Earth Defense Force 6 (PlayStation 5) Review

Once again, the Earth is under attack in Earth Defence Force 6 and it's up to the player and their merry band of soldiers to blow away the city in their attempt to save it. Taking the role of a soldier defending the Earth from increasingly harsh alien attacks, players must gain new weapons to combat the increasing hordes. The game starts incredibly bleak with only a few survivors left, battling across a destroyed world.

The Earth Defence Force series of games has not changed much which is going to be a blessing and a curse, depending on the player. The fundamental loop is loosely choosing two crazy powerful weapons, heading into a destructible city and killing oversized aliens along the way. The aliens drop random weapon and armour boxes, which increase HP and may contain a shiny new weapon. The levels might range from fighting out in a city with UFOs dropping giant frogs, to fighting endless waves of ants, to assaulting alien bases or caves.

From the beginning, this game starts off far darker and different than its predecessors. While the amount of corny or cheesy may vary - and is something players are either going to love or be put off by - this one starts dark from the beginning. Taking the role of one of the last soldiers sent to defend a base, when the player first steps outside and sees the destruction of the city, it's a moment that hits hard in its sombre tone for a series that is often over the top. Narratively, the first section of story is a tremendous high point for the series, giving some much needed 'depth' to a plot that is often 'kill the monsters' ad nauseam.

Hearing soldiers wonder why they are fighting, or commenting on the merits of defending a city that has been annihilated while they are fighting with broken weapons and armour, was a very cool touch for long-time fans of the series. Seeing mech robots from the prior games lashed to trucks as the sole way to get them to move around anymore was an example of a cool touch to the desperation. While talking any more about this opening sequence would go into spoiler territory potentially, the narrative device this uses and sets up makes the story far more captivating than the mainstream games have been.

For how flashy and crazy the game seems from screenshots, there is a lot of RPG and stat elements in the background with the weapons. There are four classes which will be covered, but within a class there are dozens and dozens of different weapons. Taking the main class of 'Ranger', he can wield rifles, snipers, rocket launchers, grenades, flame throwers etc. What makes the game so fun is that often there is not one 'best' weapon. Experimentation is the name of the game.

Rifles are pretty good overall, but they don't have any AoE to them, nor the raw close range power of shotguns, or the super long range power of snipers, as an example. Even within a class of weapons there are differences between range, power, style of projectile and so on. So, for example a shotgun that instead of a spread shot shoots powerful piercing slugs is good when enemies are waves deep coming at the player. Explosives are good simply because they knock around huge groups of enemies, but comparatively they are almost useless against air enemies.

The four classes all play vastly differently. The ranger is a typical unit, average HP, they get the aforementioned weapons, but in a change from previous games also gets a vehicle or grenade they can bring into battle. It is tremendous fun with some of the long range grenades watching the character take a running throw to try to snipe out enemies in the distance. The next up is the female Wing Divers equipped with their jetpacks. These are the glass cannons who can't take many hits but can zip around the battlefield in the air unloading lasers onto the enemies. The heavy armour Fencer wields two huge weapons ranging from cannons to swords. Last is the Air Raider who is like a support character but can call in drone and air strikes for tremendous destruction.

For those coming off of the previous game, it is going to be mostly the same. There are new weapons, and the addition of more equipment slots is really nice. The darker and more involved story is tremendously appreciated. Nothing new ground breaking, which is going to perhaps put some people off as previous entries are going to be almost the exact same experience but cheaper.