I’ve put in maybe 30 hours so far, so I thought I’d share some basic thoughts.
To start with, my expectations were very low. It looked utterly pointless and opportunistic to develop an EDF game in the style of Lego and Minecraft. It was by Yukes, responsible for the iffy Iron Rain. It was aimed at kids.
So it’s a smelly gash of a game, yes?
No. Completely wrong.
I first had a crack when it got released, and I put in maybe an hour before I gave up. I was burnt out from EDF5 and couldn’t take on another grindfest. It also seemed unplayable. The controls were awful, the visuals confusing, and the tone annoying. Thankfully, Kats persuaded me to give it another crack a couple of weeks ago after a 2 month break. It’s a cracking little game.
This is how it works:
There are 60 levels. You complete them all on 5 difficulties. Unlike EDF5, they aren’t stacked down from Hard. So, you have to complete a mission on all 5 difficulties, rather than trying Hard straight off the belt to get Easy and Normal ticked off too. However, the boon is that you only have to complete a level on the 5 difficulties. You don’t have to finish each one 5 times with 4 different classes.
That’s because of the way the classes work. You have to find well over 100 characters, or ‘brothers’. You do this by completing levels. At the start of a level, there are 3 or 4 (difficulty dependent) fallen brothers on the map that you have to rescue. It’s just a case of walking over to them and reviving them. They then join your Brothers Pool from that point. They are selectable for any mission you like, on any difficulty.
The Brothers feature every main character from every EDF game released so far. There are also dozens of cliched characters from around the world. Panda Brother from China. Tulip Sister from Holland. Each character comes in three variants - Alpha, Beta and Gamma. They are unlocked at random. I took ages to get a Knight character, but Kat got one straight away. That’s because we played separately. When you play co-op, you get the same unlocks. I think some characters can only be unlocked on higher difficulties, but you don’t have to go to Inferno to get them all. Kat unlocked them all by the time he was halfway through Hardest.
Most Brothers start at skill level 1. Some unlock at level 2 or even 3. The skill levels determine how many types of weapon you have access to. There are ten categories of weapon. That means your characters have to reach skill level 10 to access each weapon type. My Knight is at skill level 4, so he can access 4 different categories. My Ninja Brother is at level 3, so he can only access three different types of weapon.
How do you raise their skill level? Well, not necessarily through playing as them. If you play a level, and you save 3 brothers, then it’s not likely that all three brothers will be brand new. There may be 1 who is new and enters your character pool, and the other 2 you might have already saved in a previous mission. This is the clever bit. It’s not a waste. Those 2 characters increase the skill bar of your already-saved character.
So I might have a level 3 Ninja. I save another one. His skill bar races up into level 4, and my ninja now has access to 4 categories of weapon. If you maxed out every brother, they’d be able to handle every weapon.
You also unlock new weapons and accessories that way. You have attack, defence, mobility and recovery perks. You can select one per brother (but you can also select the same one one for all brothers).
For each mission you can pick 4 brothers (each wielding one weapon) for yourself. You can switch between them on the fly. It’s vital to manage them well - they can revive each other, and you can string attacks together if you’re competent enough. You choose the balance. You might have 2 ranged weapons and 2 close combat. I chose three air raiders for a mission yesterday.
Each brother has a standard attack, and a special tied to L2. That recharges, but you can manage it carefully for extra devastation. There’s also an R3 special that you build up by collecting yellow boxes and killing enemies. That can be very effective. A Viking has a special that quadruples damage, so if you get your characters close to him when he sets off his battle cry, you can release holy hell. A lot of these specials are more useful than you’d think.
Red boxes increase the armour of all your brothers. White boxes increases the health of just the brother selected.
The missions are all typical EDF apart from a couple of ‘defend the building’ ones. The beauty is in how you play them. You have to really think about your 4 brothers, their weapons and their accessories to create the most chaos. The environments are quite varied, and the visuals totally work when you tune into them. The script is great - very tongue in cheek and self-aware, talking to the player half the time with a nod and a wink. Loads of the enemies and locations, and even the music, are taken from the previous games. There’s even stuff from EDF1 and 2 in there. It’s like a Greatest Hits, but very fresh in the way it’s delivered.
I’ll do more later after I’ve finished taking MiniPrinny for a walk.
To start with, my expectations were very low. It looked utterly pointless and opportunistic to develop an EDF game in the style of Lego and Minecraft. It was by Yukes, responsible for the iffy Iron Rain. It was aimed at kids.
So it’s a smelly gash of a game, yes?
No. Completely wrong.
I first had a crack when it got released, and I put in maybe an hour before I gave up. I was burnt out from EDF5 and couldn’t take on another grindfest. It also seemed unplayable. The controls were awful, the visuals confusing, and the tone annoying. Thankfully, Kats persuaded me to give it another crack a couple of weeks ago after a 2 month break. It’s a cracking little game.
This is how it works:
There are 60 levels. You complete them all on 5 difficulties. Unlike EDF5, they aren’t stacked down from Hard. So, you have to complete a mission on all 5 difficulties, rather than trying Hard straight off the belt to get Easy and Normal ticked off too. However, the boon is that you only have to complete a level on the 5 difficulties. You don’t have to finish each one 5 times with 4 different classes.
That’s because of the way the classes work. You have to find well over 100 characters, or ‘brothers’. You do this by completing levels. At the start of a level, there are 3 or 4 (difficulty dependent) fallen brothers on the map that you have to rescue. It’s just a case of walking over to them and reviving them. They then join your Brothers Pool from that point. They are selectable for any mission you like, on any difficulty.
The Brothers feature every main character from every EDF game released so far. There are also dozens of cliched characters from around the world. Panda Brother from China. Tulip Sister from Holland. Each character comes in three variants - Alpha, Beta and Gamma. They are unlocked at random. I took ages to get a Knight character, but Kat got one straight away. That’s because we played separately. When you play co-op, you get the same unlocks. I think some characters can only be unlocked on higher difficulties, but you don’t have to go to Inferno to get them all. Kat unlocked them all by the time he was halfway through Hardest.
Most Brothers start at skill level 1. Some unlock at level 2 or even 3. The skill levels determine how many types of weapon you have access to. There are ten categories of weapon. That means your characters have to reach skill level 10 to access each weapon type. My Knight is at skill level 4, so he can access 4 different categories. My Ninja Brother is at level 3, so he can only access three different types of weapon.
How do you raise their skill level? Well, not necessarily through playing as them. If you play a level, and you save 3 brothers, then it’s not likely that all three brothers will be brand new. There may be 1 who is new and enters your character pool, and the other 2 you might have already saved in a previous mission. This is the clever bit. It’s not a waste. Those 2 characters increase the skill bar of your already-saved character.
So I might have a level 3 Ninja. I save another one. His skill bar races up into level 4, and my ninja now has access to 4 categories of weapon. If you maxed out every brother, they’d be able to handle every weapon.
You also unlock new weapons and accessories that way. You have attack, defence, mobility and recovery perks. You can select one per brother (but you can also select the same one one for all brothers).
For each mission you can pick 4 brothers (each wielding one weapon) for yourself. You can switch between them on the fly. It’s vital to manage them well - they can revive each other, and you can string attacks together if you’re competent enough. You choose the balance. You might have 2 ranged weapons and 2 close combat. I chose three air raiders for a mission yesterday.
Each brother has a standard attack, and a special tied to L2. That recharges, but you can manage it carefully for extra devastation. There’s also an R3 special that you build up by collecting yellow boxes and killing enemies. That can be very effective. A Viking has a special that quadruples damage, so if you get your characters close to him when he sets off his battle cry, you can release holy hell. A lot of these specials are more useful than you’d think.
Red boxes increase the armour of all your brothers. White boxes increases the health of just the brother selected.
The missions are all typical EDF apart from a couple of ‘defend the building’ ones. The beauty is in how you play them. You have to really think about your 4 brothers, their weapons and their accessories to create the most chaos. The environments are quite varied, and the visuals totally work when you tune into them. The script is great - very tongue in cheek and self-aware, talking to the player half the time with a nod and a wink. Loads of the enemies and locations, and even the music, are taken from the previous games. There’s even stuff from EDF1 and 2 in there. It’s like a Greatest Hits, but very fresh in the way it’s delivered.
I’ll do more later after I’ve finished taking MiniPrinny for a walk.
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