SD Gundam Battle Alliance on PS5

It’s hard to beat a Gundam game in terms of what they bring to the table. The sheer joy of watching two robots fight is just awe-inspiring and definitely something we’ve all imitated with toys at one point or another. From top to bottom, SD Gundam Battle Alliance feels like a love letter to longtime fans of the anime, as you essentially play a Gundam historian. However, those with only superficial knowledge of the story may find the game’s story incredibly complicated.

Gundam Canon Explanation

You play as an invisible commander who is plucked from the battlefield along with your petty officer, Juno. You are in a digital space where an AI is keeping an eye on the history of Gundam. The only problem is that there are always breaks in the directories that clash with the canon history and you need to correct the inconsistencies. Most story scenes take place as visual novel segments.

Each map is a different part of the Gundam story as a whole and many iconic characters are met along with their Gundam. This is pretty much where the need to follow the story ends. I am one of those with only a cursory knowledge of the overarching Gundam story and I found myself getting information overload on several occasions.

The other problem with the story is that it still takes place during missions, at the bottom of the screen. There’s always a dialogue going on, but rarely is there time to stop and pay attention to what’s being said, especially during combat where it’s incredibly easy to get completely busted if you take your eyes off the proverbial ball.

The gameplay is where all the reasons to pick up and play SD Gundam Battle Alliance can be found. Combat is the expected hack and slash and shoot that can be expected from the action-oriented Gundam games. I don’t mean that knotting the typical hack-and-slash combat is where this game excels, it’s the feel of the combat. Each Gundam gains a melee and ranged attack, as well as two sub-skills that provide additional firepower.

fights

There are 62 colors I have come into contact with and each one I tried in my first playthrough (a small slice of those 62) felt unique. From faster melee attacks to heavier blows that feel like swinging a Warhammer, each suit I tried was a new experience and provided a nice bit of rhythm to learn how to use the Gundam properly.

There are three classes that each Gundam falls into. There’s Sharpshooter for ranged combat, All-Rounder for a balanced class, and Infighter for melee-heavy.

There are two types of missions that all go about the same way. The Break missions involve rectifying some, well, breaks in Gundam history. Then there are True missions where you get to see how that same piece of history from the Break mission should actually go. The game offers a normal and easy difficulty from the start that can be changed for a mission. At some point early in the game, I hit a difficulty setting and switched to the easy one to see what was different, but couldn’t tell if there was anything. I got as confused with easy as I was with normal, it felt like.

Using boost in battle

With both you start and navigate through a lot of normal feed Gundam that you can easily bypass if you want to. But they are a good source of the Capital currency needed to update the player’s Gundam, so on later missions they are worth fighting all over.

The missions then end in fighting at least one special Gundam enemy that is much stronger and takes more effort to defeat. Because of this, I stayed with an Infighter-class Gundam for almost the entire game to gain an edge.

Upgrading a Gundam is incredibly easy, basically moving a slider in one of four stat groups: HP, Boost, Melee, and Ranged. Three are very clear insofar as they correspond and increase. Boost, on the other hand, serves as a stamina bar that is emptied by both combat and flight.

The best part about upgrading is that you can customize and rearrange stats for each Gundam whenever you want. Once you have the stats you paid for and locked in, you can rearrange them in a way that suits you. This gives you the chance to specify that you have more range if a battle needs it or more melee to hit harder.

Story Scene

All of these upgrades result in a real level, although it’s more of a marker of stat progression than anything else. Missions all have a suggested level when you get a chance to complete them. I learned very early that the suggested level is more of a requirement, after I was added up for not upgrading when I should have.

The biggest difference in any Gundam is the number of usable med kits. These items heal you, but there is only a limited number of uses per Gundam. The one I chose only had three and I often felt just how much that limited me if I was focused by a particularly hard boss, my HP was draining completely too fast for the med kits to matter.

If you run out of medkits, you can’t bring yourself back from 0 HP. If you and your partners are all knocked out, the mission will end in failure. While available, the med kits can be used after being knocked down, but on pain of healing much less HP.

Gundam Development Complete

New Gundam types are acquired by getting blueprints through missions. These are usually dropped by the ace enemies. Each Gundam requires a specific number of blueprints to build. The further you get in the game, the more blueprints are needed along with levels needed to find them in different missions. The game claims that you can find blueprints in chests, but I don’t think I’ve ever played easy and normal. Maybe that’s only on the higher difficulty.

While the missions themselves are somewhat uniform, the maps they take place on are enjoyable. They are not too big to be a nuisance or too small to feel like you are being led by the hand. The later missions also had a certain level of puzzling and maze on the maps, which was a nice distraction from just getting from point A to point B. Chests are also worth every detour they take.

The game also made a terrible choice when it came to missions: you can’t pause, even if you’re playing alone. Given the 30-minute time limit of each mission, the lack of a pause feature feels like a mistake, as if the game is really only meant for co-op play where it wouldn’t make sense to pause. Despite those 30 minutes, missions take up half those peaks, and that’s on a more involved map.

I never had a chance to try the co-op. As I progressed through the game I regularly checked the lobbies, but the one or two that were available were always full of players much higher level than me and kicked me out for trying to join their reindeer games.

Selection format

I never bothered to play solo. This was because you can solo choose your partners and, in some cases, even the Gundam they control. The partners never felt like they would reinforce an enemy, but they were often what kept me from completely wiping out with one partner pulling aggro while the other revived me. There was no programming of any kind, so it wasn’t unusual for the targeted partner to be the one trying to pick me up, and I could only watch helplessly as they kept getting kicked out of the revival. Missions usually give story-related AI to help, and in these cases they would usually grab the enemy’s attention.

There seems to be a way to import your own MP3 files into the game to listen to your own music directly in missions, but I couldn’t get it to work by inserting a flash drive into the front USB port. It probably wants an external hard drive plugged into the back and I didn’t have one handy.

SD Gundam Battle Alliance is a game for Gundam fans, but actual knowledge of the series is not entirely important for your enjoyment. If you just want some great action RPG gameplay featuring some of the best mechs ever introduced in anime, this game has you covered. The range of Gundam available to choose from will keep you repeating missions to find the one suit that’s perfect for you.

Twinfinite Editors Choice Award

SD Gundam Battle Alliance

SD Gundam Battle Alliance Critic Review

Reviewer: Cameron Waldrop | Price: Editor’s Choice | Copy provided by Publisher.

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