Kit Review: HG AGE 1/144 – Age-3 Gundam Fortress

October 15, 2022Kit Reviews,  Reviews,  ,  
Overwhelming firepower! This is AGE System’s answer!

As the third generation of the AGE System’s Gundam, the Age-3 features great durability as well as a core-block system and combination sequence. As a homage to the ZZ Gundam, the Age-3 did a great job and even more. With the AGE System’s ridiculous adaptability, it didn’t take long for the Age-3 to get its first G-Wear: the super fortified and high-firepowered Age-3 Fortress. This guy is literally 4 tanks in a mobile suit.

– Info:
Kit: HG 1/144 Gundam Age-3 Fortress
Series: Gundam Age
Price: 1,980 yen
Release date: Nov 2012

– Design: The original Age-3 normal is already very thicc and chunky, but the Fortress armor make it even MORE buffed. The Age-3 retain most of its detail, aside for new shoulders, lower legs and wrists. Even though it is the buffest unit of the AGE Gundams, it still has a sleek proportion signature to Kanetaka Ebikawa-sensei. The dark purple color of the Fortress armor is completely contrasting to the blue-white-yellow Gundam color-scheme, highlighting the fact that it is just extra stuff on top. And of course, for real robots, heavy armor also comes with extreme firepower, and the four giant beam cannons give it a balance look of both offense and defense.

– Build quality: Pretty much standard Bandai plastic quality. For the Age line, there is a certain “repetitive” and “efficient” structure to the Federation mobile suits, in that they use pretty much the same engineering across the board, just changing the armor. The Gundams are also the same within each generation, however, each “Wear” feature something unique of their own. For the Fortress, it’s the lower leg. The way it is constructed is quite fun. Unlike the Age-1 Glansa where it’s pretty much just some extra armor slapped on, the Age-3 Fortress switch out the whole lower section of the legs for a new set of calves. Which is actually pretty cool.

– Articulation: The Age-3 is alread a chunky unit, and the Fortress parts add even more upon it, so the articulation of the kit is actually quite limited compared to other Gundams, even other Age-3s. For the parts that share the same design with other Age, the range of motion is pretty much the same: a very decent torso movement, pretty good arm and thigh movement. The back-skirt being movable is also a highlight of the Age-3 (Bandai should do this to all of their kits, it’s not that hard!).

For the Fortress Wear parts, the shoulders have 2 huge cannons that really hinder some of the movement, as well as the cannons on the wrist when it’s folded backwards. While the feet’s pivot is very respectable, the huge shin armor kinda limit the range, as well as the knee bent. Nevertheless, for these kind of “KABOOOM” unit, you don’t require the articulation of an acrobat, just some solid firing poses is more than enough for display. On this aspect, the kit delivered very well.

– Gimmicks: The gimmicks of the Fortress is quite simple: flipping shoulder cannons as well as the arm cannons. For the arm ones, you either have it facing forward or backwards by detaching the connector and flip the gun around, that means there’s no in-between angle like the Glansa’s Launcher, but still, not a huge problem.

– Accessories:
x4 Sigmaxiss Beam Cannon

x1 Core Fighter

x2 set of hand

There’s no beam saber nor anything else that came with this kit, mainly because in the anime, it was only used for 2 episodes in battle. Although dominating, its screen time is absurdly little. To be fair, all Age-3 variants are quite short-lived to make space for Age-FX. So basically, aside from range attacks, all it could do is some punches and kicks. As I mentioned before, for this type of kit, this much is sufficient.

Overall: The Age-3 Fortress definitely cater to the fans who love their giant robots thicc and do not skip leg days. Age Gundams all use very simple yet very effective engineering, basically simplicity refined to bring out the best in them. Each G-Wear forms have their own unique parts and gimmicks, which makes each kit value higher than just boring extra armors. If you’re a fan of just plain good kit and A LOT of firepower, this is the one for you!

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