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. Sure, collecting duplicates of characters will still raise their skill levels, allowing them to equip more weapon types. However, characters no longer gain armor (health) after each use. Instead, everyone has a star rating that increases with use. This new leveling system does result in soldiers gaining more armor, but only to a very limited extent. The experience system isn’t very transparent; sometime a character can gain one or more out of the maximum of five stars in a single level. Since characters max out so quickly, the intention seems to be for players to constantly rotate new soldiers into circulation.