Earth Defense Force 6 PC review – The same as the last one

Back to the Future Part II‘s final act sees Marty McFly returning to the events of the first film. It was clever, if perhaps too self-referential for the movie’s own good. But imagine if the entire second movie was just pieces of the first with elements remixed and things slightly moved around. I’d wager people wouldn’t recall the movie so fondly if that had been the case. And so it is with Earth Defense Force 6, a game almost exclusively built out of the pieces of its immediate predecessor, to the point that it’s hard to really call it a sequel as much as a glorified re-release with some new enemies and tweaks.

Earth Defense Force 6 picks up three years after the events of the fifth game. Humanity has been practically decimated and the Earth is in shambles. At first, it seems like the game is all-new, as you fight some newish enemies in a different wasteland map, following an incredibly boring tutorial. But after a dozen or so missions, you find yourself back in familiar EDF 5 missions. And by “familiar” I mean “EDF 5 missions that are practically the same as before.” The game is a time loop story, and sees players repeatedly going back to the last game’s missions with slight differences (oh, there’s an enemy there earlier, oh, they defeated such-and-such earlier.)

While this is actually somewhat novel and creative, it also means that customers are being asked to pay full price for content that’s almost copied and pasted from a game that came out half a decade ago. Granted, Earth Defense Force 6 is just as much fun as ever (as long as you don’t main the Air Raider, at least.) However, for most of the game’s runtime, I just kept going, “yeah, I remember this mission.” That’s not to say there’s zero new stuff here, but this isn’t a sequel really. For instance, if you played the re-release of Shin Megami Tensei V and noted that it had a new campaign that added in a bunch of new stuff yet clearly wasn’t billed as a sequel, keep in mind that said re-release had a ton more new additions and content than this game does.

With that being said, fans don’t appear too miffed about any of this. I’ve seen the occasional player griping about how most of the maps are unchanged and how basically replaying past missions verbatim is disappointing for what they believed was a totally new game. Instead people are furious about there being a mandatory installation of Epic Online Services for the PC version. Re-releasing a game and calling it a sequel when it isn’t? Perfectly fine with EDF players somehow. I’ve got to say, though, I’ve never seen a developer release such a brazen asset flip of their own game before.

At least the game is longer than ever before. The last game had 110 missions and this one has a whopping 147. Just like in past titles, many of these are a few minutes long. A lot of them are repeated variations on earlier missions too, although they’re different enough that it’s hard to take much umbrage with them. Regardless, there’s a big chunk of game here, especially since, as an EDF title, it’s designed for you to replay it multiple times on higher difficulties. Similar to the maps, the general gameplay here mostly feels unchanged from 5.

As for what’s actually not regurgitated, there are a good amount of new enemies. Androids with multiple variants, weird excavator robots that breathe fire, incredibly annoying giant merman enemies that are super easy to fight, save for the fact that they constantly surround themselves with toxic gas. Oh and who could forget the octopi with shields and ray guns? Even old missions from EDF 5 often have these new enemies thrown in, which livens the gameplay up. Outside of enemies, the most obvious change in Earth Defense Force 6 is that classes now have backpack slots used to carry an additional item. For instance, grenades for the Ranger or shields for Wing Divers. This is a pretty major adjustment that can greatly enhance the gameplay.

Classes all have some aspects that have been reworked as well. Wing Divers have more weapons with ammo tanks, Rangers now steer much better during their sprinting animation, and Fencers can now boost or jump twice in a row (or more with certain equips.) As for the Air Raider, calling things in is far more expensive and they now have to rely on drones. As such, they’re much weaker to the point that playing as them is just a less enjoyable experience for many. In a very welcome change, online progress is now no longer separate from single-player, making it less tedious.

There really isn’t much more to say. Earth Defense Force 6 is Earth Defense Force 5 again with some changes. The quality of life additions are mostly on point, there’s a ton of content, and the gameplay is just as fun as it has been for years, but if you’ve played EDF 5, you’ve pretty much played this one already. You can get hours of enjoyment out of it, but the degree of copypasta and a bevy of typical unimaginative missions (go into an old map and kill a bunch of a single enemy type) make for a much more unimpressive showing than we’re used to.

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