One of the biggest issues with anime/manga games is finding the sweet spot between quantity and quality. As much as fans want to see their favorite character(s), something that becomes increasingly important as the cast expands, no one wants to play a dull game either. Some games have tackled this doing only the essentials, something that worked quite well for Dragon Ball FighterZ, where as other games accepted they’re just not that complicated. New Gundam Breaker was always more towards the fun side, though it also eliminated a lot of series. With a new developer, customization, cute girls and Gundam, will it break expectations or is it a broken mess?
New Gundam Breaker takes place in a school setting and generally life, with most problems being solved by battling. It’s a familiar approach, one that made E.X. Troopers a lot of fun, though this story feels particularly lifeless. Between the stock character tropes, limited interest and bland dialogue, it feels more like filler than an adventure worth caring about. Granted, the side stories allow players to somewhat control what they see, it just fails to be interesting or memorable.
Similar things can be said for the gameplay segments. Instead of having straight Gundam battles, e.g. Gundam Versus, we have an odd cross between Armored Core and a party game. Every encounter is just a series of quests both sides try to accomplish until you finally get the one that ends the match. None of these are inspired, mostly destroy boxes or defeat neutral units, resulting in a rather bland cycle.
Where most of the excitement comes from is the ability to collect parts, build units and do everything in your power to prevent falling in combat. This starts off fun and then quickly becomes frustrating. Damaging enemies will remove pieces, with the same being true for you, that can be acquired. These can be swapped mid battle, in the event you’re missing or want to upgrade, put in a box to ensure you obtain them or held on your person as a trophy.
What makes this seemingly okay system so annoying is the lack of options. With the ability to hold a mere five pieces, damage causing you to drop them and poor pick up mechanics, it doesn’t take long before it’s an irrelevant side task. This is especially true when players realize stats are fixed, meaning you don’t need a bunch of the same parts and no point in collecting a lot of them.
Collected parts can be used to enhance characters, either through new perks, better stats or design preference. Parts can also be edited, allowing for different color options and other things, making it a little more interesting. However, since combat will break these parts, often forcing players to use their newly collected armor, it doesn’t seem as important as other games.
Unfortunately, in addition to poor mechanics, New Gundam Breaker is poorly optimized and simply unenjoyable to play. There are frequent slowdowns, sometimes stopping the game for a couple seconds, a fact that is baffling when so little is going on. Seriously, three enemies and a few other enemies shouldn’t be more taxing that something like Dynasty Warriors or Horizon Zero Dawn. Even if slowdowns don’t annoy you, the lock on system tends to be fairly awful. Even when I want to target neutral units, so I can complete the objective, destroying one often jumps to one of the main enemies, which are hard to kill and have little to no impact on winning. Thankfully, targets can be swapped, it’s just a terrible mechanic that requires more player involvement than should be necessary.
Verdict
There are so many issues in New Gundam Breaker that it manages to be the worst thing an anime game can be – a title with the sole positive being the fact it’s Gundam. Combat is boring, repetitive, with a targeting system that manages to be frustrating. Even if bland gameplay is not a problem, so many of the mechanics have needless limits or seem pointless. Throw in a generic story that is about as forgettable as they come and it feels less like a game Gundam fans will love, something that has been true for previous entries, and instead a rushed title with whatever they could toss together at the last second.
[Editor’s Note: New Gundam Breaker was reviewed on PS4 platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]
