Platinum Get - Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 (Kind of)

In truth, as of writing this, I haven't gotten the Platinum trophy for Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 just yet, nor have I synchronized since my last play session, so anyone who would check my trophies -right now- (not, y'know, months from now) would see I'm only about 80% done with the game.  So why am I writing a "Platinum Get" post for a game that I have not, in fact, platinum'd?  Simple enough:  The platinum is child's play after what I did today.  What I did today being earning the "True Gundam Dynasty Warrior" trophy, the third of three gold trophies that the game has to offer.  How does one earn this trophy you ask?  Quite simply, it is earned by unlocking and beating every single other mission in the game.  This is a trying task as you might think, especially when certain missions aren't unlocked until you've taken one of the derp suits out (Zaku Tank, Ball, etc.) a number of times sometimes equaling 20, or used them enough to have shot down 1,000 other suits.

Only after those missions have been unlocked does one final mission that's likely been taunting you for 20+ hours now, if not longer, unlock itself, "The Return of the True Dynasty Warrior Gundam!".  It is a Ten-star mission that can only be played on Hard and it's not the first of that type, but this mission is not fucking around.  It is, in all honesty, the single-most difficult challenge the game has to offer which is, well, thematically appropriate, but frustrating at the same time.  I'm afraid this is one of those situations where I have to explain something to explain something else, so bear with me for a moment.  In DWG3's field-based nonsense, there are a few special fields that serve certain purposes, of them the most annoying are the Fortresses and the Missile Bases.  Fortresses cut down Morale/Effectiveness Loss when a negative thing takes place (failed a sub-goal, lost a pilot, lost a field, etc.) which is kind of an 'eh' effect, but the problem is that Fortresses are a bitch to take because while in the field for one, you're constantly being bombarded by, well, bombs.  Then Missile Bases are easier to take and you want to take them immediately because they have a very special and very annoying ability:  They launch missiles at opposing bases, surprisingly enough.  Guess what happens?

The field instantly falls.  Missile Bases are capable of hitting -any- base, including your HQ and the only way to stop a Missile after it's been launched is by taking the Missile Base field which is 99% of time easier said than done.  As far as I can tell, there is no rhyme nor reason to how and when a Missile Base fires, nor what it will target, but it doesn't matter if you just spent five minutes taking a Fortress, all it takes is that ten seconds for the Missile to get from the base to the Fortress and -bam- it is not yours anymore and you'll have to take it all over again.  Now, I'm sure you're all smart enough to figure out why I have gone so far as to explain these two specific structures, but I'm going to spell it out anyway.

The main issue with this mission is that the map is -always- the largest map in the game, and it -always- has two Fortresses and a Missile base in the same place.  The secondary issue with this map is that the two strongest suits in the game are present, the Musha Gundam and the Musha 2 Gundam (From Dynasty Warriors Gundam and Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 respectively) and always start -in- the Missile Base and always move -together-.  At ten-star hard mode difficulty, near any Ace Mobile Suit can wreck your shit but these two Gundams will especially rip your rectal cavity in half while it still exists in your body.  And the third issue is that, -somehow, someway- you will always lose your allied HQ before you can take any of the other essential fields which instantly depletes your Efficiency bar and prevents you from being able to redeploy.  (Granted, so does the loss of your HQ, but if you lose it with another essential base, it can be taken back without your gauge depleting completely)  Whether it's because somebody will catapult into the base and overwhelm it, or it'll just get hit by a fucking missile, you're going to lose your HQ and from then on, you're on your own.

I cannot tell you how many times I had to attempt this mission, but the number is definitely in the double-digits and it was an exceedingly infuriating exercise from start to finish.  I approached this, first, as a normal thing that was difficult, which I always take to with one simple solution:  Put Heero in the Wing Zero and set phasers to fucking genocide.  Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out a way for it to work because Heero and the Wing Zero both excel in Projectiles which, the map does not really afford you the leisure of using.  So, naturally I decided to go to the other extreme and switch to Milliardo Peacecraft (as you might tell, I do have a certain affinity to Gundam Wing, being the only Gundam I've actually watched and all) with the Epyon since it does not, in fact, have projectiles whatsoever and is thereby more Melee-focused, as is Milliardo himself.  It, uh....it didn't work either.  Unfortunately, the Musha Twins just gave me too much trouble.

So naturally, I went with the "If you can't beat them, join them" philosophy and threw Milliardo into my very own tricked-out Musha Gundam.  With Maxed out Attack and Defense (alongside other quite high stats) as well as other enhancements, I figured it would be no issue.  I was still incorrect as you might guess, so I just went with the only thing I -could- do and switched to another Pilot that would do what I wanted.  I'm not sure how much Pilot stats actually effect anything, but Milliardo excels in Melee at the cost of Shot while taking up a bit of slack in Defense.  It wasn't good enough, so I went with the only other guy who was an option at that point.  Domon Kasshu, the star of G-Gundam, the King of Hearts himself.

Domon's Shot stat is abysmal, but his Melee and Defense stats are basically on par with each other and even at level 43, Domon's Melee stat was higher than Milliardo's at level 50.  I spent the entirety of the G (money) I had left training him up and still only made it to about 46, and then took a couple missions just to scrape together G for a couple skills for him.  And then I threw him in my Musha Gundam and this is where I tell you that I destroyed shit, right?  Well, no.  Even with Domon powered up sufficiently and with a Musha Gundam that was a boss machine, it still took me about half a dozen tries before I managed to perform the 'Perfect Storm' required to beat it.  By some miracle, I managed to defeat the Musha Twins (thanks to Special Attacks and well-placed Attack Up item drops) and proceeded to take the Missile Base, followed by the two Fortresses that finally pushed the effectiveness of the enemy down enough to get the commander to drop down.

Knight Gundam is the Musha equivalent for Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3, so you'll understand why I was not surprised, yet still bothered, when it dropped down in the enemy HQ.  I'm not prepared to say it's -as- imposing as either Musha, especially when they're together, but Knight Gundam will still wreck your fucking day and move on, so it's not even like the worst was over when I beat the Musha Twins.  (Who, by the way, redeployed and proceeded to run amok, but away from me.)  Getting Knight Gundam to drop was the furthest I'd gotten in the mission during the half hour I spent slamming my head against the wall trying to beat it and thankfully I didn't have to make it that far a second time; the first time I got Knight Gundam to drop was the only time as I went into the base and kicked it down eventually.  It was very nerve-wracking as you might assume, and it has never been so satisfying to bellow "Ffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yoooooooooooooooou" at my TV as it was when I finally beat this mission.

So what else do I have to do before I actually get this Platinum trophy?  Quite simply, I just have to play 100 missions online which won't be as difficult as it will be tedious, but even that should hopefully be negated by the pure fact that I will be playing those missions online with friends, or at least people who are a step above 'random dude' that I'll get matched up with if I just dove into the Online mode with abandon.  I think the number 100 definitely requests that you do as much, but I'm simply not going to because after this, after this whole grind that I went through, I would like to remember what it's like to enjoy Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3.  So that is what I'm going to do.  Someday.