One of the biggest franchises, and with the most multimedia and recreational content, is undoubtedly Mobile Suit Gundam. The anime series, with a history spanning over 30 years, has an expansive universe beyond what most people know. The world of mekas (giant inhabited robots) delights us with a new opus which, for fans of the franchise, will be the perfect excuse to get lost for hours in its history.
SD Gundam Battle Alliancedeveloped by ARTDINK and published by Bandai Namco, gives us a facelift to the franchise’s usual warrior aesthetic, expanding the universe and tackling nostalgia directly.
When we talk about a facelift, it’s because, as its name suggests, SD or Super Deformed is the aesthetic chosen for this opus. This implies that the mobile suits (name of the robots in the series) have a “chibi” appearance.
The game, as an independent product, presents us with an epic story, where fans will be delighted with all the references and, in addition, they will be able to have fun testing mobile combinations for hours and hours. Sure, its gameplay may fall into various glitches and its story may be a bit complicated for newcomers, but that’s Gundam.
SD Gundam Battle Alliance can be defined as a game that delivers. It’s not exactly a production that stands out in one key aspect, so its simplicity can become a great pillar on which to lay the groundwork for future updates.
That said, let’s get down to business when it comes to the game’s graphics. The apparent intention of the title seems to be to demonstrate two entirely different layers in the same video game, separating narrative and gameplay and bringing them together at specific moments. The narration, told with simple dialogues on an image of the character, in the pure JRPG style and a playable phase in 3D which brings more or less details to the elements of the world.
This graphic dichotomy is not out of place, yes, in the playable section the small detail in the worlds is notorious. The fact that he’s super deformed doesn’t quite fit and fit into the Gundam universe.
On the other hand, an aspect to highlight is the sound section. Both the music and the dialogues are top notch. The music, as it should be, is epic and dynamic, bringing excitement to every fight. But the dialogues, in the way they are presented during the gameplay and in the cinematics, I can say that they are a fundamental pillar for the video game.
SD Gundam Battle Alliance presents us with a simple and repetitive style, despite a lot of content, the missions fail to become as complex as we go, resulting in a model that tires after a long period of play.
But let’s go in stages, I want to put special emphasis on how the game mechanics are presented to us and how to interfere with a tutorial without fully fulfilling the objective. Like any Japanese RPG, you still get text messages explaining the mechanics, which is a bit confusing because they show you a lot at once and you end up going back to the menu to read the instructions again. With SD Gundam it is not necessary, since it has 5 simple actions that teach us in the most complicated way.
Before entering a mission, you have to see a dialogue of the protagonists, here we will understand the rest and they put us in context in the story. Our character has no impact on the story, completing some totally out of place and left out dialogue. At the end of the dialogue we can choose a mission, but not before choosing our mobile suit.
The mobile suits that we can choose are unlocked throughout the main campaign, they are all variants of the mekas that we know from the animated series. Each has special characteristics, dividing them into 3 types: long distance attack with low health, melee attack and medium and balanced resistance. In addition, we have the possibility of increasing the skill points for each separately, leaving the possibility of customizing each according to each person.
Now, already entered the mission, the gameplay is very simple. You have to mobilize to attack an objective, destroy enemies and, sometimes, a final boss. It doesn’t change from start to finish of the game, so it gets repetitive. This dilutes the way of attacking a bit, because having the possibility of exploring different styles of play, things are not so complicated.
Finally, the importance of dialogue during combat adds a well-deserved epic to giant robots in city-destroying battles. Of course, the graphic style puts an end to the magic of this moment, but the dynamism of each final battle, with the background dialogues to support it, is the greatest value of this video game.
It’s one of those games that starts very well, and suddenly, due to the large number of hours it takes to complete, it becomes difficult. With SD Gundam Battle Alliance, you can easily take over 30 hours to complete, but in my case, the repetition and lack of depth in its mechanics completely took me out of the experience.
Missions can be repeated, in addition to having the possibility of using different combinations with your team and new mobile combinations to try. Beyond that, the story isn’t very engaging due to the pacing of the game itself, making it feel incomplete in every aspect.
SD Gundam Battle Alliance is the perfect game for fans of the franchise, it’s a nostalgic work that combines everything someone who wants Gundam could want.
Despite the above, the game is unable to fix all of its internal errors. From his story, completely independent of everything, but if you are not a fan of the saga you will not understand a single reference; let’s move on to the gameplay, which is so simple that it becomes repetitive in just 5 hours of play, which is fatal. In this way, we can conclude that it is a basic game with no added value beyond favoring its niche. The game could have been a surprise due to the wide variety of things it offers, but that’s it. Of course, to highlight the dubbing and its soundtrack, which exceeds all kinds of expectations.
