Gundam Breaker Mobile (known initially worldwide as Gundam Battle: Gunpla Warfare before Version 3) is a smartphone-based Gundam game. It is based on the Gundam Breaker franchise and is the first smartphone game in the Gundam franchise to be released overseas.
The game features the same idea that runs through the rest of the Gundam Breaker franchise in that players can use pieces of various Mobile Suits to create their own special Gunpla to battle with. Players can choose units from virtually every major installment, from the original Mobile Suit Gundam all the way to the recent offerings, mixing and matching pieces however you like.
Don't worry, there's actually a story! You play as "the Protagonist", a male second-year high school student who is dragged into the world of Gunpla Battle when Sana Miyama recruits you to help with a tournament she is in. Soon, you find yourself caught up in the tournament scene and showing up everyone! But with the Gunpla Club in shambles, can you help rebuild it and return it to promenance?
Also, an ONA called Gundam Breaker Battlogue aired in 2021, featuring characters from this game and Gundam Breaker 3.
On April 04, 2023, the game announced that it will enter end of service on June 04, 2023, eventually shutting down on that day.
Tropes Used In This Game:
- Aborted Arc: In Chapter 19, Ran reveals that she's scouting members for the Gunpla Battle League, a tournament where pro fighters team up and compete against teams from different regions. However, with the main story concluding in Chapter 20 and the game itself ending its service on June 4, 2023, this is never followed up on.
- Absurdly Youthful Mother: Ran Kotomori
, Ren's mother and the Gunpla Designer behind both the Gundams Artemis and Areus, barely looks any older than her teenage daughter and even gets mistaken for her older sister. - Ace Custom: A given considering the nature of the game. Most characters in the story use one, though among the main cast only Ryusei, Sana, Touma, and later Tatsuki have truly unique Gunpla units that aren't simply reusing parts from units already available in-game.
- Allegedly Free Game: Like many Bandai Namco games, the game is free to download and play, but the game is silly with the Haro Chips, the premium currency needed to roll for the more iconic units. That being said, the game isn't that cruel and gives you a single free roll every 24 hours on its two unit gacha pulls and a free ten-pull on its Friend Point pull. As well, players can obtain up to 12 free single-pull tickets a month to use how they see fit. The game's relative generosity likely stems from the part that it's one-part Allegedly Free Game, one part advertisement for Gunpla.
- Taken to slightly more Bribing Your Way to Victory levels with the Mobile Doll May unit skin, which apparently costs as much as the actual Gunpla it was based on.
- All Your Powers Combined: Like with other Gundam Breaker games, you can combine various aspects of suits to get awesome abilities and attacks. As well, getting five parts with a certain tag will activate a bonus that makes you stronger. With the new parts tier, Gunpla can now equip sub-parts: add a part of the same type to get an extra boost in stats, and be able to select traits, EX skills, word tags, and even the appearance of the Gunpla.
- An Ass-Kicking Christmas: The Christmas Events in general where the characters end up duking it out in Gunpla Battle for one reason or another which often humorous in nature.
- Artifact Title: The game is called Gundam Breaker Mobile as it's a continuation of the Gundam Breaker series of games. However, the game does away with the "breaking", as there are no mechanics where Gunpla parts can be knocked off.
- Artificial Stupidity: AI tends to have an Attack! Attack! Attack! strategy that is terrible for two reasons:
- AI will, for the most part, use their EX-Attacks as soon as possible. This is actually a passable strategy for AI-controlled opponents since they have an Instant-Win Condition if they defeat the player's mech. However, on the players' side, it's much less viable since it means an AI-controlled ally (or AI-controlled PC, as auto-play is an option) won't save powerful EX-Attacks for a boss and instead will waste them on mostly-dead mooks or even empty space.
- AI tends to rush headlong at an enemy. Doesn't sound so bad, but it leaves the unit completely open to just being shot as it's gradually approaching their target. This is even worse in the Arena.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Some parts that have Cinematic EX Skills are deemed this, especially if the cinematic itself lasts more than 3 seconds, or if it takes too long to activate. Chief offender would be the Tryon 3's torso, as its EX skill needs a long time to charge, takes a ball-ache to finish once activated, AND must be used at an enemy target at point-blank range.
- Certain word tags fall under this depending on specificity. Some require playing on certain terrain to fully activate and some are based around types of gunpla, such as Zaku type or GM type. Hardest hit is "Mobile Fighter" which is specific mainly to Mobile Fighter G Gundam parts and AI. The only exceptions are AI or parts based on the game's own characters and gunpla such as Yuri Ichinose or the Blazing Gundam.
- Beach Episode: Chapter 7 and 19 has the main cast going to the beach as part of a training camp. Several event chapters also feature the crew going to the beach to have some fun.
- Can't Catch Up: Downplayed. Rindo, Rin, and Yuri were all introduced as being as being highly skilled fighters with powerful Gunpla. However, they have yet to change their signature Gunpla out for more powerful ones as the story progresses (Though in Rindo's case, her Mid-Season Upgrade did not come until the Story Mode's final few chapters; and she only got hers from Touma who had already gone for a better suit.) Despite this, they are able to close the gap in power with their skill as pilots.
- Canon Name: The protagonist whose full name is "Ryūsei Fudou".
- Color-Coded Item Tiers: The game's seven tiers are represented with colors: White (1-star), Green (2-star), Blue (3-star), Purple (4-star), Gold (5-star), Red (6-star), and Rainbow (7-star).
- Developer's Foresight: If you play the game at night, then you can see from the player's room windows that it's also at night.
- Disk One Nuke: The Gundam Artemis and Areus, both of which are 2-star units but have amazing stats once upgraded. They're received as achievement rewards for completing story chapters and additional copies for further upgrading can be obtained through the Friend Point capsule banner. Thanks to this, it's quite possible to have two max level 6-star units at the same time with minimum effort that can carry a player through most story chapters early on.
- Face–Heel Turn: Touma Aizen, upon transferring schools, becomes Ryūsei's main rival. This is even signified by changing his machine to the Code Phi, a G-Self painted darker and made demonic. He later turns Face again after being defeated by Ryūsei in Chapter 6, becoming much more friendlier and willing to hang out with his former clubmates.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: The Gundam Artemis didn’t originally have the Gundam X’s Satellite Cannon. It was instead a modification that Ryūsei made while he had amnesia. To reflect this, the Satellite Cannon can’t use the same Marks as the rest of the Gundam and uses its own unique Marks instead.
- Honor Before Reason: In Chapter 14 of the story mode, although his sponsorship with Yotsuba Electronics was on the line, Touma refuses to activate the AIS system as per their orders during his final match with Ryusei due to his pride and unwillingness to cheat to win. This results in him losing his sponsorship from the company, losing the Code Phi as a result and the company's support in paying for his family's expenses.
- Insistent Terminology: Despite the Sanakapool being a recolored Momokapool of Gundam Build Divers, the game only refers to it as a custom Mobile Kapool of ∀ Gundam.
- Joke Character: 1-star units are relegated to this, as they are the weakest of the group. They only reach level 10 and Rank 4 for stats and most people just ignore them for better machines. Of course, since these parts can be evolved into 6-stars, these can evolve into far stronger machines.
- Limit Break: Certain Gunpla parts have EX Skills with elaborate cutscenes. Usually, they cannot be countered, save for other parts with EX Skills and/or stun mechanics.
- Market-Based Title: Prior to version 3, the game used to be known in the West as Gundam Battle: Gunpla Warfare due to the fact that New Gundam Breaker, the only game that got an official release in English (discounting the SEA releases of Gundam Breaker 3 which had English subtitles), was a massive failure and thus the localizers wanted to distance the mobile game away from its predecessor. Come the update to Version 3 however and the game now formally goes by the name Gundam Breaker Mobile much like in Japan.
- Mid-Season Upgrade: Ryūsei, Sana, and Touma all receive either multiple upgrades to their Gunpla or new ones whether they're given to them or self-built throughout the course of the story. See here to learn more in detail.
- Mythology Gag: A number of EX Skills in the game are recreations of actual attacks performed by various pilots and their Mobile Suits throughout the Gundam franchise. Characters will also sometimes quote lines from their favorite Gundam series as well.
- During the story campaign, Ryusei is taught the ability to achieve the Meikyo Shisui state, with its successful utilization notedly mirroring the Assimilation effects.
- In-Universe, and as showcased in the Battlogue ONA, the Perfect Strike Freedom's major flaw is one of the two flaws that plagued the Perfect Strike Gundam and that the Freedoms sought to rectify with their reactors: Its weapons, especially at full power and during Full Burst, quickly drain the suit's power.
- Some units' EX Skills, like the Trans-Am attack for the 00 XN Raiser, have animations that draw inspiration from their renditions in games like the SD Gundam G Generations and Gundam VS series.
- Noodle Incident: Something happened prior to the main character joining the Gunpla Club that caused Rindo to quit the team and drive other people from it. Whatever happened is never explained, but she ends up making amends early on during the story with her former clubmates.
- Permanently Missable Content:
- During the first month of the game, players could obtain 2-star versions of the Gundam, Wing Gundam, Amuro Ray and Heero Yuy. While nice, everything's been officially released as 4-stars, making them a Bragging Rights Reward.
- Currently the Sokai Festival and Gundam Battle Festival units are these. Comprised as of Ver. 1.2 of (arranged by release date) the Nu Gundam, the Zeta Gundam and Qubeley, the Freedom and Justice Gundams, the Unicorn Gundam and Kshatriya, the ZZ and Hi-Nu HWS Gundams, and the Turn A and Turn X; they were unavailable for a time until the year-end special Sokai banners where, apart from the Turn A and X which were the featured suits, all of them can be obtained via Haro coins for a brief period.
- Outside of the monthly Sokai Festival drops, the Wing Zero OVA Ver. and the 00 Qan[T] Full Saber, offered as special banner drops for Christmas and Valentine's Day, respectively. Though on occasion, they have also been treated as Sokai Festival units with their dedicated event-based limited-time banners.
- Rainbow Pimp Gear: Downplayed, as players can color their units with the color scheme of any complete Gunpla they've collected. However, this is imperfect as color schemes rarely are applied in a predictable manner (especially on the rarer or more exotic parts) and mixing and matching color schemes results in garish clashes. This can be averted, or justified, if the player opts to apply a custom paint scheme on his kit.
- The Rival: Most of the main cast serve as rivals to one another, but none more so than Touma Aizen who acts as Ryūsei's main rival for the first half of the story all the way to Chapter 12. During second half afterwards however, the role shifts to Tatsuki Hijiri, the first character to utterly destroy Ryūsei and has since won most encounters she's had against the main cast.
- Stealth Sequel: Chapter 16 reveals that game serves as one towards Gundam Breaker 3, taking place some time after the main events of the latter's final DLC story chapter. Misa, Kadomatsu, and Mr. Gunpla all make a return, and even the protagonist, now named Takuma Nagitsuji, makes an appearance as well.
- Toyless Toyline Character:
- While the game features a bunch of real Gunpla figures, there are also figures of Anchor, RMSN-008 Bertigo, and AMX-015 Geymalk, none of which have Gunpla figures of their own at the time of their inclusion in the game. While Anchor was put in to commemorate the release of Volume 13 of Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: Dust, neither Geymalk nor Bertigo have this excuse. Even the characters' primary Gunpla in-game are sadly not spared from having no official real life kits to their name.
- Averted with the Gundam Breaker Battlogue ONA — their kits were announced way before the show's airing.
