From the late 1970s onward, Mobile Suit Gundam has come to represent the giant robot anime genre. All other anime with giant robots owe their existence to this series, which continues to be popular all over the world thanks to the various incarnations over the decades. For such a popular and long-lasting property, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the video game incarnations have been mediocre at best. From a traditional 2-D fighting game to a Musou clone to a slow-moving shooter, not too many titles have enticed those outside of the fan base. With the Extreme VS series being a hit in Japanese arcades, it makes sense to bring it to North America. Unfortunately, the selected version of the game positions the series for mediocrity once more.

In Extreme VS-Force, you play the role of an AI program awakened by a pair of AI guides. Orbiting Earth Zero, you've been told that humanity is facing extinction, and the only way to save them is to help them evolve. To do that, you search the archives and assume the roles of the greatest Gundam pilots of the Universal Century to find the key traits necessary for that evolution to occur. However, a glitch in the system has expanded this ability, allowing you to control pilots from a multitude of alternate universes in the process.

The plot device is an overly familiar one, especially if you've played Dragon Ball Xenoverse. The similarities between the two end there, though. Whereas Xenoverse felt like a love letter to the series, this game feels clinical in its approach. Using a Mary Sue character to alter timelines in Bandai Namco's franchise may have been a cheesy way to get the different sagas and characters together in one place, but it gives the whole thing some personality. That charm is missing when you're an invisible AI with two partners who are unlikeable anime tropes. Games that don't strictly follow the plans laid out by the source material rarely have any tales worth caring about, but it would've been nice if this one tried a little harder on that front. It also would've been nice to get at least a brief explanation of why these characters are important for their own timelines. As it stands now, the player can only get basic specs on their Gundams and nothing more.

The core gameplay can best be described as Dynasty Warriors Gundam but with enough influence from Virtual-On to tone things down a bit. The game is presented from a third-person perspective, and you have basic melee and projectile attacks along with the ability to modify them into something more powerful. In addition to your dash ability, you can toggle lock-on, which is handy in decently sized arenas. All of your abilities, from your projectile weapons to your boosts, are governed by cooldown timers, so your attacks are more measured instead of frantically unleashed onto the enemy.

The fighting mechanics aren't bad since it has that Virtual-On feel, which is still a rarity since Sega doesn't seem interested in continuing that franchise. However, the system of periodic attacks works best during one-on-one fights, where it can be exciting. Normal missions call for multiple enemies on the battlefield, and unlike the foot soldiers of the Dynasty Warriors series, these enemies fight back in such a staggered manner that you can easily get overwhelmed. Projectile attacks can help in these situations, while melee attacks are all dash-style moves with unpredictable range that might leave you more open for a counter if you don't connect. The game tries to help by giving you threat indicators at the screen's borders and radar so you have a better idea of your surroundings, but a faster fighting system would've been even better.

The gameplay could have also been improved with a better camera. The field of view is fine, and the turning speed is good, but when you initiate the lock-on, the camera zooms in too close for comfort. It has a terrible time of dealing with walls and buildings and zooms in much closer to your Gundam than expected. Also, while the lock-on is great for automatically switching from one enemy to another, it does so erratically enough that you can get briefly disoriented during a fight.

Missions usually fall into one of two categories. The first are simple skirmishes where you'll either have to clear out the field of enemies or target a specific foe. The second category is reminiscent of a MOBA, since you fight to take over turrets, whittling down their energy until they side with you instead of your foe. The turrets not only attack but also produce minions that can be easily killed. In both mission types, unless restrictions are placed, you can go into a mission with a party of three groups consisting of two Gundam each and a battleship to act as your ultimate weapon. The battleship enables you to convert battle points earned on the field into benefits, such as health refills for your party or temporary defense and attack buffs. Get enough points, and you'll be able to have your battleship unleash an ultimate attack that takes a while to charge up but almost assures that a foe is instantly decimated.

The battleship and party mechanics can be interesting, especially since you have a basic set of commands for where your party can go to make the game feel more tactical. However, there are two major flaws that take away the excitement. The first is the state of the partner AI. They're quite good when you put them in the vicinity of the enemy, they can hold their own in battle, and sometimes, they can even take down the objective for you. However, your partners stand around doing nothing if you don't explicitly tell them to go anywhere. It makes for great base defense, but if you plan on going on the offensive, you need to set them up to move before you make your approach on the field, or you'll find yourself taking care of everything solo.

The second flaw has to do with the localization. More often than not, you'll find that your objectives change in the middle of a battle, and your allies comment on that. You'll have a faint idea of what's going on, but you'll notice that there's plenty of Japanese speech commenting on the change. What you won't see are any subtitles to let you know what was said. You may be able to figure out the general gist, but you'll often miss some important details. For example, one mission switches its focus on a ship that's flying around the city. You figure you have to destroy it, but you have no idea that it's building up its cannon blast and you have a limited amount of time to take it down before your base gets destroyed. There's no text to convey this, but there is a lot of chatter on the radio, so your allies must've been talking about it all along. This type of thing pops up far too often, so you're at a big disadvantage if you don't understand spoken Japanese before playing this game.

Despite the questionable mechanics here and there, Extreme VS-Force feels like it would be much more enjoyable in multiplayer. Indeed, the ability to take on the different mission types either working with or against three other players would've made the flaws more tolerable, since the joy of running around in Gundams would have been worth it. Alas, the multiplayer is limited to ad-hoc only with no online functionality whatsoever. This is the same issue that plagues almost all Vita games, as the ad-hoc-only experience is only viable in Japan, where the popularity of portable consoles makes it easy to get a match going. It's certainly much harder everywhere else, especially with the level of Vita support so painfully low nowadays. In a way, it feels like the game would've benefitted from having online play and perhaps should've been on a PS3 or PS4 instead of a portable.

Graphically, it looks fine enough until you look at the details. The visual novel style for the cut scenes is fine until you realize that no matter what, there are only two poses for each character, solidifying the idea that no care was given to the story. The Gundams are well done, and all of the signature pieces are in place so die-hard fans can quickly tell them apart without a name plate. The animations are good, and the effects are fine. As mentioned before, though, the camera can get squirrelly enough to make you briefly disoriented, and the environments don't look very distinct. The texture work on the battlegrounds look very bland and low resolution, while the geometry suffers with Gundams sinking into slopes when they stand. For something created so late in the Vita's life, the title looks like it came out in the system's early days.

The audio is fine overall, but that's mostly due to familiarity with the material more than the quality of it. The music is great, but it was lifted straight from the various anime series. It obviously fits with the action, but it's more interesting to hear how the styles of each track have changed over the decades. Whether you like it or not, you'll pay lots of attention to the soundtrack since the sound effects aren't very loud or pronounced. Like the music, the voices are great; they can actually be more audible than the tracks themselves. The voices end up being random noise due to a lack of translated subtitles, so they won't be appreciated by anyone except for the die-hard fans.

There are simply too many things working against Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme VS-Force. The stiffer combat system doesn't work for anything but one-on-one battles, while your AI partners can be rather useless. The story doesn't feel like any attention had been paid to it, and the lack of localization for important parts of a fight certainly hurts things if you aren't keen on replaying stages. Given the lack of online play and some of the bland presentation, it's difficult for even the biggest Gundam fan to get behind this title.

Score: 5.5/10