Gundam Battle Universe and the other Artdink Gundam games on the PSP are still considered some of the best entries in the franchise. The problem is, it’s been over ten years since the developer stopped making them. When I saw it was attached SD Gundam Battle Alliance, this quickly became one of the games I was most excited about this year. I imagined what Artdink, who made great mecha games with extremely weak hardware, must be able to do with modern technology. But after playing the game I usually just feel disappointed. This in itself is not a bad game. But it’s a far cry from what the developer achieved on much, much weaker hardware, and it doesn’t provide the satisfying gameplay I was hoping for.
SD Gundam Battle Alliance has a lot of dialogue sequences. Too bad the story is only a little off. Juno Astarte and a random commander are pulled from a simulation of the EFSF’s war against Zeon in the year 0079. An AI representing G:Universe, a repository for Gundam-related war data, has taken them out of their simulation to help with repairing “breaks”. ” in the simulations. These interruptions cause the data of unrelated Mobile Suits and their pilots to manifest itself in the simulations of other histories. There is, of course, a deeper mystery behind all this, but it is never interesting.
Honestly, I read the story sequences as fast as I could. They are all fully narrated in Japanese, but the few characters are so banal and the story loop is so boring and repetitive that I couldn’t stand it at times. “Why are you still talking?!” I would ask the characters as they continued to talk (a feeling some of you might share after reading my many complaints about this game). They’re all archetypes, from the bland AI Sakura Slash to the arrogant bespectacled Hermes Mercury who randomly shows up to annoy the other characters. I did find some amusement in the characters directly comparing the Kamille/Four scenario from zeta with the lazy identical Shinn/Stella from Seed Destination. god i hate Gundam Seed.
Better get used to those combos, kid
There are three categories of Mobile Suit in the game: melee, ranged and balanced. There are not a huge number of Suits included, and many of them play the same way. The melee and balanced usually only have a three hit combo with a strong attack that you have to chain to get a combo going. You can also use a launcher to knock enemies in the air. The fight usually feels identical between many colors. Plus, you can’t upgrade or change your weapons or skills, so the gameplay for each suit never changes. If you are one of the Gundam Breaker games and if you want more of that fast, satisfying, accurate action, you won’t find it here at all. The combat here is much, much worse, with slow, clunky gameplay.
This is compounded by the fact that, when you unlock new Mobile Suits in SD Gundam Battle Alliance, they start at level one. It’s true, even if you unlocked them from a level 30 mission. This means you’ll have to throw in a huge amount of currency before you can use them in your most recent missions. I played almost the entire game as the Exia, because it was just too tricky to level a new suit up to the level I needed. Not that the new Suits would do that play that’s all different.
Artdink’s other games don’t really have this problem. The suits you unlock in those games are usually strong enough to go straight into battle. You can also switch weapons to keep things fresh. It’s a strange misstep.
You will also bring two AI companions that you must have at the appropriate level. But they level at the same speed as your pilot level, which means you also have to grind them all over again, so I stuck with Mikazuki and Tieria.
You will gain access to new pilot skills that you can equip every two levels. Almost all of these are either underwhelming or borderline useless. All of this would be significantly less of an issue if the fights were good, but it’s mostly just mediocre. The combos and action can look pretty flashy, but the movement is clunky and doesn’t feel instant. If you press the standard attack buttons, you don’t attack right away. Instead, it boosts your suit and sends you toward the enemy you’re stuck with.
This has the added effect of giving melee attacks stamina, which you run out if you attack too much. The lock-on is automatic and made me feel like I was barely in control. It’s definitely the last thing you’d want in a game that’s almost exclusively action-packed.
What is going on?
But that’s not the only problem I have with the lock-on. It’s strangely slow, because it swings around a beat later than you’d probably expect. It’s also terribly inaccurate at times. I can’t tell you how many times I went to attack an enemy, only to see my Mobile Suit whizzed past it and was completely missing. You have a super attack with a two minute cooldown, and I only used it to blow it up completely in the opposite direction of the boss I was facing. It almost reminds me of the sloppy lock-on from 2001 Travel to Jaburo game, that was the first 3D gundam game we have in the west.
I also felt the need to use melee attacks almost exclusively, which is weird for a gundam game. All mobile suits have a gun, but it only has five or six shots before needing a long reload. Ranged Suits can instantly replenish your shots and skills, but it requires half a skill bar. You won’t be able to use it regularly during boss fights. Ugh, the boss is fighting. The regular enemies that populate the levels are basically fodder. You walk up to them and hit them until they die. It reminds me of a Dynasty Warriors game.
But the bosses are worse. They do a lot of damage and cannot be pulled back. Instead, there’s a weird pause meter that goes blank when they use skills. You have to wait for their pause meter to run low and attack with a skill of their own to get them into a vulnerable state. But they have a lot of health and don’t stay down for long. It gives the fights a weird start/stop rhythm that I couldn’t get into. You can deal extra damage to enemies by hitting them in the back, and you can perfect your guard to block all damage and use a counter to deal extra damage yourself. There are options, but the combat they are a part of is clunky and boring. It doesn’t necessarily have to SD Gundam Battle Alliance many favors.
You don’t have to jump
There is of course an online multiplayer, which the game is built around. But I couldn’t get it to work when I tried. It would instead time out with an error. SD Gundam Battle Alliance is locked at 60fps by default despite being made with Unreal Engine 4. You can use certain configuration documents to remove this but it has to be done every time you start playing the game. Anyway, the levels are mostly boring. Invisible walls are everywhere and the Mobile Suits can’t jump high enough to get higher, so movement feels limited and the spaces feel almost claustrophobic.
Usually you go into a level, fight some mindless people and then fight a boss. On some levels you will fight against three bosses. These battles are rough solo, as your AI compatriots aren’t useful and you can’t give them any commands other than “use your super” – which may or may not strike. The particle effects when you and your AI companions hit enemies are also often so big and flashy that during boss fights I couldn’t even see the boss half the time, making it hard to dodge or block many of their attacks. I would just look at a ball of light before being hit by an attack I couldn’t see coming. The camera also sucks most of the time, as it wouldn’t let me see when I got too close to the geometry, or it would start to rock out, making it impossible for me to get my bearings.
SD Gundam Battle Alliance may be worth playing for big gundam fans who just want another hack and slash. The battles and customizations are very lacking compared to Gundam Breaker 3 from 2016 and the game design can’t even handle it Gundam Battle Universe from 2009. This is probably the most disappointing game of the year for me and I’m genuinely shocked at how much Artdink missed the mark given the way it developed some of the best games in the franchise.
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