Gundam Breaker 4 is a deep toybox for Gunpla freaks

With my basic kitbash mech suit made of spare parts, I’m facing off against a classic RX-78 Gundam that’s three times the normal size. I mashed the trigger to fire my beam rifle, but there was weird feedback. Turns out my whole arm was blown off, a circular nub and jagged splash of burnt paint where it should’ve been. With a beam saber in my remaining off-hand, I charge the enemy, slashing at its legs until they turn red from the heat. I spot a weak point in the 78’s chest, hit it, and the massive suit topples to the ground.

There’s no time for a breather though, and I keep swinging until it gets back up. It took some good damage, but not nearly enough, so it’s time to repeat the cycle. My arm fizzles back into reality, returning my two main weapons in the process. Gundam is one of the great anti-war works in anime, but right now I’m playing with model kits, banging them together like action figures. I defeat the massive 78 and go back home, sifting through all the new parts I found for my kit. My partner, a weird dork who loves SD Gundam, seems thrilled. This is Gundam Breaker 4.

I woke up stupidly early over the weekend to play a video game. That’s because Bandai Namco ran an “Open Network Test” for Gundam Breaker 4, a title I’ve been attempting to will into existence since at least 2018. I only played for a little over an hour, but after that small chunk of time I can happily say I’m one hundred percent on board for more. From the extreme depth of the customization options to the lizard brain-igniting combat, it’s an easy sell for someone who not only digs Gundam as a series, but has a lifelong enthusiasm for Gunpla as well.

As a series, for the most part (we won’t talk about New Gundam Breaker today), Gundam Breaker is a simple action game that has you chasing down enemy mechs, beating the plastic out of them, and salvaging parts. You take these parts back to base, where they join your collection of Gunpla stuff. Gunpla is the colloquial term for Gundam model kits, a real-life hobby that has kept Gundam a household name since the 1970s. You customize your kit, mess with colors, decals, weathering, damage, and abilities, making the best and coolest Gunpla mech you can imagine.

Gundam Breaker 4 goes all out in every way you could think. There are tons of missions you can play by yourself or with others online. Each mission has its own difficulty, enemies, and potential part drops. You go out, do the thing, then come home and go through your winnings. The customization suite is utterly unhinged in the best way. You can change parts, resize them, color them, ding them up, decorate them, all kinds of stuff. There are thousands of parts and hundreds of options. It’s always so overwhelming in the beginning, and especially since I was just playing a demo, I opted to just be a weird freak and snap the strongest parts on without making them look nice. But even doing that was a lot of fun. That's me in the middle:

There are new options and features in Gundam Breaker 4, but unless you’re a true sicko everything will be new. This is the first numbered game in the series to be localized and released in North America, after all! You can even take your collection and build a diorama, creating an entire action set like a true Gunpla devotee. There’s so much to do in this game besides simply banging kits and parts together like toys. But you can do that as much as you want too! The only thing that isn’t present is the drama of “actual” Gundam, but that’s far from the point here.

Simply put, I can’t wait to play more Gundam Breaker 4. It has more stuff to dive into than I can feasibly have time for, but even what I can see myself doing looks like a blast. Just the small taste I had, playing on the Switch (it ran great, by the way!) was not enough. With the full game I’ll at least take the time to curate my kit, decide what kinds of weapons to focus on, and maybe even make a diorama.

Gundam Breaker 4 is available on August 29, 2024 for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and PC. We played an Open Network Test on Nintendo Switch for this preview.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.