As lifelong fans of the Gundam anime franchise, we have played and tried many licensed Mobile Suit Gundam video games over the years waiting to be surprised and delighted by their gameplay and story. Unfortunately, New Gundam Breaker is yet another disappointing video game in what seems like a long list of disappointments. New Gundam Breaker was released through Bandai Namco and feels like a straight-up import as none of the dialogue has been localized so prepare to spend time reading on-screen translations.
The gimmick of New Gundam Breaker is that there is a focus on Gunpla which is the heart and soul of Gundam plastic model building where you snap or glue pieces together. The video game is mostly a hack-and-slash action game with 3v3 combat where you are given numerous objectives like bashing crates, taking out opponents and also a boss battle. The on-screen action is chaotic and difficult to follow and the HUD is overwhelming as well with important things to consume just about all over the display. Most of our combat experience felt like luck or chance bashing and shooting our way at other Mobile Suits in the game from both Zeon forces and the Earth Federation.
The story scenes are pretty bland with a lack of animation which is strange since the subject matter is derived from anime. All of the story scenes are static with frozen lifeless characters on-screen speaking Japanese with English subtitles – most of the time we just skipped ahead because there was nothing interesting to get out of these exchanges.
New Gundam Breaker Review Final Thoughts:
It’s difficult for us to find much to praise about New Gundam Breaker — if you are a hardcore fan of Gundam model collecting and building then you’ll most likely get a little tickle from seeing a plethora of different Mobile Suits in action with sound effects and movements reminiscent of the anime shows. Also, a strange but maybe positive aspect of New Gundam Breaker is that it seems like every person you interact with is female so maybe that is a plus for guys in a video game? New Gundam Breaker is out now for the PlayStation 4 with a PC version on Steam expected to be released at a future date.