Gundam Breaker 4 might have some of the most absurd customization options I’ve ever seen in a game — in a good way. After nearly every mission, I could make a completely different build or mobile suit, spend hours painting my perfect Gundam, and spend even more hours creating my dream dioramas of battle scenes. It’s a dream come true for any mech-head that loves deep customization and a fantastic return for the franchise, though not without its issues.
If you’re familiar with the Gundam Breaker series you likely know a lot of what to expect going in, if not you’ve probably gathered it’s a game about crafting your own Gundam and taking into frantic battles where you blow other mobile suits to bits, literally.
While this entry technically carried on the story from the last game, you can jump in without any prior knowledge and be just fine. In Gundam Breaker 4, you’re one of countless players in an online game called Gunpla Battle Blaze: Beyond Borders. It’s a pretty meta set-up, and as part of the game’s “beta” test, you meet other players, like the smart but diffident Tao, and form a clan to become the top players. As you might expect, of course, things aren’t all that they seem, and the online game starts glitching as you learn more of the truth.
Gundam Breaker 4’s story isn’t the most complex out there, but it’s a schlocky, fun time that leans into making its characters real weirdos — Mr Gunpla. Is an afro-adorned frill-loving host who announces all the Gunpla news, and Rin is a spunky young girl who’s a novice but hilariously gets a doppelganger early on who’s an expert, something that frustrates her to no end. These quirky characters have some fun dynamics and help elevate an otherwise by-the-numbers story. But it also completely serves its purpose — as a vessel for the crunchy combat and absurdly detailed customization.
“Gundam Breaker 4 might have some of the most absurd customization options I’ve ever seen in a game…”
You have a main lobby that serves as the hub for Gundam Breaker 4, where you can talk to characters, buy items, customize your Gunpla, and then take on missions. The entire game is divided into dozens upon dozens of missions – and while you’ll initially only have access to Story Missions, as you progress you’ll unlock a handful of different types.
There’s a fairly simple loop to what you do in Gundam Breaker 4: take on a mission or two, earn money and new mobile suit parts, try out new builds, and rinse and repeat. That loop can be fantastically engrossing if you buy into it, but you really need to relish in the whole idea of experimenting with new builds.
It’s staggering how many options are available to you at any time, and the potential for different builds and suits almost feels endless. Even over dozens of hours, I was still finding new ways to build and play, on top of tweaking my Gundam to be the coolest-looking robot in town. You can customize every single piece of your suit — arms, chest, head, legs, weapons, skills, and more.
Battles in Gundam Breaker 4 feel like a cross between a hack-and-slash game like Dynasty Warriors and your typical anime arena fighter. More than in past games, there’s a greater emphasis on combos, with the game letting you take two melee and two ranged weapons into combat. Battles are lighting-fast affairs that are usually over in just a matter of minutes, and it’s easy to pick up but difficult to master.
That focus on combos and picking weapons that work well together makes Gundam Breaker 4’s combat flow incredibly well—like there’s almost a sense of rhythm to battles, especially if you’ve practiced and found a weapon combo that you really love. On top of that, the game simply controls exceptionally well, making it always feel like you have complete control over your mobile suit with a variety of abilities to boost, guard, activate powerful EX skills, and more.
“Gundam Breaker 4 is undoubtedly hurt by a lack of variety, but its’ clear Bandai Namco has honed this series’ formula to a sheen.”
There’s real depth to the game’s combat, which is good because the actual mission design of Gundam Breaker 4 doesn’t have that. As much as I enjoyed the core combat, that’s pretty much all you’ll be doing for dozens of hours on end. Missions are, more often than not, the exact same formula of spawning into a battle, defeating all the enemies, and progressing to the next stage to do it all again. There are some variations on this, like defending a vehicle or taking on another player’s character, but no matter what, you’re still fighting other mobile suits in that same style of combat.
That’s, by far, the biggest flaw that plagues Gundam Breaker 4: lack of variety. I wish there was more variation to missions, and I wish there was even a little bit of exploration in missions or the hub itself. It’s a testament to how strong the combat and customization are that, in spite of that, I still had a blast with Gundam Breaker 4. The issue is assuaged a bit by the game’s new Diorama mode, which lets you place models in dynamic, fully-rendered 3D settings with an absurd amount of control over creating any scene you could want.
Diorama mode lets you place hundreds of mobile suits and control their design, poses, and animation. But you can also fine-tune the environment itself, placing objects, effects like explosions or lasers, or altering textures. Just like the mobile suit customization, there’s an almost impossible number of combinations and scenes you can make — it’s genuinely astounding. If you love building Gundam models and want to make dioramas but don’t want to spend real-life money, this feature is a godsend.
Gundam Breaker 4 is undoubtedly hurt by a lack of variety, but it’s clear Bandai Namco has honed this series’ formula to a sheen. Customization has always been the heart of this series, and Gundam Breaker 4 doubles down on that in all the right ways, giving you more options than ever before. If, like myself, you find yourself obsessing for hours on end over making beautiful little robots, you’ll be overjoyed.
