My gaming buddies are an eclectic group. Some also write about games; some I’ve known for twenty years; some are friends of friends. They all play different kinds of stuff and all look at the hobby differently. But when they all agree on a game, it tends to have the juice, to hit on something, somewhere, somehow that somehow makes it compelling to a bunch of different folks who look for very different things. They started playing Mecha Break with me because I asked them to; now, they’re the ones asking me to play. Mecha Break’s team-based robot throwdowns quickly became one of our group’s go-to multiplayer options in the week since it was released, and there’s a reason for that: it’s really damn good.
Mecha Break scratches a very specific kind of itch: the kind that drives someone to seek perfection in their multiplayer games. Not overall – there’s no such thing as a “perfect” piece of art. But perfect moments? The perfect shot, the clutch dodge, confirming the last kill that wins you the match? They’re out there, in that things come together just the way you need them to… man, it’s something special. Mecha Break is the kind of game that lets you build your own stories that worm their way into your group's conversations, the kind that spawns somebody shouting “Did you see that shot?” midmatch or the whole group going “clip that!” when somebody makes a great play. It’s the kind of game where you’re planning a strategy pre-game and gassing up your friends when they win MVP, where you’re celebrating your wins and trying to figure out your losses. It pulls you in.
Your time with Mecha Break is going to start with its fairly detailed character creator. For men, your options range from “conventionally attractive dude” to “taller, buffer conventionally attractive dude.” For women, they could be summed up as “extremely slender, conventionally attractive woman” and “yo, girl, are you the Tower of Babel? Because you are stacked in defiance of God.” As you’d expect, the men are steady as a rock. But whenever the women move (and this includes when you rotate them in the character creator), there’s quite a bit of jiggle. You’ll never guess what body type is more popular online. I’m here for the hot mech-on-mech action, personally, but there’s no denying that Mecha Break is also unapologetically a game for horndogs based on the human characters. That’s not a slight against it (we love a game where everyone is hot, which basically just makes Mecha Break The Mummy), but it is extremely funny.
Once you’re done building your hot person d’jour, you’re dropped into tutorial missions meant to teach you the basics of piloting your Legally Distinct Gundam Break Striker while setting up Mecha Break’s story. Basically, humanity is fighting for crystals called Corite, a power source capable of solving Earth’s energy crisis. However, it’s also a massive health risk and seems to be able to infect people (and Break Strikers) fairly easily. The opening missions set up the stakes (and let you fight a pretty slick boss battle) while also giving you an idea of how Mecha Break’s extraction shooter mode works. But the reality is that story isn’t important for more than a “here’s why you’re doing this” backdrop and, honestly, I’ve forgotten most of it in the 20 hours I’ve played since. You can walk around the base if you’d like, and it is cool to be able to both see your Break Striker up close and spend a little time running around Mecha Break’s world (and you are rewarded for doing so), but it’s one of those “huh, yeah this is neat” things in a game where your overriding motivation is “I would like to use my giant robot to blow up other giant robots.” Oh, and you can watch your character take a steamy shower if you’re into that, I guess. Again, Mecha Break is a game for horndogs.
The extraction mode is mostly boring, but the PvP options are what it's all about.Like I said, though, I’m here for the violence, and Mecha Break has three modes for you to get your mech killin’ game on in. We’ll talk about Operation Storm first because, like a middling appetizer that comes out before your main course, I ate enough of it to determine what it was, decided that I didn’t care, and moved on to tastier plates.
Operation Storm is an extraction shooter. You – or you and a couple buddies or complete strangers – drop into a map called Mashmak with one goal: take everything you can and get out while the getting’s good. Oh, and you’ll have to avoid Corite storms, which look like massive tornadoes that move across the map. “Taking everything you can” generally means killing the computer-controlled enemies (often mechs, sometimes rare enemies, occasionally big bosses), and opening chests scattered across the map. Standard extraction shooter stuff. Of course, you can pick up and equip anything you find, offering your mech new options for superior firepower (though you always have access to your base loadout). Survive long enough for an exit point to appear, and you’ll get to keep everything. Die, and you lose it. And, of course, there are other players/teams looking to take you out and steal your things.
It’s… fine? I don’t know, reader, I played it after I had already tried Operation Verge and the Ace Arena (more on those in a minute) and I was mostly bored. Mashmak is huge, so travelling across it takes a while in most Break Strikers, and fighting the initial CPU enemies is dull. Unless you’re willing to stay a while so the challenging stuff shows up or go looking for a scrap with other mechs you’re hoping to turn into scrap metal, it just isn’t all that interesting. It’s neat that you can call in supplies and find new weapons, but your kits are already pretty strong. New stuff helps, but the central appeal of an extraction shooter is that you can both get stuff and lose it, and since you can’t really lose any of your core Strikers, I don’t know if this idea works here because your base build is never going to be bad. Yeah, you can lose whatever you bring in with you (and there is a whole economy built around upgrades, weapons, paint jobs, and all that) and whatever you find, but the overall risk is pretty low so I just… didn’t care? And, wonderfully, since no other part of Mecha Break is tied to Operation Storm (besides cosmetic stuff), I don’t have to. That rules, and I hope other developers will take note.
My attention was elsewhere, and that elsewhere is Operation Verge. This 6v6 online mode is where I spent the majority of my time during this review because, well… it’s basically what Mecha Break’s all about. Once you squad up with your guys, gals, or nonbinary pals, you choose from one of the 15 different mechs available. 12 are unlocked immediately, with another 3 locked behind either real money or in-game currency. As of right now, you can only buy one with real money; all three can be unlocked in-game and none feel crucial to building a great team, so it's not a huge deal that they're not there from the jump. And you can try them for free for 7 days before you buy them, so you won't waste your currency if it turns out that you don’t like one.
One of the things I appreciated most was how much variety there is. Mecha Break has every kind of mech you could want: heavies like the Stego with the ability to plant itself in the ground, sit behind a shield, and launch a massive missile barrage; the Falcon, which transforms into a plane, Starscream-style, making it an ideal choice for folks who like to zoom across the expansive battlefield and rain death from above; the all-powerful-in-the-right-hands Aquila, whose sniper rifle and ability to hover above the fray make it a must for most maps; the ultra-heavy Tricera, which combines four gatling guns, a shielded turret mode, and mighty howitzer that will chew through other Break Strikers for unparalleled defense; and my personal favorite, the Alysnes: a medium-weight, more traditional mech that becomes smaller and more agile after its armor is blown off. Survive long enough in this form and you can reapply your armor, like some kind of mech-flavored Magical Girl.
That isn’t all of them, of course. There are support mechs for healing and shielding your friends, melee mechs for getting up close and personal, and so on. Everyone has different armaments to manage, and I had to tailor my playstyle to the mech I tried. Picking the right one is important, because once you’re locked in and the match starts, you’re stuck with it. There’s also no customization beyond cosmetic stuff like patterns and paint in Operation Verge. Two teams enter an arena, one team leaves victorious, and the one is already queuing for their next game. That’s how it should be.
Everything in Mecha Break feels amazing, and all 15 mechs are fun.The thing is, though, they’re all fun. Everything in Mecha Break feels amazing, whether you’re flying a Falcon, slamming into someone with the Panther’s spear, launching the Stego’s missile barrage, unleashing the Tricera’s howitzer, or just wailing on some poor Striker with the Alysnes’ battle halberd. The fastest Strikers zoom across the map, and even the the slowest ones comes equipped with a solid dodge. From a moment-to-moment gameplay perspective, Mecha Break is a joy no matter what you’re playing. It just feels good. You remember that old saying about “30 seconds of fun?” Yeah. That’s this. And when you land that awesome kill and get an execution animation? Oh, baby.
Mecha Break also (smartly) prevents you from having duplicate mechs on a single team, which leads to some really great fights. I had a particularly tense rivalry in one game where my Alysnes faced off against another player’s camo-enabled, melee-focused Stellaris. We clashed several times, and they were long, drawn-out duels that tested everything from our overall map awareness and positioning to when we decided to attack. In others, my Tricera went-to-toe against the heavy brawler that is the Welkin, or I stayed away from the fray and picked off the fast-as-hell Skyraiders and Falcons before they realized they’d taken a bad fight. You build rivalries in real time in Mecha Break, and it made for some memorable moments. Some I lost, others I clutched out, but the fights were all exciting.
The other cool things Mecha Break does is marry its maps to how you’ll play on them. The multi-level, industrial Gracelynn Skycity only offers traditional deathmatch (first to eight kills wins; best two out of three), as does Babylon Sky Fortress. But there’s more here than Deathmatch. The waterlogged Poseidon Armory sports a King of the Hill-esque data retrieval mode where you have to capture and hold points to win, as does my beloved Kraub Sinkhole. Eye of Misra and Vigil Imbrium ask you to capture launch keys and upload them to a nearby turret, while Longmen Launch Site and Palmbay Harbor queue up good ol’ fashioned payload escorts. Cape Blanc Observatory and Stella Observatory Island switch it up by asking you to destroy objectives rather than capture them.
The maps themselves are a smorgasbord of interesting locations, too. Stella Observatory Island is a combination mountain range with a valley and a destroyed city. I could set up and snipe at other mechs from the high ground with the Stego, but to get the objectives (and stay in the fights over them) I needed to head down where I was more vulnerable. Stego is a great choice, but it does take a minute for it to get from place to place. It's easier to play the Aquila or the Alysnes on that map, and if you’re smart, you’ll build your team accordingly. Longmen Launch Site is at a missile facility where you can choose between fighting outside with limited cover, or getting up close and personal in the tight corridors indoors. It’s perfect for the Tricera; where you can sit your happy ass on your payload (or the other team’s) to speed them up and send them back, respectively. Combine that with the healing powers of the Pinaka, and it’s hard for the other team to deal with. Vigil Imbrium is set on a crater-covered moon that includes both open skies and small canyons just big enough to squeeze through, ideal for dodging enemy fire or moving around out of sight. The real trick there is the pulse storms, which damage your mech unless you take cover. The Aquila’s an absolute monster here, but a well-piloted Falcon or Panther can straight-up roll the other team if you’re not careful.
By far my favorite map in Operation Verge is Kraub Sinkhole, a King of the Hill style map with three points all placed in very different areas. Any team composition can work well here if you play it right, and I’ve had fun and been able to make plays on it no matter what I was piloting. I don’t think there are any bad maps in Mecha Break, but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t rather play stuff like Stella Observatory, Kraub Sinkhole, and Longmen Launch Site over the others because I think they reward good teamplay over their counterparts. I never thought I’d say this, but my least favorite maps are built on Team Deathmatch. Not because it’s bad, mind you, but because dealing with objectives means more focus on team comps, communication, and clutch plays. When an opponent is straight up better than you, you’ll know it, but a single player can’t break a team over their knee in an objective-based mode the way they can in Team Deathmatch. You gotta work together, and that's where the good stuff lives.
Building the right team and coordinating pre-match is essential (you can tell what map you’re on ahead of time, though it isn’t obvious unless you remember a map’s name; that will thankfully be changing in a coming update). Our pre-match discussion was about what we should have, who should play it, and what our strategy should be. Certain mechs are kind of a necessity: you should probably always run an Aquila (or the lighter, faster, “I can go invisible” Narukami) because snipers are hilariously powerful, but running both a Falcon and a Skyraider is a risky proposition. On the other hand, you can never have too much beef, so a Stego/Tricera combo is strong. You’re just not gonna be fast. And you should probably always run a support mech like the Pinaka because being able to heal through hits once your armor is gone (mechs have both armor, which regenerates, and health, which doesn’t) is pretty incredible.
Building the right team and coordinating is essential.In-game, teamwork is crucial. We were calling out targets (pro tip: if you see an Aquila, you need to bully it relentlessly and kill it as soon as you can), coordinating who was going where, and pinging each other for help. That’s the best way to play Mecha Break, and it’s led my team to a 70% win rate. Are certain mechs stronger than others? Yeah. Aquila, Welkin, Narukami, and the unlockable, melee-and-stealth focused Stellaris can all run you over if you let them. But if you coordinate properly, they’ll die real fast.
But no matter what we played or what map we were on, I appreciated that Mecha Break let me contribute regardless of what I was doing. Even keeping another mech distracted while your team hits the objective (or killing them outright) can swing a game, especially because respawns take longer than they do in most comparable games. If you can take a piece off the board for a bit, that matters. For example, while piloting a Stego against another player in the same heavy-hitting mech on the opposite team, keeping him out of the fight long enough for us to secure the last objective helped decide that match. Prioritizing an Aquila or Pinaka can be the difference between winning and losing. Hell, even just sneaking behind the enemy and capturing a point while they’re busy forgetting this isn’t Team Deathmatch has won us a lot of games. Mecha Break gives you a lot to learn about your mech’s various weapons and abilities and how to beat other Break Strikers you run into, but if you really dig into it, you’ll be rewarded. The person that realizes a Panther’s airborne strikes bypass a Tricera's shields is gonna have a much better time than the one who doesn’t.
But wait, there’s more! I’ve spent most of this review talking about Operation Verge, Mecha Break’s best mode, but Ace Arena, a 3v3 mode, is also pretty slick. There are only four maps (one of which has a cool environmental hazard in the form of test-firing rocket engines that you don’t wanna stand behind), but it’s a good time, and I appreciate that you can switch mechs when you die, something you can’t do in Operation Verge. When I took part of my Operation Verge team into Ace Arena for the first time, we smoked the other team 8-0, so… you know. Transferable skills.
Mecha Break also has a training mode where you can practice against various enemies, tutorials and challenges for each of the 15 mechs, and custom rooms if you just wanna play with friends and not venture into Casual or Matchmaking. I spent most of my time in Matchmaking for this review as Casual doesn’t yet have rewards, though that is allegedly coming in a later patch.
Okay, now for the boring stuff. There is a real-money auction house you can sell things in, whether it’s a character customization item, paint, or stuff to equip your mech with in Mashmak. Most prices are pretty reasonable, but the rare stuff is very expensive. I don’t really care about this because I don’t care about cosmetics and I’m not going to play more Operation Storm, but it should be noted that you can get most of this stuff just by playing. It does make Operation Storm somewhat pay to win, the competitive integrity of Ace Arena and Operation Verge is fully intact. And there’s plenty of stuff you can only unlock with in-game currency, which is handed out fairly generously if you just play and do missions, which are basic things like “Do X thing Y times with Z Striker.” You’ll also earn it through various progression systems like the Rally Orders, which you get by teaming up with friends and completing challenges, or stuff like Christian’s Challenge which puts you in a scoring race against a story character. All of this stuff is free. And, of course, there are log-in bonuses, match bonuses, and so on.
The monetization is as mixed as a bag of spare parts.If there’s a real issue with Mecha Break’s monetization, it’s in the the stuff that developer Amazing Seasun Games is selling directly. Paying $22 ($13 at the current sale price) for one of the locked mechs and a ton of in-game currency bonuses is whatever if you don’t wanna take the time to unlock it yourself. What’s wild are the prices on the cosmetic Ace pilots. You can recruit Falcon pilot Leonie Fèvre, her custom Falcon, and three character-specific (boarding, execution, and MVP) animations for the low, low price of $47.99, which is frankly outrageous. Listen, I get it. Mecha Break is a really gorgeous video game, everyone’s hot, and anime waifu stonks are through the roof. But $50 for three animations, a character model, and a custom mech design is nasty work. $10? All right. $15? Okay. Even $25? That might be tempting. But $50? Good Lord, man. That is solely for the people who are too horny to live or have more money than sense. I’m sure a bunch of people will buy this, but the pricing here feels obscene.
So the monetization is as mixed as a bag of spare parts and something I could see people spending way too much money on if they’re not careful. But Mecha Break does give you a decent amount of stuff for in-game currency, and frankly, I’m not sure that I care about monetization in a game like this anyway. If you really want to go crazy customizing your character or buy that shiny new pilot and her mech, you’ll have to pony up. Otherwise, you can unlock paints and patterns for your mechs for free at a reasonable pace. And, let’s face it, unless you’re somebody who is playing the shower sequence on repeat, that’s probably what you’re gonna spend most of your time looking at, anyway. I’m here for the gameplay, and these extras don’t drag down how much that part rules.
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