Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme VS-Force (PS Vita) Review

First and foremost, this is very well optimised on the PS Vita. It runs smoothly even with lots of things happening, the draw distance is pretty good, the low-poly environments have enough detail to look quite good, and the Gundam themselves look nicely detailed and textured, plus It has short load times for the most part, and crisp clear art. It does have a tinge of Godzilla 2016's lack of detail but it has reasonably good effects and systems that take the focus off of the environment.

The story is nothing special but it provides enough narrative to give an incentive to continue playing. The characters involved in the plot are interesting, but a lot of focus is put on the two interactive AI girls who explain the world and the missions to the main character - their designs are unusual but, otherwise, pleasing to the eyes. Everything is very bright and chipper lending a bit of gumption to the otherwise gung-ho action.

There is a fairly predictable set of missions ranging from defend a base, destroy a base, annihilate the enemy forces, and not much else. There's enough variety and some missions even feature boss Gundam. Each mission has three sub-missions which can be completed for medals and extra points, and these points can be spent on a better team for the next mission, and the medals unlock Gundam information like lore or images.

Armoured Core comes to mind when playing it, and the controls are all about what should be expected of a mecha game. Movement is slow and clunky, but it's all deliberate rather than a development mistake, and it captures the feeling of driving a slow and clunky machine pretty well… although, isn't Gundam a fast paced anime series?

While the movement is slow, however, this feels very smooth, with a pretty good lock on system, hover mechanics, and a mix of ranged and melee attacks that all flow reasonably well. Unfortunately, it has one massive glaring flaw, which is that each time an attack is initiated, the player is locked to the spot for a second or two before they can then move or attack again. It's not a game-breaking system but it can make for some stressful moments in later missions.

The whole thing relies on a team system. The player controls a two Gundam team, which is part of a six-man overall party with one support weapon. The bank of characters is pretty extensive, featuring characters from many different eras of the franchise, and each has different voice clips for their attack and such. The most glaring issue with it is that the repetitive nature of the voice bites, since each attack is announced, each injury plays the same sound, and each explosion plays out the same. It's not a glaring issue with the otherwise cool sound design, but it can grate occasionally.

It is also unfortunate that the localization doesn't feature subtitles for the in-mission conversations. Sometimes messages will chime in via the radio but often these are left to the player imagination to translate, plus the music ranges from really good to pretty repetitive. It all sounds a bit "Neon Genesis Evangelion" at times, with its ominous plodding bass, but that kind of music works better than a fast paced guitar riff when the player is restricted speed-wise. The music can be custom set on each mission which is a nice feature, meaning that the better tracks get more airtime than the not-as-enjoyable ones.