The Earth Defense Force series has always been a niche title in the U.S. with a very dedicated cult following since the PlayStation 2 days. This is why Japanese publisher D3 always delivers on keeping the series alive in Japan and then bringing it over here to the states. After a year being out in Japan, the fifth installment has been localized for our enjoyment.
Earth Defense Force 5Â is a third-person shooting game where your objective is to defend Earth from giant oversized bugs, alien spaceships, and alien frog like creatures. There are three consistent gameplay loops throughout the entire EDF series. These are selecting a mission, blow the crap up out of giant bugs and alien, and picking up loot to advance your character or weapon all while traveling to protect the cities of Earth. There are big and small open world mini maps for most missions.
Earth Defense Force 5 can be played either offline mode or online mode. In offline mode you’re able to plow your way through over hundreds of missions on easy, normal or hard. Later you’ll unlock hardest and inferno mode once you complete the final mission on any difficulty. Playing online mode is way separate from offline mode in that anything you do offline will not carry over to online mode. This means you’ll be doing missions twice if you choose to play online.
As you start Earth Defense Force 5, you be able to choose from four different classes are Rangers, Wing Divers, Air Raiders, and Fencers. Once you get passed the overly long first mission tutorial, you’ll start acquiring new and better weapon which as you go. You can level up weapons after completing missions. One of the best parts of Earth Defense Force 5 is putting together your loadouts as you can collect over 70 plus different weapons through your playthrough. There are a lot of weapons to choose from which is never a bad thing. When playing on the Playstation 4 Pro, Earth Defense Force 5’s framerate handles very well even where there are hundreds of enemies on screen.
Graphically it’s the best looking EDF game but at the same time its looks like a dated game down to the cheesy voice acting to some gameplay elements and visual aesthetics. If you’ve played an EDF game, you’ve most likely come to terms with it as your mostly playing EDF for its core gameplay mechanics. Earth Defense Force 5 plays like an arcade shooter and its charm is from blowing up giant ants, giant jumping spiders, and giant bees mission after mission. It just always feels good and makes you want to come back for more. Once you get to mission 19 you’ll encounter your first Godzilla size monster. After you defeat it, you’ll feel very accomplished especially if you chose a good loadout to survive all the chaos.
The Earth Defense Force series has been around for 18 years already with another game it in works. Earth Defense Force 5 may not be the most polished game but with each EDF release, D3 and Sandlot slowly add more features, tweaking the games to keep the experiences fresh. Earth Defense Force will forever be one of the most over the top games. It’ll always stand out with addicting gameplay, amazing weapon selection, giant on screen enemies, distinct mobility between classes, and sizeable city maps. As time goes by, Earth Defense Force will only continue to get better and better. If you never played an Earth Defense Force  game, now is the perfect time to hop in.
