So far this is my favorite of the PS2 Gundam games. It captures 79 perfectly - if you're Amuro, you're on easy street. If you're anyone else, every battle will be the most vicious dogfight of your life. The character campaigns are cool and show different sides of the OYW, and the combat is excellent. The lock-on problem of Gundam vs. isn't solved, but everything feels so smooth it's easy to ignore. Going hard on the thrusters and spinning through space feels incredible, and maneuverability varies between suits in subtle but appreciable ways. While the controls are easy to understand, mastering them is a different story. In a typical battle, you'll need to dodge projectiles, manage ammo, eliminate enemies quickly, and more if you want to survive. Learning the ropes was a challenging but rewarding experience, and by the end of my playthrough, I felt like I had advanced a lot in terms of skill. Certainly one of the best mecha action games on the PS2, and worth playing if you're a fan of Gundam.

If you ever thought to yourself "I want to play Journey to Jaburo but good" then here's the game for you. The secret ingredient? Being able to actually land hits on the enemy reliably.

Journey to Jaburo covered the first half of the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime, and Encounters in Space appropriately follows with the second half - and a fairly large assortment of side stories and alternate scenarios - which entirely takes place in space. No ground combat to be had here, your mobile suits move in a decidedly more fluid fashion, you're permitted to use the analog stick, and despite combat taking place in the void of space, it's surprisingly more easy to keep track of where everything is at than it was in the previous game.

Really, the only part of Encounters in Space I found disorienting is its targeting system, which has a tendency to lock on to the nearest enemy rather than what you're pointing the camera directly at. There were countless instances where I had a command ship in my sights but the game decided to spin me around because I had a Ball up my ass. You think I give a fuck about a Ball? Those things just like, explode on their own. They're colloquially referred to in-continuity as "spherical coffins," stop targeting them!

The main "White Base" campaign is enjoyable from start to finish, though it is very short, only taking one or two hours to complete. Gundam fans might get more out of all the side stories, which focus on different ace pilots, including deep cuts like Shin Matsunaga. It's fun being able to take different mobile suits and mobile armors for a spin, and having arcade-length runs through shows like Stardust Memories definitely adds a lot of replay value. However, these ace pilot substories also suffer from some pretty awful difficulty pacing, with the Thoroughbred episode placing its hardest mission directly at the start for some insane reason.

Still, for someone like me who has suffered immense brain damage from ingesting Tamiya Mr. Mark Setter (I like to take a hit for "inspiration") hearing Char's theme kick in when you summon him as a support unit during Gato's A Baoa Qu mission is all I need to have a good time. Gato even comments on the Zeong not having legs! Gato you dumbass, you're in space! You don't need legs in space............

uh, four of five

I found this surprisingly fun as a Gundam fan. It's like a janky, cracked out Star Fox.

The main campaign mode is disappointingly short, covering only the last thirdish of the original Gundam series (I think Journey to Jaburo covered the story up to this game's point) but it is easily the most fun part of the game. The campaign immediately jumps into the action, I found myself already fighting Big Zam minutes into this mode, things move really fast and it's super exciting. The other modes I played were the Thoroughbred mode and the Ace pilots mode, both were missing the on rails sections that the main campaign had which was disappointing. The Ace pilots mode makes up the largest portion of the singleplayer content as you get to play as a bunch of cool pilots from the original Gundam and even three from 0083 which was cool.

They also reanimated some scenes from the original Gundam anime, most of which I found pretty cool. But I was a little disappointed by the reanimated bazooka decapitation being censored, presumably so they wouldn't get an M rating. I liked most of the English voice acting, I think the actors are mostly returning ones from one of the Show's English dubs, but I don't know for sure. Characters not from the original T.V. show don't seem to get the same voice acting quality though and are underwhelming.

The game runs fairly well overall, but it occasionally slows down if things get chaotic enough, but the framerate was far from being a problem for me.

I think this game's scoring system could've been a lot better, there's a specific what-if scenario in the Thoroughbred mode that can only be unlocked by getting an A-rank, but I couldn't get this no matter how hard I tried. The best way to get score from what I've managed to find online is to do multitarget lock attacks, which is honestly not useful against enemy mobile suits and is not very fun to spam in my opinion. It doesn't seem to reward faster playing or even taking less damage very much in regards to the score if at all.

The gameplay is fairly simple and the controls are weird at first but work fairly well once you get the hang of things. My main frustration with the gameplay is that certain enemies like to spam a spin move that breaks your lock on which just gets annoying and makes little sense how something like Big Zam can escape my lock by doing a star fox barrel roll, most common enemies don't use this but it's still annoying to encounter one who abuses this. Other than these complaints, I generally enjoyed the combat with its emphasis on fast frantic action and the spectacle it can provide.

Overall, much of my enjoyment of this game is because I'm already a Gundam fan and I don't think non-fans should touch this game. If you are a fan, don't expect a masterpiece but it's still really worthwhile if you can get it for a decent price. This is one of those games that can put a big grin on my face from playing it, and very few games have done that for me.