Earth Defense Force spin-off games have been hit or miss. EDF: Insect Armageddon wasn’t much of a game, and EDF: Iron Rain was too tough for its own good. EDF: World Brothers, however, struck the right balance between new ideas and classic EDF gameplay – not to mention adding the fun of crossover characters and enemies from EDFs past. Three years later, Yuke’s and D3Publisher have delivered a sequel in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2. The new game is much bigger than its predecessor, but bigger isn’t always better.
In the first World Brothers, Voxel Earth was split apart by an alien called Dark Tyrant. The same thing happens at the beginning of World Brothers 2, but this time, the foe is named Gaiarch. The new threat once again attacks the planet’s human defenders with a mix of voxelized (blocky) enemies from past EDFs, now including EDF6 foes like the fishy Scylla and big-headed androids, as well as the massive centipedes from EDF2. Brand new giant baddies that resemble EDF soldiers also join the fray.
The mystery of the giants and Gaiarch’s ultimate goal propel the narrative, still delivered by fully voiced mid-mission dialog (with subtitles!) and occasional post-mission cinematics. However, the story is really drawn out thanks to the increased mission count (104 here as opposed to 60 in the original), and the attempts at humor mostly fall flat this time (other than the comment about frogs in the above screenshot). The World Brothers games are supposed to be kid-friendly, but much of the dialog in this one comes across as childish rather than witty.
Thankfully, World Brothers 2 features the same strong and authentically EDF gameplay as its predecessor. This is a squad-based third-person shooter in which players hop between the members of their 4-person team with the tap of a direction on the D-Pad. The shooting still feels like EDF, and characters drawn from past EDF games retain most of their signature abilities. Air Raiders still can’t summon vehicles, however; tanks and mechs only appear in specific missions. Weapon reloading times are a bit long, but the developers clearly intend for players to switch between characters when one is reloading.
Most missions involve defeating waves of enemies while also rescuing a handful of characters scattered around the map. These characters then become playable after the mission ends. There are over 100 characters to collect, plus a few DLC ones at $3-4 a pop. The roster still includes numerous characters from every previous EDF game, plus a bunch of regional and wacky soldiers. The wacky ones might be a little too goofy at times, but I do love getting to play as female baseball players.
As for the missions, Yuke’s works in some variety here and there, including a Space Invaders-inspired tank battle against invading Daroga walkers and some late-game missions in which players must protect a drill vehicle as it burrows through cavern walls. Some of the final missions are truly epic in scale, but the 104-mission game length doesn’t do World Brothers 2 any favors. As with the story, a smaller number of missions (say, 80) with less padding would’ve made for a tighter and more engaging experience.
Speaking of engagement, World Brothers 2 throws a new progression element into the mix. Collecting duplicates of characters will still raise their skill levels, allowing them to equip more weapon types, and completing missions with a soldier will increase his or her armor (health). The new element is that individual weapons now earn experience and level up with use, increasing damage. World Brothers 2 doesn't explain the weapon experience system super clearly, but it makes sense when you look over the Mission Result screen.
The only version of the first World Brothers that had split-screen was the PlayStation game. This time, alas, none of them get split-screen. Thankfully, all three versions still have 4-player online co-op, which is undoubtedly the way to play. In co-op games, each player brings their own team of four soldiers into the mission, resulting in up to 16 characters battling the bad guys. Players can revive downed comrades at a cost of a portion of their health, just like always. One improvement is that players can now join in-progress lobbies to wait for a turn to play, an option that was conspicuously absent in World Brothers 1. A returning nuisance, on the other hand, is that after the host chooses to launch the game, the mission won’t actually start until the host confirms a second time on the loading screen. This double confirmation is unnecessary and leads to wasted time when the host forgets to press the button again.
On the whole, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 packs a lot more content than the first game, but some of that content bloats the game instead of benefiting it. The huge mission count of EDF games is usually a selling point, but this one just feels too long, and the constant inane NPC chatter doesn’t help. World Brothers 2 also suffers from truly unfortunate release timing outside of Japan. EDF6 reached the worldwide market in July 2025, and then World Brothers 2 inexplicably followed just two months later (an issue we pointed out in our developer interview).
Had the games’ releases been spread reasonably apart (as they were in Japan), fans would have more time to miss EDF and crave a new game. Instead, my team wasn’t even fully finished with EDF6 when this one came along. World Brothers 2 is not as good as EDF6 (my 2024 GOTY), so we spent the time it took us to beat this one wishing we were playing the other. The scarcity of online lobbies compared to EDF6 proves this point. It’s a shame that D3 Publisher released two games in the same franchise so close together, but World Brothers 2 could still attract fans over time, especially younger ones.
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 sells for $49.99 on PlayStation and Steam, and $39.99 on Switch. The Steam version is fully Steam Deck compatible.
Steam download codes were provided by the publisher for this review.