EARTH DEFENSE FORCE: WORLD BROTHERS

Oh right, I never left a review on this. Well, my low playtime combined with how long I've owned it should tell a lot about how thoroughly underwhelmed it left me. Some compare it positively to Iron Rain, and frankly I could not disagree more, and this is while acknowledging IR is an incredibly flawed game that could have used a lot of extra work. Sure, this game doesn't rely on consumables with use animations that get cancelled by scratch damage or the heavier enemies walking too close to you, but that's about the only good thing I can say about it. Thing is, I'd rather play a flawed game with some fun aspects than a game that lacks such glaring flaws, but is also completely lacking in anything actually enjoyable, and this is so blatantly the later. Let's see, what does this game do well? It sure isn't humor, borderline-offensive national stereotypes constantly repeating their one singular joke aren't exactly funny. Is it being a celebration of the EDF series? Most of the cast and weapons are the aforementioned national stereotypes and their signature, non-EDF weapons, and most of the more interesting EDF weapons that are featured at all are locked behind specific EDF members' ults, leaving you only with the most standard, generic weapons from the series and a few swords, as standard equipment options, so no, not really. Is it being a fun shooter with good mobility and interesting enemies? Of what I've played, the *only* enemies present were the most basic tropes from the series, with none of the unique ones some of those games had that were not repeated later, and most of them do not respond to your presence in any meaningful way even as you're shooting them, at least on the first three difficulties. Mobility abilities, for the characters that have them, are tied to long cooldowns and in many cases can't easily be chained together due to a seemingly random delay on character change that can sometimes be longer than a second, which also makes switching weapons harder than it needs to be. Is it the good ol' EDF grind? No, not really, rather than the typical drops from enemies, which even Iron Rain had the enemies at least drop currency, and the rest of the series loves to drop crates everywhere, the grind is instead tied to characters who start on the map. Killing the, as mentioned, largely unresponsive enemies is more a formality between you and the rewards you already know you're getting rather than a rewarding experience in itself. So I ask again: What is the quality that makes this game fun? That's the thing. As far as I can tell, there is none. It's a thoroughly boring experience that, the last time I choose to give it a chance, bored me so thoroughly that I immediately uninstalled it. You've got better things to do with your time and money. I know you do. Don't buy this even on sale. Not when the rest of the series can provide as long a playtime as it can on just straight up, 100% better games than this. I would call this game aggressively mediocre, but that feels to me like being too kind to it. Mediocrity implies being either average or on the high end of bad. While not as thoroughly unpleasant as the worst games out there, this is too far from even middling to qualify as 'mediocre'.