by theygamesOur Verdict
Earth Defense Force 6’s quality of life improvements make for the strongest gameplay in the series to date, but an annoying intro and the same glitches as usual leave it as a diamond in the rough.
Earth Defense Force 6 makes a horrendous first impression. Opening with a stunted tutorial ripped out of the 2006 PS3 bargain bin, Sandlot’s sixth mainline entry in its generations-spanning arcade shooter spends its opening minutes in a drab, poorly rendered military bunker. Compared to the real game’s frenetic, balls-to-the-wall action, your introduction is a grating tutorial in one of the ugliest rooms game engines can render. You’re then pushed out into an already-razed environment that does little to excite.
After trodding through the first half-an-hour of monotonous intro, EDF quickly transforms into the high-octane, Dynasty-Warriors-With-Guns everyone expects. In just a few missions you’ll go from fighting your typical horde of massive ants with the space game’s intro weaponry to battling gigantic bipedal frogs with laser guns and battalions of bulbous androids straight out of a H.G. Wells novel.
In a similar vein as your annual sports game, Earth Defense Force 6 is a little too similar to its numbered predecessor, even going so far as to borrow some missions from EDF 5 during its lengthy campaign. Visually, it’s almost identical, and a large number of weapons and enemies are directly lifted from 5. Thankfully, alongside a healthy dose of new additions, Sandlot has delivered some brilliant changes and quality-of-life tweaks to make this the best-feeling game in the series to date.
Across the EDF 6’s four classes — Ranger, Wing Diver, Air Raider, and Fencer — myriad changes make for a slicker, more modern gameplay feel. Every class can now mantle over small obstacles, fixing a decades-old issue of getting stuck in small corners, and partially used weapons now reload quicker, which can easily be the difference between life or death on higher difficulties.
By far the biggest improvement comes in the form of the machine-controlling Air Raider. Early-game Air Raider players have access to a slew of new drones to send ahead and rain hell on the alien hordes. As you collect weapon boxes and unlock new goodies, you’ll eventually gain access to huge air strikes that decimate the environment in a glorious sweep of military might.
On the other hand, while some improvements have been made over their incarnations in EDF 5, the flying Wing Diver is still in a weird spot. As one of the strongest classes in early EDF, the Wing Diver’s history of nerfs has finally resulted in some decent changes for once. With access to backpack equipment, you can now utilize shields or grenades while soaring through the air, but the class is still not as powerful as the EDF 2017 version fans fell in love with.
Nevertheless, every class is still fun to play and they all have their own specialties that make them better suited to specific missions. While the Wing Diver is great for huge open maps, the plodding mech suit Fencer with shoulder-mounted rockets and Gatling guns is perfect for cutting through thousands of oncoming aliens in tense close-quarters fights.
While it takes a while to hit its stride, Earth Defense Force 6 eventually blossoms into one of the series’ best entries. The more you unlock and the more freedom you get to experiment with your seemingly endless arsenal, the more the game leans into its arcade roots as you soar across the sky, unleashing huge plasma cannon blasts onto a river of angry fire ants, leveling buildings in your path.
At its heart, EDF is the ultimate B-movie, and not just because of the supersized hornets. It’s the type of game internet commenters claim developers don’t make anymore before booting up Valorant for the millionth time – a no-holds-barred dose of good fun ripped straight from the dreams of Roger Corman.
The game’s PC launch has not gone entirely smoothly. Those looking to play the game online with friends — split-screen is also available on PC — will be asked to make or sign into an Epic Games account, although this isn’t actually required. Furthermore, I did experience a number of crashes while playing the game on Steam Deck across multiple versions of Proton, although performance is mostly fine. Finally, if you were hoping for some sort of proper options menu, look elsewhere. It’s just resolution and anti-aliasing here.
Obviously, it doesn’t look great, although spectacular explosion effects and some particularly gnarly gore and dismemberments do hide the worst of it, and the game is buggier than the swarms of alien insects you’re tasked with battling, but Earth Defense Force 6 never once gives up its sheer lunacy to try and follow some industry trend. It knows exactly what it is and it’s not changing anytime soon, mechanically or graphically, and it’s just as fun as when the series first came to the West almost 17 years ago.
Maybe EDF 6 is an acquired taste, or maybe it’s a series destined to stay in cult classic status. Whatever the case, there are no other games like Earth Defense Force 6 – other than its predecessors, of course. If this is your sixth stab at the series or you’re a newcomer to this anime Starship Troopers, Earth Defense Force 6 is the exact type of diamond in the rough that gamers should be leaping at the chance to play.