I am going to admit that I am not exactly a big fan of Gundam. The closest I ever got was watching this cool advert on Toonami that had battling robots scored to DJ Shadow’s ‘Building Steam with a Grain of Salt’. Looked great, but I was told that the available English dub and edit butchered the plot, so I never bothered to commit to learning more about the Gundam universe.
But giant mechs rule so I was down for giving this a go.
The story seems to be about the protagonist being part of a virtual recreation of significant moments within the Gundam mythology, however due to some kind ‘break’ the events are coming out incorrect and the player must battle through these breaks to unlock the proper events and restore them. The story portions are largely presented in a visual novel style with the player able to pick certain dialogue choices, these are interspersed with combat sections that should be familiar to anyone who has played a third-person, character action game.
The player has light and heavy attacks that can be strung together as well as ranged attacks and specials. There is also a block, parry, and combo breakers on the defensive end to help with more complex boss battles.
The style of the game eschews the traditional aesthetics of Gundam, with the characters presented in a cutesy, squat fashion that is regularly referred to as ‘Chibi’. The art team have gone out of their way to add a grit to it though, with each mech showing wear and tear on their metal surfaces. There is flare to the animations too with screen freezing specials and photo-finish ending blows. The mini-me mechs don’t mean that they have skimped on the effort in bringing these machines to life. Sadly, this effort doesn’t translate to the Xbox One with much of the game looking washed out and blurry on the weaker machine.
Each level unlocked plays out with the player (and up to two human/AI companions) hacking, slashing and shooting their way to a boss. On beating the boss, they will unlock parts, money and sometimes elements of new Gundam to use in battle. The perfunctory levelling system and the unlocking of Gundam elements propelled me through the story as I became eager to see what new set would be available.
As mentioned, this can be played with other people. That allows for finishing every level with 3 human players online. I tested this out with a friend overseas and the connection was rock solid. It is probably the best way to play this game too because co-op just helps paper over some of the game’s shortcomings.
There is not much more to do except hack and slash some more until you, inevitably, hit one of the games difficulty spikes. At that point it is expected that the player will grind through one of the earlier areas for more cash to upgrade the Gundam of choice. There are some elements of strategy to which types of Gundam you take into battle but at the end of the day, grinding is what you’ll be doing and grinding is always more fun with more people.
That said the levels aren’t exciting on replay. The game tries with the later unlocked Chaos levels that add an extra boss and a few wrinkles but not enough for me to feel genuinely engaged.
The combat itself just wasn’t compelling or varied enough for me to want to keep going. No matter how many carrots, in the form of new Gundams, dangled in front me.
SD Gundam Battle Alliance ends up struggling in the one place that a non-fan of the series is really going to need it to shine – the gameplay.
Conclusion
Battle Alliance seems like it will be a love letter to fans of the series with so much content to unlock and so many battles to experience. For those that don’t care for the franchise, the offering is very slim.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
