I love this game, and I hate it at the same time.
This is a long-winded review for other EDF nerds like myself. The "TLDR" without spoilers is in the final paragraph.
------>>!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!<------
The mechanics of this game are better than all the previous EDF games, and there are many more tools at your disposal to complete your missions. HOWEVER, a massive amount of stuff is just recycled from EDF 5 with slight tweaks to the EDF 6 version. That includes many recycled missions! Let it be known that this is basically EDF 5.5!
One of the things I like about that though is the environments. Again we have so many little details making the world feel lived in, and I still spend a lot of time window shopping at stores and vending machines when a mission gets quiet. Expect no real graphics upgrades though. (I'm fine with that).
As for the new environments. A lot of them are post-apocalyptic wastelands with nothing worth looking at and I absolutely hate them! Functionally they're awful too! They didn't seem to take into account how the vehicles and their awful physics would work in these environments. Wheeled and tracked vehicles constantly getting stuck on or into debris built into the environment that can't be destroyed, and nix's trip over the same solid debris every few steps triggering the landing animation. You will have vehicle physics bugging out like crazy on these maps! Your ai troops, and enemies both get stuck in half destroyed buildings as well. You will either need to destroy the building or run around it trying to lead them out somehow.
These new apocalyptic environments are a real drag to play in, both visually and functionally!
The Main Campaign: Deals with repeatedly travelling back in time to try and change future events. This leads to NAUSEATING amounts of repetition!!! It's like playing the same 10 missions over and over and over with slight differences in each rewind of the timeline. Those differences are usually just an evolved or devolved version of some of the enemies in the exact same missions. EDF 5 took place in one continuous timeline and all of the missions were unique. This game has no where near the variety of missions compared to EDF 5, but EDF 6 has more variety of enemy types. There are a few dragged out boring dialogue sessions that you are forced to sit through an excruciating amount of times throughout the campaign as you go back in time to rewrite history over and over again. By the 100th mission I was only playing this game to get new weapons. I was having almost no fun at all because of the ridiculous amount of repetition. It sounds like an interesting plot, but gameplay-wise, it was the worst EDF campaign ever! It felt so lazy to just be playing a short campaign that gets re-imagined and recycled over and over via time travel. Not to mention some missions being just redux versions from EDF 5's campaign (unbelievable really!)
DLC 1: It's a prequel to the main campaign, only 18 missions, but no excruciating time travel loop BS! Honestly I liked it better than the main campaign simply do to the absence of recycled missions. This DLC has a plot and has fully voiced dialogue just like the main campaign, unlike EDF 5's DLCs. This one is short but sweet, and adds a few more useful and unique weapons. It has one major drawback though. A lot of missions are centred around new enemies that are way harder than previous enemies, but for whatever reason, they drop very few items. A lot of times you can farm missions in this DLC and get almost nothing out of it. For example, you might wipe out a whole mission of new DLC enemies just to walk away with upgrades of the same junk you got from the main campaign on higher difficulties. This mostly has to do with new enemies dropping about 1/3 to 2/3 as much as something like cosmonauts from the main game despite new enemies being 3x the dmg to kill.
DLC 2: This one is more interesting to me, and feels more like EDF 6 than the main campaign and DLC 1, but it is frustratingly difficult on inferno. This actually starts more fresh than the previous parts of the game. It's more futuristic and apocalyptic. DLC 2 takes place in a training simulation that was created to train soldiers to handle stress on the battlefield. It uses information collected from the real battlefield as well as some incorrect information from soldiers, and some total exaggerations of the EDF's reality. It is most certainly a great stress simulator as it is much harder than the rest of the game! DLC 2 takes a special type of person to complete on inferno, mainly masochists, and EDF nerds like myself! This one is much longer. About 40 missions apparently (still working on it). Much longer than DLC 1, and again it has fully voiced dialogue unlike EDF 5 DLCs.
Personally I found this DLC much more interesting than the rest of the game just because it was a fresh idea and departure from the typical recycled EDF content from the past decade. DLC takes the level of insanity EDF is known for to a new height.
Conclusion: This game introduces mainly new mechanics and tools to the series. It keeps many of the good things from previous titles. However, the main campaign is so repetitive I could barely stand it anymore even when I was only 2/3 through it! The last 3rd of the main campaign I basically sighed and cursed my way through with very few weapon upgrades along the way. The DLCs basically saved this game for me by getting me out of the time travel hell loop that the main campaign is, and adding some weapons that were actually worth grinding for (some of them anyway).
TLDR: For longtime EDF fans I'm giving this game a 7.5/10. For normal people I would give this game a 5/10, and not recommend it. I'm sure most normal people wouldn't finish it! Mostly just us loyal EDF members will be able to appreciate this disasterpiece!
