Everyone, I mean everyone who has ever built a model kit has fantasized about it. Staring at your newly completed kit, trying to find a cool pose- these are all integral phases of owning your own cool little robot.
It’s this principle that the Gundam Breaker series is built on- building your own Gunpla out of Bandai’s massive catalogue of every thing from Zaku II to Aerial Gundam to Zaku Warrior, and piloting them through missions to get more parts and build your strongest robot.
Having tried out Gundam Breaker 4 over the Open Beta weekends, it feels like Bandai Namco Entertainment is getting really close to the perfect game that embodies this fantasy.
The First Time Inflation and Gunpla Together Make A Good Sentence
The new features on Gundam Breaker 4 break out of the constraints of the older games- an overly dogmatic interpretation of model kits limiting them to the actual size of the parts. It’s arguably the biggest benefit of the game- parts can be scaled up and down, with even option parts being free to attach wherever. Heck, you can even combine SD Gundam parts with regular gunpla parts to create some truly size-disparate mechs.
It’s a really fun way to build your gunpla because it very much focuses on letting you make cool results. A big problem with the older Gundam Breakers were that even though you could hypothetically mash together any parts together, you were limited by the aesthetics of it. Gundam Wing and 00 parts would always be smaller than UC parts, while anything from Char’s Counterattack would be massive to the point of comedy.
It doesn’t even have to be massive size changes- in Gundam Breaker 4 something as simple as enlarging a Geara Doga torso while shrinking the head turns it from buff Zaku to almost Armored Core-esque in its design. It’s granular and fussy- the way a customizer ought to be .
Pull My Gunpla Trigger
Of course, there’s also the play itself. Another problem the Gundam Breaker series faces is the fact that a lot of its chips are stacked on the building- gameplay can be a little dull in comparison. It’s not great when you lovingly craft your mace-wielding gunpla only to have a moveset that doesn’t feel different from a beam saber. I mean sure, it’s got more damage but where’s the finesse? Where’s the brutality?
Gundam Breaker 4 thankfully has a dramatically intense combat system. Weapons are treated like classes, having their own movesets that can determine your playstyle. the RNG gods denied me the chance to try out any of the truly heavy stuff- even though the Gundam Gusion’s massive hammer was running around the maps, these hands will never get to hold their big, chonky bonksticks.
There’s also a surprising amount of sauce to be had- weapons have launcher attacks, and combo into option parts attack to allow you to do things like rocket juggles. Most attacks are even dash cancellable- so I’m sure once you have more time with the game we’re going to start seeing some crazy combo builds in the game.
Sadly there are going to be people who complain that it’s not the most polished experience. We’re living in a blessed age for mech games- we’ve had multiple excellent releases like Armored Core as well as Mecha Break around the corner- and it’s easy to see where a lot of the otherwise good feelings for Gundam Breaker 4 may fall apart in comparison.
Lots To Look Forward For With Gundam Breaker 4
Unfortunately, while Gundam Breaker 4 has improved a lot for the series there’s some gripes that still remain. For as fun as the changes are bossfights are still kind of a boring slog- part of making it so fights can be cleared with any build also means you don’t really get fun interactions- worse still they go to the Warframe school of boss design and have phases where they take reduced damage, dragging the fight out even more.
It’s not like there’s nothing at all- breaking parts on giant mechs like Big Zam is cool in concept- but ultimately doesn’t do much to sell the power fantasy of building your own gunpla since you’re just hitting it until it dies, DOOM-style.
That being said, in all other aspects, Gundam Breaker 4 feels like the peak of the Gunpla fantasy. We’re just a few weeks out from the game’s launch, and it’s looking like that exact joy of a freshly built model kit- staring at your freakish horrors with awe and joy.
