It’s nonetheless the early days of Bandai Namco’s new staff shooter Gundam Evolution – the sport got here out for PC about ten days in the past as of this writing – however issues are already wanting up. The time it spent in testing wasn’t wasted, both: Already fairly refined, the play expertise is easy virtually to the purpose of feeling frictionless. Bandai Namco has realized, and realized properly from the instance of Overwatch and its many copycats, and landed the necessities with aplomb.

For these uninitiated, Gundam Evolution is Bandai Namco’s try to adapt probably the most iconic anime franchises of all time to the pains of a free-to-play, team-based “hero shooter”. Rather than secret brokers, superheroes, or elite troopers, Evolution plumbs the many years of Gundam historical past for inspiration. As of launch, 17 cellular swimsuit mecha from a variety of Gundam sequence kind the playable roster. Twelve are playable from the start, with 5 extra unlockable by varied means (extra on that later).

Every Mobile Suit (MS) is exclusive, with bespoke weapons, talents, and techniques. Rather than Overwatch‘s role-based system, Gundam Evolution embraces a more freeform approach to team-building. There can’t be multiple of any given MS on a staff, however there’s sufficient overlap in model that you simply’ll discover one thing fairly comparable when you discover your favourite swimsuit taken. Even then, each unit is exclusive, and studying the right way to play as them and play in opposition to them is essential to mastery.

Of course, every Mobile Suit does fall right into a sure most well-liked model outlined by its loadout and stats. Absolute items like Sazabi and the Unicorn Gundam love to combine it up in staff fights, with Sazabi out entrance absorbing injury with its defend and shutting in to make use of its beam shotgun. Unicorn suppresses enemies with its rapid-fire beam gatling, whereas serving to its staff simply by being there by way of a passive heal and armor enhance potential. Yet each are fairly completely different. Sazabi can instantly jet to its thrown axe or a teammate, giving it shocking mobility and the flexibility to get proper in an enemy’s face. Unicorn’s dimension and lack of a defend make it much more weak in a stand-up battle, so it’s reliant on conserving in a crowd of friendlies and utilizing its Shield Bits to tag faraway snipers lining up a bead. One of the brand new unlockable fits, the Mahiroo, is the one one within the sport with a grenade launcher, and is sort of invaluable for its potential to spam areas with oblique hearth.

Gundam Evolution can be surprisingly quick and lethal for the alleged dimension of its large robotic solid. Every unit has a number of boosts to shortly dodge out of the best way, and plenty of items have entry to precision “hitscan” weapons that reward correct goal (the GM Sniper II can outright down the extra fragile fits in a single headshot). In different phrases, the time-to-kill might be brutally quick. There are some mitigating measures in place to account for ability and coordination. Getting “killed” leaves your MS disabled for a couple of seconds, permitting a teammate a short window to revive you (help fits just like the Methus and GM Sniper may even do that from a distance). And swapping fits can change a method completely, doubtlessly letting you flip an oppressive state of affairs round with daring offense.

There are, nonetheless, some stability considerations to be discovered. Though the relative dominance of the melee Mobile Suits (Barbatos specifically) has been toned down considerably, the three have a particularly excessive ability ceiling and, within the palms of succesful gamers, can completely oppress an enemy staff with few direct counterstrategies. Exia specifically appears just a little too able to jetting its method out of penalties when its pilot makes a mistake. The new melee swimsuit, Zaku II (Melee), has almost medium-range attain on the shockwaves from its axe, and even has a transfer that makes it invincible (if motionless). In a sport with many sources of precision injury, melee fits have to really feel high-risk; in the mean time, they really feel a bit too secure.

More regarding than any transient stability concern, although, is the best way the Gundam Evolution executes its monetization mannequin. The sport is free-to-play, however these 12 preliminary fits are all a brand new participant will get entry to for a substantial time frame in the event that they don’t need to pay up. Bandai Namco’s added the triple-threat of monetization strategies to the sport: A battle cross (with premium and free tiers), an merchandise store promoting bundles of cosmetics and swimsuit unlocks, and a gacha/loot field system that lets gamers roll the cube for cosmetics.

The sport’s premium foreign money is Evo Coins, paid for with actual cash and earned in small quantities by way of the Battle Pass. Evo Coins can be utilized to purchase issues off the merchandise retailer and roll the gacha. Freebies are few and comparatively far between. Players can unlock a brand new swimsuit by paying “Capital” (a.ok.a. blue factors), which is earned from finishing Beginner’s Challenges and Battle Pass ranges. But the present Battle Pass and Beginner Challenge slates solely reward sufficient Capital to unlock two fits on the finish of the grind. There are 5 unlockable fits. Worse nonetheless, ranked play is outright unavailable to gamers on the free tier with out a appreciable grind to get their participant degree up. Those who improve their Battle Pass to “Premium” unlock ranked play instantly. It’s a transfer in poor style that additionally warps the panorama of accessible gamers for ranked mode as a result of even on the bottom-tier bronze ranks you’ll have a mixture of utterly new gamers who selected to improve their Battle Passes and gamers which have tons of expertise however couldn’t unlock Ranked Mode till they’d achieved their time within the informal playlist mines.

Even now, after some changes to the system, it may well take fairly some time to get into ranked matches above the primary rating tier. All in all, when you simply downloaded Gundam Evolution and need to bounce straight into ranked play with all of the out there fits, you’re an outlay of about $60 USD (about $50 in Evo Coins to buy the “Deluxe Pack” that unlocks the 5 locked fits, and $10 to improve to a premium Battle Pass).

I personally don’t assume it’s unreasonable to pay one thing to a free-to-play sport. At the second, although, it looks like Gundam Evolution‘s potential is being hamstrung by its monetization. New players might be turned away by the notion they’re getting a second-class expertise in the event that they don’t pay up, and gamers who do pay don’t reap the advantages of the massive viewers a free-to-play sport can entice.

With luck, Bandai Namco will rethink a few of these strikes and deal with Gundam Evolution as extra of a long-term concern. The moment-to-moment play expertise is just too a lot enjoyable to should be weighed down by the gravity of enterprise.