Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs.

Extreme Vs. retains the trademark gameplay of previous installments of the Gundam Vs. series, with a few adjustments and changes. During a standard arcade battle, each team is given a resource meter of 6000 points; when a mobile suit is shot down, its cost is deducted from the meter, and the first team to hit 0 loses. Each mobile suit costs 3000, 2500, 2000, or 1000 points, with higher cost machines being more powerful while cheaper machines are much weaker. A few missions, particularly boss battles, eschew this in favor of making a single machine the target and having its defeat be the goal of the stage (the player's side still has a resource meter and will lose as normal if it is depleted).

Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS Maxi Boost has major changes since its update from Full Boost, the previous version; all 1000 points units are up 500 each, so it is 1500 points in total. The 1000-cost mobile units' HP, and other ammos are now up since it has added by 500 points, so the weapons are also up and they're now par with 2000 cost mobile suits in terms of skill speed (e.g. Gundam 00 Colasour GNX-III's [Note: Normal/Powered] cost 1000 -> 1500, HP 330 -> 480, main ammo [A] 40/60 -> 60/90, sub [ab] 3/6 -> 6/9, and enough mobility).

Gameplay makes use of four primary buttons: Shoot, Melee, Jump, and Search. There are also three sub-commands used by pressing Shoot and Melee (Sub-Weapon), Shoot and Jump (Special Shooting) and Melee and Jump (Special Melee). In addition to these, machines can have two different charge attacks, activated by holding the Shoot or Melee button until a meter on the ammunition display fills.

Extreme Vs. adds in two important gameplay changes. Extreme Action is the ability to dash-cancel one's attacks, allowing the player to string together larger and more damaging combos. Extreme Burst is a super mode, similar to older games' Awakenings, activated by pressing Shoot, Melee, and Jump together when a meter at the bottom of the screen is filled. All playable machines also have a super-powerful Burst Attack, executed by pressing Shoot, Melee, and Jump together while Extreme Burst is active. Full Boost will give Burst Attacks to every mobile suit in the game.

The PlayStation 3 release adds Trial Mission Mode, which features a series of specific challenges that go outside the normal conditions of the game, such as destroying a set number of machines within a time limit or sinking a battleship such as the Argama or Archangel. Trial Mission Mode features a number of enemy-exclusive mobile suits from all the included series, as well as a number of new boss characters.

The arcade version initially had around 40 suits, such as FA-010S, MS-06FZ Zaku II, MSN-04 Sazabi, MSZ-006 Zeta, RX-78-2, RX-78GP02A Physalis, RX-93 Nu and XXXG-00W0 Wing Gundam Zero EW. Suits such as MSN-02 Zeong and PMX-003 The O were added to the PS3 version. Suits such as NZ-000 Queen Mansa feature as bosses. Suits such as GF13-001NHII Master and MSM-04 Acguy were added via updates.

The release of 2 XBoost brings the total to over 220 suits.

Forbes praised the balance, and said it "has an extensive singleplayer setup to keep any Gundam fan occupied. Put simply, this is a thoroughbred multiplayer game with an immense amount of depth and variety."

Push Square said "there's a massive amount of metal-mashing fun to be found. As both a comprehensive gameplay package, and as a celebration of all things Gundam, it's very, very hard to fault."

In Japan, the game reached #1 in the sales charts, selling more than twice as many copies as second-placed Animal Crossing: New Horizons.[3]

• Official website (in Japanese)