Gundam Breaker 4

Gundam Breaker 4 was provided by Bandai Namco for review. Thank you!

Gundam Breaker 4 was my first foray into the Gundam Universe, and judging from the poor reception of other Gundam games recently, Gundam Breaker 4 might be a decent entry point into the series for various reasons. Whether you're brand new to the Gundam experience or a returning player, Gundam Breaker 4 does a good job of introducing you to the world of Gundam and what it's all about.

In case you aren't familiar with the premise of Gundam, or more specifically, Gunpla in this game, the aim is to build the ultimate "mech" (or Gundam) using parts you've collected in battles. You can modify the head, body, arms, and legs. You name it, and it's probably modular and can be fitted with new parts.

This is one area where Gundam Breaker 4 shines; there are many parts for you to find and equip, all with a different look and style. They usually have slightly different abilities, allowing you to separate your Gundam into a different playstyle, and you can paint/add decals to them. As far as customization of your Gundam goes, I think there's not much more Gundam Breaker 4 could do.

Parts can be obtained from battles, or you can use the coins you get from battles to buy specific parts you want from the shop.

The touted Diorama mode also lets you pose various Gundams in different positions in an environment you can craft yourself using models that you've bought in the in-game shop, as well as adding visual effects such as explosions to the scene, so if you're a particularly big fan of Gundam, I'm sure you can have some fun creating your scenes and capturing them.

But let's move away from customization and onto some actual gameplay. How does Gundam Breaker 4 feel like to play?

Well, the primary gameplay mechanic in the game is the combat, as you might assume. And the combat is a bit of a mixed bag, if I'm honest. The customization helps out here; your Gundam can have 2 melee weapons, and 2 ranged weapons equipped. There's a lot of weaponry to choose from, and the combat is pretty fun for the first few missions.

But before long, you realize that the combat is quite repetitive. All of Gundam Breaker 4 sadly falls into the realm of repetition. The missions in the "Standard" difficulty are easy. I dread thinking about the easiest difficulty, so I stayed on standard for my playthrough. However, I avoided the hardcore mode, as I had never played one of these games.

You can get away with mostly sitting on top of enemies, mashing your melee button to deal massive damage; ranged weapons do far less damage and are used when closing the gap, so you can start using your melee. The first couple of bosses do pose a challenge, but I feel as though the game's balance isn't quite there, and your parts and progress seem to outpace the missions, meaning enemies are dealing less and less damage as you progress through the story chapters, and you are dealing more and more.

Depending on the parts fitted to your Gundam, you can perform several special attacks. These take the form of EX and OP moves, such as firing a barrage of machine gun fire or rockets, repairing mid-battle, or doing a combo of melee moves. However, the damage output of these moves is barely worth the time you sacrifice to pull them off, so mashing a melee attack might still be your best option.

There are pretty much only two mission formats you can discern apart from each other. One is where you must protect a rocket from waves of attack until it takes off, and another is just destroying other Gundam that appear in waves... There *is* technically a 3rd "Clan Battle" mission format, but it's essentially just the destroying Gundams mission format, with some interspersed dialogue and a story cutscene. Either way, you will always fight through 3 waves of Gundam in every mission.

By the time you hit mission 20, I started getting sick of playing what felt like the same mission for the 10th time; even the maps began to repeat. It's a real shame, and you get the feeling that the budget for the game may have been pretty low, or it comes across that way.

A separate set of missions alongside the "Story" mode is called "Quest" missions. These missions are the same as the Story missions, using the same maps and often having very similar objectives but with a time limit. It does feel like the developers created a few maps and then tried to recycle content as much as possible to make it feel like the game has a lot of content when it doesn't.

The storyline for the game falls into a somewhat "meta" area. Where everyone in Gundam Breaker 4 is... playing Gundam Breaker 4. Every NPC you meet in the game is someone with a life outside of Gundam Breaker 4, but you all meet up as online friends to escape various situations these characters face in their real-world lives.

The narrative is advanced by utilizing voiced cutscenes before and after story battles and sometimes during the battles as part of a cutscene. Some of the characters are somewhat interesting, but they fall under some fairly generic tropes, and you can figure out the characters and their personalities within a couple of missions of meeting them.

Because of this, Gundam Breaker 4 feels like a game that may have been designed with a younger audience in mind, maybe in the 10-13-year-old range. Character plotlines and their motivations are pretty simple, and we have a silent protagonist using hand gestures to convey emotions.

Visually, the game is okay. Nothing particularly stands out, and they do the job they're meant to do, but it isn't what I'd call a "pretty" game. The sounds likewise are fairly generic and just do the job, they can get a little repetitive when firing weapons like a machine gun or mashing a melee attack. The voiced lines of dialogue are probably the best part of the sound in the game, with the voice actors doing a pretty good job.

I couldn't test out any of Gundam Breaker 4's online features, as they weren't available to reviewers before the game's launch. The game is supposed to contain an online lobby where you can meet other players, as well as the ability to do certain missions with other players.

Gundam Breaker 4 - Steam Deck Performance

How does Gundam Breaker 4 handle the basics then? Quite well, actually. It has 1280x800 resolution support, which it defaults to. It also has great controller support, allowing you to control menus and gameplay with the Steam Deck's controller.

Specific text in the game is a little on the small side, specifically on the mission select screen. Luckily, this is largely unimportant flavor text. Dialogue text is of a decent size and should be quite legible.

There are a few graphical options that are laid out very simply, with the options ranging from "Low" to "Best", so I'm offering 2 presets today, one focusing on battery life, and one focusing on the best quality you can get while getting 60 FPS.

Recommended Settings - 60 FPS

Regarding SteamOS settings, we aren't applying a frame rate limit or TDP Limit for this one.

We're putting all the graphics settings on the "High" option, including Texture Quality, as the game can hog VRAM a bit. Then we're setting the "Frame Rate" option to "60" and keeping the 1280x800 resolution. These are the default settings that the game recommends you play at upon booting.

With these settings, you should see an almost constant 60 FPS throughout the game; I rarely experienced any dips. There was a mission where I experienced several stutters within a few seconds of each other, which I think was likely to do with the VRAM being full, but this resolved itself. There may be some memory leak, as VRAM usage hit 7.2GB, an absurd amount for such a game.

The power draw varies greatly depending on the map and number of enemies, ranging from 17W in quieter situations up to 22W in intense ones. Steam Deck LCD owners can expect around 2 hours of battery life, with Steam Deck OLED owners getting around 2.5 hours.

Temperatures stick around 70-80C as you play, meaning the fan ramps up and down a fair amount, meaning the fan will be audible at points.

Battery Life Settings - 30 FPS

If you want a battery life as long as possible, then set your TDP limit in SteamOS to 7W, and again, we don't need a frame rate limit in SteamOS for this one.

In the in-game graphics settings, use "Low" for everything but Textures, which we'll leave on "High." Then, set the in-game frame rate option to "30". With some uneven frame times, the in-game frame limiter isn't perfect, but it stops us from getting the input lag that the SteamOS frame limiter introduces.

With these settings, you can get a mostly stable 30 FPS, the frame times will be slightly erratic, due to the in-game frame limiter, but I largely found it to be fine once I got used to it.

Power draw is much lower using this preset, around 8-10W, so you can expect 4 hours of battery from a Steam Deck LCD, and 5 hours from the OLED model on these settings.

Temperatures are also lower, mostly between 60-65C. Thus, fan noise shouldn't be a concern.

Accessibility:

Gundam Breaker 4 has no accessibility menu per se. Although it does offer some features such as disabling camera shake, adjusting sensitivity, auto lock-on, and rebindable controls. All dialogue is subtitled, whether voiced or not.

Conclusion:

Gundam Breaker 4 excels in some areas and falls short in others. If you're a fan of collecting parts, building your Gundam, experimenting with different combinations, and showing it off in the Diorama mode, then Gundam Breaker 4 has got you covered.

But the gameplay sadly falls a bit short, with repetitive missions with almost the same objective each time and repeating maps and enemies. The lack of variety quickly drains the fun out of Gundam Breaker 4 before it should. I thoroughly enjoyed the first hour of playing. Still, after reaching mission 6 and realizing I would be completing the same mission format of defeating two waves of enemies and then facing a boss every mission, it became stale. Then you realize there are over 30 missions of the same.

The saving grace here might be the online mode. If the player base is strong enough, you might get some enjoyment out of the variety that comes with online play. Sadly, the servers were offline for reviewers, so I couldn't test the online gameplay myself.

Steam Deck's performance is at least pretty good, with the ability to have a "decent" looking game without an obscene power draw and sacrifice some visuals for an incredibly long battery life. The controls work perfectly well. You can't fault Gundam Breaker 4 for how it performs on the Deck.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.