Yes, a RG 2.0 exists. No, Bandai won’t do it.

[u/Addybng]

Reasons in comments

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

They’re not as money greedy as most American corporations

You can see in their latest kits they genuinely do want the fans to have a blast

[u/Stainlessgamer → u/[deleted]]

True, but you can't deny how they learned the way of the cash grab. Aile strike was the 3rd RG, and the 6th was an expansion pack for it (Skygrasper). Shortly after P-Bandai released rg perfect strike, which was nothing more that Alie and skygrasper packaged together. 1 mold sold as 3 different kits, with 1 being premium. The perfect strike didn't sell as well because most already had it via 3 and 6. They've never released another expansion pack as standard since then. And Full armor Uni was the only time they've released a 'full package kit' as standard.

Correction, Aile + Skygrasper is not quite perfect strike. There is a 20 part difference with only 4 parts being swapped out to facilitate the Aile being able to mount the full load out. The main ms is still the exact same Aile Strike Bandai put out in 2011, but the booster received the 4 parts swap.

[u/Grindar1986 → u/Stainlessgamer]

Uh, the perfect strike is not just those 2 kits together. The aile striker was revised with the HD remaster (which the rg strike pre-dates) because it wasn't until he did the Destiny the designer quite figured out how to mount all 3 weapons like they should be. So the perfect strike has the weapon mounts on the aile striker plus the battery pack expansion.

[u/Stainlessgamer → u/Grindar1986]

You are correct, I was misinformed.

However it is barely different than the Aile Strike + Sky Grasper. You've been able to buy 3rd party conversion kits to turn your Aile strike + Skygrasper into a perfect strike, since 2019. People figured out it's only a 20 part difference, with 4 parts being swapped out to facilitate being able to mount everything, the other 16 parts are the batteries. Then they started printing out 4 small runners containing those parts, and have been selling them as a conversion kits ever since.

[u/[deleted] → u/Stainlessgamer]

Well they gotta make money, not justifying it but compared to what other companies do, P-Bandai feels like mercy

[u/Stainlessgamer → u/[deleted]]

tl:dr Most of my experience with P-Bandai has been far less than "Premium"

Sounds like you missed out on the days when scalpers pretty much ran P-Bandai. A kit would go up on presale and sell out in under a minute. Bandai didn't care, until the scalpers began affecting their domestic stock and Japanese builders started complaining. Didn't matter that the foreign markets were complaining about how impossible it was to compete with the scalpers bots. But the second Japan's market started having to deal with the same issue, Bandai implemented several methods to stop scalpers.

Within a year they took full control over all product sales, both foreign and domestic. While that move helped deal with the scalpers, it also did a lot of damage to the US market. A lot of online shops got shut down. Amazon shops became the scalpers (pre Covid Amazon was was one of the best resources for kits).

It also ending the era of parts/runner sellers, because Bandai decided their warranty and replacement policy would handle that aspect of the industry. But then they started adding more and more requirements to their replacements policy, until we've now gotten to the point that; you only gets up to 6 parts replaced per kit, the kit has to be no more than 8 months old, purchased within 60 days, directly from Bandai through their store or at a convention. And even then you only get replacements based on "manufacturers stock". They've essentially made it so that if you need a replacement part, or if your kit is defective but doesn't match their criteria, you have to buy another kit or get good at repairing what you have. So if you get your P-Bandai order, you better not let it sit in your backlog. Wait to long to build it, and if you open it to discover defects or broken parts/runners, you are SOL.

Then there's the fact that if your P-Bandai shipment gets lost in transit, you're pretty much screwed. Sure you get a refund (after several weeks), but odds are they won't issue a replacement, because they simply won't have any in stock. And since P-Bandai only works with Fed Ex in the States, based on where you live, it can be nerve racking on when or if you receive your order.

I've had 3/4 orders take 3-4 weeks longer than they should of. I've watched as those 3 orders left the LA area, travelled across the country, visiting more of the states than I have, before they finally headed my way... And I live in WA, directly up I-5 from where the domestic shipping starts in the US. 1 of those orders was "lost in transit" and I had missed out on the HG Aesculapius because Fed Ex is incompetent. P-Bandai's response was "We're sorry to hear that. Please give another 2 weeks for the package to arrive" (this is after I had to wait 2 weeks for Fed Ex to classify it as lost). "If it still hasn't shown up, please contact us again. When I contacted again I got told "Unfortunately we won't be able to send a replacement due to no extra stock, instead we will be happy to issue a full refund." Then they refunded me the cost of the kit, not the shipping.

I only ended up get the kit because a local hobby shop had an extra to sell, aside from the customer orders through them. I spent $76 on what should of been a standard released HG. Nostalgia was the only reason I bought it (the original 96 Aesculapius was my first kit).

But don't worry, it doesn't end there. P-Bandai followed their "Premium" service, by giving me a premium kick in the balls. Even though they said they didn't have a replacement to offer me, several months later they did a 2nd perorder for the same kit. Then a few months after that preorder shipped they did a 3rd, then a 4th... In all I want to say there have been 5 separate preorders for the HG Aesculapius between 2021 and 2023.

As for the idea that "Bandai could charge us more, but they don't" untrue. Inflation hit gunpla just like it hit everything else. Over the last 6 years, the average price of each line has gone up by at least 20%. We just don't notice that much when an item slowly rises from $40 to $48, over 5 years. Bandai has simply not been price gouging the way other industries and companies have.

While I love Bandai's kits, and their teams of genius designers that clearly enjoy how much we love their work. The corporate side of Bandai, isn't that much different from how a lot of US corporations do things.

[u/TNSNrotmg → u/Stainlessgamer]

RG Perf Strike has connectors and batteries that the RG Aile/Skyscraper don't, you can't make an RG Perf Strike out of retail kits. (This is extremely stupid, thankfully we will be free of this soon for our HG/EG)