SD Gundam Battle Alliance

SD Gundam Battle Alliance is fun, but it was plagued by unfortunate crashes (Image via Bandai Namco)

SD Gundam Battle Alliance releases on August 25, 2022, and with it comes a rich, enjoyable story and fun combat. While I enjoyed my time with the game, reliving some truly memorable moments in the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, it is much more than Universal Century stories.

G Gundam, Gundam Wing, Gundam SEED, and many more are featured, and it’s a charming Super Deformed Gundam game, but it has some issues that have genuinely baffled me. Sure, it’s fun, and the main issue I had can be hotfixed, but it marred an otherwise enjoyable experience.

SD Gundam Battle Alliance is an enjoyable trek through Gundam history

Thanks to shenanigans, the Gundam timeline has been scrambled, and characters are showing up in timelines that they shouldn’t. This leads to our heroes coming together to set things right again, the only way they know how: violence.

Players unlock some awesome mobile suits and work together with a pair of partners (NPCs or friends online) to play through short but enjoyable stages set in the Gundam universe. The combat is easy to get into, and the mobile suits have a trio of styles. Players have sharpshooters, more aggressive melee units, and all-rounders that average all around.

Each of these roles has its own special ability too, which can be triggered a few times during a stage. Players go through a series of stages and chapters, and the stories are divided into “Break” and “True” stages.

The “Break” stages, as the name implies, are broken. As players get through these and play SD Gundam Battle Alliance, they’ll unlock the “True” version of these events, playing them out as intended. Then, with the timeline corrected, the team leaves and sets off for other battles.

This could include some tragic stories too. After all, not every ending is a happy one in the Mobile Suit Gundam series. That said, being a sucker for a good tragedy, I appreciate it. SD Gundam Battle Alliance also features many of my favorite mobile suits of all time, including Hyaku Shiki, Burning Gundam, Gundam RX-78-2, Gouf Custom from 8th MS Team, and so many more. They can be a little grindy to unlock, but it’s worth having a nice assortment of pilots and mobile suits.

Combat is simple and mostly enjoyable but not without flaws

In SD Gundam Battle Alliance, players select a mobile suit, a pair of partners, and enter a stage proper. The actual mechanics of combat are simple enough: players have a regular attack (hold for knockback), a strong attack (hold to knock up), a pair of sub-weapons, and whatever beam rifle/gun/Vulcan the mobile suit has.

I’m glad players have Medical Kits that they can use to revive their allies, because some of these stages can get incredibly challenging. Thankfully, if you’re down, allies can revive you as long as you have a Medical Kit left. That’s because you also have the power to revive yourself with a Medical Kit.

That aside, I enjoyed the stage layouts and the actual gameplay. Maneuvering and using abilities at the right moments felt fairly rewarding. However, it comes with a negative, and that’s the Break System.

Most foes have a Break Meter, and when it’s reduced to zero, it temporarily makes them vulnerable. This is when you want to dump all of your focus onto the enemy. On Mobile Armors and other giant enemies, the Break system is fine; it regenerates slowly, making it manageable.

When it comes to regular enemies, however, it feels like the meter heals to full almost as soon as you stop hitting the foe, and only certain attacks reduce it. This drove me absolutely insane, especially in stages where I felt underpowered.

Leveling up mobile suits can be very costly at the moment

Each stage has a recommended level, and at first, it was easy to keep up with this. The more you unlock mobile suits, though, the greater the temptation will be to switch to another one and try something new, and soon, it gets very expensive to upgrade mobile suits and make them viable.

I invested a ton of time and money into the RX-78-2 Gundam (Amuro Ray), and by the time I unlocked the mobile suits I wanted (Hyaku Shiki, among others), I couldn’t really the stages to get them up to par with Gundam. This made stages harder than they needed to be.

You’ll also need decent parts for the mobile suits, which can also require grinding. This is something that could change with patches, if by simply adding a stage that gives tons of Credits for upgrading mobile suits.

While the suit designs are great and many of them are enjoyable to play, what wasn't fun was trying to find time to grind through stages and increase my Credit count to upgrade suits.

The visuals and soundtrack are perfect

What SD Gundam Battle Alliance pulls off flawlessly are its visuals and music. I adored the attention to detail in the chibi mobile suits. They aren’t massive, and it’s very cool to see them take flight and stand on a building.

The music is exactly how I remember it from the various shows, with some cool remixes and new versions of tracks. It also has some new music, and thematically, it all fits. It’s easily my favorite part of SD Gundam Battle Alliance.

Conclusion

While I have had some negatives to say here, I still very much love the game. I don’t have any problem with it being challenging, but I surely found myself vexed at how costly it became to upgrad mobile suits and the RNG in unlocking new blueprints.

The most frustrating thing about the game was that it kept crashing. It happened no less than six times throughout my Nintendo Switch playthrough. To make matters worse, it would crash right before the autosave, so I would have to redo a stage completely.

While I very much enjoyed my time with SD Gundam Battle Alliance, the Switch version was plagued by crashes (Image via Bandai Namco)

While the stages aren’t long, this issue also made unlocking blueprints for mobile suits so much harder. Suddenly, I had to replay the stage to get credit for the main story, and another time, because I didn’t get enough blueprints for the mobile suit I wanted.

This is something that can no doubt be fixed, and I understand that there is no way that all bugs can be found in a development cycle. This one baffled me though, and it made my playthrough a lot longer than it needed to be.

I also unfortunately had no experience with online multiplayer. There were no lobbies while going through SD Gundam Battle Alliance, so I cannot confirm or deny the quality of this aspect of the game.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed this game a great deal. It’s a satisfying Gundam experience, but it isn't without its flaws.