The Gundam franchise is arguably one of the most beloved in anime history. While it didn’t necessarily invent the mecha genre, it certainly revolutionized it and brought it into a spotlight it has not yet left. Not only has it influenced other anime series like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Code Geass, but it has also inspired movies, TV shows, other manga, and, of course, video games, including Gundam Breaker 4.
Many other companies have experimented with the fantasy born from the Gundam series: that being the ability for people to create their own mechas and use them to fight enemies across varying locales. One such example is From Software’s recent title, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, which released to critical acclaim. However, it’s not the only recent example as of late.
Bandai Namco has released a new entry in their ongoing Gundam Breaker series: Gundam Breaker 4. One of the Gundam franchise’s many video game spinoffs, the last entry in the Gundam Breaker series released in 2016. After eight years though, the franchise has finally returned. How has it made its jump to the next generation of systems? Is it the perfect experience for longtime Gundam fans, as well as newcomers? I’ve had the chance to review Gundam Breaker 4, and after twelve hours of playing, I can confidently say that while the game’s premise and customization mechanics are charming, the gameplay and story came up short for me.
Welcome to Gundam Breaker 4!
In Gundam Breaker 4, you are one of few beta testers invited to the “GUNPLA Battle Blaze: Beyond Borders” game, also known as “GB4.” In this fictional game, you can create a Gunpla and use it in competitive online battles against other players. When you enter the world of GB4, you are immediately greeted by Tao and Lin, two other players who each have their own personalities and characteristics.
Tao is a knowledgeable player who knows everything about GB4, yet is ultimately meek and shy in the face of hardship when we first meet him. Lin, on the other hand, is an overconfident hothead who dreams of becoming the best player in GB4. As you begin to build a clan, you meet other characters, the troubled Sheena, the soft-spoken Lilin, and more.
Each of the characters I just mentioned is somewhat compelling. On one hand, Gundam Breaker 4‘s cast of characters are fairly cliched and trope-heavy. Watch any modern anime and you’ll find characters identical to Tao, Lin, Sheena, and so on. It made a lot of later story surprises feel less impactful as I could predict them hours beforehand. On the other hand though, each character is charming and unique in their own ways. Plus, they’re not limited to their tropes and a few of them, namely Sheena and one other character introduced in Chapter 3, go through a character arc that was impactful in spite of everything else.
That’s the key word in Gundam Breaker 4: charming. There were a few decisions that I found admittedly strange at first, particularly as someone largely unfamiliar with not just the Gundam Breaker series but also the Gundam franchise at large. For example, I didn’t understand the decision to set Breaker 4 in a fictional MMO rather than one of the many timelines that exist within the Gundam universe. To me, it felt like a missed opportunity to not create a Gundam to fight in the Universal Century, Cosmic Era, and other such timelines.
That said, I very quickly realized that the whole point of Gundam Breaker 4 was not to have players explore the playground that is the Gundam franchise but to navigate a very specific part of that playground: Gunpla building. Customization is the name of the game, and that’s reflected in the story. Characters won’t talk about winning a war or fighting in a battle against a daring Gundam pilot, they’ll talk about optimizing their Gunpla for battle as well as people who hack the game to cheat and create a Gunpla that is overpowered.
With Gundam Breaker 4 talking so much about creating the perfect Gunpla, its customization options have to be good then, right? Well, I am delighted to say that the game’s customization is easily the best part of the entire game.
Customize, Customize, and then Customize Again
Much like previous Gundam Breaker games, as well as similar titles like Armored Core VI, you’re going to spend the majority of your playtime building your ideal mech. As such, the customization system cannot be boring. If it is, then all enjoyment immediately goes out the window. Thankfully, GB4‘s Gunpla building options are robust and incredibly addicting.
Let’s start with the obvious: after every mission, you get access to a wide variety of different headpieces, arm pieces, leg pieces, chest pieces, weapons, and more. You unlock these based on how well you do in battle, namely whether or not you get an S rank or how well you can tear apart other Gunpla. You can also buy some kits in the lobby using the currency you’ve earned. Before you start your next mission, you can play around with customizing your very own Gunpla using the parts you’ve acquired.
Gundam Breaker 4‘s customization options are very easy to understand, thankfully. It’s divided into head, body, right arm, left arm, legs, backpack, right long-range weapon, left long-range weapon, right close-range weapon, and left close-range weapon. Each part can change the appearance of your Gunpla in drastic ways. My Gunpla looked completely different at the start of the game versus at the end of the game, and I was all too happy to continue fiddling so I could create my ideal mecha.
Most of their parts will increase your HP, reaction speed, and thruster capacity, allowing you to take more hits and move around the battlefield quicker. However, changing your headpiece or arms won’t drastically change how you play GB4. The major adjustments will come from the weapons you pick.
There are a lot of weapons, such as bazookas, machine guns, laser weapons, buster swords, whips, laser swords, axes, and more. Which weapon you pick will depend on your play style. Unfortunately, though, there is still little importance in choosing one weapon or the other since an axe, a sword, and a whip are all equally effective against other Gunpla.
In terms of the main customization, the actual designs you can create are strong and add a lot of depth to the game. Later, you can unlock builder parts that allow you to add other unique elements to your mech. For instance, I discovered I could add a cape and horns to my Gunpla. This was huge for me, as I had always loved the aesthetic of long capes on big robots. As such, as the game came to an end, my Gunpla looked like the right balance between sinister and heroic.
There are other great options, too. There’s obviously a photo mode to play around with, but for true die-hard fans, there’s the new Diorama mode. The Diorama mode allows players to create their own scenarios by posing Gunpla, adding props, and even explosions. I didn’t spend too much time messing around with the diorama mode, but it was a satisfying option to go back to once I beat the game.
While the customization options are great, though, there are some very clear limitations. I already mentioned how meaningless it feels to change parts beyond just adjusting your stats. Sure, you can upgrade parts that may be lacking statistically so that they not only improve your HP but also look great with the build you’re trying to pull off. However, you could just as easily upgrade those more advanced parts to create the best possible build.
Also, parts often clip into each other. For example, the shield would often clip into the arms, or in my case, the cape physics were all wrong and would end up in all the wrong places. Whether or not that’s intentional is hard to say, but I don’t feel like I’m building an actual gunpla when my cape can barely be seen since the back parts are clipping through them. It all feels messy and dated, bringing me to the most flawed part of Gundam Breaker 4, which became abundantly clear during my time with the game: its gameplay.
Many Glitches and Problems Within the System
Bandai Namco has not released a Gundam Breaker game since 2016; you can feel that in this game’s design. I will freely admit that I am unfamiliar with the series and that both the story and premise will definitely have its fans, despite not being my cup of tea. The gameplay, however, is completely inexcusable.
The combat loop is simple: when you select a mission, you are paired with either one or two AI allies. You must fight through three waves of enemies, each with a different objective. Sometimes those objectives are guarding a ship before it launches, sometimes it’s killing a select amount of mobile weapons, and sometimes it’s killing every single mobile suit you see. In rare circumstances, the objective of the first wave will vary from the second wave, but usually, the two waves will have the exact same goals.
The third wave is always a boss fight. These bosses could be either giant mobile suits with a set number of life bars that you must work your way through methodically or a group of three or more mobile suits that will move around at a speed comparable to yours. Once you’ve played through a few missions, you have already experienced a majority of the mission types within Gundam Breaker 4.
Therein lies the problem: the combat loop is way too simple. Every mission feels precisely the same. You deal with enemies the same way, you move around the battlefield the same way, even the Gundam you fight often looks the same, and so too do the locations you navigate around. They will often fall into several tropes, such as a lava area, a snowy area, a cavern, a factory, and so on. There are very few battlefields that don’t repeat, and when you’ve played enough levels, you will not be able to tell one mission from another.
There’s also no sense of mass and scale in the locations. Each battlefield is sized to the scale of your mobile suit, which removes a lot of the fun from the mecha genre. While several massive bosses are fun, these moments would be more frustrating than anything since the lock-on would force you to target all the wrong places of the giant mobile suit.
This monotony isn’t helped by the actual moment-to-moment gameplay. Oftentimes, Gundam Breaker 4‘s enemy AI feels like it’s flipping a coin between being absurdly challenging to fight and hilariously easy. There were a few times when I would be caught in an infinite combo by an enemy mobile weapon that would last for over fifteen seconds. In these moments, I would be forced to put my controller down until the enemy decided to drop the combo.
At other points, the enemy mobile weapon would just be flying away from me at all times without attacking at all. Instead of feeling like a thrilling game of cat and mouse, fighting mobile weapons felt like an elaborate game of tag where I’d have to reach the enemy mobile weapon after chasing them around the small map for minutes at a time.
There would be just as many times when the enemy mobile weapon would stop right in front of me and simply stand there for a few moments, not doing anything. Further, if you use the buster sword or other highly damaging weapons, you can destroy enemies within seconds, trivializing combat and customization. That AI issue also applies to your allies. Every time I would down an enemy, I would expect to see my ally dealing just as much damage to them. In reality, they would be in another corner of the map, spinning around in a circle and slashing at air.
In spite of this, I never got anything other than an S-rank in all thirty-five missions. Additionally, I didn’t die a single time, and I was only downed twice in the entire game. The final boss only took me four minutes to complete. As I watched the end credits, I didn’t feel accomplished or satisfied; I just felt disappointed. The entire game just felt so monotonous that it didn’t matter how good the music was, how great the characters were, and so on. At points, my fingers were actually beginning to cramp, and my eyes were hurting from all the flashing lights. This wouldn’t be a problem if the game were maybe six or seven hours. Instead, Gundam Breaker 4 is twelve hours of the exact same level, over and over again.
As if that wasn’t enough, there are several bugs I noticed throughout the game. There are the aforementioned clipping objects and enemy AI. I noticed that the on-screen Gunpla models were completely missing at a few key story moments. There were several frame drops, especially towards the end. The lock-on would often not work, and missiles would miss enemies at point-blank range. Finally, I noticed that the damage would simply not register when I attempted to attack an enemy. It didn’t look like invincibility frames since there was no visual indicator, but it was impossible to tell.
As a whole, the gameplay of Gundam Breaker 4 was monotonous at its best and messy at its worst. Yet, despite everything I’ve just said, I do believe that a very specific audience will still find enjoyment in the complete package of Gundam Breaker 4.
The Conflicting World of Gunpla Battle
At several points throughout this review, I’ve noted how Gundam Breaker 4 is a game filled with idiosyncrasies. Its story is cliched, its customization is great but limited, and its gameplay is a mess. Yet, despite its problems, I can’t help but admire what this game will likely represent for its core audience: people who love Gundam and building Gunpla.
While that’s a very niche audience, it does a lot to bring them in. There’s the new diorama mode, the many Gundam kits you can use from countless anime entries in the series, and even the ability to create a Gunpla that you could feasibly build in real life. These mechanics cannot be overlooked and if you’re a Gundam fan, a Gunpla fan, or a Gundam Breaker fan, Gundam Breaker 4 will likely appeal to you.
That being said, I can’t imagine how the gameplay or story would be appealing to those very same fans. With how monotonous it feels, it’s best to experience Gundam Breaker 4 in bite-sized increments. As I was booted back to the menu, I felt no inclination or desire to explore the other modes or multiplayer options since I had just spent the last twelve hours doing the same thing repeatedly without any sense of variation or accomplishment.
While I wanted this game to be the thing that got me into the Gundam franchise, I instead felt frustrated and confused without any desire to explore a series I’ve been interested in for years. As such, in spite of my admiration of everything Gundam Breaker 4 represents, I can’t recommend the complete package, even for the most diehard fans of Gundam.
Disclaimer: Bandai Namco provided Final Weapon with a PlayStation 5 copy of Gundam Breaker 4 for review purposes.
