I have fond memories of watching giant mechs take to the stars and fight one another as a kid. The Gundam franchise has always been something that I’ve adored, but as I got older, I stopped following it. Now, with countless shows and manga under the Gundam umbrella, it can be daunting to pick a starting point. But that’s why I’m especially excited for Bandai Namco’s upcoming game Gundam Rogue Orbit: because it removes the homework of keeping up with 40+ years of lore and takes place in an original universe that’s easy to understand. At Gamescom 2026, I went hands-on with the upcoming game and chatted with the Gundam Rogue Orbit producer Yuya Tomiyama and director Yoshiyuki Serizawa of Bandai Namco Studios about taking the series in a new direction.
Rogue Orbit is a breath of fresh air for the series. In short, you play as Re-X; he’s one of the few people who can pilot a mech suit. In this timeline, humanity is all but lost in a war against an alien threat. In true anime fashion, you’re one of the last lines of defense. They did this to make the game “as appealing as possible” to a new audience, and they thought an outside threat would do just that, Tomiyama tells me.
“We did actually walk away from the original Gundam concept,” Tomiyama tells me, going into more detail on why they took the series in a new direction. “Having said that, what’s important for this game is war and drama. I don’t think we stepped too far from the original Gundam in that respect. Obviously, the war is against aliens, but the fundamental philosophy is there.”
Philosophy aside, it very much feels like a Gundam game. Before you start a mission, you’ll have the option to customize your suit and change the way it looks and even the loadout you bring with you. As you might expect, the loadout is especially important because it drastically affects how you play.
Throughout the course of my demo, I was able to pick from three weapon types. The first was the Assault Sword, a solid all-around weapon. The next was the Whip Sword, which was great for attacking from a distance and hitting multiple enemies at once. The last was the Sword Lance, which was ideal when it came to closing the gap and inflicting a lot of damage up close and personal.
For the first mission, I went with the Lance and jumped straight into combat. I immediately noticed the Soulslike elements the developers have implemented. Rogue Orbit has its own version of health potions that you can pop during combat, stamina that you need to be mindful of, and a mana bar of sorts.
Most fights involved me looking at my stamina bar, gauging how much I would need to fly across the battlefield, and seeing if I had enough juice in the tank to come crashing down on some poor alien that was in front of me. The second I did just that, I would pull out my blaster and try to damage someone who was just out of sword range, and repeat the cycle all over again. It fed into the power fantasy of what I’d imagined piloting a mech would feel like when I used to watch the show as a child.
This continued all the way to the boss fight. This is when things got especially anime. The music kicked into high gear, and in true Soulslike fashion, I was fighting something that was towering over me. Combat was just as fast as it had been before, but every block was especially important due to how powerful each swing at me was.
The one thing that truly caught me off-guard was the fact that you could cut off the boss’s limbs during a fight. The game does a great job of showing you when a specific limb is being targeted because it starts to glow. The second it falls off, it handicaps them a little. After a few minutes, it grows back. While it was cut off, I could do more damage, and I was able to walk away from that fight alive.
By this point, I was ready to start the second level. To change things up, I opted for the Whip Sword this time around. Once the level started, I spawned in a fairly empty room, and after doing a bit of exploring, I was face-to-face with another boss. Thankfully, the controls are universal across loadouts; despite different combos, they all use the same inputs.
With a better grasp of the basics, I took out this boss almost immediately. This was because the Whip allowed me to hit multiple limbs at once and fight this larger-than-life monster from a safe distance. Whenever it got too close, I would create some space and go back to swinging the whip as though my life depended on it. After the second boss was done and dusted, my demo had ended.
Although this wasn’t shown in the demo I played, Serizawa did let me know that Gundam Rogue Orbit will feature a multiplayer mode that lets you play with up to three people at once after you’ve completed a mission.
I walked away impressed with what I saw while playing Gundam Rogue Orbit. The fact that it takes place in its own timeline is enough to get me hooked on the story they’re trying to tell. Even though it takes a lot of inspiration from the Soulslike genre, I never felt like I was being truly punished, and it’s welcoming enough to make you feel as powerful as you should be when piloting a mech suit the size of a skyscraper. It’s showing a lot of promise, and I’ll be keeping an eye on it as it gets closer to its release date.
Gundam Rogue Orbit is scheduled to release next year on March 5, 2027. It’ll be playable on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.
