Gundam has always been an entity that has piqued my interest. Having been (and still am) a Robotech fan since the mid-1980s, and a huge Transformers fan to boot, giant robots battling each other is just a cool concept that has delighted me. It’s just neat to imagine gigantic metal monsters battling, where the stakes are high.
While I haven’t always bought into the concept that Gundam was and has been trying to sell over the decades, I can dig a game built around its mecha mayhem. And thus, we have developer Crafts & Meister’s Gundam Breaker 4. It’s a game that brings a middle-of-the-road story to the gaming table while bringing along one of the deepest and richest customization experiences a game has featured.
So, sit back, get your Gunpla ready, and let’s talk mech talk.
A story that pushes the gameplay
Gundam Breaker 4’s story isn’t going to win any gaming awards any time soon. It’s not impactful to the gameplay, rather it’s just a means to end with getting the player going in the game. I know that might sound a bit harsh, but at best you’re talking about a story that is geared towards a younger audience, based on the anime, and doesn’t go too deeply into the Gundam lore, nor does it press or expand the universe. It just simply acts as a vehicle to get the player into the options of the game and, in a sense, acts as a long tutorial. Sure, there are characters you meet, some mystery is drummed up here and there, and those characters can be interesting and at times goofy, and there are enemies that fight with some purpose, but ultimately, the story is just trying to get you into the groove of upgrading your Gunpla and understanding the complexity of the world that was built for Gundam Breaker 4.
Listen, I can dig that just fine.
I have no problem with the story being built this way, even attached to something you can access on YouTube. Because of this simplicity, the story makes Gundam Breaker 4 easy to pick up and go, and it works for this world. Plus, and I haven’t played any Gundam Breaker prior, I’m sure it helps new players like me get used to the purpose of this game without needing to get overly involved with catching up with the narrative. Again, I can dig that purpose, execution, and structure just fine. It works well enough and gives some good personality to what otherwise would be a dry story experience.
Gunpla customization and gameplay
This is the reason why you play Gundam Breaker 4, especially if you’re a mech model enthusiast. Let me reiterate from earlier in this review, that I have not played the prior GBs. I have never experienced what those were like, so this is my jumping-off point, and what a jumping-off point it was. There are 250 base kits to this game that are assumed will grow as the game continues to thrive. The kits allow you to mix/match and try out new-looking robots with powerful and cooler parts.
Tapping into everyone’s inner child, unless you’re an actual child, the game allows you to fight during gameplay, pop off enemy parts, acquire them through successful missions, and then take them and use them. In a sense, you’re being rewarded for kicking mecha butt during any given mission, where mecha will randomly have parts pop off during battle. This allows the player to cannibalize the mecha’s parts and use them against other mecha in other missions. What’s even more impressive, especially the attention to detail, is that the popped-off part has the chance to affect how the enemy Gunpla works. Sometimes it could be as simple as them losing a weapon, which puts them at a slight disadvantage (there are other ways for them to attack), or it could be as devastating as them losing a leg, which puts them at a major disadvantage. Regardless, once the part is knocked off and acquired, it now becomes an option.
This is the driving point of the game and one that is more than just fascinating – it’s addictive. If you’re playing against powerful mecha, you can pop off an arm, weapon, shield, or whatever the case might be, and seeing how much you can acquire helps build the gaming experience. Once the match is over, you look at your acquired goodies and decide whether you want to use them or sell them. If you use them, you can adjust their style and looks to match your mech. Or you can simply leave it as-is and look like Frankenstein’s mecha monster. It’s a constant state of customization with options. It’s quite impressive and makes up for some good chunks of shortcomings for this game.
To make the customization deeper, by progressing deep through the story you will eventually unlock quests, missions, and the ability to synthesize parts. The latter of the bunch allows you to adjust the power levels of the parts, which is a huge jump from just collecting parts and scraps to ‘cross your fingers’ and maybe make your Gunpla better. When you pass this point in the story where these options unlock, it changes the entire experience for the better. It gives you deeper, better control over your Gunpla, which takes the customization from zero to sixty in an instant. Having more options to jump into shorter, less-story-connected experiences creates a weird mecha obsession about how far you can take your Gunpla and how powerful you can make it. If the game is driven by customization, then having more in a quicker amount of time makes the battles far more meaningful and enjoyable.
All this said Gundam Breaker 4 is insane with the depth of customization it offers the player. It’s truly the key to making this gameplay experience interesting. Even if you’re not a mech enthusiast or a Gundam fan, you could get caught up in these weeds and end up becoming one or both. The entire concept of this game was certainly a hard sale on me, especially with its complicated and subpar designed control scheme, but the customization component had me continually playing. I’m glad I did.
Controls, enemies, and action
One of the big turnoffs with Gundam Breaker 4 was probably the control scheme. While it certainly might be my simple mind not grasping things, I found that the controls might have been overly complicated in how they work and function. While most of the complexity of said controls is caused by the ability to customize how you can use your Gunpla during battle, the actual execution of the controls is my chief complaint with this game. I’m not a developer or a huge Gundam fan, but if the controls were trying to convince me to become a fan of the series, they were doing a poor job of it.
I found myself multiple times during a battle accidentally turning off my sword and replacing it with gunplay. In the middle of the chaotic battlefield, trying to turn a sword on while avoiding an enemy barrage isn’t the easiest feat in the world. The controls had so many options of play and that made it nearly impossible for me to not panic-push the wrong combination of buttons and turn something off by accident. Again, it might be me, but I just never got used to them.
I also didn’t like how the response between buttons and actions worked. It felt like there was a tinge of a delay between push and reaction. It almost felt sluggish to the point of not being sure if my Gunpla pulled off whatever move because of me or because it was catching up and caught another button. It never felt comfortable, especially when avoiding enemy attacks or simply trying to get the Gunpla out of an area where a boss enemy was about to pull off a massive attack. Simply put, the controls seemed to get in the way rather than to help. There were too many button combinations to do simple moves or activate new weapons.
Simplifying movements and attacks, maybe using the triangle button as a main point of the weapon switch would have done wonders for the experience. You could still include complicated multi-button moves but the basics should have been sharing buttons more than individualizing them.
In addition to the controls, I also had an issue with the gameplay. Lower-tier enemies were unexciting and easy to take out. Mid-tier enemies were just a step above lower-tier enemies, where they would put on some moves to avoid attack, but most of the time they were just disposed of as quickly as the lower. If that wasn’t enough, I also found that knocking a Gunpla enemy on their back or kicking them into the air was pretty much a death sentence for the lower and mid-tier enemies. The game gives you more points for combos, and the game seems to want to help you out as much as possible with acquiring those points. While I do appreciate the help, having two Gunpla in the air while pulling off massive combos didn’t create much competition from the computer.
The real challenge of the game didn’t appear until bosses were dropped, and the most difficult part of those matches was simply keeping up with continually healing my Gunpla while slowly and surely taking out the boss. And to credit the devs, the bosses did come with some ever-shifting moves depending on their gradual damage. They were the cherry on top of the sundae for the game. I also liked the creative variety of them. I just wish the lower tiers were a bit more exciting.
The final piece to the action puzzle here is the teammates you are paired with during the story. Your teammates in the story do make a difference in the action. I was pleasantly surprised about how much they helped out. For example, while I was trying to figure out the button combination to turn on my Gunpla’s sword, my teammates were taking out enemies and truly taking out enemies. Their help became even more magnified when we were fighting a tough boss in the latter stages of a chapter in the game, and haphazardly turned off my sword again, and they picked up my slack. They did more damage to the boss than I did.
It’s crazy how much they matter in the story part of the game, but they are a welcomed part of Gundam Breaker 4.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap this review up.
Conclusion
Gundam Breaker 4 from developer Crafts & Meister has more depth in its customization than with story and entertainment. While the latter won’t grab you and keep you in the gaming experience, the former will certainly have you hooked on how far you can take your Gunpla’s design and customization. Gundam fans and mech model enthusiasts will adore this title more than gamers dying for a rich and full gaming experience based on the Gundam brand.
