An interesting game in the end, one which ended up being more fun and satisfying than I expected, but very much one of two halves, at least as of patch 1.31.

The first part is the first act, the linear section that's about six hours or so long, and arguably the final mission. When the game's guiding you along and fully working (as it was during act 1 at least) it's full of energy and pushing you along. A 15 hour or so campaign of that would be just my kind of game.

The other half is the middle part when you're in the city doing missions, and that's more of a mix in quality. There are some good stories in there as you get to know the side players in the game but the simulation and engine struggle so much and so often. It only outright crashed on me once but I did have to reload a few times and there were many occasions where I was thinking in the back of my mind about the possibility that things had gone wrong. In fairness, whenever they did, the game fixed itself with a reload but it did kind of drag things down a bit.

A low 4 but I'll revisit after the next big patch, go for some of the other endings maybe. It's so close to being great but at the same time I can see it needing so much work to get there.

Official mode clear - again, this counts because it's the mode which actually has proper cutscenes, voices and the like. For someone who isn't familiar with the Gundam series, it's a surprisingly good introduction to the story, though the later stories are a bit convoluted. The game itself is a lot of fun, though it lacks challenge because the charged shot is far too powerful. I liked the Gundam 3 system of small energy bars and Extreme Versus-style "forces remaining" gauges, keeping you on your toes. The music this time around is pretty bad too: not because the music itself is bad (it's mostly classic Gundam themes) but because they're weak arrangements. That said, there's a finite amount of TM Revolution I can take per day...