New Gundam Breaker has no shortage of good ideas and fun features, all of which are unfortunately buried in a mediocre visual novel and various severe technical issues. I hope the game is patched in the future, because behind its countless blemishes, New Gundam Breaker is pretty damn cool.
New Gundam Breaker
Developer: Bandai Namco
Price: $59.99
Platforms: PS4 (reviewed) and PC.
MonsterVine was provided with a PS4 code for review.
Gundam is one of the coolest franchises in the world. While I’m still somewhat new to it, the idea of people fighting one another in huge robots while addressing ethical and philosophical issues is probably the most amazing thing I can think of. The endless amount of toys and models the franchise has spawned is icing on the cake, so an entire game based around Gundam toys is certainly exciting to me. While it fulfills its potential in some regards, New Gundam Breaker is far too inconsistent to be considered great.
The story of New Gundam Breaker is that of a standard visual novel, though attending a school based entirely on Gunpla fighting is certainly entertaining. Still, having multiple girl characters fall for your avatar because of his Gunpla sill is incredibly silly and forced, especially when these characters are as flat as a board with only stereotypical anime-girl traits to give them any personality. While this kind of writing is fine in certain types of games, it feels incredibly out of place in a robot action fighter.
The combat of New Gundam Breaker is strong in concept but clumsy in execution. Attacking enemies to break them and steal their parts is incredibly fun, or at least it would be if the enemy A.I. was competent. The only two behaviours enemies seem to understand is “completely ignore player” and “gang up on player until dead”, when a middle-ground would be far preferable. There’s also a certain amount of input-delay for attacks and other commands, with some inputs occasionally going entirely ignored. Add in a bad framerate and you’re going to have a bad time.
The best part of New Gundam Breaker is easily the Gunpla customization. There’s a seemingly endless volume of pieces and accessories to collect for your Gunpla, all of which have roots in different Gundam series. Every inch of your Gunpla can be customized beyond just its pieces, from colors and patterns to how damaged, glossy, or metallic each individual piece is. I spent hours building a variety of Gunpla, from original models to ones based on various characters in pop culture. Building and customizing your Gunpla is definitely the highlight of New Gundam Breaker, as it also makes grabbing model pieces in battle far more attractive.
New Gundam Breaker is visually stunning when it’s not chugging at a consistent 15 fps. There are times when, in combat, the game will freeze for 3-5 seconds straight, whether playing offline or online. While a lot may be happening on-screen, it’s inexcusable to have such ridiculous drops and freezes be so frequent. While Bandai has said that there will be patches to address this in July, the issues as they are now keep me from saying this is anything but embarrassing.
The Final Word
New Gundam Breaker could be great, but its numerous technical issues and boring, cliché story make it a difficult game to recommend to any but the most devout Gundam fans. Building Gunpla is incredibly engrossing thanks to the stellar amount of customization options, but that alone isn’t enough to save New Gundam Breaker from itself.
– MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
