Wenzel Games

• Overview

Gundam: Battle Operation 2 (GBO2), is a free-to-play competitive online multiplayer third person shooter set in Mobile Suit Gundam’s “Universal Century” timeline. Where you can enjoy 4 vs 4 to 6 vs 6 online battles on both ground and space in either a casual or competitive format. There are more than 300 unique and customizable mobile suits and mobile armor. Augment their stats with custom parts or even repaint them to your heart’s desire and launch them into hectic battles in a variety of environments; forests, deserts, destroyed cities/space colonies. So jump into the cockpit and train to become one of the best ace pilots in the world.

GBO2 is currently a Play Station exclusive title but it will be coming to PC this year.

• Story

You are a PMU trainee competing in peacetime mock battles. That’s about it.

• The Beginner’s Experience: The Good

You will begin the game with a set of 10 hand-picked gifted mobile suites from a variety of costs as a welcome present from the developers. GBO2 has a cost restriction system in place so that an advanced suite can’t pick on older-slower units. The cost range goes from 250 to 700 as of this review (a suits cost can range from 100 to 700). However, a 200 cost match does show itself from time to time. This being a free-to-play game, you’ll need tokens (in game currency) to requisition (roll the gacha) for a new unit or piece of equipment from the supply counter. I do recommend buying the New Player Pack as it has the best value, but no more after that, no matter how much you may want the “new hotness”.

New mobile suits/armor are added to the supply counter every week. There are also limited edition suits that you can obtain through limited time event missions and clan battles every 3 months or so.

• The Beginner’s Experience: The Bad

The amount of time it takes to get good enough to actually want to play the game can be quite long. I recommend completing all of the training missions that the game makes you do before you even start a match against other people and even go back to them periodically to refresh your memory on the games mechanics.

There is a Rock, Paper, Scissors (Roe, Sham, Bo) style combat system and it can be difficult to get used to as units are classified as either Raids, Supports, or Generals. The game teaches that, Raids > Supports > Generals > Raids. However, an experienced pilot can do fairly well up against a unit they’re weak to and survive. I recommend new pilots stick to General units as they normally have balanced qualities between Raids and Supports.

The melee combat can also be difficult to get the hang of as you can control the direction of your swing as you slash, stab, or punch with your respective melee weapon. The community generally refers to forward (^) as Neutral, left (<) as Left, right (>) as Right and down [\/] as Knock-down because using your melee weapon in while pressing the down direction will knock down your opponent giving you the option of dealing more damage or escaping the fight. Though, the Large Axes on some units can knock down other units no matter what direction you chose to initiate your swings.

The weapon swap system can be another roadblock for beginners. There is a dedicated button to swap weapons with, pressing only that button will quickly cycle through your equipped weapons, pressing the button in combination with other buttons will swap to a weapon assigned to that combination (example: R1 + Triangle, the default placement for melee weapons), and holding down the weapon swap button will bring up the assignment menu letting you see which weapon is assigned to which button.

I recommend using Free Practice just to get used to piloting new units as the enemy AI in the game don’t behave like other players. They’re just not that advanced.

All of the above can be overcome quickly with the help of a “new-player” friendly clan but there aren’t many of them as the ability to join a clan only comes after you have leveled up a bit.

• Closing Thoughts

Despite the downside of the new player experience I was still able to have fun with GBO2 and I’m sure you will as well. Being free-to-play, the only cost to get the game going is some hard drive space and a little bit of time. I’ve linked to the GBO2 website wherever the game is mentioned. Don’t be shy, give it a visit. So far my favorite units are Pale Riders and Pale Rider variants, even though they aren’t that good I still have fun piloting them.

Hope to see you on the battlefield soldier.

J.C. Whetsell.