Mecha Break review

Out, Gundamnéd spot

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Amazing Seasun Games

A hectic and sometimes-exciting mecha brawler has its solid battle-dashing clogged up with cumbersome menus, leery character design, and in-your-face microtransactions.

• Developer: Amazing Seasun Games
• Publisher: Amazing Seasun Games
• Release: July 2nd, 2025
• On: Windows
• From: Steam
• Price: Free-to-play
• Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7-11700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, Windows 10

In Mecha Break you play as a booby anime statuette. She is the one driving the mech. This is a leery game of lasers and ass shots, and sometimes even manages to elicit moments of exciting robo-a-robo combat. You fight other players across a splatter of multiplayer modes, and may often feel the crunch and weight and whirl of a Gundam-esque ground-to-sky battle of wits and bullets. But there is always a boob or two waiting for you after the heights of battle, jiggling over endlessly popping screens of free-to-play gubbins. Somewhere in Mecha Break is a good game, but you have to peel away the plastic tits and pushy sales screens to find it.

Let’s start where the game kicks off - character customisation. There’s barely any variety in body type or appearance, it is jiggle-physicsed hourglass girl or you quit the game. The only way I could create a vaguely different character was by applying my time-tested “one-up, one-down” rule to all the body meters. Eg. “arm length” gets blasted super high, then “arm width” goes super low, then “hand size” super high, and so on. Years of non-committal character customisation screens have taught me this is the fastest way to emerge from such menus with a bonafide monster.

I am sorry, but not as sorry as the developers should be. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Amazing Seasun Games

The tutorial runs you through the basic controls as part of a lore-establishing sequence of shockingly ropey dialogue and hackneyed storytelling that can barely keep a plot point straight. The world is infested with a mineral called “corite”, which is sentient, or it might be (no, it is) - wait, the jury is still out!

You get the hang of the controls quick enough, but the same tutorial does a poor job of teaching you the objectives of a real game, and doesn’t show you what any actual multiplayer match will look like. It’s like playing the opening act of a singleplayer game, complete with boss fights, then being dumped into the menus and told “lol, different game now”. You’ll need to play some matches for yourself to see what it’s actually about (or watch some of the briefing videos sequestered on another menu screen).

Or just listen to me. There’s a clutter of 6v6 game modes. There is plain deathmatch and a territory control mode, for example, with each mode getting its own dedicated maps. Another mode sees you trying to interrupt a number of spidery mining machines while the enemy team does likewise. Another has you grabbing and delivering little data gadgets to a central launch site. All the while boosting around and firing off volleys of ammo and special attacks at your online foes.

One of the better modes is an Overwatch -style escort job where you push a vehicle along a track, speeding it along by activating consoles en route. The enemy team has their own robotrolley on a parallel route and is racing you to the finish line, but you can reverse their payload by rudely standing on it. First to the end wins. If all this feels too crowded, there’s a 3v3 “ace arena” which is a more straightforward deathmatch - first to eight kills triumphs.

And then, ah, the obligatory extraction shooter mode. This sees you pummeling PvE minimechs, airships, turrets, and tanks on a much wider world map that is struck by periodic storms. You’re here to loot new toys for your mechalad, such as disposable rocket launchers or mods that can be attached to your robosuit. These mods will increase armour, or boost your rollerskatey speediness, but you’ll lose them if you die on the field.

Cue the the usual endlessly grasping loop of going into the warzone for stuff so you can go into the warzone for stuff so you can go into the warzone for stuff. Or, for me, a case of getting killed after 20-30 minutes, losing everything I gathered, and ignoring this mode forever out of a mixture of shame and annoyance. No, I have not liked an extraction shooter since The Division’s Dark Zone.

That there are so many modes to choose from feels in some ways old-fashioned. It reminds me of the years in which multiplayer modes were added to singleplayer games as an afterthought - pressured devs would just upend every idea they had into a bucket and hand in the whole thing. Yet here, in a free-to-play multiplayer-only game of the mid 2020s, it feels like the designers are just throwing every established multiplayer mode at the wall to see what sticks, like a mad Englishman trying to understand which of the nine types of pasta he has cooked are ready to eat.

I find the short, objective-focused fusilli goes down easier than the higher-stakes and ultimately slower-paced extraction spaghetti. The mechs, to be fair, handle like wondrous Gundam war machines, boosting freely all over the place at the touch of a button and rollerblading across the countryside with glowy-wheeled abandon. And there’s decent variety in the way they do battle.

This beefy bot is my favourite, because you can just sit down and have a good, big shoot. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Amazing Seasun Games

The slow Tricera has more miniguns than feels prudent and a hefty mortar cannon - it is my favourite mech. The Stego has a range of missile payloads and can become a fiery turret when it plants itself down on the spot. Narukami, a “light sniper”, can cloak themselves or spit out sneaky decoy holograms, while taking pot shots that do more damage the longer they charge.

There are support mechs who can plant down walls and repair damaged friends from afar. There’s a melee specialist with a pinning charge that brings to mind Reinhardt from Overwatch. And another hacky feller who can disrupt enemy targeting computers, making your foe’s normally blue teammates appear as flashing red enemies on-screen. Sadly, this hackerbot is only available after grinding out a bunch of tokens (more on the game’s hunger for cash in a moment).

The game does a piss-poor job of teaching you the specifics of each of these machines, however. The weapon descriptions are hidden away on extra tabs, in tiny writing and accompanied by reams of percentages which will mean nothing to anyone new to the game. There is a training mode, where you can test mechs, and only once you learn how to enter it and swap directly between mechs will things become much clearer. It sometimes feels like you are battling the game to understand its workings and intentions. It’s a hero shooter, essentially, but feels outright afraid to explain itself as one.

The pre-match hangar bay is about as clean as the menus get. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Amazing Seasun Games

Initial confusion aside, there’s a good split between heftier fighters and lighter scrappers. The biglads have tanky armour and horrific ordinance, but they move slow and do some of their most damaging attacks when completely rooted to the ground. The nippier folks can turn into manoeuvrable jets or vanish from sight completely, but they are more fragile when it comes to their armour. A good team can conceivably work together, with flighty lighties coaxing enemies into range of heavier brutes, while themselves dipping behind their co-brawler’s shield bubbles and tanky armour plating.

This is the high-level dream of co-operative play, and I briefly felt it in one extraction game where I played the repairing support mech, keeping my battlebros healed from the back lines. I especially enjoyed seeing my highlights from this match - a reel of recorded footage that plays at the end of every game. This was the exception though. Most other battles felt more like chaotic bar room brawls. Even if they were often exciting in their own way, it rarely felt like a team sport. One or two people would play the objective. Everyone else goes for plain kills.

This guy made a speech but I stopped listening about five words in. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Amazing Seasun Games

If duking it out as nippy mechfolk were all there was to Mecha Break, I’d have an easier time recommending it. But much of the game resides not on the field but in the menus, a bleepy-bloopy mess of sci-fi blueness, with all the expected free-to-play potpourri clogging up multiple screens with myriad currencies and special offers. Some of these feel like standard practice in the free-to-play world. For example, a few of the mechs, like Inferno (who has two giant laser shotguns that can be charged up for a twinblast of direct megapain) can only be obtained by grinding out tokens or buying them. That feels normal to me, as someone who got used to saving up for Apex Legends characters.

But a remarkable amount of simple things cost money. Want to play as a male pilot? That’ll be seven quid. Want to unlock a new outfit for your fearfully long-fingered sex doll? That’ll be a tenner. Players who enjoyed the beta are miffed that customisation options which once appeared to be free have since been taken away or locked behind a paywall. Even corite, that sinister fictional mineral which infests the world as a corrosive environmental hazard, also happens to be a currency you buy with real money in batches of 500 or 1000. The logic of this fictional futureworld grows ever more inexplicable.

The beginning of the payload-pushing mode sees you coming out right in front of your enemies, so lasers fly immediately. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Amazing Seasun Games

Even if you’re trying your best to avoid this stuff, animated flash after animated flash assaults you as you navigate around the cluttered, confusing menus. You’ve earned 500 mission tokens! (What are those?) You’ve unlocked a beret! (Okay but how?) You’ve progressed up this bar of indecipherable icons! (Please stop interrupting me while I paint my mech an expensive shade of red.) End-of-mission reports are an assault on your eyes with whizzes and cracks of reward screens, as if the very lights of neo-Las Vegas are being beamed into your retinas.

It isn’t a gacha game as such, but it mirrors the gacha game’s tactics of overwhelm and numbersprinkling, an attack on attentional dignity that you will immediately recognise as a symptom of extractive game design. It doesn’t feel “pay-to-win”, contrary to the common fear about such games (I’m landing plenty of kills as a freeloader) but it does sour every minute outside of the actual matches. Immediately after the tutorial you are advertised a pilot with a cooler designed mech for the low low price of £47.99. I urge you: go buy an entire other game instead.

In some sense judging Mecha Break for these free-to-play foibles is a pity. Because buried beneath the weedlike mass of microtransactions, the noise of lootboxes opening, the lecherous lingering over chests and butts, and the legion of screens popping up to flummox you with unintelligible currencies, there is a slight but glowing core: a decent multiplayer action game with a lot of admittedly cool robots. It is a shame this core is housed in the greebly shell of a desperate salesbot, hawking at you every step of the way. Mecha Break upsells to you even as you leave - quit the game, and there is an advert to follow it on social media. Mate, I can barely follow what you said in the briefing room.

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Mecha Break

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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