I really wanted to like this game. Having watched the anime, I absolutely love the world created for it so I was looking forward to taking part. However, trouble brewed with this one very quickly. I found myself repeating the first hour of the game to figure out which way would play better: keyboard and mouse or a controller. Mixing two forms of combat repeatedly, both fitted well for only one type of control did not bode well for this game... and ultimately was the first hint of it's undoing for me.
Story: Mankind faces extinction. A new species of creature known as aragami has appeared all over the world. They started as small things... single-celled life forms that mankind was studying. They soon formed into colonies that resembled worms.. and then bigger animals like rabbits and cats. The bigger they got, the more dangerous they got and the more they could devour... animal, plant, mineral, or artificial. The took over the world and put mankind on the defensive.
But the previously dominant species is nothing if not resourceful... and while none of mankind's best conventional weapons seemed able to hurt the creatures, they could kill and eat each other. Mankind noticed, and found a way to use that, producing God Arcs: weapons made from aragami cells to be wielded by an elite new soldier type known as God Eaters. You not only play one of these soldiers, but a newly recruited "new type" one. In your case, you have the ability to not only wield one of these weapons, but in your hands, it can morph between functions, making you far more versatile then any of the soldiers who fought the good fight before you. And on your shoulders for this, the hope of all mankind.
Sadly the game does a very poor job of explaining any of this to you... in fact you will get none of this information when you start playing. All you will get is to make your character, witness the test to confirm they are compatible with these weapons, and be basically thrust into the Den as the newest member of the far East branch of Fenrir. With no clear direction as to why, you will be guided to the key places you will need to visit as you play in a handful of rooms and how to pick up missions. Everything else will fall into place, but very ham-fistedly and in awkward chunks, and I mean HAM-FISTED. The devs decided to built their universe by having your character and his fellow new recruits taking classes with the top scientist in the branch, right down to one of them being unable to stay awake and made fun of every time... often by the professor himself. It's formulaic and terrible and does little to enforce just how bad things are outside the walls your character was supposedly brought in from. Wasted opportunity in your backstory traded in for a terrible set of disjointed scenes.
Thankfully once the game has taken it's (incredibly) awkward steps to set the stage, you begin to get a descent story of intrigues, and military plans gone-mad in mankind's desperate plea to survive as a whole and it is suitably epic for a game like this. It's just a shame how badly it stumbles to get started... and that I can not be sure how well it delivers the rest, as this is one of those games I was able to play for the runtime I require before I review a game, but not good enough to keep going. I will explain more when we get to gameplay, but I can at least say it's promising... if that it took those 8-10 hours to finally start the real plot.
5/10
Graphics: There is a single word to describe the aesthetic of God Eater: Resurrection: Anime. From the opening animation before you even see the title screen, it's obvious this game wants to be an anime so badly it just oozes over every ounce. But this is hardly a bad thing as the game shows exactly why this style works so well in the long-term for games.
And you will see this right from the character creation. It all looks clean and with a surprising amount of detail for a game originally released on the PSP. The world it depicts, though, is anything but. When on a mission, you will spend the majority of your time in ruined cityscapes, depicting just how bleak and abandoned the world mankind had made for itself is. It isn't as ruinous as one might think, but it is from that era where everything was grey and brown and really refuses to stand out from it's age in any significant way.
When not out on duty, things get both better and worse: a little better in that there is more variety in the currently lived-in Den and worse in that you will have exactly five locations, four of which are varied only in the color palette of. In short this world just offers nothing to look at.
The characters, however, are another story, starting with your own. The character creator will offer you dozens of potential variations with which to design them, either as a guy or a girl. And while this is purely cosmetic it hints at just how different every character you walk into looks, even as each possible combination (yours or others) still screams an anime feel... with all the outlandishness this could suggest. It's actually quite impressive this mash of characters still manages to share a feel like they actually belong in the same universe and look good doing it.
Nor are the enemies a slouch either. Often taking a combination of monstrous, obscene and gothic, expect what you face to be large and impressive pretty much across the board. And there was actually a descent amount of variety here, too. Within the 11 or so hours I played I came across at least 7 completely unique creatures, each with their own behaviors to rage chaos across the field. Even if the maps are frankly samey and boring, the battles you will fight will be shockingly varied.
Really the overall package looks pretty good! Maybe a bit dated in the geometry that makes it up, but I can hardly hold that against a remake of a game that originally came out over a decade ago for the PSP.
7/10
Sound: The sound scape of this game seems a bit more generic, but out of necessity more then anything else. While in combat, you will hear the clash of weapons, the roars of monsters, the slashes of blades sinking into flesh and even gun blasts cluttering up the battle. Nothing individually stands out, but the cacophony of battle it all makes up is every bit as confusing in battle as it should be. And yet you can use that sound as one more hint to what is going on and what to react to. It's war out there, after all.
And while there is music, you may be hard pressed to hear it while in battle... but don't worry too much. It's often very generic military sounding stuff that you won't remember long after the battle is over. The base, however, takes an almost religious tone. You will remember the feel if not the notes.
But the biggest ups and downs come from the voice acting. To start with, in battle you can use what your teammates say to help you figure out what is going on and how people are doing. In fact, you will have a command voice to alert you when someone is hurt or even incapacitated in the battle so listen up, soldier! In addition there are much more generic lines you yourself are given. I have yet to see them be used for anything useful, but in the battle field, several voice actors lent their voices to lines for you. It's a shame that was all they got for them though... when you are in actual cutscenes, you are a silent protagonist.
But this is also where everyone else shines. Between battles the story will be told through cutscenes that, while ham-fisted in their telling, are lead by some pretty good voice work. You will see a lot of the character development in the moments you are given. Very well done.
7/10
Gameplay: Sadly, this is where the game failed for me. Don't get me wrong, I honestly don't think it's a bad game to it's core, but it just did not work in this current rendition. The game itself is split into two basic sections: at home base and in mission, and you better keep up in both if you want to survive.
While at home base, you will have a handful of people to talk to giving you a little bit of flavor to what is going on, but at most only three matter to progress the gameplay. Sometimes, you will have someone there who you can ask questions about game mechanics: usually how weapons work and it will benefit you greatly to listen to what they have to tell you. To the side there is an items dealer who, if you have the cash, could give you a leg up if you are running low on items you can take into the field, craft into your current gear to upgrade them or even build new stuff, or even buy new weapons and gear outright from time to time.
And we are going to stop right there and talk about crafting because this game relies heavily on it. You will find terminals in the main room as well as yours and anyone you can visit's between missions which house this among other functions. In essence it's your "do it all" place... and you will want to familiarize yourself with it, especially for crafting since this is how you get the best weapons and shields for on the field as well as most upgrade equipment you can take into battle.
Finally however, there is the mission desk, which is where you select the mission you want to play as well as any team options you want to take with you. With that and your equipment squared away, its time to exit the main doorway and begin your battle.
Once there, the main action and meat of the game begins. You will be dropped into an entry point in the selected map where your target aragami monsters are and hunt them down. There could be one or several as well as many other potential others you can choose to take on or not, but you must take out the target(s) before the time limit runs out to complete the mission. Rinse and repeat. There is little else to it and rarely do you see more then two or three of the monsters on the map as necessary to destroy. If you need more variety then that, this game will wear out it's welcome quick.
Further more the faster you take them out, the better your mission rank will be and the more rewards you will gain in addition to what you get while on the battlefield itself, allowing you to craft more powerful weapons and gear for the next mission. Unfortunately this dynamic seems rather deceptive from where I stand as I can not be sure what nets you more rewards: diving head long at your opponents and taking them fast like the mission end rewards suggest or running around and making sure to kill everything first. I simply can not be sure if doing as the game's own structure suggests is indeed the best course of action.
But this isn't what sank the game for me. I have to be honest, and going out again and again to fight a handful of monsters repeatedly with no change in mission type did wear thin, but I would have kept going if it were not for the controls. To be blunt, God Eater was originally designed for the PSP, and as such this remake had an opportunity to revise this. Considering the controller scheme does use the second stick, I would have to say it does, but it didn't do it as well as it should, especially with a keyboard and mouse.
Simply put regardless of your control choice, there is an overreliance on context to control what a button does. The same button you hold to run is tapped to change your weapon type. Your inventory navigation also changes your camera type. Dash/roll is the same button as picking up items. There is simply a lot of doubled up controls in this game that complicate it a lot more then it has to be. And then the game begins adding new techniques you earn as you play, crowding the combination options too. It's simply too busy for it's own good the way they are laid out, and frankly I called it quits when the game gave me my third "devour" attack without a clear way to use instead it of my first one or what it would mean to customize it. It was simply too much for a game about gearing up properly for what you expect to hunt, chasing it down, and strategically/surgically picking it apart.
And do not expect the multiplayer to save this game. Simply put it's a dead-zone so unless you bring anyone with you, you are playing on your own. Furthermore I see reports of a major bug where more likely then not playing with more then 1 other person (the online supports parties of 4) will break the game beyond playability.
6/10
Bugs: Despite the bug I mentioned above, I did not have any myself.
Score: I honestly can not call this game bad, but it definitely isn't great either. I can best describe it as someone blending Phantasy Star Portable's system for home base with Monster Hunter missions and trying to do way too much with the control schemes offered by either. The results are just plain clunky and nothing I haven't experienced in better forms elsewhere. Want to play an action RPG built to keep things moving? Phantasy Star Universe and Portable did it better, keeping the controls simple enough to even play on something as simple as a PSP and do it well. Hell, you could even get more complex controls that do the job with Phantasy Star Online 2.
Want to hunt monsters with friends? You could play Monster Hunter World by it's reputation, but I haven't so I can not speak for it. I can, however, vouch for Dauntless as a free and much smoother playing alternative.. and it even has much bigger maps and more focused goals since your rewards are not only based on time and how effective you are, but what damage you do to the parts of the monster(s) you are actually hunting.
Sadly this is yet another example of a game that just tries to fill too many rolls and is outclassed by the games that do one or two of them much better.
6/10
System Requirements: (Please note these requirements are for God Eater 2: Rage Burst since God Eater: Resurrection has no page of it's own and is only available on Steam as a bonus when buying that game.)
- Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93 Ghz or AMD Athalon 64 X2 Dual Core 5600+ 2.9 Ghz
- 3 GB RAM
- NVidia Gforce 9800 GT (1GB VRAM) or AMD Radeon HD 6670
- 15 GB hard drive space
- Windows 7
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
- Windows 10 (64 Bit)
Source: Steam (Please note this is the link for God Eater 2: Rage Burst as God Eater: Resurrection is only sold as a free extra bundled with this game)
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