If you’ve heard of Earth Defense Force before, then chances are you know kind of what to expect here. For the uninitiated, the Earth Defense Force series is a long-running series (18 years in fact) where you fight giant bugs and aliens intent on taking over the Earth, surviving waves upon waves of overwhelming assaults from a variety of insects and weird devices that the aliens are using to try to subjugate us. The games are hectic, chaotic, tough as nails, and hokey as all get out. They’re also pretty fun in a slightly repetitive but entirely lovable B-movie sort of way.
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers from Yuke’s Co. Ltd. and D3 Publisher fits right into that mold. Yuke’s cut their teeth on Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain (check out our review here) and now they’re back with the latest entry into the series, the voxel-based Earth Defense Force: World Brothers! This is interesting because Sandlot (the company that made most of the other EDF games, including the most recent and highly lauded EDF 5, is working on Earth Defense Force 6 at the moment, so at this point, every other EDF game that comes out is from Yuke’s in much the same manner as Call of Duty releases. Two studios, both working on the same IP and taking different paths to create fun and unique titles!
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers looks awesome. That’s no exaggeration, the voxels look cool as hell, the flow of the visuals is amazing, and the game features the most destructible environments yet in an EDF game. You control a variety of EDF soldiers in their attempts to, um, reassemble the Earth. Don’t ask about the tech because this game is definitely not about making sense. Instead, just enjoy the ride! Turns out alien motherships have obliterated the Earth, but by fighting back the hordes of monsters and other opponents, you and the rest of the EDF can put it back together again! Way better than Humpty Dumpty! Along the way you’ll join forces with around a hundred “World Brothers” (and sisters), EDF members from nations around the world and even fictional monsters in an attempt to save voxel Earth! It’s ridiculous, it’s silly, and most of all it’s fun as all heck!
In EDF: World Brothers, you’ll end up with four team members per mission. Initially, you’ll only have a few to choose from, but each stage allows you to rescue up to three more Brothers, unlocking new characters on almost every level. Simply run up to them and hold down A to rescue them, then at the end of the stage, you’ll add them to your roster. Using the d-pad, you can switch on the fly from character to character, the main strategic mechanic of EDF: World Brothers. Each character has different strengths and weaknesses, different ranges of weapons, and different attacks and special attacks. Building the right roster for the right stage makes things a lot easier or tougher depending on your preference. Hand-to-hand combatants are pretty useless against a horde of airborne enemies for example, and some weapons only have a few rounds of powerful ammo, forcing you to toss in some characters who have machine guns or other weapons with extended clips.
As you slowly slaughter the bugs and robots over various terrains and noticeably recognizable locations all around the world, you’ll get the hang of switching on the fly from character to character as you run out of ammo, or switching to a character to pick up boosts for their health or special attacks in order to maximize your effectiveness. The game even warns you if you’re not utilizing your teammates well enough, chastising you with a curt “Trust your teammates more!” If you end up rescuing someone you’ve already rescued, they’ll get a stat boost instead, allowing them to equip more and varied items. It’s fairly important to rescue everyone you can because your versatility increases quickly.
In addition to the wide cast of wild characters, there are also vehicles you can commandeer to assault the enemy insects. Tanks, walking armor, and more await your pleasure as you blast your way through cities, farms, and even the pyramids! Some characters can even fly, allowing you to take to the skies and attack from higher vantage points with ease, a handy way to get out of a scrape when you’re suddenly surrounded! Between the vehicles, arrays of weapons and armor, and the wild choices of World Brothers, there’s an absolute dearth of choice here. There are multiple variant versions of each character too, allowing you to choose colors or select by slight stat differences. Some of the Brothers are a bit questionable though, like the odd Canadian guy in a bear suit who sounds suspiciously like Tommy Chong did the voice acting, or the odd Chinese guy in a panda suit. There’s a Mexican Brother in a sombrero with a guitar who sings songs that power up your team, a Dutch girl who throws windmills, a Romanian vampire, and other absolutely bizarre choices. This is definitely a game that toes the PC line, especially these days, but it also seems like it’s all in good fun, rather than any legitimate ill intent, especially with the comedic undertones of the game.
There are a few negative points to Earth Defense Force: World Brothers though. The most noticeable for veteran EDF players is the difficulty. EDF: World Brothers is a remarkably easy game, which is weird considering how incredibly hard other entries in the series are. In Iron Rain or EDF 5, you might end up trying the same level over 20 times, refining your tactics and improving your approaches to finally beat a particularly tough stage, achieving that absolutely victorious feeling. In World Brothers, you’ll simply win. You can walk around with nary a care, even in Mothership stages at the end of a section. Rarely will you even lose a single character, and others can revive them easily. The difficulty is definitely keyed to beginner players, and with the cute voxel graphics, this is going to be a chill-out-and-play game for players familiar with the series and a good starter title for new and younger players that want to slaughter the alien bugs. Once you beat the game, harder difficulty is available, but that’s a good 10+ hours and over 40 stages, something that might frustrate those that don’t feel challenged by the default difficulty. It honestly doesn’t matter who your team consists of because you’ll simply survive no matter what if you have even passing skill at gaming in general.
On top of the ease of gameplay, there’s the issue of progression. Sure, you can level up your World Brothers, but it’s irritatingly random. Keeping the same characters ups their armor and hit points, but it doesn’t upgrade their skill level. To make things worse, when you do find a repeat character to rescue and upgrade skills, it might be one of the variants you haven’t been using, giving you level 2 or 3 characters that are actually weaker in other areas. Unfortunately, playing half the game with your favorite Brother won’t make any difference in their ability to equip other weapons, and that lack of flexibility is particularly irritating if you’re not just playing casually and want to really turn your guys into powerhouses, which is of course half the fun of the EDF series. Even if you really want to run a team consisting of a vampire, a ninja, a Viking, and a cowboy, it’s a hassle to play them without being able to swap weapons around easily. And if you haven’t found them multiple times, you don’t get the skill level upgrades to do that.
But regardless of some weird quirks, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is still outlandishly fun. On top of the singe player storyline, there’s also online play and local co-op on the Switch. For the purposes of this review however, there were no online rooms open to try multiplayer on, nor any local co-op opponents due to the pandemic. However, the ability to play online and local multi-player is a welcome addition here and this seems like an excellent party game for get-togethers! And not only is EDF: World Brothers fun to play, but let’s talk about those voxel graphics for a bit!
This is one fine looking game. The blocks are colorful and odd, the characters suitably complex, and the overall designs of enemies in the game are simply excellent. Sure, it’s not hard to make voxel buildings, but a lot of thought was put into design work for enemies, attacks, weapons, and characters here. Additionally, there are some neat splatter effects and firing patterns that are noticeably not voxellated (is that a word?) and the effects of attacks look absolutely awesome. Features in various parts of the world are easily recognizable and the amount of care taken across the board is a joy to behold, with landscapes ranging from flat to mountainous and a wide variety of terrain to traverse. There’s the occasional time that you might get the camera stuck in a partially destroyed building, but that’s not really a surprise and is quite infrequent. The sound is light and fun too, and all the characters are fully voiced, sometimes to absolute hilarity. In short, this is a loud, boisterous and silly game that’s great to look at and listen to! You might not be ready to download the soundtrack, but it’s quite serviceable for the game and never gets too stale.
Additionally, the controls are clean and crisp in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers. Characters are responsive and the controls don’t stutter at all. It’s easy to feel the difference between characters of different speeds and jump abilities, the transitions from character to character are seamless, and the aiming is mostly pretty great. It’s occasionally tough to back away from enemies, especially with Brothers that fire more powerful weapons, and you’ll end up blowing yourself backwards more than a few times, but it’s all part of the charm. Switching characters on the fly allows you to clear a path with machine guns, then follow up with a blaze of grenades and homing rockets, then back to machine guns to beat back the hordes. Load times are fairly fast on the Switch, and there’s not a ton of waiting. The game auto-saves as well, so don’t panic if the software gets closed! You won’t lose all your progress.
There is a wealth of gameplay and options available in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers. Yuke’s has done a great job turning this into what basically amounts to an all-ages adventure blast-a-thon that’s approachable for a wider variety of audiences and runs smoothly on the Switch. Sure, there aren’t nearly as many levels as EDF 5, but the charm simply oozes out of World Brothers in a way that mostly won’t make you mind. However, keep in mind that this is a pricey little title. Weighing in at $60, this is a AAA price for a title that, while cool, might not hit AAA expectations across the board for all players. Fortunately, it’s on sale for release for $47.99, so if you’re into the EDF experience or just want to exterminate bugs willy-nilly, you can save a few bucks if you grab it ASAP. The EDF series is always a bit expensive, but they’re also fun, kind of a gaming guilty pleasure, so don’t hesitate here, as there’s a lot of polish on World Brothers! Simply put, the cute voxel graphics, wild weaponry, outrageous characters, ridiculous fully-voiced dialogue, and crisp, responsive gameplay are pure fun and unlocking everything will take some serious replaying! There’s bang for your buck in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers and tons of fun to be had! And for those of you that are paying attention there’s also a deluxe edition which comes with even more Brothers and will give you access to the forthcoming DLC expansion when it arrives! That’s a lot of Earth Defense Force! Go EDF!!!
This review is based on a digital copy of Earth Defense Force: World Brothers provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and was absolutely excellent in both. Play with a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller and with the Circle Pad Pro was also excellent and the game is fully compatible with both! Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is also available for PS4 and PC on Steam. All screenshots are from actual gameplay.
