History VideoGame / MSSagaANewDawn

* Certain mobile suit parts aren't all that useful. While claws and launcher hands increase the melee and ranged powers of mobile suits, in exchange you can't equip melee/ranged weapons or shields if it's one the right hand of mobile suits.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Shield cannons; as shields with built-in weaponry, they theoretically provide the benefits of both a [[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe shield]] and an [[ArmCannon arm-mounted weapon]]. Unfortunately, they tend to be large, relatively weak as both weapons and shields, and have significant speed penalties.

* BonusDungeon: A few dungeons don't have to be completed but can net powerful equipment. Usually have a BonusBoss guarding the really good stuff.

** The Master Gundam and Mini-G system are your rewards for fully exploring the BonusDungeon and fighting every suit in the game, including the {{Bonus Boss}}es. There is nothing much you can do with either one.

* CantCatchUp: Starting with the second mobile suit you get, it becomes clear that some mecha just flat-out overpower others. Given that you can only build a limited number of MS during the course of the game, and many of the ones you built are unique, you'll frequently have to settle for a subpar ride for some of your characters.

* LethalJokeCharacter: At first, unarmed fist attacks are much too weak to be useful... then Li Fang appears. Li Fang, in her first appearance, pilots a Guncannon... specced for melee. Apparently, the salesman told her it was a Gundam and Li Fang, never having seen a Gundam before, was suckered into buying it. With only head vulcans and a Z'Gok claw that cannot even wield any handheld weapons, it's not terribly dangerous, right? Except she immediately opens the battle against her with a [[RapidFireFisticuffs Gatling Punch]] boost that has a very high chance of instakilling whoever it hits, ''even without a critical''. And she also has Bakunetsu-ken (overheats target) and Senko-ken (shorts out target), also fist-based boost attacks. Even after she joins the party (for a while), her melee skill is so insanely high that Gatling Punch can instakill pretty much any non-boss enemy encountered at that point in the game.

* EliteFour: The Dark Army's four main generals are presented as such. [[spoiler:Their leader Vladi Zarth is actually not among them.]

* FiveBadBand:
** Neo-Zarth
*** TheBigBad: Vladi Zarth[[spoiler:/Hal later Gabriel]]
*** TheDragon: Gabriel, [[spoiler:actually Vladi Zarth[=/=]Hal is working for him.]]
*** TheBrute: Tuck
*** TheEvilGenius: Mahdi
*** TheDarkChick: Lapis

* BossInMookClothing: Every other area has atleast one enemy that would be a Mid-Boss battle as a random encounter.
* BraggingRightsReward: The Master Gundam and Mini-G system are your rewards for fully exploring the BonusDungeon and fighting every suit in the game, including the {{Bonus Boss}}es. There is nothing much you can do with either one.

* GuideDangIt: This game has a ''really'' bad habit of this. While it will tell you the direction of where the next town is in order progress the story, they won't appear on the map unless you've already visited them before. That means that it's possible to not see the town/fort you have to go to if you're close by because it won't appear anywhere on your map.

** Another thing to note is that if you travel far from where you're supposed to be going, you'll run into much higher level gundams that will kill you with ease.

* MoneyGrinding: You'll more than likely have to grind out money for equipment and weapons since the gear and weapons enemies drop isn't usually very good. Considering the gear the game allows you to buy early on, it's definitely worth grinding for the money.

* PietaPlagiarism: The {{GenderFlip}}ped version; Tristan cradling Aeon's limp body is prominently featured on the box art. Oddly, this is actually a depiction of the scene early in the game where Aeon is ''first introduced''.

* ArmsDealer: Vargas is a SkyPirate who also owns and controls the international Black Market, but he's actually a pretty nice guy. Mr. K is a legitimate weapons supplier for Eisengrad, but actually sells weapons to their enemy as well.

* BareYourMidriff: Tremmie.
* BehindTheBlack: Abuses this.

* CounterAttack: Both enemies and allies automatically counter a melee attack on them with a melee attack of their own. Learning to deal with these is absolutely vital for the proper use of melee-oriented characters.

** The Dark Alliance
*** TheBigBad: Vladi Zarth[[spoiler:/Hal]]
*** TheDragon: Oceanreaver
*** TheBrute: Bazuli
*** TheEvilGenius: Mr K
*** TheDarkChick: Zain

*** TheDragon: Gabriel

* ForgottenFallenFriend: [[spoiler:Averted, Gavenger is never forgotten after his sacrifice. If anything, he's even more important to the team after his death.]]

* GlassCannon: Both Tremmie and Li Fang deal damage fast and hard, but lack defensive boosts. A number of MS with good melee or ranged stats but poor HP and armor stats also qualify.

* GodzillaThreshold: The villains go to the moon in the last part, so Tristan and friends need to make a spaceship to pursue. The leader of the Unicorns at first objects because a spaceship could potentially make another Great Fall, but because of the threat presented relents.

* MagikarpPower: The Xamel Cannon. Does quite good damage but requires a whopping 6 EN to fire and takes up so much inventory space that only a handful of mobile suits are capable of equipping it. It also looks goofy as hell. Most players simply sell it for cash the first opportunity they get. However, once a character acquires [[AlphaStrike Gatling Body]] and is put into a mobile suit capable of equipping it, the Xamel Cannon turns into an InfinityMinusOneSword: a fully-upgraded Guncannon using only early-game hand-integrated weapons can dish out ''over a thousand points of damage'' with the Xamel Cannon.
** Even Tristan can be regarded as this. Early on, his choice of boosts and techniques are quite limited, especially when it comes to ranged weapons. Near the end of the game however, he learns the Fin Funnel technique that can absolutely ''devastate'' enemies from afar.

* WakeUpCallBoss: Aeon is ''not'' talking out of her ass when she advises defending against the Zock's boost attacks. They will '''hurt'''.

* WithThisHerring: Averted; top-tier (for the time) mobile suits are given to you at multiple points in the game. Don't expect much help upgrading them, though.

* AntiGrinding: You don't get massive amounts of experience from random battles, and leveling only increases about a third of your offense-oriented stats (and none of your defense ones).
** MoneyGrinding: You probably will have to grind out money for equipment and weapons though.

* LetsPlay: has an impressive one [[http://lparchive.org/MS-Saga-A-New-Dawn/ Here]] at the lparchive. Has humor, Fritz bashing, but is played by a person who self-admittedly makes tactical errors and refuses to finish the BonusDungeon.

* NintendoHard: The final stages of the game and the bonus bosses. The latter can easily kill you in one hit.

As a departure from most ''Gundam'' video games (which tend to be either arcade-style {{Action Game}}s a la the ''VideoGame/GundamVsSeries'' or TurnBasedStrategy in the vein of ''VideoGame/SDGundamGGeneration''), ''MS Saga'' is a turn based RolePlayingGame in the style of the ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' or ''DragonQuest''. The player controls a party of characters each piloting a mobile suit; as they fight, the characters gain levels (which increases their stats and expands the pool of more powerful "[[SpecialAttack boost attacks]]" and useful "[[MagicByAnyOtherName techniques]]" that they can perform), while the mecha can be equipped with various combination of weaponry via a GridInventory system. In a hanger with proper facilities, mecha can be upgraded and otherwise modified -- parts from many different mecha can be combined to form one new machine in a robotic form of MixAndMatchCritters (incidentally mirroring the RealLife practice of combining multiple [[MerchandiseDriven model kits]] into a single, new unit, a process known as "[[FanNickname kitbashing]]"). Of course, you can always just switch wholesale to a shiny new mecha once you get your mitts on one. This multi-tiered system, with the linearly-developing {{Character Level}}s of most {{JRPG}}s applying to the pilots and the less restricted CharacterCustomization more typical of {{Western RPG}}s applying to the mecha, can lead to the construction of [[EliteTweak absurdly-customized parties]].

* KatanasAreJustBetter: Not quite. The Ninja Sword, looted from the Black Assassin optional boss immediately before Tohai, is slightly behind the best sword the player is capable of buying at that point in the game and gets outclassed quickly. Its only noteworthy feature is that it inflicts the Acid status effect on the target.
** Its Kampfer owner, on the other hand, is ''very'' deadly with it, almost always scoring critical hits that can wipe out somewhere around 90% of a mobile suit's health in one hit. Add in the fact that he's an avid user of [[SwordBeam Sonic]] [[OneHitPolykill Storm]] and you can see why he's a bonus boss.
* LethalJokeCharacter: Li Fang first appears in a Guncannon (a ranged-oriented suit) using barefisted melee attacks. She's still rather impressive in it.

Note that this effort will not be wasted; ''MS Saga'' can reach NintendoHard levels even during normal gameplay. Additional extras, including {{Bonus Dungeon}}s, {{Bonus Boss}}es, BossInMookClothing battles, TournamentArc {{Sidequest}}s, and more are added at nearly all points in the game. Thankfully, these are generally optional, and in fact sometimes become LostForever without [[GuideDangIt their existence ever really being hinted at]]. Getting true OneHundredPercentCompletion is an impressive feat.

* StealthHi/Bye: Hal does this [[spoiler:in the final dungeon, once when Tristan is ambushed and again for the final boss.]]

* Stealth Hi/Bye: Hal does this [[spoiler:in the final dungeon, once when Tristan is ambushed and again for the final boss.]]

* GatlingGood: Oh baby. In addition to both versions of Heavyarms' iconic weapon, we also get the [[GundamF91 G-Cannon's]] cannons and the right arm of the obscure MS-12 Gigan, a heavy weapons MS that was slated to appear in the original 52 episode version of ''MobileSuitGundam''.

* MythologyGag: There's a subtle one where Hal offers you a new mobile suit and you have to pick between a Gelgoog or Gyan (you can buy the other one later, though). This references the backstory of the original ''MobileSuitGundam'' where the two mobile suits were designs from rival defense contractors competing to be mass-produced.

* BishonenLine: Done with the BigBad's ''mecha''. He starts off in the Master Gundam from GGundam than upgrades to the nonhumanoid [[http://mahq.net/mecha/gundam/cca/nz-333.htm Alpha Azieru]] mobile armor, and when that's defeated he uses the G-System to reconfigure it into an evil version of [[http://mahq.net/mecha/gundam/endlesswaltz/xxxg-00w0.htm Wing Zero Custom]], which has a more familiar humanoid appearance.

''MS Saga: A New Dawn'', also known by its Japanese title ''Gundam: True Odyssey'', is a {{PS2}} {{RPG}} loosely based on the long-running ''{{Franchise/Gundam}}'' franchise. An odd duck by any standard, ''MS Saga'' places the iconic HumongousMecha of the ''Gundam'' franchise in an entirely new setting and plot, effectively creating an(other) AlternateUniverse to add to the ''Gundam'' menagerie. The result is predictably {{Troperiffic}}, cheerfully combining standard {{JRPG}} tropes with standard ''Gundam'' tropes into something of a ClicheStorm that may none the less be a GuiltyPleasure for fans of either (or especially both).

''MS Saga'' incorporates mecha primarily from the Universal Century ''{{Franchise/Gundam}}'' timeline, specifically from ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'' to ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamCharsCounterattack Char's Counterattack]]'', but includes weapons and equipment from everything through to ''[[Anime/MobileSuitVictoryGundam Victory Gundam]]'' (aside from ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamUnicorn Gundam Unicorn]]'', which was released after the game came out). Mecha and equipment from ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing Gundam Wing]]'' and ''[[Anime/MobileFighterGGundam G Gundam]]'' also appear, though primarily as rewards for beating the aforementioned optional content. The game did poorly both critically and financially, having the dubious honor of being the worst selling ''Gundam'' PS2 game ever, though it's something of a CultClassic among the few who took a shine to it.

* PietaPlagiarism: The cover art.

As a departure from most ''Gundam'' video games (which tend to be either arcade-style {{Action Game}}s a la the ''GundamVsSeries'' or TurnBasedStrategy in the vein of ''VideoGame/SDGundamGGeneration''), ''MS Saga'' is a turn based RolePlayingGame in the style of the ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' or ''DragonQuest''. The player controls a party of characters each piloting a mobile suit; as they fight, the characters gain levels (which increases their stats and expands the pool of more powerful "[[SpecialAttack boost attacks]]" and useful "[[MagicByAnyOtherName techniques]]" that they can perform), while the mecha can be equipped with various combination of weaponry via a GridInventory system. In a hanger with proper facilities, mecha can be upgraded and otherwise modified -- parts from many different mecha can be combined to form one new machine in a robotic form of MixAndMatchCritters (incidentally mirroring the RealLife practice of combining multiple [[MerchandiseDriven model kits]] into a single, new unit, a process known as "[[FanNickname kitbashing]]"). Of course, you can always just switch wholesale to a shiny new mecha once you get your mitts on one. This multi-tiered system, with the linearly-developing {{Character Level}}s of most {{JRPG}}s applying to the pilots and the less restricted CharacterCustomization more typical of {{Western RPG}}s applying to the mecha, can lead to the construction of [[EliteTweak absurdly-customized parties]].

* InfinityMinusOneSword: You have to make due with a few suits that don't quite measure up to the fully top tier ones. The BonusDungeon Mount Trial has three that can be used for the pilots that don't get them.

* ArmorPiercingAttack: A certain melee skill line and critical hits both go through defence, making them invaluable against heavily armored enemies that can take no damage otherwise.
* ArmsDealer: Vargas is a SkyPirate who also owns and controls the international Black Market, but he's actually a pretty nice guy. Mr. K is a legitimate weapons supplier for Eisengrad, but actually sell weapons to their enemy Dark Alliance as well.

* AttackDrone: UC Gundams bits and funnels make an appearance as techs that can be powered up by the right equipment.

** Some Boost Attacks have no real use. Explosion uses one of your ranged weapons to deal damage to all enemies in a huge WaveMotionGun style attack, but since it just divides the normal weapon damage up between multiple targets, it ends up being fairly weak. The Speed Lance line of attacks allow you to make a melee attack before anyone else can act, regardless of ActionInitiative, but in late-game this does more harm than good since it doesn't allow your allies to set up support moves to cover you from {{Counter Attack}}s.

* BigDamnHero: Hal in the Gelgoog than the Gundam, Fritz and his Full Armor Gundam, [[spoiler:and again Hal during the final dungeon.]]

* BladeBelowTheShoulder: You can get one of these in the form of the blade-arm of the imfamously ugly Zakrello. It's one of the best melee-focused parts in the early part of the game, but since it's literally just a metal blade, [[AwesomeButImpractical you can't equip and hand-held or arm-mounted equipment]] while you're using it.
* BladeOnAStick: Spears are useful for their high damage and defence boosts. Their main drawback is their size makes them difficult to equip on anything not specializing in melee.
* BlockingStopsAllDamage: The Double Shield boost well stops all damage, even moves that cannot otherwise be blocked by other boosts.

* BonusDungeon: A few dungeons don't have to be completed but can to aquire powerful equipment. Usually have a BonusBoss guarding the really good stuff.

* CriticalHit: Works differently here, they do somewhat more damage and ignore defence. Little help for the attacks that already ignore armor.

* DefeatMeansFriendship: Bazuli and Lapis join the heroes alittle after they were boss fights.
* DifficultySpike: A very noticeable one. Starting after [[spoiler: Hal's betrayal and TheReveal that he's Vladi Zarth]], the bosses become ''much'' harder, to the point that they can OneHitKO (or at least come ''very'' close) even your strongest Mobile Suit with their Boost attacks if you don't either defend or put up the proper counter. Even then, it can be a bit of a guessing game as to which counter you should put up, as most of them tend to alternate between beam, bullet/shell and melee attacks.

* EleventhHourSuperpower: The Nu Gundam -- which has the largest possible equipment grid and among the best stats in the game -- is only available after the penultimate boss fight. The Sazabi, similarly powerful, only joins in for the ''second half'' of the FinalBoss. You'll need them both for the PostEndGameContent.

* FightWoosh: The screen breaks into squares that fade out. The pattern and color changes depending on the type of encounter -- RandomEncounters, PreExistingEncounters, and {{Boss Battle}}s.

** TheLancer: Fritz, and later Temmie

* ForgottenFallenFriend: [[spoiler:Averted, Gavenger is never forgotten after his sacrifice. If anything he's more important to the team after his death.]]
* FormFittingWardrobe: Almost everyone looks like they are wearing an outfit at least one size too small. Tremmie infact might be wearing pants far too small for her.

* GodzillaThreshold: The villains go to the moon in the last part, so Tristan and friends need to make a spaeship to pursue. The leader of the Unicorns at first objects because a spaceship could potentially make another Great Fall, but because of the threat presented relents.

* GridInventory: Used to equip weapons. Each mobile suit's inventory is a rectangle of a certain height and width (the smallest is 3x4, the largest is 8x8), and each weapon is represented by a certain arrangement of squares. Melee weapons tend to be tall and skinny, while ranged weapons are short and wide; for example, a basic beam saber is one square wide and three tall, while a basic beam rifle is only one square tall but three squares wide. The dimensions of the grids reflect this as well; a melee-oriented suit will be have a tall, thin grid, while a ranged-oriented suit will have a short, wide grid, and a balanced suit will have a nearly square grid.
* InfinityMinusOneSword: You have to make do with a few suits that don't quite measure up to the fully top tier ones. The BonusDungeon Mount Trial has three that can be used for the pilots that don't get them.

* JailBaitWait: Referenced by Vargas when you talk to him at Rock Diggins regarding Lyra.

* MetalSlime: Metal Zaku and Gold [=GMs=] both have low HP and give, respectively, large amounts of ExperiencePoints and money with a chance to drop rare e-caps. To offset this, they have tons of speed and defence -- to the point they always go first and cannot be damaged by anything other than a critical hit or armor piercing attack. With their ability to run away from a fight and disable your MS, you're never guaranteed a win. The most powerful of these are a full up BonusBoss.

* StandardStatusEffects: Same old effects, shiny new names to make more sense as applied to giant robots. Acid is poison, Short is paralyze, etc.

* WakeUpCallBoss: The first Gouf will teach you the importance of defending against boost attacks. The Xamel shows the necessity of defensive boosts.