I love the first 2 God Eater games, so this game is a massive disappointment for me.
Lets get the pros out of the way. Its a great looking game with wonderful anime artstyle that still looks good compared to its contemporaries, showing that artstyle truly does trump realistic graphics when done right. And the combat is really fun, with the burst arts allowing players to truly create a fighting style that suits their own playstyle. The character designs and monsters designs are also very good. To this day, God Eater retain a style that distinguishes it from all other franchises, and this game continues that visual art perfectly.
But that's all.
Because there is just so much cons in this game that all the positives that it have is buried under the sheer weight of mediocrity.
First and most important issue is the game is extremely short compared to the other two. And then the Aragamis... the older games have reuse assets and fights, but in God Eater 3, the roster of monster are so small and some of the Aragami fighting style are so boring, the fact that they keep repeatedly having the player fight the same small roster of Aragami again and again became very grating, very fast, regardless of how fun the combat is. And they once again failed to improve the battle area in the game, as there is no verticality or interactivity that could help alleviate from the boredom of fighting the same monster again and again.
And the story, oh the story.
The party in this is the least likeable out of the 3 games.
What is the point in giving the protagonist dialogue choices when they mean nothing.
This game make me understand why monster hunter sticking with the simple set up of just going out hunting for ecological purposes works so well. Because when you try to poorly
introduce a JRPG, anime, apocalyptic, human is evil, revolution theme story into the mix and failed to deliver in everyone of the genre, you get this failure of a story.
It takes a level of incompetence to make the monster you are hunting, in a game centred around hunting monsters, be reduced to mere roadblocks that is so insignificant in the story, they might as well not exist.
If human conflict is the direction the game wanted to take the story, then that's fine, make the players able to fight the threats that have been established in the story, not resolve them in cutscenes.
Because the right way to confront oppression, tyranny and genocide is running away with your people alone, accept that its bad luck for everyone else, love, friendship and hope for a miracle? And horrible actions and horrible people does not deserve to take accountability for their actions and need to be offered a helping hand at all times.
The message, moral and theme of this story is incomprehensible. The constantly switching theme between crapsack world and primary school level anime ethics gives me whiplash.
If newer games in the God Eater franchise means the expansion of how horrible the world and its people is, and the threats growing larger and more unmanageable, while your playable
party become less and less likeable, then they should just stop here.
And they have the gall to make the final cringey cutscene of the story unskippable. It's cringe. You can't write a good story. Let me skip it.
Finally, this game also spat on everything the player and their party throughout the first two games, as all the progress that have been made there have been so reduced in this game, it is in the negatives.
Though understandably done to raise the stakes in the story (a horribly bad story at that), its still annoying for players of the previous games in the franchise.
It's a shame that such a storied franchise have to be reduced to this. And the fact that there have not been another God Eater game in so long is most likely owed to the failure that is this game. An undeserved trash and a stain in a franchise that still have so much going for it.
Disappointing.
