Noisy Fairies FTW

The Battle Operation series from Bandai has become a guilty pleasure of mine. While I love everything about the game because I enjoy Gundam’s so much; I am going to reveal something today…. I am really freaking bad at the game. Battle Operation is a multiplayer game that pits teams of players who pilot an array of available mobile suits while trying to get more kills than their opponents. While I am good for a few kills, I spend most of my time respawning instead of being a MS pilot. So, I was elated when I heard about the release of Mobile Suit Gundam Battle Operation: Code Fairy.

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PlayStation
Price I’d Pay: $49.99

Code Fairy is a single player experience set in the same universe of Mobile Suit Gundam: Battle Operation 2. Each of the chapters in the game plays out like an anime episode; complete with an intro and outro. (Both of which feature incredible music!) The story being told here is top notch and even comes equipped with beautifully animated cutscenes throughout. Code Fairy tells its story during Gundam’s lauded ‘One Year War’ timeframe; while not focusing on the timeframe’s primary protagonist Amaro Ray it instead tells the story of the ‘Noisy Fairy’ Squadron. The Fairies have the distinguishment of being Zeon’s first all-female Mobile Suit squadron.

There is often a feeling of getting more story than gameplay but this isn’t a bad thing as I rather enjoyed the all-female cast. Focused from the perspective of new squad leader Alma, she is a strong and determined young woman who is a great character to follow for this story. While all the vocals are in Japanese; this only really becomes an issue when the team is talking during combat. Due to the speed of the combat and everything happening on the field; unless you are fluent chances are players will miss story beats during these segments. Following this team of young woman over the course of 15 episodes and seeing how integral a part they played in the events of the ‘One Year War’ was very cool to see.

Gameplay is similar to the Battle Operation online series with each Mobile Suit falling into three categories; Raid, General and Support. There’s an advantage triangle that exist as well with Support strong against Raid, General strong against Support, and Raid strong against General. The system is pretty straightforward but players will want to take a look at what the mission calls for as there are times when you can be at a disadvantage if you use the wrong Mobile Suit. The early episodes don’t allow for much in the way of customization but the later missions allow to tweak weapons, and other equipment that can affect things from reload speed to thruster cooldown. Weapons range from machine guns to typical laser rifles and even beam swords. Each of these weapons have different firing and reload speeds, players will have to figure out how to sync these weapons together in order to take down enemy Mobile Suits.

Each of the missions ends with a ranking system and various unlocks. Some of these things will only be usable in Code Fairy, while some suits will be unlocked for players in it’s older brother Battle Operation 2. I enjoyed the single player and slower pace of Code Fairy. I was finally able to get a handle on the combat and movement system that Battle Operation uses. But really the true cherry here was the fantastic story of the Noisy Fairy Squadron, watching this team start off on shaky ground but ultimately coming together and meshing as all good teams do was just the feel-good story that I needed to see. Its one that really resonates with people, and the fact that its so well done and is an all-female team is a nice chef’s kiss.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.

Good
  • Really good all new story in Gundam lore
  • Voice acting is really good
  • Fun missions and combat in Mobile Suits
Bad
  • Sadly the VO is only in Japanese
8
Great
Written by
Terrence spends his time going where no one has gone before mostly. But when not planning to take over the galaxy, he spends his time raising Chocobo and trying to figure out just how the sarlaac could pull Boba Fett’s ship with its engines firing FULL BLAST into it’s maw with relative ease; yet it struggled with Han Solo who was gripping *checks notes* SAND!