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| Title | Gundam Breaker 3 |
| Developer | Crafts & Meister / Bandai Namco |
| Publisher | Bandai Namco |
| Release Date | April 28, 2016 (Asian Version) |
| Genre | Beat ’em Up |
| Platform | PS4 / Vita |
| Age Rating | N/A |
| Official Website | |
I didn’t really know what to expect when I said I would review Gundam Breaker 3. I’ve never seen a single Gundam show and had very limited knowledge of the actual mechs involved. The combat looked fun and I love games where you customize giant mechs and go blow stuff up, so I was interested to see how this would play. Did I find something that made me want to get into this series more, or just another run of the mill beat em up. Let’s find out.
The story centers around a young girl named Misa who is trying to save her local shopping arcade. In this age Gunpla competitions, which are simulated Gundam battles, are popular. Your avatar runs into Misa shortly after moving to Ayato Shopping Street and she asks you to form a Gunpla team with her to get some notoriety for the district and bring back the customers.
While the story is nothing to write home about, it is pretty interesting to see how some of the over the top characters interact with each other. There’s also a lesson be learned here about team work, friendship and lots of those other standard anime tropes. By the end I was pretty invested in how this would all play and to see just what would happen next.
The graphics here are fantastic. All of the Gunpla models are very detailed. If you put logos and accessories on them you can see them very clearly. The combat areas look nice as well. Each area has a fair amount of detail and a distinct style, from the snow covered battle field to the surface of the moon these area look great. My only issue is I wish there were more of them. You will play the same areas over and over. A little more variety would have been welcomed here. Even though everything looks great, the framerate doesn’t suffer at all. This game runs silky smooth even when all sorts of crazy attacks are being used and that screen is full of enemies. I played this on the PlayStation 4, so I do not know how the PlayStation Vita version of this game will run.
The sound department is very solid as well. The music tracks are hard rocking and get you read to kick some serious ass in your Gunpla. The sound effects of the attacks and parts flying off you enemies are very satisfying and make you feel like you are really ripping your enemy to shreds. There are also quite a few voice cut scenes for the story mode. The Japanese VA is great and all the voices really seem to fit the characters. There is no English dub for this one, but I didn’t notice any glaring errors in the subtitles anywhere, so this was not an issue.
The gamplay is where this game really shines. I love the Dynasty Warriors style combat found in this title. If you ever played one of those game you can pick this up and be having fun within minutes. Some of the major differences, however, are that you can equip up to 4 different special moves. There are tons of these to unlock for each of the weapons found in the game. Some of these will require you to have certain types of equipment to use, so you will have to take this into account when customizing your Gunpla. You will also obtain an EX move a bit later in game. There are quite a few of these than can obtained as well, so combat all feels fresh because you are constantly using different moves and weapons. Some stages will have vehicles for you to use. There’s nothing like riding a giant mecha elephant and mowing down you enemies. The only issue I found here was the camera will sometimes give you a horrible angle. The game does have a lock on feature, and you change which enemy you’re locked on to by tapping the right analog stick, though sometimes this doesn’t help and you have to tap L1 just to unlock from targets all together. Some may find the normal and casual difficulties too easy, but the game becomes much more challenging when playing on the hard or extreme difficulty.
I have never seen a game with as much customization as this one. There is a crazy amount of options when making your Gunpla. There are hundreds of arms, bodies, backpacks, legs, and accessories you can use to create your ultimate fighting machine. If that’s not enough, you can add logos, decals, and paint each piece to whatever color you would like as well. Even the parts themselves can be merged together to form better parts with more abilities and skills. So if you love how a part looks but it’s not as leveled up as the other parts, just upgrade it to your liking. There are even cubes that can add abilities to weapons or other parts of your choosing. You can seriously create just about anything your mind can come up with here. I spent hours just making my Gunpla exactly the way I wanted it and had a total blast doing it. You will obtain most of these parts by simply cutting them off the Gunpla you face in combat. You can add abilities to your weapons that will give you a greater chance of knocking off a part, but they will fly off from just attacking normally as well.
In addition to story mode the game offers some online Co-op play with up to four players. There is also online arena combat were the game connects to the net and downloads other players’ Gunpla so you can battle them with AI. There’s also a challenge mode which gives you various objectives to overcome, the ones where you have to dodge things can get very tricky. I would like to have seen some PvP modes here but if there are any I was unable to find them.
All in all I spent about 25 hours with Gundam Breaker 3 and I loved every minute of it. I had a blast with the combat, the story was pretty interesting and making bad ass Gunpla to fight in is just a pure joy. I would have liked to seen more stage variety and some PvP modes for online play but there’s plenty of content here to keep you hunting parts to make your perfect mech for hours. Once you complete the story mode you can obtain MG or Master Grade parts to make your Gunpla even more deadly. I have no issue recommending this one to fans of Gundam, fans of mecha, or fans of Dynasty Warriors style combat. This one will run you about 60 bucks with shipping from Play-Asia, and it is worth every penny.
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