The God Eater games have always had a cult following, stemming from its PSP origins over 5 years ago. Fans fell in love with its quirky, insane monster design and Monster Hunter-esque gameplay. God Eater 2: Rage Burst is the re-release of last year’s God Eater 2 with added features like survival missions, gear and extended story content.
You are a member of Blood, an elite unit of God Eaters, whose sole purpose is ridding the world of Aragami. The Aragami are monsters that have completely taken over the planet. Aragami come in all terrifying shapes and sizes from people-sized demon plants to gigantic bug-dinosaur looking monstrosities. The awesome creature design makes every boss encounter more worthwhile, as the big baddies become more and more outrageous.
You’re not alone in your God Eating, your teammates all fall into the typical J-RPG spectrum of personalities from the stoic team leader, all the way down to the ditzy scantily-clad bad-ass who really likes to eat. I’ll admit at first I eye-rolled at a lot of the writing but the team aboard our flying fortress, Friar, did grow on me.
There are really good character moments in between mission that reveal a lot of your crew’s motivations. Early on a teammate concocts a scheme to stage a meeting with a visiting pop-star. The humor in Rage Burst balances the grim reality of monsters displacing people into ghettos worldwide in a way that I really appreciated.
In order to fight the good fight, God Eaters use God Arcs, a Swiss-army type weapon system that houses a ranged weapon, melee weapon and shield. It’s a neat system that lets you change weapon types on the fly. Managing your God Arc becomes a herculean task considering the endless combinations of weapons you can craft and upgrade. I found myself loving the Buster Sword/Sniper/Shield combo.
If you want to really kick ass, you need to be able to effective switch your God Arc weapons suit your needs and being able to identify a specific Aragami’s weakness and when to press for the attack. I found that memorizing the attack pattern of each monster is the best way to get results. Combos and charge attacks on big melee weapons like hammers and scythes do crazy damage and feel good when you catch a monster from behind.https://realotakugamer.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=24449&action=edit#titlediv
Each mission lets you bring in up to 3 computer controlled teammates that do a surprisingly good job of not being a hindrance and I even opted to recruit actual players for harder missions via online co-op. I suggest bringing in some buddies early on since the beginning missions are so utterly boring.
Rage Burst’s biggest letdown is in its mission design which is basically just from an arena filled with monsters. The first few hours are a bit of a drag since you can essentially sleepwalk through most of these conflicts, considering you don’t really need to use of the advanced combat techniques until you’re 8-10 hours in. I found myself having to replay a bunch of these missions in order to grind out loot and crafting materials.
The customization options for Rage Burst are dense. The player-created protagonist has access to literally thousands of outfit and weapon combinations. There are plenty of loot and game rewards replaying mission in order to gain higher ranks scoring better loot. Join an online game and you’ll just how ridiculous and/or awesome you could potentially look.
Rage Burst also isn’t a great looking game. Most of the mission reuse the same locations, so just get used to fighting in the same bombed-out city landscapes for a good long while. This is a shame considering the character and monster design are so fun and full of personality.
There is a rather steep learning curve. Advanced techniques are not explained all that well unless you do some digging in the database and become intimately aware with the all the System Terms. It was only after playing for about 10 hours that I figured out exactly what Bursts actually do. Other skills like parrying and using Zero Stance would have saved me a lot of heartache if I knew where to look earlier.
It’s easy to lose a lot of time playing God Eater 2: Rage Burst. If you can make it through the painfully slow start, you can find a deep and addictive action-RPG that could compete with the likes of Monster Hunter. This is all assuming you’re patient enough to put with a boring start, frustratingly steep learning curve and sub-par visuals.