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So yeah, I decided I wanted to make a thread about this marvelous game series. The cheesiest and most Japanese-iest of janky horde shooters, Earth Defense Force. Or just EDF for short, as you'll be crying out to cheer your fellow troopers on! The EDF series started out all the way back on the PS2, with a little indie game belonging to the (in)famous Super Simple 2000 series of games, which were meant to be cheap and sold on a literal bargain bin. With a silly story inspired by 1950's alien invasion movies, it just had simple janky gameplay of a little soldier dude fighting to defend the Earth from an alien invasion that employed giant insects as weapons. And it was successful enough to stick! sequels were made, for the XBox 360 and the PSP later on, but where it really started to hit it's stride and some more international attention was with EDF 2025, also known as EDF4. Finally catching Western attention, the game was hilarious and fun to play, because they run the alien invasion scenario completely straight, to the point of ridiculous. And that's what makes it entertaining. The whole style of the games is a love letter to classic tokusatsu movies, containing several legally-distinct Godzilla monsters on every game, and the gameplay is a horde shooter that is extremely simple at first, but goes into further depth the higher up the difficulties you go.
In recent years, a few youtubers made videos about it, giving even more attention to the franchise's latest and most successful games that are available on PC, EDF 4.1, 5 and 6. And while the videos are absolutely hilarious and do a great job of selling the idea of how fun it is to blow up hundreds of bugs with obscenely overpowered weaponry, they also don't show the depth that I mentioned before. The plot may be simple and barely there for most of the game, but when it hits, it honestly hits really hard. So much, that right now I'd say playing EDF5 is an absolute pre-requisite to play EDF6, they are very strongly connected plot-wise.
Now compare the fun and memes of the videos above to a high level mission at maximum difficulty solo:
You must plan out what enemies you will fight in which order, what weapon combos you will bring, how much armor you will grind (some madlads go in with minimum sized health bars and basically got hitless) and know exactly what reinforcements will spawn when. It becomes giant combat puzzles that can go unraveled in an instant. And of course, the game is fun to play online with other people basically at all levels. If any of you have played Helldivers 2 and any of this seemed familiar to you: that's because it is. I am personally pretty sure the EDF series was a significant inspiration to that game, and I love both. They're just two different approaches to generally the same idea of fighing alien hordes!
and lastly, a video about my favorite class, the Fencer. Because what's better than man with gun? Man with power armor that allows him to choose that the best way to deal with giant bugs and alien soldiers is MELEE WEAPONS. And that the best way to become proficient at playing this class, is to master the jank of the game itself, and animation cancel your way from making the slowest class in the game, into the most mobile!
So yeah, play EDF. 4.1 should be super cheap on Steam whenever they have a sale (it's quite often) and is a perfect way to get in. Or get 5, it's a better game overall and will lead you into 6, which will have immense story payoff if you play both in sequence. Now excuse me as I go back to bashing aliens with artillery and giant hammers.
In recent years, a few youtubers made videos about it, giving even more attention to the franchise's latest and most successful games that are available on PC, EDF 4.1, 5 and 6. And while the videos are absolutely hilarious and do a great job of selling the idea of how fun it is to blow up hundreds of bugs with obscenely overpowered weaponry, they also don't show the depth that I mentioned before. The plot may be simple and barely there for most of the game, but when it hits, it honestly hits really hard. So much, that right now I'd say playing EDF5 is an absolute pre-requisite to play EDF6, they are very strongly connected plot-wise.
Now compare the fun and memes of the videos above to a high level mission at maximum difficulty solo:
You must plan out what enemies you will fight in which order, what weapon combos you will bring, how much armor you will grind (some madlads go in with minimum sized health bars and basically got hitless) and know exactly what reinforcements will spawn when. It becomes giant combat puzzles that can go unraveled in an instant. And of course, the game is fun to play online with other people basically at all levels. If any of you have played Helldivers 2 and any of this seemed familiar to you: that's because it is. I am personally pretty sure the EDF series was a significant inspiration to that game, and I love both. They're just two different approaches to generally the same idea of fighing alien hordes!
and lastly, a video about my favorite class, the Fencer. Because what's better than man with gun? Man with power armor that allows him to choose that the best way to deal with giant bugs and alien soldiers is MELEE WEAPONS. And that the best way to become proficient at playing this class, is to master the jank of the game itself, and animation cancel your way from making the slowest class in the game, into the most mobile!
So yeah, play EDF. 4.1 should be super cheap on Steam whenever they have a sale (it's quite often) and is a perfect way to get in. Or get 5, it's a better game overall and will lead you into 6, which will have immense story payoff if you play both in sequence. Now excuse me as I go back to bashing aliens with artillery and giant hammers.
