Gundam Breaker 3 is probably one of my favorite Gundam games. Eschewing the usual war-and-conflict style of the franchise, it was built around creating and battling your own custom Gundam toys against one another. Unfortunately, it was released overseas, despite having an English version available. The follow-up, New Gundam Breaker, was also released overseas but managed to miss the point of what made the franchise so fun. I was worried it would be confined to the graveyard — or relegated to mobile games — so I was relieved when Gundam Breaker 4 was announced. GB4 is an excellent follow-up to Gundam Breaker 3, and it's the sequel that fans have been awaiting.

In Gundam Breaker 4, you play as a character who is joining the beta test of a brand-new online game, Gunpla Battle Blaze: Beyond Borders ("GB4" for short), which is built around creating and battling various Gunpla (plastic Gundam toys) against one another. As soon as you join, you meet a wild cast of characters and participate in online tournaments and contests. Something mysterious is lurking beneath the surface of GB4 that threatens the safety of ... well, an online video game. It's not exactly a high-stakes story.

GB4 has a cute if somewhat predictable story. The cast is largely new, but there are a few cameos from previous Gundam Breaker games, and there are a lot of familiar archetypes that add some personality. When it starts getting serious, it does so in a fully tongue-in-cheek way that references various Gundam shows as well as other games like Final Fantasy, and it never gets too extreme. Once revealed, the villain's motivation is extremely iffy and poorly presented;  it seems to be trying to make a real-world statement that feels odd coming from the main villain.

The easiest way to describe Gundam Breaker 4 is that it's a beat-'em-up with a fully customizable character. Each mission sends you into an arena full of various popular Gundam robots, and your goal is to beat the living crud out of them, take their parts, and use those parts to create and customize your own robot. It's a standard Diablo-style loot grind in that you get stronger parts so you can fight more powerful robots and get even stronger parts.

The cool thing about Gundam Breaker 4 is that your character is extremely scustomizable. Every unit is comprised of backpack, body, head, legs, left arm, right arm, and shield. Once you get one of those parts, you can use it to customize your Gunpla. Aside from a rare few boss units, if something is in the game, you can use its parts on your mech. This isn't just a random mishmash of parts like New Gundam Breaker; you're allowed to optimally design your robot however you like.

This is done in an incredibly easy-to-use interface You can select various parts, equip them, and adjust them to an absolutely wild level. You can paint every individual aspect of the mech, including various weathering and airbrushing. You can adjust the scale of the robots, allowing you to properly match parts that would otherwise be wildly out of scale. You can even create Super Deformed (SD) robots, which are adorable little big-headed and small-bodied models with a more cartoony appearance. There's also a gigantic number of "builder parts" that you can equip that let you add more distinct flair to your unit, ranging from horns to capes, and you can choose a custom color for each. The amount of detail you can put into units is almost worth the cost of the game on its own because you can spend hours customizing and crafting your designs.

Creating your own custom robot isn't just for visual choices. Depending on the equipped part, you may unlock new weapons, abilities or skills. For example, the Infinite Justice Gundam has beam sabers attached to its legs. By equipping the Infinite Justice's leg parts, you gain access to beam sabers as an OP (Optional) attack. Likewise, if you equip the Full Armor Unicorn's weapon-laden backpack, you'll gain access to every single weapon on the backpack as an individual attack. This doesn't only apply to weapons but also special abilities and moves. Units that have super modes like Trans-Am or Exam System can access those. Builder parts also grant attacks and abilities, so you can further modify your unit.

Each of the special attacks are divided into OP attacks or EX attacks. You can have up to eight OP attacks and four EX attacks equipped at a time. OP attacks can be used freely but have a cooldown after every attack, so you can't spam them. EX attacks require you to fill up an EX bar by inflicting or taking damage. The more powerful the EX attack, the more bars of EX meter it takes. For example, a simple beam saber combo will only take one bar, while something like Strike Freedom Gundam's Super Dragoon mode can take up to four bars.

In addition to the various parts, you also can equip two melee and two ranged weapons, one on each hand. Melee attacks come in a variety of flavors ranging from beam sabers to martial arts fists to whips, each with a distinct move set. You can equip a weapon in each hand to combine their move sets, such as using a whip for crowd-clearing and a regular beam saber for single-target damage. Some weapons, like martial arts and greatswords, require both slots. Each weapon type has distinct uses, and it can be fun to figure out what works well together.

Likewise, ranged weapons can be equipped one to each hand, with each weapon having its own heat meter. The more you shoot, the more heat builds up, and if you fire too much without letting it cool down, you'll have to wait for it to stop overheating before you can use it again. Ranged weapons come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Gatling guns are great for plinking down enemy health while moving, bazookas deal big damage, beam rifles are orthodox and reliable, and so on. If you hold down the attack button, many weapons also have special secondary attacks, such as a grenade launcher attached to a beam rifle or transforming a single-shot laser into an unending stream of death.

Additionally, each part you get also has a rarity and level. Level is how powerful the part is. Even parts from "weak" units like the GM can be on par with the strongest 00 Gundam; it just depends on their level. Rarity is tied to passive skills. Every part you find has randomly generated passive skills that do things like regenerate health when dealing damage or increase the cooldown speed of parts. The higher the rarity of your unit, the more passive skills you can have. You can meld together various parts to combine their skills or use special plastic to boost level or rarity for no real cost. Later in the game, you can get ability capsules to further customize your unit with additional bonuses or special passive skills, like the ability to auto-guard attacks.

These choices are also important because Gundam Breaker 4 is built around a hit and break meter. When you damage an enemy, you'll fill the hit bar, which grants passive boosts to your character. When you defeat an enemy or take off one bar of a stronger enemy's health, you'll fill the break bar. The higher your break bar, the better your chance of getting drops and powerful parts from enemies. Getting an S-Rank on stages, which is necessary to unlock special builder parts and items, requires you to hit certain break bar thresholds, so the title encourages players to be aggressive and aim for smashing enemies as quickly as possible. Dealing enough damage can also knock off enemy parts, which temporarily disables weapons. If you knock off enough parts, it opens them up to a "ground break" attack that does massive damage and insta-kills all but the strongest enemies. While this is easy enough to do on the standard difficulty level, the game has multiple unlockable difficulty levels that encourage players to optimize and achieve the best scores.

If you've played Gundam Breaker 3, you'll find that Gundam Breaker 4 aims to be more balanced. Previously, near-unstoppable moves like Destiny's palm-grab attack are significantly nerfed by having a cooldown on attacks, and tools like funnels and super modes now require a genuine investment instead of being used on a cooldown. It's still possible to create overpowered builds, and I fully expect people to discover new moves that are just as good. The beat-'em-up aspect of the game is fun, but it shines when players create absurd suits to play around with and show off.

Gundam Breaker 4 also has a ridiculous number of available units. Pretty much every Gundam animated work is present in some form. A lot of associated video games, manga and other side stories are also present, ranging from the obvious like SEED Astray and Blue Destiny to the obscure like Captain Gundam from Superior Defender Gundam Force. Some series are better represented than others. The current lineup only goes to Gundam SEED: The Witch From Mercury's first season, but more units, including the Mighty Strike Freedom from Gundam SEED Freedom, will be added down the line. There are four different units (Super Fumina, Mobile Doll May, and two plot units) who can't be customized, and it feels weird to emphasize that limitation in a game that's otherwise so free.

Half of the fun in such a customizable game is the ability to show off what you've made, and Gundam Breaker 4 has surprisingly robust online features. You can play stages cooperatively, form a Clan to share parts and help out each other, compete in tournaments and contests, and take on "Bounty Hunter" missions where you fight AI-controlled versions of other players' suits. PvP seems to be downplayed, which is a huge relief after New Gundam Breaker's mechanics tried to put it front and center.

In addition to being able to customize your own Gunpla for battle, you can create surprisingly complex dioramas. By buying various parts, stages and effects, you can make your own still artwork of various Gundam battles and events. It's an incredibly in-depth tool that allows you to position various units and add special effects; it's generally a neat bonus for those who like to spend hours creating a dramatic-looking fight between various units.

Gundam Breaker 4 looks great. The sheer amount of customization options mean that the graphics are relatively simple in a way that absolutely works for the game. The models kind of look like plastic toys — except they are plastic toys, so it works perfectly for the game. The music is nice, if somewhat unmemorable, and the English dub is surprisingly good. There are a few areas with weird lines or obvious mistranslations, but it is mostly solid.

Gundam Breaker 4 is a game for fans of the franchise, and it's a darn good one. It even eclipses Gundam Breaker 3 in terms of customization options and the sheer fun that it offers. It's definitely a huge step up from New Gundam Breaker. It's a "create your own digital Gunpla" game first and a beat-'em-up second, but it's difficult to deny the fun of creating the most absurd mech you can and then using it to beat the living crud out of swarms of bad guys. If you like Gundam, Gundam Breaker 4 is probably the best available title for English-speaking audiences.

Score: 8.0/10