SD Gundam Battle Alliance Preview Impressions

Once I started up the game I was immediately hit with a lot of complex story information as well as the tutorial. This was information overload for me. While I always watch my anime in Japanese with the English subs, it was very difficult to play the game and read everything that was being said at the same time. This put me at an extreme disadvantage; key story information was there and gone before I could follow it. Throw in the fact you are trying not to die while reading it, and you have a recipe for a convoluted story to become a nonsensical one. Narratives surrounding time displacement can boggle the mind even without lack of clarity. I checked my language settings and found everything set to English; perhaps by the time of release an English voice over will be added, but I doubt it. 

Graphically, SD Gundam uses what I would call a “kiddie” art style. Everything looks sharp, but rather than having the tall, slender Gundams of the upcoming Gundam Evolution, SD Gundam has smaller models that look like something you’d find inside a McDonald’s Happy Meal. The environments you fight in clearly show your size, but looking at the models by themselves shows this to be purely a design choice. I am not certain if it was a good one. 

While the general enemies throughout my time with the game seemed to be pushovers, bosses can be surprisingly difficult, requiring quick reflexes and the mixing of tactics in order to overcome them. Playing on higher difficulties rewards you with more resources, which you will need to upgrade your technology. Let’s face it, it would not be a game with giant armoured mechs if you could not upgrade your arsenal along the way.