SD Gundam Battle Alliance [Game Review]

SD Gundam Battle Alliance brings players once more into the world of chibi Gundam but with a different tale being told. As a commander of a small team, you and your navigator are caught within a virtual world that has within, all the different timelines of Gundam but a problem has arisen that causes each universe to have irregularities. To return home, you must don a mobile suit and fix these historical issues unless you wish for the virtual timeline to affect the real world and cause destruction to the Gundam universe! The story of SD Gundam Battle Alliance isn’t the most grandiose of the franchise but it is a good way to allow players to experience worlds from the beginning days of Gundam to modern series like Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans and even further. This also means you’re going to be controlling loads of various suits that range from the iconic GM Mobil Suits to the more legendary Gundam like Barbatos and Wing Gundam Zero. We won’t spoil all the suits you can unlock in SD Gundam Battle Alliance but we loved how many of our favorites were contained within!

Okay, we can feel you readers wondering how SD Gundam Battle Alliance plays and that is our next focus. SD Gundam Battle Alliance is akin to an action RPG where you control your mobile suit using a mixture of light and launcher attacks with various special attacks different for each suit. At first, you’ll be stuck with a GM and then Zaku—unless you got the pre-order edition—but as you hack and shoot your way through various locations that are ripped from the world of Gundam you’ll unlock more and more units to control and level up. Combat is fine and we did love that each unit feels quite differently. Barbatos being a melee-heavy Gundam is all about up-close skirmishes while the Guntank is more about launching rockets and bullets from a medium range. The only two major gameplay issues we had came from the repeated treks through various maps—you’ll often have to go through a map more than once as they are split between a historically inaccurate version and a TRUE version—and the leveling system.

Honestly, leveling up and strengthening your mobile suit is boring as it just comes down to putting in points to max out various stats like melee, ranged, health and boost. We kind of wish there was a bit more to the leveling system but we equally understand that could be over the top for a game filled with loads of suits. Honestly, though, SD Gundam Battle Alliance feels repetitive overall, and while combat is fun, replaying maps and fighting similar enemies for hours kind of begins to wear thin after the first few hours.

SD Gundam Battle Alliance’s visuals are another strange mix that even at its weakest, we kind of enjoyed it. Each mech is perfectly done with stunning levels of detail and we really give Artdink credit for how much care they put into preserving the various mobile suits and Gundam to their exact details. The landscapes, like the mecha, have been chibi styled and while we felt they were adorable to look at, they also lacked impact. Slamming into tiny buildings is cool but doesn’t leave a lasting impression which is strange to say. SD Gundam Battle Alliance isn’t the prime definition of next-gen but that doesn’t mean it looks bad either.
Together, We Will Win!

At first, it seems like SD Gundam Battle Alliance is a single-player experience but you’d be amiss if you didn’t notice there is a co-op and it allows up to three players to join together and tackle missions together! Now you can argue which Gundam is stronger and who would crush more Zaku in a battle Epyon or Burning Gundam! Playing co-op isn’t going to rid your eventual boredom of the combat after hours of gameplay but it is a good means to have some mindless fun with friends and geek out about all things Gundam.