Again in early 2016 after I was searching for import-friendly video games on PS Vita, I used to usually see Gundam Breaker talked about. If you happen to’ve by no means heard of the collection earlier than, consider them as hack and slash motion video games with RPG components, deep customization, and a pure unadulterated love of Gunpla. Across the time I used to be wanting into the collection, Bandai Namco introduced an Asia English launch for Gundam Breaker 3 on PS4 and PS Vita, and I made a decision to purchase each variations. I ended up loving it as my first Gundam recreation. Since then, I’ve imported and performed Gundam Breaker 1 and a pair of on PS Vita, and in addition gotten mainly each Gundam recreation launched in English throughout platforms. To see Gundam Breaker 4 introduced earlier this yr and confirmed for a worldwide multi-platform simultaneous launch stays certainly one of 2024’s greatest surprises. Quick ahead to at this time and Gundam Breaker 4 is lastly right here on Steam, Swap, PS4, and PS5. Having put in about 60 hours throughout platforms, I like Gundam Breaker 4, nevertheless it has a couple of points proper now.
Gundam Breaker 4 is a vital launch not solely due to the sport itself, however due to how far we’ve include the collection within the West. So what makes Gundam Breaker 4 an enormous deal? Gone are the times of ready for an Asia English launch to import. Gundam Breaker 3 was an Asia English launch not launched within the West, and simply on PlayStation. I can’t recall the final Gundam recreation that had an English dub possibility, however right here we’re with a twin audio possibility and a number of subtitle choices (EFIGS and plenty of extra). However what concerning the recreation itself and the totally different platform variations? I’m going to cowl all of that on this prolonged overview that will even take you on a journey of me beginning my first Grasp Grade Gunpla (Gundam Plastic Package in the event you’re new to this) after constructing some Excessive Grade (simpler and smaller kits) earlier than.
Gundam Breaker 4’s story ranges from getting the job accomplished to some highs and lows. The lows are after I felt like sure pre-mission dialog was happening a bit too lengthy, and the highs had been within the latter half of the sport when there are fascinating character reveals and in addition extra fascinating dialog. If you happen to’ve not performed a single recreation within the collection earlier than, Gundam Breaker 4 nonetheless does an excellent job of bringing you on top of things, however you may marvel why the looks of sure characters is an enormous deal in a while. The embargo solely permits me to speak concerning the first two chapters of the story, and it seems like a simple affair throughout these two. I ended up liking the principle characters fairly a bit by the tip, however my two favourite characters seem a lot later within the story.
The actual draw of Gundam Breaker 4 isn’t the story although. It’s constructing your individual good Gunpla, enhancing it over time, getting higher gear, and turning into stronger to deal with larger difficulties and extra quests. If you start, you get the fundamentals, however what the staff actually underold within the promotion is the customization side. It’s unimaginable. Not solely are you able to alter particular person components like left and proper arms, however you can even alter ranged weapons for every arm, melee with twin wielding, and alter the person half dimension and scale. This implies you may even use SD (tremendous deformed) components in your regular Gunpla and both have it seem like this bizarre frankenstein go well with or scale issues to your liking.
Past the precise components for every primary class in meeting, the customization in Gundam Breaker 4 takes issues additional with builder components that allow you to add much more issues to your Gunpla. A few of these even have their very own abilities. Talking of abilities, you might have EX and OP abilities to make use of in fight. These rely in your components and weapons. In a while, you additionally unlock potential cartridges which have their very own specs that offer you buffs or debuffs.
As you undergo the missions breaking components and incomes S-rank reward components, you additionally get supplies. These can be utilized to stage up your components. Every mission in Gundam Breaker 4 often has a advisable components stage indicating how appropriate it’s in your present gear. Along with supplies you earn to improve components, you begin incomes supplies to extend half rarity in a while. This allows you to improve for extra abilities as effectively, and you need to use older or lesser half abilities whenever you improve and cannibalize these older components.
Throughout the principle story, I spent a little bit of time on the non-obligatory quests to earn cash or components, however really feel like the sport is balanced sufficient the place you received’t actually need to grind throughout the principle story on the usual problem no less than. Talking of the problem, you unlock three larger difficulties as the principle story progresses, and these up the problem and half stage suggestion fairly a bit. If you happen to do plan on skipping many of the non-obligatory quests throughout the principle story, be sure to regulate the brand new unlocks as a result of among the non-obligatory quest sorts are lots of enjoyable, particularly the survival mode.
Outdoors of all of this, you can even alter the paint of your go well with which helps you to coloration schemes you’ve unlocked by development or from DLC. If you happen to put time into Gundam Breaker 4, there’s a ton of stuff so that you can get out of it, and I’m floored by how a lot has gone into this. If you’re accomplished with paint, you may work with decals and weathering results as effectively. Gundam Breaker 4 is the actual deal for Gunpla lovers, however does it play effectively?
Having loved the whole lot Gundam Breaker 4 has to supply in its gameplay by story missions, facet content material, and boss fights other than one particular mission sort, I feel the staff nailed it. I by no means obtained bored of fight although the conventional problem is on the better facet. I stored swapping out weapons and attempting the varied sorts earlier than selecting a greatsword model weapon for the remainder of my playthrough. All the things feels diversified sufficient, and the person abilities and stats make for a contemporary expertise all through.
In terms of the bosses and minibosses, I really like having them seem on the stage within the Gunpla containers after which breaking out earlier than combating you. This by no means will get previous, and seeing one of many Gunpla kits I constructed seem as a boss in a while was superior. Most boss fights contain concentrating on weak factors, damaging the numerous well being bars, destroying shields, and the standard. I did have bother with one explicit boss’ weak factors utilizing particular weapons, however I modified to a whip and sorted it instantly. The one actual laborious boss battle within the story was coping with two of a particular boss directly. I received’t get into particulars for spoiler causes, however I did battle with the AI in a single particular battle.
Visually, Gundam Breaker 4 ranges from nice to wonderful. The environments look missing early on, however I discovered the variability good total. A lot of the work went into ensuring the Gunpla kits and animations look the most effective, and it exhibits. The builders clearly weren’t attempting to go for a practical artwork model right here, so don’t anticipate one thing like Gundam Evolution and even how some bits of Gundam Breaker 3 appeared. The aesthetic in Gundam Breaker 4 works effectively and it scales because it ought to on decrease finish {hardware}. The results look nice, and the size of many boss fights is superior.
The music in Gundam Breaker 4 ranges from forgettable tunes you received’t consider exterior the sport to some actually nice songs in particular story missions. I’m disenchanted under no circumstances to set music from the varied anime and films right here. Often we’d see some anime music pack DLC or a premium bundle for Asia and Japan, however I’ve not seen any of that but within the recreation or introduced. I additionally don’t see a technique to load customized music like in Cell Go well with Gundam Excessive Vs Maxiboost ON on PS4.
The voice appearing has been a nice shock. I performed by the sport utterly with English on one save, and in addition spent a couple of dozen hours with the Japanese voice possibility on one other platform save. Each had been excellent and I discovered myself liking the English extra throughout missions as a result of I hate studying small subtitles throughout motion battles after I’m specializing in combating enemies.
To this point, other than one mission sort actually annoying me (fortunately not too prevalent) and some bugs, I’ve had no actual points with Gundam Breaker 4. If you’re new to this collection and aren’t a fan of replaying missions to grind out higher gear and drops, you could discover issues repetitive. I’ve at all times seen Gundam Breaker like Earth Protection Drive and Monster Hunter the place after ending the story, I spend time constructing my good Gunpla.
As for bugs, I bumped into one the place sure names wouldn’t save or two I feel are Steam Deck-specific. The primary is that returning to the title display from in-game takes approach too lengthy. The second is one particular mission that crashed for me solely when taking part in on my monitor. I replayed it on the Deck itself and it was wonderful. It’d simply have been regarding the efficiency penalty I see in some video games docked, however I can’t say for certain.
The one side I’ve not touched on to date is the web. Pre-release I managed to play an excellent quantity of the community take a look at on PS5 and Swap, however I solely managed to check a little bit of the retail launch on PS5 with a good friend who’s reviewing that model. The PC model’s servers haven’t been on-line pre-launch in any respect, so I can not take a look at if the web works wonderful on Steam Deck but. I might be updating this as soon as servers go browsing and I’ve managed testing the PC model on Steam Deck with pals on-line.
At this level, you’re in all probability questioning concerning the Gunpla I used to be constructing. I made some progress and obtained by 5 units of runners, however made a mistake with one small half. I panicked and virtually broke it whereas attempting to separate issues. That is the place my guitar decide got here into the image and saved me. I ended up stopping with my RG 78-2 MG 3.0 about midway accomplished. As soon as the overview embargoes of this week are over, I’ll get again to it and end it.
Now let’s get to the platform variations and options.
Gundam Breaker 4 PC port controls – keyboard, mouse, and controller assist
Gundam Breaker 4’s on PC is the one model of the sport that helps above 60fps. The PS5 model is capped at 60fps and the Swap model hovers across the 30fps mark. The Gundam Breaker 4 PC launch additionally has mouse and keyboard assist along with controller assist with a number of button immediate choices.
When taking part in on the Deck itself, it displayed Xbox button prompts. When utilizing my DualSense controller over the Dock on my monitor, Gundam Breaker 4 confirmed PlayStation prompts appropriately. It additionally auto switches between keyboard mouse and controller prompts based mostly in your enter. The one controller-related problem I bumped into is the sport not appropriately detecting after I’ve reconnected a controller. I examined this on my DualSense and 8BitDo Final controllers wirelessly.
Gundam Breaker 4 ships with three controller presets and a customized possibility. You may alter the keyboard mouse and controller settings independently.
One setting I like to recommend altering instantly or after you check out the primary few missions is digital camera sensitivity and distance. You are able to do this in Participant Mode from the sport settings. I discovered the default too gradual and shut.
Gundam Breaker 4 PC graphics settings and show choices
Gundam Breaker 4 helps a number of resolutions and body charge caps. On the Steam Deck itself, it sadly doesn’t assist a full 800p and runs at 720p and 16:9. On the body charge facet, it may well go from 30fps to 360fps and limitless on PC. I set it to 120fps when taking part in on Steam Deck since I performed it virtually completely on my Steam Deck OLED. You may also toggle v-sync.
On the graphics facet, you may alter the standard of textures, anti-aliasing, post-processing, shadows, results, and in addition alter brightness and toggle movement blur.
Gundam Breaker 4 Steam Deck efficiency – does it work out of the field?
I performed Gundam Breaker 4 with Proton Experimental (bleeding edge) as I usually do for untested video games, however I additionally examined it on the default Proton. It really works completely out of the field and even invokes the on-screen keyboard for textual content enter. I’ve confidence on this being Steam Deck Verified pre-launch or quickly after. The 35 hours I put into it on simply my Steam Deck OLED show that.
When taking part in with all settings at Excessive other than shadows, Gundam Breaker 4 simply hit 60fps, however I needed extra. For this, I turned issues to medium and performed at 80-90fps virtually throughout the board. A number of late-game missions noticed drops to the excessive 60s throughout gameplay, however in any other case I had no points in precise gameplay. In-engine cut-scenes do take successful to efficiency and run within the 50-70fps vary for me on Steam Deck. I did run into one problem the place the meeting part out of the blue dropped to 1-3fps for a couple of seconds earlier than capturing again as much as 90fps. This didn’t occur greater than 3 times whole, however I couldn’t determine what prompted it. If this can be a Proton associated problem, I hope Valve can repair it.
The one visible problem I had when taking part in on the Deck itself is among the icon glyphs and menus had both smaller than anticipated fonts, or they weren’t as crisp as they need to’ve been. I seen this even on Swap so it seemingly is a matter with the sport being designed for the next res and larger display. Not a dealbreaker, however price declaring.
Gundam Breaker 4 Swap vs PS5 – what to purchase?
On the console facet, I didn’t have time to check Gundam Breaker 4 on my PS4, so I targeted on the Swap (Lite and OLED) and PS5 variations. Gundam Breaker 4 on PS5 appears superb and runs mainly completely at 60fps within the time I put into it, however I didn’t attain the few missions within the story in the direction of the tip that had been extra visually demanding. I additionally didn’t attain right here on Swap, however I put practically two dozen hours into the Swap model to see sufficient of the way it runs there. Take a look at a comparability of the opening tutorial mission on PS5 and Swap within the screenshot comparability beneath:
The most important downgrades on Swap other than the efficiency are with decision, element, and reflections. This is applicable not solely to the levels, but in addition the Gunpla components. Through the community assessments, a good friend of mine identified how the Swap model appeared like an HG Gunpla whereas the PS5 model appeared like an RG in some scenes. If you happen to constructed Gunpla you’ll perceive this, however for everybody else, it simply means Gunpla within the Swap model finally ends up missing in lots of particulars like decals, lining, and even weathering results in particular conditions. They do seem, however I feel the decrease decision and draw distance makes it in order that they’re invisible typically. That is a type of modifications you received’t notice till you see the sport exterior Swap.
I truthfully anticipated this to run at 120fps on PS5 given the visuals. Taking part in Megaton Musashi at 120fps was good as a current launch. Possibly the builders capped this to 60fps for multiplayer causes with the PS4 model, however I’m unsure. Except for the 60fps cap, Gundam Breaker 4 has first rate rumble assist and even has PS5 Exercise Card assist to load into your save faster. Because the overview embargo prevents me from exhibiting something past chapter two within the story, the screenshot beneath is from after I simply started taking part in exhibiting the Exercise Card implementation for story mode. I hope this helps on-line play and lobbies sooner or later as effectively.
Talking of loading, the Swap load occasions are actually lengthy in comparison with PS5 and Steam Deck. Even working the sport off the SD card on my previous Steam Deck LCD had a lot quicker load occasions than Swap.
If you happen to solely care about portability, you clearly received’t hassle with the PS5 model, however the Swap port presently has one main problem that makes me hesitate to advocate it. The meeting part and diorama mode really feel very sluggish. Whereas the principle foyer or hub can also be sluggish, the efficiency in missions is best albeit nonetheless not an ideal 30fps. I noticed drops even in early missions from 30fps, however once more, this can be a lot higher than I anticipated given some current Swap ports.
I might be comfortable with this given the {hardware} if the meeting part ran higher contemplating you can be spending lots of time there after every mission. Diorama mode additionally wants extra optimization on Swap with how sluggish it feels. If you happen to performed Gundam Breaker 3 on PS Vita, you can be greater than wonderful with the Swap model, however I hoped for a greater port all issues thought-about. Since there are extra content material updates deliberate, I hope we see some optimization on this entrance.
For many who personal a number of platforms, I solely advocate the Swap model in the event you completely wish to play portably and don’t personal a Steam Deck. Talking of moveable play, I loved Gundam Breaker 4 on my Swap Lite other than the textual content dimension in some menus. Gundam Breaker 4 can also be sadly the ultimate recreation I reviewed on it earlier than the display developed some LCD-related points.
Is the Gundam Breaker 4 Final Version price it?
I had entry to among the DLC included within the Gundam Breaker 4 Deluxe Version and Gundam Breaker 4 Final Version. I can’t touch upon the story DLC but because it isn’t obtainable, however the early unlocks aren’t recreation altering. You get stage 1 components for the fits listed on the shop web page, however I discovered the builders components to be higher as early DLC that will help you get began.
Past that, the Diorama content material doesn’t appear to be absolutely obtainable proper now, however there may be some content material from the DLC I had entry to, and it was actually good for posing Gunpla and utilizing the cel-shaded filter as effectively. Having tried the Diorama mode rather a lot throughout my playthroughs on all platforms, picture mode lovers and people who get pleasure from these sorts of modes in video games will discover rather a lot to like right here. Having extra gadgets and equipment on this mode might be good, however you would get these individually I assume. I really like how Gunbarrel Strike Gundam – Gundam Breaker Ver appears, so having these components was good. I appreciated the design sufficient to order the collector’s version the second pre-orders went up as effectively.
Is Gundam Breaker 4 price it for the story?
I’ve seen some of us excited to play Gundam Breaker 4 for its story, and whereas it’s a wonderful story, you actually are right here for personalisation, battles, and constructing your splendid Gunpla. If you need a story-focused recreation as a substitute, take a look at Megaton Musashi. Each video games have their strengths and weaknesses, however I ended up clicking with the gameplay in Gundam Breaker 4 extra as a fan of the older video games.
After I obtained my overview codes for Gundam Breaker 4, I had a enjoyable concept of beginning the MG 78-2 Model 3.0 equipment and constructing it alongside the sport to complete each on the identical time, however sadly there are too many different video games releasing for me to have the ability to try this.
Not solely was it nice to play a brand new Gundam Breaker alongside constructing my latest Gunpla equipment, however there’s a brand new discovered appreciation I’ve for the work that goes into designing these kits now after shifting to an MG and in addition an RG from HG kits. I’ve additionally been fortunate sufficient to have some pals who’re tremendous useful with Gunpla ideas for decals, panel lining, and in addition what to do when caught. I stay up for ending this equipment after which engaged on my RG subsequent.
The look ahead to Gundam Breaker 4 has been tremendous lengthy, and I didn’t even suppose we’d see a brand new recreation within the collection after New Gundam Breaker, however right here we’re. Gundam Breaker 4 is actual and it’s spectacular in virtually each approach. It’s my favourite Steam Deck recreation this yr since Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance, and one I stay up for taking part in on-line and offline over the approaching months with all of the DLC deliberate.
Gundam Breaker 4 Steam Deck overview: 4.5/5
