Bandai Namco Entertainment released SD Gundam Battle Alliance on August 25 (JST) for PC (Steam), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. This latest Gundam game appears to be enjoying a successful start on Steam in terms of both sales and player count.

SD Gundam Battle Alliance is an action RPG based on the Mobile Suit Gundam series and brings together a wide range of mobile suits and characters from across the different worlds of the franchise. The mobile suits in the game are depicted in a super deformed style otherwise known as SD Gundam. The game takes place in the G: Universe, a world where history has been distorted from the original events of each Gundam series. Players must do battle in order to correct this false history to the way things should be. In addition to being able to fight solo alongside two other mobile suits, the game also supports co-op for up to three players.

Players can relive a variety of famous scenes from different Gundam series as they develop new mobile suits to add to their arsenal. Mobile suits can also be enhanced by spending Capital to strengthen stats or by equipping expansion parts. The ability to improve your favorite suits and then brandish their immense power is one of the distinctive features of the game. Furthermore, when obtaining a new suit, the character that piloted it in its original series will join you as an ally (excluding some mass-produced suits). Seeing their favorite mobile suits and characters both appear in the game is one of the pleasures that the game provides for Gundam fans.

After the game was released, the concurrent player count on Steam rapidly surpassed 20,000 players (SteamDB). At the time the Japanese version of this article was written on August 25, the game held the top spot on Steam’s Top Sellers list in Japan. Even on the Global Top Sellers list, it placed very high at number 3, sitting above Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. This shows that the game has had a good start on the platform.

Super Robot Wars 30, another game in the mecha genre that was previously released on Steam by Bandai Namco Entertainment, recorded a peak concurrent player count of 17,005, according to SteamDB. SD Gundam Battle Alliance is continuing the great success of that game and has achieved a similar number of players. This also shows that the efforts to expand the company’s overseas presence on Steam is going well.

The game currently has over 1,100 Steam user reviews, of which 73 are in Japanese. You can see an especially high number of reviews in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Korean, so it’s clear that Gundam is quite popular in the Asia region.

SD Gundam Battle Alliance supports 12 languages including English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Korean. One possible reason for the strong performance of the game may be the way that it is meeting global demand. The high number of user reviews in both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese is another similarity the game shares with Super Robot Wars 30.

When looking at the reviews themselves, however, currently 58% are positive, giving the game Mixed status. Some of the gripes that players seem to have with the game are the monotony of the action gameplay and the bosses being unbalanced. On the other hand, many players have praised elements such as the wide range of mobile suits and the story which makes use of many famous scenes from Gundam.

SD Gundam Battle Alliance is experiencing a great start and has garnered recognition for the abundance of mobile suits, characters, and story elements it includes from all across the Gundam series. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see whether the concerns that some players have with the gameplay will be addressed via future updates.

Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-08-25 16:08 JST)

Hideaki Fujiwara

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