God Eater 3 is the third installment in the somewhat niche God Eater series, and while in itself a very competent Action Combat game, it fails in many of the things that defined the first 2 entries in the series. It’s a strange experience, and while I adore the game to bits, I've got quite a few gripes with it, as its exceptional combat is often overshadowed by its lack of difficulty and the failings of its story.
Let’s perhaps get the negatives out of the way first. The story. God Eater games are somewhat known for putting a larger emphasis on story than other games in its genre, this one is no different. However, God Eater 3’s narrative falls mostly flat. This is in part due to the game’s overall structure, as the mission-structure followed by endless waves of dialogue makes for a very disconnected experience that seperates gameplay and story into two distinct camps. GE2 managed to remedy this a bit with its several locales, but it was an issue then too. Here, every mission just ends with you back on the same Vehicle, talking to a bunch of characters who sometimes say interesting things, but usually do not. When the game throws the odd major cutscene at you, it can be quite cool and the game has some great moments where its narrative does shine, but overall I’ve found that it lacks real tension to fully work on its own. This isn’t helped by its, sadly, quite underwhemling character cast, most of which are simply tropes and develop little during the course of the story. After the main narrative finished off, the game also has some strange post-game story which involves learning more about the backstory of your companions, and for some to have some major development too. Some of these stories are interesting, some aren’t, but across the board the way they are presented to the player is through boring dialogue dumps that fail to truly hold up to what these stories are supposed to mean. There’s some interesting ideas here, but the way GE3 tells its story is not very compelling and makes an otherwise good narrative fall right over its own feet. While this didn’t bother me as much at first, seeing as this was my first God Eater game, as I went back to play Rage Burst, it’s a little saddening just how emotional and compelling the plot of that game managed to be, not just in comparison to the third game, but in general. These games can be so much better than this.
What God Eater 3 does very well is its combat system. There’s a bunch of improvements from GE2, most notably a much higher degree of mobility and far more customizable movesets for each weapon. This game’s burst art system is still one of my favorite combat systems, as each weapon is highly customizable and moves can be switched out almost at will, provided the player holds up their own burst gauge in combat, something that requires good pattern recognition and rewards risky play. The monsters (called Aragami) you hunt also learned many new tricks and can trigger the same power-up Burst mode that you can. Once again risky play is encouraged, as the only way to fully negate their power-up attacks is to hit a perfect guard against them. But furthermore, letting an enemy intentionally Burst can often increase the damage potential of your own team and can be a major benefit, as long as you can handle the extra pressure. In addition to the roster the series had known so far, a few new weapons make their debut, each one of them some of the best in the series so far, featuring incredibly versatile movesets and enriching combat a lot.
While GE3’s combat on its own is incredibly compelling and makes for incredibly diverse and fun encounters, the game suffers under a somewhat strange difficulty curve. Going into God Eater 3, almost nothing will be a meaningfuul challenge, and unfortunately this never changes throughout its story mode. God Eater 3, during its story ranks, is unlikely to challenge anyone, it’s an incredibly easy experience. Should you play into postgame, however, (which i very much recommend!) the game starts picking up difficulty almost immediately after the final encounter. There’s several tiers worth of increasingly difficult challenge content, and it’s here that GE3’s incredible combat starts to matter, as your team setup and combat skill is put to a real test. My personal highlight is the “crimson ashlands” missions, a series of variably challenging missions, with rotating restrictions placed during a mission, which forces players to think on their feet and prepare for a wide variety of niche substyles which will be required to keep up the pressure at all times.
Unfortunately, due to poor sales, they never made an Expansion pack for this game, like they did for the other 2 titles in the series. This deprives the game of a LOT of potential content and makes this one by far the shortest title. Due to that, the content scope is much smaller and, as there simply aren’t as many, you will often be fighting the same foes. The expansion content is by far my favorite part of Rage Burst, so it’s quite sad to think about what could’ve been done here. A lot of potential surely went to waste on this installment, and it could’ve and should’ve been much expanded. The online system in this game is, much like every game in this series, of somewhat questionable quality, but if you can deal with the scuff, there’s a ton of fun to be had with friends here. There is also a few raid-like missions which no longer work correctly due to insufficient amount of online players, but you can easily do them solo, so no content is lost due to this.
God Eater 3 is a strange title in the God Eater series, because despite it being an incredibly solid title on its own, to those who know and love the series, it will likely be very disapppointing. GE3 fails to live up to what its predecessors were, not only due to poor sales and lack of expansion, but due to a narrative that simply does not hold up to what the games before it were capable of. Nevertheless, I highly recommend God Eater 3, and in fact all games in this series. They are incredibly fun Hunting Action games, with a huge focus on customizable combat and compelling, emotional storytelling. Each game comes loaded with an incredible soundtrack and a unique visual style, and GE3 is no different. Despite its failings, GE3 is full of great content, an incredible combat system emphasizing personal expression above everything else, and a long and challenging endgame for those wishing to stick with it.
