[ Phase 02: Providence Gundam ]

ZGMF-X13A Providence. Now with 100% less Omnicidal Maniac.

 

 

Hoo boy. Where to begin. 

Providence could (and probably should) be so, so much better than it is. Given that Gundam SEED’s main antagonist piloted it in his final battle, it almost feels like what we get here is kind of a disgrace to its namesake - it seems like it’s crying out to be so much more, but getting nothing but static from the developers. Freedom can, and often does, run circles around Providence in just about every imaginable way.

Providence’s successor, the Legend, will always be whistling the tune of “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” around Providence. The only thing that it has on Legend is that its DRAGOONs (funnels for you non-SEED-addicts) pack a little bit more punch than Legend’s, and it runs the uncommon Creuset’s Hatred skill at 50% HP or less, but the Legend’s extra DRAGOON, stun-spam-enabling weaponry and dedicated close-range mode more than make up for that.

But I admit, I’m biased towards Legend for obvious reasons. I’ll do my best to review Providence without drawing too many comparisons to Legend, but the two units are so similar in many ways it’s difficult NOT to compare the two. The two units are basically identical in Missions. PvP, not so much. Legend’s still better in either case though. 

Providence is a fairly straightforward unit and gives new pilots a nice introduction to annoying the ever-loving hell out of their opponents with funnels. It doesn’t have any sort of tricks up its sleeve. No debuffs, no knockdown rifles, no homing missiles. What you see is what you get, and in PvP, that absolutely cripples Providence. People know that when they see a Providence in PvP, it will probably be funnel-spamming, and they might pack Newtype Pressures just to counter it. And without its funnels, Providence loses the one thing that makes it unique as an early-game, low-rank PvP unit.  While Freedom can get away with being predictable because it's a fairly solid unit to start with, for Providence, it's a death knell.

I will admit, what Providence sacrifices in deviousness it makes up for in raw firepower. Which is weird, when I think about it - Rau Le Creuset was a pretty dark man, and I would expect his unit to pack a few more tricks than it does. Providence’s beam rifle, when well-placed, can hurt quite a fair bit though, and the DRAGOON system it carries packs more bite than most. And as of G-Gen, Providence’s beam rifle has been upgraded and now pierces foes, meaning it can nail more than one enemy at a time, if aimed properly. 

Providence is awkward as a Long-Range unit in the sense that it's a Long-Range unit without any long-range weapons. Its guns are all classified as Medium-Range. It (and the Legend) suffered a lot more for this prior to G-Gen’s release, when Long-Range units were known for having appallingly bad horizontal dash. Providence was essentially a glorified "Scissor-type" with the pathetic horizontal dash of a Paper and nothing too spectacular to balance out the negatives. Granted, its boosting abilities still aren’t great even post-G-Gen, but they’re better than they used to be, and boost times can now be augmented with Custom Parts in the Factory anyway if it’s something that really bothers you. As an avid user of Long-Range units, I can assure you that you get used to it after a while. Especially when you’ve got a Long-Range unit with access to the Neutron Jammer Canceller skill, like Providence, which means you don’t have to care about your horizontal boost anymore. It also doesn’t hurt that both N-Jammer and Creuset's Hatred both kick in at the same point, essentially unleashing the unit’s (albeit somewhat limited) potential once below 50% HP. 

I wouldn’t recommend Providence for Missions too often. It’s very fragile and can’t take too many hits, and with nothing spectacular to offset it, that becomes a crippling weakness on higher difficulty settings. It plays like it wants to be a glass cannon, but doesn’t have the firepower or the ammo to make it one.  It functions perfectly well in Very Easy and Easy modes, and alright in Normal if you’re very good/careful with how you use it and you know which missions it is and isn’t appropriate for. In addition, its skill set really doesn’t do much for it in Missions.  It benefits a little from the added DEF granted by Creuset’s Hatred, but N-Jammer is only helpful on a very select few missions, and since Providence has a Ranged Special Attack and not a Beam Special, you won’t be using your Special Attack often (if at all) in a mission setting, making Creuset’s Hatred’s third effect pretty useless. As for the DEF boost, it’s not all that noticeable, especially when you compare their effects with those like Dozle’s Pride on the Big-Zam and Fortress on things like Heavyarms Kai (EW). Even after the post G-Gen Fortress nerf, Le Creuset’s Hate can’t defensively hold a candle to Fortress or Dozle.

In PvP, Providence is barely passable early on, but it’s really not great. It will very quickly be outclassed by every other S-rank in the game (and, sadly enough, by more than a few A-ranks), simply because it’s not a very adaptable unit.  Just about everyone out there has either faced one down at one point or another and learned its tricks that way, or has used one to some extent and thus knows how it works. It’ll be an alright unit to get you started in PvP (if you’re not already addicted to your Freedom by the time you get it), but you’ll quickly want to trade up to something a lot better. There’s really only one way to play a Providence in PvP - shoot at things from as far away as you possibly can while waiting for your DRAGOONs to pick away at your opponent, then maybe drop a spec-bomb or two once your Creuset’s Hatred skill kicks in. Then run away and hope you don’t get caught in someone’s melee combo. That’s another thing I should probably mention - Providence’s melee is depressingly lacklustre. It has the three-hit knockdown combo common on most long-range units, and... that’s about it. When facing down other S-ranks in melee, Providence will have a very hard time holding its own due to the fact that it’s not the quickest unit in the Earth Sphere, and it only has one weapon it can turn to for help in close combat, which... isn’t very reliable to begin with. It’s got no fail-safes if you’re going toe-to-toe with another unit. It might have a little bit of hope out there as a spec-bomber, but only if you get it up to a pretty high level, and at that point it simply might not be worth the effort.

In short, out of the three S-rank units that one acquires at the beginning of the game, Providence is far and away the most underwhelming, which is kind of disappointing. As a result of its limited weapons selection, poor skill set and crippling predictability, Providence ends up being a one-trick pony S-rank with all the flexibility of a lead brick that plays like a slightly above-average A-rank. Like its canon pilot, it’s suffering from a wild identity crisis and desperately wishes it was a Medium-Range unit to make up for its poor boosting abilities and sub-par weapons range as a Long-Range unit. It’s a shame, considering it caused Mr. Yamato so much trouble in his fight against it.

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