I’ve been playing Earth Defense Force titles on and off for more than ten years. I’ve been wildly fascinated by the idea of taking on tons of terrifyingly-large bugs, robots, and aliens in a destructible city, armed to the teeth with tons of differing guns. I started with Insect Armageddon, the title meant to break the series out in the West, and now I’ve come across the newest spinoff in the series, World Brothers. So, how is the series performing after all these years?

Earth Defense Force: World Brothers received a release in 2020 in Japan, and is just now coming to North America and Europe. The big pull in this game is a familiar pixely block aesthetic that would most immediately remind players of Minecraft. I recall A.R.K. getting this treatment for a title called Pixark, so it seems that this trend has some lasting power. The benefit to this style is that it’s quite easy to run on hardware compared to more realistic graphics styles, boosting performance. That happens to be a necessary factor in gameplay-oriented titles such as this.

World Brothers starts you out with a bare-bones, straightforward tutorial right as it throws you into the action, pitting you against gigantic ants. It was abundantly clear that despite the change in visual style, the core of this Earth Defense Force game was the same pace as previous entries. After completing the tutorial and saving some characters around the game world, you’ll see that there are several different weapons to choose from; all of which you can designate to characters with unique abilities, such as a quick roll, flight, and much more.

My press key for World Brothers came with the Season Pass for the game. As the “season” technically passed from the title’s initial release in Japan, it’s all available to use upon redeeming. There’s a lot of fanservice in this pass for fans of past EDF titles, Riho Futaba, Dream Club, and OneeChanbara, but I found myself particularly enjoying the Cosmonaut character. They happen to be equipped with a weapon that didn’t necessitate a reload. Most guns in Earth Defense Force games take several seconds to reload, so this was nice.

The gameplay loop in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is plain as day. You see tons of big baddies, shoot them, rinse and repeat. There’s some bosses, some spawners, but that’s the meat of it. In World Brothers, characters talk… a lot. Like, Bubsy levels of obnoxious one-liners. The voice acting is pretty solid, but the quantity is just too much at times, enough to distract from the action. I could stomach one-hour sessions but I don’t feel this game could be binge-worthy like other games in your library.

At the end of the day, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers will please fans of the franchise and younger players who are swayed in with the graphics on display. Newcomers may find more engaging/visceral combat in other video games, but those that just want to shoot a lot of big, bad enemies will get their fill with this title. It’s tough to see this worth the full $60 if you don’t have friends to delve into the entire campaign with, but Earth Defense Force titles get deep discounts every now and then, so that may be ample time to deploy the EDF onto your screen!

A PC Review Copy of Earth Defense Force: World Brothers was provided by D3 Publisher for this review.

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Earth Defense Force: World Brothers

$59.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Great Variety in Weapons/Abilities
• Runs Smooth

Cons

• Characters Talk Too Much
• Exhaustingly Repetitive
• Most DLC Not Worth It