Initial release date: May 23, 2024
Genres: Shooter game, Adventure game
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows
Developer: Yuke’s
Series: Earth Defense Force, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers
Publishers: D3 Publisher, 505 Go Inc
The Earth Defence Force titles have never been executed in a particularly complicated manner. You’re placed into a glitchy fighting zone and must defeat a slew of enemies straight out of Japanese kaiju or classic science fiction films. I’ve been playing and enjoying these games for longer than seems imaginable. But for some reason, the Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 launched by Yuke’s entirely missed me. It’s safe to say that I won’t be avoiding the B-movie cheese-fest franchise again.
The key gimmick in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 is that the whole EDF universe has been reduced down to a super-deformed, block-built voxel format. The obvious touchstones are the numerous LEGO titles, as well as mega-selling phenomena like as Minecraft and Roblox. The gameplay is similar to that of the major entries in the series, but there are literally hundreds of other characters to unlock and play with. You see, the game takes place in a range of approximated real-world settings, and you can uncover “World Brothers (and Sisters)” from far-flung areas all over the world, as well as popular army classes from legendary EDF games of the past.
The portrayal of these global, multicultural action pals is frequently prone to quite blatant stereotypes, but it is all done in such good humour that it does not feel awkward or insulting in any way. Nearly every country comes in for a good-natured tickling, which frequently makes me giggle at how absurd it all is. If there is a Belgian out there who is angered by the fact that his country is represented by an anthropomorphic cat that fires waffles as a weapon, I will be very shocked.
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 features over 100 missions to complete, as well as the normal range of difficulty settings from EDF. Each level of challenge has its own set of rewards and characters to unlock, so you’ll be compelled to beat each level numerous times right away. You can change your team between missions, which is an interesting process as you discover which individuals and loadouts are most efficient in certain situations.
As with the mainline titles, there will be combinations that are staggeringly useless, such as taking someone with a devastatingly large rocket launcher into a scenario where most of the combat is close range, resulting in damage from your own explosives and the risk of friendly fire – the amount of hit points wiped out by friendly fire also increases depending on the difficulty level selected. Some guns, and even entire characters, are simply a load of junk, as if the game is mocking you or dare you to beat it with the most awful shooter possible. However, this is a recurring element throughout the series and is part of its overall wacky charm offensive.
There is a thread of a hilarious plot running through Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2, which introduces some useful NPC characters who can assist you in combat by healing and assaulting foes. You can even cure fallen comrades yourself, but only if you have enough armour left. The concept of friendship and teamwork propels the tale along, which is appropriate given that the best aspect of Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 is the ability to run with a team of four at all times and interchange between them in real time. Each member of your team has a primary weapon as well as a choice of up to four skills, including a special that can be charged by killing enemies or collecting yellow crates from the battlefield. The specials are frequently fantastic, and sometimes devastating; nevertheless, be prepared for the odd moment when you shake your head, wondering what the hell just happened. Being suffocated by huge ants and then summoning a giant voxel apple to fall from the sky was not something I expected to see on my 2024 gaming bingo card.
In between stages, your squad will level up, with the MVP reward going to the guy with the most kills. You can also experiment with equipment and swap firearms. When a player reaches a certain level, they can switch between weapon classes and experiment with different types of attacks. Despite the vast number of characters to pick from, I found myself sticking to a small group of favorites during the first 10 missions. Because of their familiarity and ease of understanding, loadout types from the main EDF titles are my preferred choice. A Pale Wing is, in my opinion, the most entertaining character in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2; she can take to the skies and fly around the map quickly to mop up any survivors at the start of a mission, before swooping around with a devastating shotgun-style scatter weapon and a special that skewers enemies with a powerful melee lunge. I combined the Pale Wing with a Jet Armor from EDF: Insect Armageddon, another quick flying soldier with a powerful rocket launcher with a decent cooldown period, an Infantry grunt from EDF3 with a tasty long-range rifle, and Hope Brother, a South African tribal chief with a crushingly effective close-range spear. This mix works well in the early missions, but after the tenth sortie, the challenge, adversary size, and scope increase dramatically.
Suddenly, your team feels tiny and irrelevant in the face of new attackers, and you must apply various tactics or risk being wiped out repeatedly. This is when selecting heroes with long-range heavy explosives and air strikes comes into play, as you combine picking mid-powered enemy with rifles and rockets with launching cataclysmic air raids on larger and more resilient foes.
Multiplayer is where choosing a balanced group capable of completing your goal becomes critical. I played a few of the more difficult stages in multiplayer and discovered that an anthropomorphic Canadian Bear was useless against a sky full of death-dealing flying saucers. Playing with friends is a lot of fun, and I’m excited to play with the full complement of four EDF teams once the servers are more occupied.
Despite the fact that you may not employ them all, the diversity and compulsion to catch ’em all remains a terrific gameplay hook, and leveling up your own favorite army of troops to their full capacity is quite rewarding. It gave me a tiny emotional pull to watch these cute-as-hell brothers and sisters develop into lethal killing machines, in the same way that you become attached to keeping your lads Jools and Jops alive in Cannon Fodder or form strange ties with the residents of Fire Emblem. That is not just me, right?
Missions are straightforward for veterans: simply kill everything. All of your iconic EDF villains have returned, albeit in their most lovable forms ever. Spiders, a feast of different ant kinds, flying saucers, robots, huge reptiles—the whole crew is here. Sometimes you have to take down enemy spawn locations since they will continue to spew their terrible contents until destroyed. Sometimes there are vehicles to play with that are difficult to operate but may be incredibly destructive, even if they handle like a 1985 Ford Fiesta with a broken steering column.
Earth Defence Force: World Brothers 2 is all about having fun, regardless of what you’re doing. It looks gorgeous, with some great music and an insane quantity of voice acting – every single brother or sister is voiced in a stab at their local accents, as you might expect, with hilarious consequences. The conversation is as cheeseball as ever, with a lot of repetition, but it never gets annoying for me; this is to be expected in the EDF world. It is, in my opinion, the best and most pleasant release in the series since the first Xbox 360 installment introduced me to the concept. It feels like a game I would have imagined playing on the Dreamcast, and it brings me the same thrill that SEGA and Nintendo do.
Review Overview
Gameplay: 80%
Controls: 78%
Aesthetics: 83%
Content: 76%
Accessibility: 75%
Value: 79%
Overall: 79%
GOOD
Summary: “Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2” is a vibrant and action-packed sequel to the game, combining smart team management with chaotic battles against strange foes. While the gameplay is enjoyable and the art style is lovely, some sections might get repetitive, and the overall content may leave players wanting more. The controls are generally responsive, but they can become clumsy at stressful periods. Despite these minor flaws, the game provides a pleasant and enjoyable experience, making it worth playing for both franchise enthusiasts and newbies.