead he charges in and tries to fight them head on.  Did I mention that the Titus isn’t even stronger than the armored UE’s?

Yeah seriously, he gets stalemated like this

So in all, unlike the DOTS, the Titus armor doesn’t give the gundam a clear superior edge.  Hell if UE’s were remotely smart (and not made for a children’s show), they just fly high enough and snipe the shit out of the armored buffoon. That was this shows pixie dust, which wouldn’t have been so bad if they didn’t show how STUPID the AGE system is or that Flit is still a rookie pilot.

Why?

Who's awesome? This guy!

Seriously, Wolf show’s up in his brand new suit and not only destroys his armored UE opponent, he completely make it look like child’s play! (if the child was named Kira Yamato).

Yep that's right, beam sabers. That was the answer all along.

So he not only dodges the UE's attack, he one shots it.

So Wolf, without all the fancy tech, figures out the right tech to completely over come the new UE model in a vastly superior (and probably cost efficient) way than the AGE System.  Oh and lets not forget it didn’t take him all that much longer to get this custom suit than it took the AGE system to figure out this retarded upgrade.

That being said, my Merchant of Death theory was off but not totally off.  Apparently there’s some guy out there that has super tech (or at least the plans for them) that was supply the retards on the Faradain colony. What’s his new suit and how does it play out?

Dun dun dun! Looks UE, my guess is he was trying to make a copy.

But I’ll leave you with some screen shots that had my inner Dai Guard fan super happy.

O_O yes, ok they do have a superior rigging system

I'm sure this modular config would have been the next upgrade for Dai Guard

Played a bit last night and my first impressions are pretty good.  The one glaring annoyance is that the menus could have been much better.  Smaller ones include not having all the nice graphics adjustments in game, (had to force them through my nvida control panel), not much in game explanation on some stuff (they do have extensive training tutorials though), and the chat box being small + there are some douchey folks on it.

That being said I enjoy it quite a bit.  What seems like a simple game is pretty deep when you start to dig.

Gotta have the Gouf Customer *a sallute to you bad as normal Patrick Norris*

The gave has 300+ mobile suits (mecha) that you can get and customize through various means.  There are 4 main ways to get new suits.

1. Some are granted through questing
2. You can buy/rent suits out right from the store (paid for with in game point earned from missions/matches, or real money)
3. Buying blue prints of the suit from the store and built using your excess suits according to the blue print recipe
4. You can try your luck with the capsule machine which is basically a vending machine with some randomness thrown in (cheaper than buying from store)

So let me explain the capsule machine (or Gashapon) and it’s genius (from a “how we can get them addicted” stand point).  Basically, the suits are broken down into sets of 6-8 suits per “capsule group”.  Each group has 1 “rare”, 2-3 “uncommon”, and the rest “common” suits. You can spend either real money or your in game points to use the machine to try your luck on a group.  So basically you have a 1/6-1/8 chance to get the suit you want!  When you use the machine, there’s a little animation that pops out a capsule which you click on to open.  I would re-missed to say that the anticipation factor right before you click to open is real.

“But that doesn’t sound like a good idea cause i want XYZ suit NAO!”  That’s what I thought too, but here what they did to make it appealing.  Not all suits are available for sale in the store, and if they are, they’re expensive.  Ok so what about blue prints?  Obviously these are cheaper than buying out right (in some cases) but are still MORE expensive than the Gashapon.

“How much more expensive?”  Here’s my example.  I wanted to get a Gouf Custom (hellz yeah for Patrick Norris creaming the 08th team, F beam weapons!).  I check the store, not for sale oh there’s a blue print for 5000 points O_O.  OR I can try my luck on that capsule group that contains the Gouf Custom for 1600 points. (almost 3x cheaper).  Well keep in mind I just started and have no excess suits to build the Gouf Custom any ways so the Gashapon was my only “real” option.  Also, you don’t earn points very quickly.  Doing the “very easy” co op missions will net you about 100 points per completion. Yeah, you do the math and that’s a lot of beginner missions.

Luckily, I was given 3000 points for my first “pilot level up” (more on level ups later).  Speaking of luck, I got my Gouf Custom on my 2nd try at the Capsule Machine! Seriously, clicking on the capsule and seeing my suit gave me that little thrill you get from winning a hard fought match.  Let me tell you that feeling is addictive.

OK so now to the real meat “This game IS pay to win” for more accurately, it’s pay to have an advantage.  But, just cause you buy a high spec’d suit from the store doesn’t guarantee successes.

Obviously, suits that have high specs are BETTER, flat out, than suits with lesser specs.  One way they try and balance this is having two leveling systems.  There’s a pilot level (ie rank) which controls what missions you can go on, and suit expertise which acts as levels for that specific suit.  As your suit expertise grows your suit will become better.  In some cases a fully level’d Class C suit (C is the lowest quality of suit) could out perform a stock Class A suite (there’s also class S suites but i don’t think any are out in game yet).

In addition to this, suits are broken into a rock paper scissors system.

RPS Unit Property System

Rock	- Optimized for close combat - Strong against “Scissors” - Ranged attacks not very effective - Weak against “Papers”
Paper	- Best performance on long range attacks - Sniping available for some units - Strong against “Rocks” - Weak against “Scissors” - Weak melee attacks
Scissors	- Best balance between melee and long range attacks - Strong against “Papers” - Weak against “Rocks”

It’s just like it sounds, Rock based suits do more damage to Scissors, but get disadvantage to Paper etc.  This allows for no one type of suit to be the end all be all (well in theory at least)

In addition to the Suit Expertise and RPS system, you can also customize your suit later with new items.

Also forgot to mention that ever suit has different characteristics too which is made up in their HEX

Hexagon Unit Ability

A Typical Hexagon	Attack: Attack ability of the unit
	Agility: Maneuverability of the unit. Weapons ready faster with higher agility.
	Unit HP: Total Hit Points of the unit
	Defense: Defense ability of the unit
	Special Attack: Strength of Special Attack of the unit
	Speed: Dash speed of the unit

Phew, that was a mouth full and I’ve only played the game for maybe an hour!

Combat in comparison is more straight forward, you have 1-4 weapons that you use to blow shit up while using your boosters to move around.  Yep that simple (course I haven’t done any matches other co op so I’m sure there can be more to it)

SD Gundam Capsule Fighter Online wow that’s a mouth full.  I don’t know too much about this game other than it’ll be the “Freemium” or Free2Play with micro transactions.  But hey, it’s FREE GUNDAM.  The release is set for Dec 1st (oh look that’s today!)

The site has a bit of information and a the forums seem to be active.  Let’s take a glance of what this game might be

Mobile suits? Check

HUD? Check

Tons of beam weapons?  Check

Looks a bit arcadey but that’s alright, most F2P games tend to side more on simple and grindy.  Oh what’s this, they already have a wiki up?  Whoa, there’s quite a bit in here. Hmm could be a little more deep than I thought. What’s this, Operators?

Operators act as:

- Talks to players to enhance their game experience

- Act as a Combat Information Center operators (CIC Op) to assist the players in battles.

Each operators are unique in the way that:

- Each operator have different personalities.

- Each operator have different special abilities.

O_O I can hire my own CIC, ok I’m sold enough to try this out.

Hmm that looks expensive! Not mention there’s got to be some massive upkeep on an automated system like that!  So who’s paying for it?

—continues after the jump—

I’d say after years of waffling around and false starts, the hope is that if I write enough it might actually become habit and allow me to improve my writing.

—Continues in the About page—