Mobile Suit Gundam Battle Operation 3: New free team game announced after the disappointing run of Gundam Evolution

Wow, cool robot!

Bandai Namco has released the first announcement trailer for, a free-to-play team action game and sequel to 2018’s. The trailer is really, really beautiful, showing Gundam units facing off in large-scale battles and infantry fighting under the colossal mecha feet (similar to Titanfall, as both human and mecha players are represented in the same match). I’m unfortunately not enough of a true Gundam fan to recognize many of these units at first glance, other than the RX-78-2, but there is real variety on display here.

Although no release date is mentioned in the trailer, Bandai Namco has confirmed that a network test will take place in Japan from November 20th to 22nd, with an open network test planned for the future (thanks, Gematsu).

After the fate of , a 2022 attempt to bring the Gundam series into a team format, it’s pleasing to see another initiative in this direction. suffered from the all-too-common quirks of heavy microtransactions, where multiple playable Gundam units with unique abilities were only available for real money. It was rightly criticized for this, and since Bandai Namco apparently had high hopes for the income from these microtransactions, the game was closed again a year later when the hoped-for income did not materialize.

In contrast, based on my observations, Gundam Battle Operation 2 was quite well received upon its release. Although little is known about the third installment, we can hope that it has a better chance than the last major release in the series. I’d like to quickly note that the trailer ends with the note “*Some content may require a purchase,” so there will likely be some form of microtransactions — hopefully not to the same extent as Evolution. And while we’re talking about Gundam, there’s also Gundam Rogue Orbit coming in 2027, a drastically different game that’s more akin to an action-packed title in the vein of Devil May Cry (though, unlike Battle Operation 3, it will initially begin life as a timed-exclusive title for the PS5). Well, if we could get a Gundam game that played similar to Armored Core, and thankfully a decent PC release, then I’d be a very happy girl.