Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Battle Destiny Remastered Review – Slick Mech Combat, Story Left Behind

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Battle Destiny Remastered Review

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Battle Destiny Remastered is a third-person action RPG loosely adapting the events of the Cosmic Era Gundam continuity. Players create their own custom pilots and play through the many iconic battles of Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED Destiny, and related spinoffs.

As a long-time Gundam fan who’s never played a mecha game before, I was excited to see how this 2012 title holds up. To my surprise, it’s still pretty good.

As a newcomer to mecha games as a whole, I went into this blind. This definitely made my first experience with this title frustrating. The game opens with a slew of tutorials that taught me the basics of land combat, but nothing about space dogfighting.

Unsurprisingly, I had some trouble getting the hang of the controls. However, I kept at it, and 10 hours into my first playthrough, I was getting S and SS ranks. So I can safely that despite the rough start, this game does do a pretty good job of teaching new players its mechanics through immersion. But there is a very steep difficulty curve at the start.

A Rough Start

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Battle Destiny Remastered offers two types of mission: story mode and Free Missions. During the main campaigns, you play through the events of Gundam SEED and its sequel. Free Missions let you take on various enemies with all the pilots and mechs you’ve unlocked, no faction or era restrictions. There’s a clear sense of progression across both as you unlock more mechs and get better at piloting them.

Players create their own protagonists, choose a faction, and set out to play through the tale of Gundam Seed. You determine your starting stats by picking between Natural and Coordinator heritage, plus a face type. Only Coordinators can join ZAFT, at least at first.

The main appeal of this title is the mech fights. And even as a newcomer, I can tell you, they’re pretty good. Nothing ground-breaking, but definitely a fun time overall. You can change factions in certain story missions the first time you play through them. The other factions’ missions will unlock after a certain point of progress. And this title has tons of replay value. Different mechs and different strategies make going through levels again and again fun and exciting.

I had a really rough start with this title, but once I started tuning up mobile suits, it became very fun. The sheer variety of mechs on offer is astounding and combat became exhilarating once I found my preferred playstyle. I just wish the game’s narrative was more than a paper-thin excuse for character cameos.

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Battle Destiny Remastered Technically Features a Story

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Battle Destiny Remastered retells the story of Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny. Unfortunately, while the mecha fights are glorious, the narrative suffers. Most of the context has been removed in favor of adding more fights. If you don’t already know what’s going on, it would be easy to assume there’s no plot. This is too bad, as Gundam SEED has a solid narrative behind it.

Generally, you’re given a pre-level cutscene or two of people charging into battle, then turned loose. It’s easy to miss when characters are killed or understand why they change sides. I needed to revisit the shows to get the full picture. Shifting faction mid-campaign is a neat touch, but the lack of context keeps it from really feeling like the stakes are changing.

That aside, the game features about 25 hours worth of story campaign, where you can take on a wide variety of battlefields. The sheer complexity of scenarios is impressive. No story two battles are alike and you’re forced to take into account changing conditions when you dispatch your mecha. It’s pretty great.

In short, play this game to experience fun robot fights. Watch Gundam SEED if you want to understand what the robots are fighting about.

The Mechs are Fighting

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Battle Destiny Remastered is a remaster of a Japanese-exclusive title from 2012. The graphics are visibly dated in some areas—namely, the backgrounds. However, the mobile suits look fantastic and the anime-style character cut-ins look fine. And in a game like this, that’s what counts. The Japanese voice acting and overall sound design are solid. The mobile suits sound fantastic when they move and the weapon noises are satisfying.

Once you unlock mobile suits, you can spend points to tune them, increasing their stats. Different suits have different features and limitations. You can customize your upgrades to match your playstyle. The game has over 100 mobile suits to choose from with a variety of possible upgrades for each. If that’s not enough customization for you, there are a bunch of restrictions that add difficulty and limitations. You can unlock them after clearing certain objectives. This way, you can customize your preferred level of challenge.

Playing as a Natural adds extra layers of difficulty because many powerful mobile suits take a performance hit. You must decide whether to risk a lower performing super mech or tune up a lower-quality mech to fit your needs.

It’s really fun to boost around the battlefield in a big stompy mech. It is less fun to try and figure out what’s going on and what enemy is the priority. Thank goodness they included an updated lock-on mode. The Classic version was convinced I needed to target supply crates.

All in all, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Battle Destiny Remastered is a fun mecha action title with solid visuals, audio, and mechanics. It’s not anything truly special, but it is a treat for Gundam SEED fans. I just wish they’d properly adapted the franchise’s narrative instead of slapping a few plot twists on as an afterthought.

***Switch code provided by the publisher***