It starts off great: CGI's animate the hundreds of orbiting colonies, the mobilization of the Zeon and Federation forces, an orbital battle sequence, and, finally, Amuro Rey and the Gundam giving a squad of Zakus some serious payback.

After beating the first mission, the game takes a sincere downfall. Manually aiming and firing the gun is awkward. One must get up close and personal with the incoming Dopps in order to take them out, either by thrusting directly into them or standing on the White Base in wait. Destroying enemy Gaws in the third mission requires thrusting repeatedly, landing on top (which is painfully difficult at times) and wrecking it from there.

Most of the Gundam fans out there defend the controls as being authentic and true to the show. That's all well and good with a game like Silent Hill 2, where the player assumes the role of James: a depressed widower with little or no combat experience. Thus, the controls are strange and clunky, in order to give the player some feeling of how James isn't used to swinging clubs and firing guns.

Here's the trade-off. While combat is only used when absolutely necessary and performance ratings are nonexistent in Silent Hill 2, ALL of the goals in J2J involve fighting and performance is graded based on remaining life, defeated enemies, time taken, etc.

Let it also be known that fans are optimistic in saying that one gets used to the controls. With ANY game, the player soon memorizes button functions and special moves. This does not make the controls respond better at all, though. Being on the receiving end of a beam weapon while trying to dash away makes one want to hurl the controller across the room. All of the moves listed in the instruction manual (except for the sequential saber slash) are difficult to execute, take time, and are not worth the effort in the end. Strafing while using the rifle, bazooka, or hammer is the best strategy at any and all times.

If anything, rent or borrow the game, find a good strategy guide, and play through it once, like I did. The CGI's and animated cutscenes are done well and fun to watch. The mobile suit specs, movies, and music tracks in the gallery are worth checking out. In short, the gameplay suffers while everything else is thoroughly enjoyable. Bad gameplay is, however, totally unacceptable, which is why I only give this game an average rating.

On a final note, it ticks me off that the first good Gundam game on the PS2 is one in which the player fights on the Zeon side.

"real rating 4.5 Great game Hard to play", This would have gotten a 5 out of 5 if it was not so hard once you get to jaburo! Personally i hate the original gundam but this game is awesome! if you love gundam this is the game for you even if you hate the original gundam!

"The One Year War finally comes to the PS2", I am a big fan of all of the Gundam shows (except Gundam Wing) and i have been waiting for a long time for a good gundam game to come out and its finally here. I was a slight bit dissapointed in some categories of the game, but overall I was fairly pleased. Before I got the game I figured that anyone who was not familiar with the shows would be hopelessly confused after a few minutes of play considering the depth of the plot, but I was proven wrong. The game is loaded with cut scenes explaing the plot, and a non-gundam-fan friend of mine was quickly drawn in and is now obsessed with everything in the gundam universe. To make this review a little shorter I'll do pros and cons
Pros:

It has good graphics and is totally loyal to the series.

"Gallery Mode" lets you view all of the many cut scenes, listen to the game music, and look at Mobile suit statistics with narration and 3-D models

Lots of weaponry choices

Tactics battle mode(open when you complete the main part of the game) lets you fight on both sides of the war, and allows you to earn massive ammounts of bonus mobile suits to blow things up with.

Practically unlimited amunition...

Very nice explosions

Cons:

Sometimes frustratingly slow controls. I often feel like I have aged 20 years when I have succesfully completed a proper beam sword attack(though once you master them they are very rewarding and you can really kick some but) Also it takes a long time to turn around, other than that, reading the manual properly and little practice and anyone complaining of bad button mapping will reallize it was designed more for advanced play.

It is to short. Only nine missions, but the tactics battle mode will keep you happy for a few weeks as you can get some very cool mobile suits there.

Lack of difficulty setting. Once you master the beam sword controls and the few hidden moves that come with it, you will dominate the battle field. But don't worry to much about that, it will take you a while to master it.

Mix of music, voices, and battle mayhem make it quite hard to understand any of the three. Sometimes it is best to just turn off the music.

Not very good replay value. Once you beat everything in the game and have all of the cut scenes and cinematics unlocked,(which took me about 4 months due to the fact that the tactics battle mode gets old prettey fast and i seldom played) you will really only want to play it for about a week every 4 months.

Despite the Cons which seem numerable, the game is quite entertaining and will keep most people who do not dislike giant battle robots happy for a while. If you don't like it, you can always sell it. Later

"short and sweet", This is a VERY good game. it is a bit easy but it is still fun. I rented the game and beat it in a few days but after you beat the game you get to do this thing where you get to use all of the other moble suites ( guncannon, zaku, and even one of the suites from 08 ms team).you should rent first. but it is a very good game so you might want to buy it. REMEMBER MY FAVORITE QUOTE: When there is great power there are great opportunities to abuse that power.