I didn't know I could have an entitled opinion about giant anime robots until I played a preview of Gundam Rogue Orbit, but it turns out I can. I'm mad because they gave me a Gundam with a whip sword straight out of Bloodborne (if Gundam hadn't actually gotten there first in the mid-'90s).To be clear, I'm not mad at the whip sword itself. I'm ecstatic about the whip sword. It's exactly the kind of esoteric weapon that suggests Rogue Orbit has a real shot at being the kind of action game that I want out of Gundam—one with a bit more melee crunch and nuance than they tend to offer. But I can't help but look this gift sword in the mouth, because months after revealing the game, the Gundam team are still holding back hands-on with the bit I want to see most: a damn customization screen.Why couldn't I look through a short list of weapons whitelisted for the demo build and have a chance to think: "Whip sword? Yes, I'll be having some of that." The fact that you can customize your mech in Rogue Orbit isn't secret: there's a screenshot of the menu on the freaking Steam page! Here's what it looks like:Bandai NamcoBandai NamcoBandai NamcoThat looks cool. I would've loved to spend at least a few seconds pondering stats like "close-range power" and "output" before deciding a 60-foot-tall robot using a whip to channel its inner Belmont while fighting aliens is far too dope to resist, numbies be damned.Demos always have to strike a balance between showing too much and not enough, risking a confusing amount of up-front complexity or a slice so thin it misses some of the fatty goodness that adds flavor. I played about 30 minutes of Rogue Orbit, which was all action, accompanied by plenty of anime-tinged voiceover about the aliens(?) called "The Apocalypse" that made me think I will probably not pay much attention to anything that happens in this story.On the edginess scale, though, Rogue Orbit's got nothing on the likes of "XXXG-01D2 Gundam Deathscythe Hell" from Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz—you can practically feel the impending turn of the millennium oozing from every letter in that cursed name. Rogue Orbit may not be the politically tinged deliberation on war I love from the best Gundam shows, but that's okay—it's doing something different, and the combo-heavy action immediately made me feel like the game was on to something.Rogue Orbit skews a bit more action RPG than Devil May Cry—the combos are just a few repeated button presses, and much of your damage comes from throwing in active skills which each have their own cooldowns. Holding a trigger and tapping Square on a PlayStation pad made my Gundam swirl the whip sword around in a 360 degree frenzy, catching anyone nearby in a flurry of quick hits. Another weapon, the Sword Lance, almost felt Monster Hunter-inspired, building up a unique meter every time I performed a heavy lunging attack mid-dodge. That meter could then be spent to spawn a "Beam Phalanx" of laser-spewing orbs. Damage numbers, on by default, increase the sense that in the full game I'll be monitoring skill cooldowns a la Granblue Fantasy: Relink as much as I am focusing on attack timing or perfect dodges.This is, nevertheless, the closest any Gundam game I've ever played has felt like FromSoftware's sublime Armored Core 6. A gentler, "have fun pressing buttons and watch shiny particles go everywhere" cousin, to be sure, but a cousin nonetheless.It's sort of a cute full-circle moment: In the pre-Dark Souls days, FromSoftware developed several Gundam games for Bandai Namco around the same time it was putting out Armored Core: For Answer and Armored Core 5. The learner has become the master, and so on. If the current Gundam dev team looked at AC6 with envy and decided to replicate it for a slightly less hardcore audience, I think that was a wise move, and I also think, at least based on my early impressions, that they've pulled it off.But it still feels like I haven't seen the most important bit. So much of the joy of Armored Core—of any proper mech game, really—is assembling a build before tackling a mission, trying to find that balance of speed and durability, raw damage and ammo capacity, range and up-close stopping power that fits the coming threat.(Image credit: Bandai Namco)Demo practicality be damned—until I'm putting that whip sword in my Gundam's hand myself, I won't know for certain if this is the next great mech action game or not. The full game is out in March.