Earth Defense Force 6 review – There’s still nothing quite like it

Big budget AAA games or 100 hour RPGs are nice and all, but sometimes you just want to blow up endless waves of aliens with some friends. Enter Earth Defense Force 6, the perfect way to spend a few hours saving Earth as things get progressively weirder.

Saving Earth once again

Earth Defense Force 6 takes place a few years after the events of 5, where humanity has seemingly driven back the alien invaders at great cost. Most of humanity is dead, and what’s left is still under threat from the aliens that remain. Once again taking the role of Storm-1, you must continue the fight and somehow save Earth.

I’d hesitate to say that the Earth Defense Force franchise has ever had a “good” story, but its blend of b-movie weirdness and the way it takes everything completely seriously is always fun. With Earth Defense Force 6, things have gotten even crazier. In fact, it’s actually hard to talk about the story without spoiling its main plot point.

Without going into much detail, the plot of 6 is absolutely bananas, recontextualising the previous game in a way I didn’t think was possible. Granted, it’s not the most well written — Earth Defense Force 6 still has a weird localisation, possibly on purpose — but it ties together the lengthy main story well.

Everything’s the same, but not quite

When it comes to the actual task of taking on aliens, things will feel extremely familiar for fans of the series (especially those coming directly off Earth Defense Force 5.) You take one of four classes, kit them out with an increasingly ridiculous set of weapons, then mow down everything on the map.

Earth Defense Force 5 really perfected the art of alien annihilation, with blood and chunks flying everywhere giving your attacks even more impact despite the dated visuals. Earth Defense Force 6 takes things even further with robot enemies that chain into massive explosions when killed, or tentacled aliens with limbs that you can individually remove to weaken their defences.

It’s easy to learn, visually impactful, and above all just fun. Earth Defense Force has always excelled in overcoming its technical limitations via sheer spectacle, and I can safely say that 6 takes things even further.

But once again, it’s also the times where it tries to tone things back where the Earth Defense Force 6’s worst moments are. Cave missions are still the least fun due to how bland the areas are, and it can be tedious following a bunch of slow NPCs to the next objective.

There’s also something to be said whether Earth Defense Force 6 has perhaps too many missions — the total clocks in at just under 150, not including DLC. Again, it’s always fun to blow up aliens, though some missions don’t bring much new to the table.

If you are coming directly from Earth Defense Force 5, there’s also the fact that a lot of what’s here isn’t that different. Some classes get extra tools, like Air Raider’s drones or the return of turrets as a deployable type, but you’re otherwise just dealing with a few tweaks here and there.

Still a technical mess

As always, it’s hard not to review an Earth Defense Force game without mentioning the technical side of things. To put it bluntly, it’s pretty awful. You can absolutely brute force good framerates via better hardware, but still expect slowdown and minimal settings options on PC.

It’s not like Earth Defense Force 6 looks that much better than the last game — both are barely pushing what the PS4 could do — though it does make up for things thanks to the sheer scale of some missions.

While again this is nothing new for the franchise, it is a little harder to defend now that the series no longer has its budget status. Earth Defense Force 6 is priced at £50, with the two main DLC packs bringing this to over £70 (even more if you include the weapon DLC.) At this pricing, I’d like to start seeing some improvements to performance and PC settings.

Earth Defense Force 6 review – Final thoughts

Earth Defense Force 6 is another fun entry, but one that might be a little close to its predecessor for some players. You’re still going to have a great time, especially if you vibe with the weird direction the story goes in early on. Just don’t expect anything wildly different.

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