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Earth Defense Force: World Brothers Review(PS4)


Developed: Yukes

Published: D3 Publisher

Genre: Action Shooter

Release Date: May 27th,2021

Platforms: PS4/NSW/STEAM

*Game provided to me by D3 Publisher


''A Minecraft Apocalypse''


Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is an action shooter party game that is developed by Yukes and published by D3 Publisher. With Earth Defense Force 6 recently announced and coming off the heels of successful releases of Earth Defense Force 5 and Iron Rain, D3 Publisher and Yukes decided to change up the formula a bit with a Minecraft like shooting game, set in the EDF universe. Does this spinoff keep the spirit of the mainline series? or does it end up a failed experiment. Only one way to find out. So lets go!


Story:


A new EDF adventure begins! Only this time, the action unfolds in a parallel world where the Earth is made of digital blocks. The world has befallen into chaos, as the once peaceful square Earth has been shattered into pieces. With the dark tyrant threatening to destroy everything in his path, It is now up to the EDF to restore peace to the square planet and put a stop to him once and for all.





Game Play:


EDF World Brothers is a spin off title in the popular Earth Defense Force franchise and a far departure from what people may be used to, at least to extent. Still here is the goofiness, the cheesy dialogue and multiple classes to choose from to play as, but this time its set in a weird block like earth that is like if Minecraft suddenly went giant bug and alien apocalypse mode and said ''have a nice day''. But being a block earth, with a block world and block characters, this is where all comparisons to Minecraft end and there will be no digging and mining in this title because the only digging you will be doing, is your grave. Well, if you do not choose the proper classes that is. Yes, you heard me, classes, not just one class is playable at a time in this title, but instead, you can play up to four characters at once due to the party style set up this game currently uses. This is where the first big change comes into play that sets it apart from the previous entries in the franchise.


As you playthrough the games story mode, which will run you around 8-10 hours for completion, depending on the difficulty you picked, it will take you through a variety of locations such as Paris, Egypt, Japan, China, U.S., throughout its 60 missions. It is here where you will discover the biggest change from previous games and that's the utilization of a party system. With this party system will be able to put together your own team of world defenders to fight off the enemy legion. When you arrive at the menu you screen, you may choose between your team members, weapons, accessories and emblems. Picking which classes you want in your party can be pretty vital and may require some thinking in between missions because certain classes like Infantry can use a rocket launcher, which is good for long range, but he cant run fast and is very slow, Jet uses medium range rockets and can fly, albeit not that well, and classes like Wing Diver can fly at a quicker pace and utilize her weapon, Laser Lance, for quick and fast laser shots that can take down most enemies in one or two attacks. This is where a strategy element can come into play for specific missions that have flying enemies or stronger enemies like steel spiders or gigantic space ships and alien robots. Infantry's rockets can take down giant space ships in 3-4 shots, but it can't run away from enemy alien robot fire fast enough and will be obliterated quickly. But on the flipside Wing Diver can hover and circle around an enemy robot and fire off laser shots without being touched. It makes for some very entertaining moments.





Strategy is where my boyfriend and myself kind of were on the same page. I focused more on an offensive build with classes like Wing Diver, Infantry, Jet, while he focused on a more balanced party of Amigo Brother, who has a medium ranged gun with a special ability that gives an offensive and defensive boost to the party in the immediate area by playing music. Think of him as sort of like a bard from Final Fantasy 11 or 14. My boyfriend also chose to go with a Pharaoh Sister that utilizes gigantic tornados for huge amounts of damage, while also having a special ability that stops time completely for around 10 seconds. This ability came in handy immensely when we got surrounded by hundreds of bees, ants or spiders and allowed him to pick off enemies one by one to give us some breathing room. Switching classes works seamlessly and instantly by pressing up, down ,left or right on your D-Pad to select your EDF hero. This is one key aspect of World Brothers that I feel needs to be carried over into the mainline series, maybe starting with EDF 7. Being able to swap characters on the fly to whoever you want at any given point is a godsend really. In previous entries you're stuck with your one class and that's it, you have to wait till the round is over before being able to pick a class that is better suited for the mission you're attempting to beat. But with World Brothers, it says ''nope, screw that, were upping our game''.


However, while it is a great feature and definitely will help a lot more people, mainly a more casual player, be able to pick up and play immediately, it does take away from the games difficulty a fair bit. Usually in past games like EDF 4.1, EDF 5, it was a bit of trial and error when deciding what class to use on a specific mission. This made you think long and hard about each level you play and made those games that much more tougher on you as the player, especially if you played solo. But with World Brothers, that difficulty of the game goes away completely as you can prepare for any scenario the game has to throw at you, with one party only. Now don't get me wrong, the game can still get pretty intense and a tad bit difficult towards the later levels when you're protecting and defending buildings from hoards of enemies. but its still easily manageable even on normal difficulty. Unless you are like me and my boyfriend. We were on fire, kicking butt left and right, nothing can stop us... well no one but ourselves that is. As we spent like over 5 minutes protecting a vital monument in World Brothers, we noticed our building kept taking damage and by the time we realized it was US that was the problem, we failed the mission!. As it turns out between me using my rocket fire to clear out enemy bees and his use of Pharaohs tornados, we completely annihilated our own objective. Big oops moment, but still pretty hilarious. These are the type of moments that make the EDF games, especially this one, so endearing and why they have gained such a cult classic aura over the years. Are they the most polished and riveting blockbusters on the market? not even close. But they're all entertaining, campy, very cheesy and so over the top that you just can't help but laugh and have a good time. This does not change here in World Brothers, even if the graphics and design overall have.





EDF World Brothers takes everything you love from the mainline series and amps it up to 100. With over 100 playable characters to choose from, that you unlock as you progress through the main games story mode, you will find representation from nearly every region of the world and with it comes so very different personalities. The story mode in this game I feel is structured better than most of the previous EDF games. Previous games had some sort of a story with aliens attacking, some banter and dialogue between members, but nothing really fleshed out. However here in World Brothers, this actually changes. Now you actually have an overarching story about how the dark legion, lead by Dark Tyrant have started not only taking over the world, but have blown it into pieces. In order to rectify this, you must take down enemy mother ships in order to put the world together again, bit by bit. As you move through the story, you will find a variety of characters that range from Ninja's, vlogger/livestreamer or over eccentric characters that can be both funny or extremely annoying. Most of the characters are well written like the hardened vet who lost all his friends in battle and is now trying to not make friends so he doesn't feel that pain again, but ultimately you soften his heart and befriend him. Other characters are even more ridiculous like this one guy that dresses like a bear and is convinced one day that he will in fact, become a bear himself, good luck there bro. But I think the one character me and my boyfriend agreed that was the funniest of all, was one female that you meet towards the middle half of the game. She decides to join you in battle, but you do not know her reason to fight alongside you, till its learned that she's only fighting because if the earth falls, she will no longer have any supply of Soy Beans left. That's right, she just wants Soy Beans and another character is devastated because he wants Muso soup. This is their reason for fighting. They're literally fighting hoards of enemies and they all banter about wanting to keep Japan's supply of Soy Beans in tact and eat soup. Its so hilariously random that we both just started laughing at how stupid it was.


But not all characters are winners. Characters like the vlogger and her constant screaming ''woo woo!'' over and over at ear piercing levels got annoying REALLY fast and the ditsy Volg 7 who is the typical ''like oh my god, so like, hash tag besties!'' character who out stayed her welcome and quickly got on my nerves too. But other than those two characters, everyone else was actually really fun and entertaining to not only play as, but listen to as well. They all have unique and funny personalities that were parodies of a specific region they came from. Some of them even over stereotyping at times, but lets just hope someone doesn't try to cancel them for that. As stated before, each character you come across in the game, also has their own unique abilities that will help you out in sticky situations. Wing Diver summons homing lasers that attack groups of enemies, Infantry shoots one big gigantic energy beam and this holds true for every. single. character. That's right, that's over 100 characters with different abilities and to top it off, each character has multiple weapon upgrades that you acquire throughout the game by picking up red armor boxes and raising your characters weapon level. The higher the weapon level, the stronger it becomes or allows you the chance to unlock an entirely new weapon altogether. The variety is pretty insane and there's no end to the combinations of characters plus weapons to use at your disposal, the possibilities are endless.



While having over 100 characters and weapons at your ready is a great thing. I however loved that they kept the mech fighting in this title like we've seen in previous entries into this series. During a level where you must fight gigantic kaiju godzilla size monsters, that range from being 50ft tall to well over 100ft tall, this requires you to take the fight directly to them, ala Pacific Rim style. For anyone that's a fan of the EDF franchise, you've seen this before and its still as awesome as ever. Heck, my boyfriend even got a little too into it. As we were fighting this near 100ft tall monster, he decided to get into the giant mech and take the kaiju on 1 versus 1. So here I am, flying my way around, involved in a super intense battle, concentrating my butt off, but then I turn my view and look towards the big monster and there my boyfriend is... hitting the monster in the family jewels. I was like wait, is he doing what I think he's doing, so I kept watching and sure enough, hit after hit, he keeps giving him the johnny cage punch of doom right to his balls. It was the funniest thing I had seen our entire playthrough because he got super into it. Strangely enough, it was really effective and he actually took the damn thing down by doing it!. It was hilariously awesome.





Overall:


When its all said and done, Earth Defense Force World Brothers stays true to usual EDF formula, but in my opinion, completely surpasses it with the extremely funny story mode, inclusion of over 100 characters, fun character personalities, party system that allows you to choose a team of 4 different classes at once giving you the option to seamlessly switch between them at any given moment and a Minecraft block style that actually fits the EDF universe strikingly well. Sure it has minor downsides like a few characters being annoying here and there or some levels stretching on longer than others, but overall, this game is a blast from start to finish, especially on Co-Op. I definitely want a sequel in this style. So I'm pretty sure you know what I'm going to say by now, well, my verdict is clear. GameNChick says Buy Now.




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