I really, REALLY want to recommend this game to people, in fact I do try to. I love it dearly, I think the gameplay is a very fun and immersive way to experience Gundam without needing to be retold the anime timelines verbatim for the umpteenth time. I am gobsmacked by the plethora of playable Mobile Suits (MS henceforth) (the in-universe term for the mechs; not that anyone who doesn't already know that is bothering to read this, but just in case) especially since I have a special fondness towards the esoteric experimental or support units that had one canonical appearance in an obscure photo-novel from 2002 or a Japanese-region-only strategy game on the PSP (here's looking at you Hazel Gigantic Arms Unit and Dom Barrage). Also, once you get to a certain rank, you also get to color every single of your MS individually as if you had a little digital model kit collection! And each MS has 3 color presets to boot; most of mine are the same gaudy, oversaturated color scheme as is my heartfelt trademark, but I made presets for both my Unicorn and Phenex that's a neat bottom-to-top, black-to-white gradient as well, just because I thought it would look cool to try, and it is in fact very cool.
Mechanically, the single most innovative part of the game (in my opinion!! I haven't experienced it in any other game) is that all the MS are split up into Cost values depending on how powerful they are. If you queue for a low-cost match, it'll be grunt units fighting grunt units, which I have the most fun with and look for most often. If you queue for a high-cost match, it'll be equivalent to the anime protagonists butting heads, quite literally; fun for most, but not so much for me because it can be overwhelming if not stun-lock heavy, especially if you don't know what you're doing. Put a 360mm cannon on my shoulder and I'll sit behind a hill and fire potshots all day, that's all I need. But, do keep in mind that this demonstrates how different playstyles/interests can be satisfied by the breadth of the game's roster and gamemodes! I think that's awesome!
Sadly, that's where the good ends. Actually attempting to play the meat of the game is a chore.
There is a small amount of PvE, which is really fun to blast through, but there are only 3 static missions at a time and they cycle out... I think once every two months. It doesn't give the actual time period in-game, at least not within the mission selector itself (someone will surely want to correct me on that - I don't care, the point is that it's not easily-apparent information) and this schedule is in part because there are opt-in global leaderboards to show who got the fastest time and which MS they used to do it for the duration of the mission's availability, which again is cool, but creates a quite overbearing timeframe. Were it up to me I'd make them last for a week at most. On top of this, these missions only last 3-5 minutes unless you're struggling to take the enemies down, which can definitely happen when you're fighting one of the bosses that are twice your height who may require you to directly melee their head to finish them off. You can attempt these missions in a team of 3 which is a bonus in theory, but of course that does require two friends who also want to play the game with you.
Now, the PvP, which is the core of the game, is a simpler but more pervasive problem. It's plagued by abysmally low player counts and therefore mind-numbingly long queue times, particularly since I live on the opposite side of the planet as the majority of the already-dwindling playerbase so I have to be online at like 3-5AM to find anyone else within a reasonable timeframe. Not to mention that the queues are split between as many as 8 separate gamemodes, which cycle randomly every 2 hours (you *can* see some info for the upcoming cycle ahead of time, but that's it), so good luck picking the one everyone else is playing at any given time. I seem to get slightly better luck with the rated (ranked) ground matches, but take that with a grain of salt. On top of this, I've seen and heard others' experience with disconnecting from matches repeatedly causing them to be banned from matchmaking for disgusting amounts of time for network issues that weren't their fault to begin with, because I think the connections are peer-to-peer (ew), and/or being put into a penalty queue as a result of the disconnects, although I have not experienced such things firsthand.
Lastly, a new MS is added every single week, which is amazing from my standpoint as an obscure mechanics nerd, but the gacha to acquire them is prohibitively expensive and largely unrewarding to say the least unless you have like $600 to burn, and I know that I have no chance of getting any of the new stuff for months at minimum because of this so I don't even bother with interacting with it myself. Instead of spending that valuable cash, just use the earnable currency DP to get a bunch of MS at your own choice instead - except that unless you find and join a clan that somehow levels up regularly, grinding DP is utterly abysmal and frankly not even worth it on its own (that's how they getcha).
All that said, I *personally* think the game is phenomenal, but it's completely overshadowed by problems that I do not expect will ever get fixed in the lifespan of the game, and it will never gain a wider audience because of it. Maybe if they make a GBO3, slap on a story or wave-based PVE mode (please Bandai, I'm begging you), overhaul the matchmaking to server-based, be more transparent with the queues, consolidate the gamemodes so it's easier to queue in the first place... there's so many things that could be done, and even ONE of them would be a vast improvement.
Play at your own risk, but know that it can be loved if you are very patient.
