Upon seeing MS Saga's title, A New Dawn, I foolishly assumed that Bandai had turned a corner and finally created a game that wasn't shot out of a cookie cutter gun, but unfortunately, I was wrong. MS Saga, while a refreshing take on a series that's been tarnished by boring action games, is no better than its brethren, and in some cases it's worse.

Other websites have thankfully taken the time to provide detailed descriptions of MS Saga's narrative, and you have both Gamespot and IGN to choose from, so go knock yourself out. But the short of it is you play as an orphan named Tristan who, along with his brother Fritz, set out on a quest to save what's left of Earth from these evil Mobile Suits. And, to tug at your heart strings, before any of this happened the world fell victim to some cataclysmic occurrence known as The Great Fall which pretty much wiped everyone out, so these two boys really have nothing. But along the way they acquire some Mobile Suits of their own and make some new friends, all of which are stereotypical personality types that show up in other RPGs, and from there you'll visit towns (Yay!) and become entangled in random battles. Lots of random battles. So many random battles that the word "random" loses its meaning much like a bird that's been ground into the pavement by truck.

It feels like Bandai's trying to collect sympathy for the characters but I don't respect any of them. Tristan, Fritz, and their friends are all annoying, and the story they're wandering through is too familiar to be interesting. Combined with all that battling, lots of which is unbalanced (the AI's at times way too strong, ridiculously so), the game just isn't very enjoyable. Plus, the mind numbing missions are just too repetitive.

It also doesn't help that the CG cut scenes are more spectacular looking than the actual game. They're unfortunately nothing but a tease, as the game is far more subdued. And, the visuals aren't exactly impressive. The detail on the Mobile Suits is fine, but the jaggies aren't. In fact, the entire game has a very first generation feel to it that brings back memories of the PS2's North American launch but they're not happy thoughts.

Thankfully, the game isn't a complete waste. I like how you can bring up to three Mobile Suits into battle, and also that the three that aren't fighting (six in your party) will gain experience in addition to the ones doing all of the work. Furthermore, there's a nice amount of strategy to weapons management. You basically have a set of slots and each weapon takes up a certain amount, so you need to give some thought to which ones you want to take into battle. Furthermore, the game lets you customize the mobile suits using over 250 parts, so you can tinker with arms, legs, and other pieces.

All of the aforementioned positives help to keep MS Saga: A New Dawn from being one of the worst of all time, but they don't outweigh the game's negatives. It just looks and feels too typical to impress, yet I know that its customization features will impress some Gundam fans eager to find out what Bandai's done to their beloved series. As for the rest us, we shouldn't bother playing it.