I’d never heard of the Gundam Breaker series until I came across it on PlayStation 4 with Gundam Breaker 3 at which point all DLC had been released and I was pretty late to the party. It still gave me hundreds of hours of enjoyment as I am a huge fan of the Gundam Anime series since the 90s when I was introduced to the Gundam Wing anime on T.V. Since then, I’ve grown to actually build Gundam model kits or Gunpla as they are called and have watched every series to date. I like robots okay? Bandai released a game called New Gundam Breaker a few years ago which everyone thought would be the next big game in the series and introduce the future of gameplay. We were wrong, so very wrong. New Gundam Breaker aka NGB, was pretty much despised by all fans as it took all aspects of previous games and watered them down to the point you could barely customize anything to what you wanted and gameplay was the slowest it had ever been.
February of 2024 Bandai announced a new Gundam Breaker game and fans rejoiced but were worried it would continue the NGB style of gameplay. Bandai assured everyone that this was a true Gundam Breaker game like the original releases and showed off kits we hadn’t seen before, customization abilities and mechanics that made everything better. How much were people excited? At this point I own three copies of this game. I bought the collector’s edition on PS5 which game with a special Gunpla kit, a PS4 digital copy so my 8-year-old and I could play together and this PC version. Each of them has been beaten at this point. I can’t wait for the DLC to come out. Gundam Breaker 4 was developed by CRAFTS & MEISTERS Co. Ltd and of course published by Bandai Namco Entertainment.
The story of Gundam Breaker 4 is all about the newest Gundam battle simulator called Gunpla Battle Blaze: Beyond Borders, you play as a player playing the beta of the release. You of course start the game with the most basic of Gunpla set up based on the RX-78-2, aka Grandpa Gundam as it is fondly called by fans, you quickly befriend a helpful player named Tao who uses a custom Super Deformed or SD Gundam. As the story progresses you will meet more characters which all have their own reason for playing GB4 and they join your party. Lin is the second character you meet and is one of your primary partners for most of the game, you play with Lin a few more times until you realize there have been two people using the same name and avatar of “Lin” at which point the second one takes on the name of “Linlin” except her color scheme is blue. Linlin has a specific way of talking, which was the first clue that something is different about her than all the other players you encounter.
With every Gundam Breaker game you are introduced to much of the combat mechanics via a tutorial mission. The biggest change to come to the Breaker series with the introduction of GB4 is that you can now have two different ranged weapons and two melee weapons, one in each hand for each type. You want to run two giant beam sabers and a bazooka in one hand and sniper rifle in the other?? Go for it. Two dual gatling guns and double twin-blades? Sure, knock yourself out. The dual weapon system came along with also the ability to have two different arm pieces for your Gunpla creations, giving you that much more ability to really let your creativity fly. Not every change introduced is positive as I talk more about game mechanics and systems later.
As you progress in the story Linlin starts to change in her speech and mannerisms, seemingly more human one would say. I’m sure if you live in 2024 you have figured out exactly what Linlin is at this point considering all the talk of A.I that is happening in our world at this time.
The game progresses from there to glitches and bugs happening in GB4 world that are affecting player stats and enemy strength being higher than intended so in-between all the power of friendship and overcoming adversity subplots you have to stop the disgruntled ex-developer of Gundam Breaker from taking over the simulator before the game is shut down and Linlin is lost forever under his control.
In regard to the pacing, that has to be discussed on two fronts, the story and the in-game systems, the two go hand in hand due to the systems being gated by story progression but systems are hindered I think to an unnecessary extreme. The story moves along at a decent pace but much of it is all about recruiting more people to join your clan so that you can sign up for the big tournament at the end and prove how strong you are.
Each character has their own story missions that dig a little bit into their background and of course no one has a perfect life, they all have their own real-world issues happening and playing the game is their escape. By the end of the game everyone has a resolution of some kind to their real-world problems all solved by playing video games. I hate to say this but, I didn’t care about most of their problems, we got a rich girl who has to follow family traditions, an ex-pro player who has been in a funk ever since he left his team. Lin is probably the only one that has a compelling story that isn’t even fully explored as you find out that she lives with her cousin, Misa, who was not only one of your partners in Gundam Breaker 3 but also shows up in many of the Gundam Battlelogue specials made into anime. It’s implied she lives with her now due to her parents passing away and has been very distant since it happened.
Quite a few other characters from the Battlelogue series make appearances during the story as clans that you battle in the tournament but the one I expected to meet, Robota, the robot toy that also seems to be becoming sentient in the previous game and was also a partner and integral part of the story. Maybe they didn’t want to bring up the fact the story had already sort of happened in the previous game.
Systems, the core of all Gundam Breaker games. In previous games you would use plastic that comes in different qualities to increase your Gunpla part levels, the higher the quality of plastic, the more experience you would earn. Part rarity mattered because you could use a higher rarity Gunpla piece to mix or “synthesize” new parts of higher quality. How it works in GB4 is that you must complete each chapter to progress to the next chapter, the difficulty can be changed from “casual, standard, hardcore” and the Gunpla pieces and plastic that drop can be higher level or rarity depending on the difficulty. There is also “Extreme and Newtype” which are unlocked by progressing into the late chapters and then defeating the final boss. Newtype difficulty introduces a new mechanic to dropped long range weapons that can give them a different weapon subclass. A basic rifle that dropped two or three copies could suddenly be classified as “Rifle: Highspeed” for rapid fire or “Rifle: Highspeed + Beam” which gives you both rapid fire and a beam attack. Some weapons do not get the benefit of Newtype difficulty such as Bazookas.
Why does it matter you might ask if you can just replay missions and farm the plastic and parts to synthesize parts just like in earlier games? The problem is that you are level and rarity capped until you reach specific chapters and stages. You can have a stock of 9999 plastic of the highest quality but its completely useless if you haven’t progressed enough to actually use it. By the end of the game, I had a huge stock of most plastic parts that while I was able to use it for post-game, I would have liked to use up some of if prior so I could keep earning.
When it comes to Gunpla parts the rarity system has been changed from the usual “common, uncommon, rare, epic and legendary” to just a star system with 5 golden stars being the maximum quality you can get. Each rarity level gives your Gunpla an ability slot which can be filled by synthesizing other parts into it to transfer or increase a stat, an example would be “Attack power: rifles” if you had it on a bazooka part that you won’t ever use, you can move it to your favorite rifle weapon to gain the benefit. The abilities you put on your parts is how you make your Gunpla stronger as you progress and customize it to your exact playstyle.
Did I like Gundam Breaker 4? It’s a very strong yes from me. While the gating of gameplay mechanics was frustrating at the time and the story was a bit expected the core gameplay itself is extremely enjoyable and the ability to cross-play PS4 and PS5 so that I can play with my kid it’s given me a level of enjoyment of the series I didn’t have before. The truth is that until all of the DLC is released and as updates happen, some of these things I found negative could change and be improved on. I’ve spent hours just customizing a Gunpla to create my own original creation and have it look and play exactly like how I imagine it would in my favorite show series. Gundam Breaker 4 released on August 28,2024 on PC, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo switch.
