LifeisXbox’s SD Gundam – Battle Alliance review | As one of the first Anime shows that I have ever watched in my lifetime, Mobile Suit Gundam etched itself into my memory banks as one of my childhood thrills. I remember waking up each sunday morning to get behind the tv as a little lad with my coco pops getting ready for an amazing 2 hours of anime! So of course I was more than thrilled when I got the oppertunity to review SD Gundam – Battle Alliance, developed by Alvion and brought to us through Bandai Namco. SD Gundam – Battle Alliance is a curious little beasty to be honest. The game starts off at The Principality of Zeon’s war for independence turning point. This had my hopes up because you actually have full sized suits in this intro! But not every dream ends in a dream. Soon you find yourself teleported into an ‘in between’ universe and will be tasked to fix several breaches in the history of Gundam because… plot points, I guess? Honestly. Most of the game’s story is a hotch potch of jumbled together stories and missions, with backstory that sadly enough got lost on me due to the chaotic nature of this game. Want to know what I mean? Then wait no longer and read on in this review of… SD Gundam – Battle Alliance.
Most Memorable Moment
One of the first Big Boss battles. This was a certain Suit that floated above a huge lake and actually had my heart racing with adrenaline. One of the only times though… A battle where my AI companions did a great job not fudging around either! Hurray!
ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox Series X | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion of the writer.
What we Liked!
- Audio| Hear-ye Hear-ye thou audio enthusiasts out there. For thine prayers hath been answered. Anyone out there looking for a premium experience when it comes down to music and voice overs looketh no further because SD Gundam Battle Alliance has your back.
Firstly the music? Mwuah. A+ on this behalf! Each track suits the level perfectly and I can only recommend the following: Play this game with the best setup you can muster. Of course its not a mindblowing soundtrack, but it gets the job done with perfect quality music.
But not only that, this game has a fully narrated and voiced over story. And you can honestly hear that the voice actors really gave it their all (okay, a few ‘minor’ hiccups here and there) during most of their lines. Sounds like *death gurgle* and what not sound a bit more… cringe at times. But still, great job none the less! - That’s actually it| Unfortunately that is about it for what it comes to really top notch game stuff. The rest you’ll have to discover down below.
Mixed Feelings
- Visually lack-luster| I wish I could say that this game did not only sound great, but looked great as well. But then I’d be lying to you and that is something we never (okay rarely do; If I would ever say something like I totally adore Maui that is either a lie, or she edited something in my review somewhere) do. Though the starting intro and battle looked great, the moment that we get into our tiny mobile gundam suit, the world just looks bland and boring. Sure, there’s bright colours everywhere around you. But come on, put a little bit more effort in it will ya? One some close ups of the models you can actually see that the smudges on the suits are just faded and pixelated. I mean, what? Am I running this on an Xbox 360? No, I’m running this on the Series X. Put a little more effort in it. And honestly, this part would’ve been in the what I disliked part, if the anime-style in-between stuff wasn’t there. Those parts really elevate the entire visual block to a passable.
- A lot of story, but what?| During your missions you’ll hear the NPC characters talk, a lot! Giving you more story to swallow than you would even be able to process if it was in English. But sweetheart, you’ll be scratching at your head to find out that there is no English narration, so if you’re up to dieing… a lot? You’ll have to skip all of that juicy dialog during your battles because you won’t have any time at all to read the subtitles (which also make up a fairly sized chunk of your screen, adding more chaos to the already chaotic battles). And since I do not speak or understand Asian, I lost a lot of backstory during the missions.
- Boring combat| For a game that leans heavy on combat, I sadly enough didn’t feel my adrenaline rise at all during the most part of my game time. Sure there were a few instances, but they were spread apart so heavily, I lulled back into a drowsy state of sleepiness while playing. And if there’s one feeling you have to avoid during a new game? It’s being bored because it just feels lack-luster. Also, there are a couple of classes for you to choose from. I found myself always choosing the same class because it did the most damage over all the other classes. The sharpshooter even trumps a few mobile suits in the melee department. I mean … There’s an entire class dedicated to melee combat, and my sharpshooter suit trumped even those without even batting an eye. Uhhh… Balance please?
- Poor tutorial| Sure, there’s an in-game tutorial for you to dabble around with. But, I felt as if it didn’t really explain to me what some features really do. I actually had to google how I unlocked some in-game features of my suits. I mean, if you have to do that instead of just reading the in-game tutorial? Yeah … Something’s just off.
- Dissapointing customization| One of the other ‘selling options’ for SD Gundam Battle Alliance was to be the actual customization of your gundam suit… I was hoping on some actually cool stuff in this part. Sadly enough it’s just a rudimentary add part to replace that part to get an incremental increase for a certain stat… limited to 3 parts per suit. Mayor killjoy!
What we Disliked
- Chaotic AI| SD Gundam is one of the most chaotic games I have played in a looong time. Not only are the battles all over the place and will the camera be one of your worst enemies from time to time, but you’re A.I. comrades that you assign to tag along are at times just brain dead imps running around slashing at thin air. I, at times, had to body block my artificial bud because he was trying to get at an enemy that was behind a building that wouldn’t be destroyed. Okay, if you lived in that apartment you’d be having a very bad time. But my enemy just lived on to shoot me that one last time.
At other times they would just zip around as if some unseen force gave them the necessary wind in their sails to just reach mach 10 in 0.001 seconds and then teleport right next of an enemy. Oh, and lets not forget that annoying running forward… With a rock holding him back. Ugh.
How long to beat the story | 50 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 50+ hours
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