I went for the sword. There were three Gundams waiting for me at Gamescom, one with a sword, another with a lance and a third using a whip, and with absolutely no previous Gundam game experience to guide that decision, the sword seemed like a good place to start. A few minutes later I was boosting across the battlefield, missiles were flying everywhere and I was hammering away at robots considerably bigger than the enemies I had started with. So this was my introduction to Gundam games. Could have gone worse.
Rogue Orbit gave me two missions and around thirty minutes to figure things out. The first was fairly straightforward, with groups of regular enemies giving me plenty of opportunities to mess around with light and heavy attacks, boosting and some of the additional abilities attached to the preset I was using. I had suppressing missiles, extra shields and eventually Overdrive when I wanted to hit considerably harder. I wasn’t sitting there analysing how accurately any of this represented Gundam; I was mostly figuring out how aggressively I could throw this massive machine around the battlefield without getting punished for it. Turns out: pretty aggressively.
Time for a whip
I eventually swapped builds, and this was where Rogue Orbit became more interesting to me. The three options in the demo were completely fixed, so there was no building or customization to play around with yet, but changing from the sword to the lance and eventually the whip made a bigger difference than I expected. The light and heavy attacks changed, my reach changed and I naturally started keeping different distances from enemies. I liked the sword because getting close and attacking was easy to understand, but the whip gave me more room to work with and looked pretty damn cool while doing it.
That immediately made me curious about something the demo deliberately kept away from me, which is building my own Gundam. I don’t know yet how much freedom Rogue Orbit will eventually give me there because I simply couldn’t test it, but now I had three examples sitting in front of me showing why I’d want to. I didn’t need a customization menu during those thirty minutes to notice that weapon choice is important. I just wanted access to that menu afterwards.
The first mission eventually threw a larger enemy at me, but the second stopped bothering with much of an introduction and concentrated far more on a difficult boss. Suddenly all that boosting around became less about looking cool and more about getting the hell away from whatever was coming towards me. I had to watch the boss, move out of its attacks and then get back in quickly enough to actually do some damage. My shields became particularly useful here, and Overdrive gave me something heavier to throw back whenever I had an opening. This fight was also where I stopped thinking about the fact that I had never played Gundam before. I was just enjoying the fight. Rogue Orbit moves quickly, the machines can cover a surprising amount of ground and there was enough happening on screen during the boss battle to keep me busy without losing track of my own Gundam. There are missiles, effects and massive machines beating the crap out of each other, which is more or less what I hoped my first Gundam game would give me.
I have questions now
Thirty minutes obviously didn’t suddenly turn me into somebody who knows Gundam. I barely got anything from the new story and world during these two missions because most of my appointment was spent fighting, and the demo didn’t allow me to dig into the customization either. Strangely enough, those are now the two things I want to know more about. Especially the customization. Give me those weapons, abilities and whatever else Rogue Orbit eventually allows me to change, and then let me make something stupid. I’ve already tried the sensible sword option, I think I’m ready to make worse decisions.
Early conclusion
Gundam Rogue Orbit was my first proper Gundam game, and two missions were enough to make me curious about the full thing. The combat was fast, the three preset builds played differently and that boss gave me a proper fight. Now I mainly want to get into that customization and build one myself.