I've never actually played GBO2 so this was my introduction to the gameplay. I've more or less been out of the PlayStation ecosystem since late 2020, and the PC port of GBO2 is suffering from some horrendous connection issues. When I got my PS5 and saw that the single player GBO spinoff title set in the middle of the One Year War was on sale, I had to pick it up. I haven't played that many Gundam games (really just a bit of Gundam Breaker Mobile, SD Battle Alliance, and SRWT and 30 if you want to count those) but I like the series and I'm ths kind of person that's starved for mecha content, so I decided to check it out. The core gameplay is really solid and it nails the kind of intentional clunkiness a Gundam game should have. A Zaku isn't some kind of super maneuverable mech like Jehuty or something out of Armored Core. It's a lumbering piece of mass produced tech, more like a tank on legs than a giant person. The slowness of the suit, the clunkiness of the jump, and getting knocked down/staggered by attacks all help to sell that these things are the giant weapons of war a mech should be, and the use of the PS5's adaptive triggers to add resistance and kick to the various weapons goes even further to sell that illusion of controlling an 18 meter tall hunk of steel. The other suits I messed around with in the simulation mode felt different enough (a GM is more maneuverable while something like a Guntank's cannons have the kick you'd expect) but maybe this isn't pulled off as well in GBO2 proper. I also liked how each chapter was broken up into two missions that were normally part of the same battle. It led to getting a lot more out of only a few maps by doing things like shifting around enemy placements or capture points, or having the first mission be a push to find and salvage a cannon lost in a desert patrolled by Federation troops, then following that by having a mission where you defend one of your teammates and the transport vehicle from waves of Federation reinforcements while they prepare to get the cannon off of the battlefield and back to base. There's not too much in terms of customization since a lot of weapons are suit specific, but you can do things like swap out your primary weapon of a bazooka for a smaller, more accurate machine gun. You also can switch between the different weapons built in or equipped to your MS (the protagonist's Zaku has the obligatory vulcan cannon, a heat sword, shotgun, and arm mounted missile launcher, for example) and combo different things together. Switching weapons triggers a cooldown that varies by weapon that keeps you from instantly firing so you can't do anything too crazy, but you can for example stagger an enemy with a rocket, then switch to your sword and knock them down, then finish them off with either your vulcan cannon or a shotgun blast.

As far as the story goes, this is only the first third of it so I can't speak for the whole thing, but I enjoyed what I've played through. The Noisy Fairy Squadron is a fun group, it's cool to see the One Year War from Zeon's perspective, and the classic Gundam themes of trying to find meaning in a meaningless war and separating the atrocities of battle from the people just trying to survive being thrown into conflict are about as prevalent as you'd expect. I'm excited to play the second and third acts since I bought the full game on sale, but I figured I'd review it part by part because it was released that way.

Fuck some of the simulation missions though I spent two hours trying to plant a bomb without taking out any enemies and whenever I did I'd get jumped by like 10 Federation assholes in GMs. I just wanted to level up my heat sword in peace.