I reviewed each volume of this game on its own as I played through it, and since I mostly talked about the gameplay in my volume 1 review and the story in my reviews for volumes 2 and 3, this is really just me talking about the game as a whole. It's good. Really good, actually. It takes GBO2's gameplay systems and (in my opinion) very satisfying MS combat and puts them into a single player story that feels equal parts arcadey and tactical. Giving orders to your AI companions or targeting a specific enemy never gets as complicated as even a relatively simple squad FPS like Republic Commando, but it's enough to keep you on your toes during missions and things like the game's whole rock-paper-scissors system of mobile suit types serve to keep you from just soloing entire stages without relying on your squad mates for help. You can still pull off some pretty neat combinations like ambusing an enemy MS with an explosive attack to stagger it, dashing in and knocking it to the ground with a melee combo, then finishing it off with a shotgun blast, but it's more restrictive than most other mecha games or even other Gundam games like SD Battle Alliance. That restriveness and the stiffness of the controls, especially when piloting the mass produced stuff like the Zaku II, helps to convey the feeling of piloting an 18 meter tall monstrosity that can barely climb up a small hill without falling over, but I can see how it would put people off from the game. It's also entirely removed from GBO2's shitty gacha system, so the only time you're paying for anything is when you're buying the game (completing the game unlocks some suits and extras if you link your save data with GBO2, but other than unlocking like two bonus simulation missions, nothing transfers from GBO2 to CF). The story is your standard OYW side-story fare, but the main gimmick of it is you're playing as the leader of an all-female MS squad in the Zeon military. It's also a very self-contained story, taking place entirely on the North American continent. Major events in the OYW like the battles at Odessa and Jaburo get brought up, and a few major players like Char or Gihren are mentioned a few times, but for the most part it's a story going on in the background of the OYW, and that's probably what made it so good. It took the themes of UC era gundam (the pointlessness of war, finding meaning in fighting to protect those you care about, how the designation of ally and enemy aren't always clear cut, and how being on opposite sides of a conflict doesn't mean that people have to hate each other off the battlefield, mostly) and tells a new story with them, instead of adding to the main story of the original series and muddying its thematic consistency in the process. There's also a lot of game here (16 story chapters with two missions each and hard mode variants of each chapter, a handful of side stories where you either play as different characters in story battles or play through entirely new scenarios, and a bunch of simulator missions which alternate between being things like "destroy 20 Zakus in 10 minutes" or "hijack an enemy MS and wipe out the enemy" to being simple GBO2 skirmish matches against AI) so it's definitely worth picking up. I played it for around 25 hours and still have a bunch of stuff left to do, so it's a surprisingly large game for being a spinoff of a free-to-play multiplayer gacha title. Now if you don't like Gundam or mecha stuff in general I probably wouldn't recommend it, but if you're even kind of interested in that kind of stuff I'd defintiely say check it out. I paid about $20 for this on sale (it was actually the first PS5 game I bought after I set up my console), but having finished it I can say it would definitely be worth like $40, maybe even the full price of $50 if you're into this kind of thing.

Reviewed on Jul 13, 2023


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