SD Gundam Battle Alliance

SD Gundam Battle Alliance is a love letter to Gundam fans, full of recognizable characters, Gundams, and serves as a history lesson for newcomers and veterans.

Gundam fans and newbies alike are in for a treat with SD Gundam Battle Alliance, which delivers a really well designed action RPG, on top of homages upon homages to decades of the Gundam franchise.

SD Gundam Battle Alliance is a game for Gundam fans, but actual knowledge of the series isn't wholly important to your enjoyment. If you just want some great action RPG gameplay featuring some of the best mechs ever introduced in anime, this game has you covered. The array of available Gundam to choose from will keep you replaying missions just to find the one suit perfect for you.

After years of arena fighters and lackluster sequels, like New Gundam Breaker, Battle Alliance feels like the breath of fresh air the franchise needed in video games. It’s a love letter to one of the most prolific anime franchises out there, but even if you aren’t a Gundam fan there’s a great action RPG underneath, with a surprising amount of variety. Between its deceptively fun original story and dynamic combat, it’s absolutely a standout in the crowded market of anime games.

Artdink's first Gundam game in a decade is surprisingly a challenge as a purely solo experience, and playing with others may make this action RPG shine despite its handful of flaws.

This game reminds me of another Bandai Namco-published series, God Eater, in a lot of aspects. From mission setup down to multiplayer progression and level design. I think if you like those games, you’ll find fun in BATTLE ALLIANCE. And despite the grinding, there’s enough content to go over for in a single campaign playthrough with a season pass (sold separately, of course) of content that will come later. I liked the story and its original characters, even if I can’t say I enjoy the presentation of prior Gundam events very much.

The sound design is excellent, with plenty of bumping tracks and sound effects from throughout the Gundam franchise. There’s even a very cool feature that allows you to upload your own music tracks into the game to play at various points, meaning you can use any songs you want to decimate enemy mechs with. It’s a minor feature, but it can make for some very enjoyable moments.

What could've been a bridge between the veterans and the newcomers to Gundam instead becomes a product that will cast aside anyone looking for a crash course. The veterans should find more than their money's worth, though.

SD Gundam Battle Alliance has me at odds because there’s a lot of things I like about it and a lot of things I don’t, both as a Gundam fan and just a general player. The mobile suits and pilots are fun to collect and explore. The story and missions are also fairly well-done and I like the look of the super deformed versions of a lot of my favorite mobile suits from across the series. My big miff is that the difficulty spike between series of missions makes repeatedly playing the same scenarios to level up your pilots and mobile suits a near-mandatory chore. I also just don’t think it makes goo...

With eternally stagnant, overly repetitive combat with subpar lock-on to boring, tiny levels, SD Gundam Battle Alliance is a substantial step down from the quality of Artdink's PSP classics.