Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 review

The Earth Defence Force titles have never been particularly complex in their execution. You are dropped into a glitchy battle zone, and have to kill a load of enemies that are pulled straight out of Japanese kaiju or vintage science fiction movies. I have been playing, and enjoying these games now for longer than seems possible. But for some reason, the Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 deployed by Yuke’s completely passed me by. It is safe to say that it will not be a part of the B-movie cheese-fest franchise I will ever be avoiding again.

The main gimmick in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 is the way the whole EDF universe has been shrunken down into a super-deformed, block constructed voxel style. The obvious touchstones are the many LEGO titles, and of course uber-selling phenomena like Minecraft and Roblox. You get more or less the same style of gameplay as the main titles in the series, but with the intoxicating draw of literally hundreds of different characters to unlock and play with. You see, the game takes places in a variety of approximated real-world locations, and features “World Brothers (and Sisters)” from far flung destinations all over the globe, as well as popular soldier classes from classic EDF games of the past, for you to discover.

The characterisation of these multinational, multicultural action buddies is frequently prone to rather obvious stereotypes, however it is all done in such good humour that it doesn’t feel awkward or offensive in any way. Near enough every nation comes in for a good-natured tickling and it frequently made me laugh at how ridiculous it all is. If there is going to be a Belgian out there offended by the fact their nation is represented by an anthropomorphic cat that fires waffles as a weapon, then I would be extremely surprised.

There are over 100 missions to play through in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2, with the usual array of difficulty settings that you would expect from EDF. Each separate level of challenge comes with its own set of rewards and characters to unlock, so from the get-go you are compelled to beat every level multiple times. You can swap your party between each mission, which is a fascinating process as you learn which characters and loadouts are most effective in certain situations.

Like the mainline titles, there will be combinations that are staggeringly useless, for example taking someone with a devastatingly huge rocket launcher into a scenario where most of the combat is close range, meaning you will sustain damage from your own explosives and risk friendly fire – the amount of hit points wiped out by friendly fire also increases depending on the difficulty level selected. There are some weapons and indeed whole characters that are simply a pile of crap, almost like the game is poking fun at you, or perhaps challenging you to beat it with the most pathetic shooter imaginable. But this is a common theme in the series as a whole and part of its kooky, all-round charm offensive.

There is a thread of a ridiculous plot running through Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2, which serves to introduce some helpful NPC characters than can help you in combat with stuff like healing and attacking enemies. You can also heal fallen comrades yourself, but this is dependent on whether you have enough armour left. The idea of camaraderie and working together drives the story along, which is apt as the best thing about Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 is the way you run with a team of four at all times and can switch between them in real time. Each of your team have a main weapon, plus a selection of up to four skills, including a special which is charged up by killing things or collecting yellow crates on the battlefield. The specials are frequently spectacular, sometimes devastating; however be prepared for the occasional moment when you are shaking your head and wondering just what the hell has just happened. Being smothered by giant ants and then summoning a giant voxel apple to fall out of the sky was not a moment I expecting to be on my 2024 gaming bingo card.

In between stages your team level up, with an MVP reward dished out to the person with the highest kill tally. You can also tinker with equipment and change weapons. Level up a character enough and they are able to take on different weapon classes and experiment with different forms of attack. During the first clutch of ten missions, despite the humungous amount of characters to choose from, I found myself sticking to a small selection of faves. Those pulled from the main EDF titles tend to be my go-to, due to the familiarity and easy to understand loadout types. A Pale Wing is for my money the most fun you can have in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2; she can take to the sky and fly around the map in quick time to mop up any survivors at the start of a mission, before swooping around with a devastating shotgun style scatter weapon and a special that skewers enemies with a powerful melee lunge. I combined the Pale Wing with a Jet Armor from EDF: Insect Armageddon, another swift flying soldier who has a powerful rocket launcher with a decent cooldown period, an Infantry grunt from EDF3 with a tasty long-range rifle, and Hope Brother – a South African tribal chief who has a crushingly effective close-range spear attack. During early missions this combo works fine, however there is a big spike in difficulty, enemy size and scope that boots in after the tenth sortie.

Suddenly your team feel tiny and irrelevant against the new enemies that emerge, and you will need to employ different tactics or get wiped out repeatedly. This is where picking characters with long range heavy explosives and air strikes comes to the fore, as you combine picking mid-powered enemies with rifles and rockets with deploying cataclysmic air raids on the bigger and more resilient foes.
Multiplayer is where selecting a balanced squad capable of finishing your mission becomes vitally important. I played a handful of the trickier stages in multiplayer, and found that an anthropomorphic Canadian Bear was useless against a sky full of death-dealing flying saucers. Playing with friends is an excellent time, and I am looking forward to playing with the full compliment of four EDF teams once the servers are more heavily populated.

Despite the fact that you may not even use all of them, the variety and compulsion to catch ‘em all is still a great gameplay hook, and levelling up your own beloved team of soldiers to their potential is immensely satisfying. It gave me a slight emotional pull seeing these cute-as-hell brothers and sisters grow as lethal killing machines, the same way as you become attached to keeping your boys Jools and Jops alive in Cannon Fodder, or form bizarre bonds with the denizens of Fire Emblem. That’s not just me, right?

Missions wise, there is nothing too out of the ordinary for veterans: you just kill everything. All of your classic EDF enemies are here, albeit in their most loveable ever incarnations. Spiders, a smorgasbord of different ant varieties, flying saucers, robots, giant reptiles, the gang is all here. Sometimes you have to take down the enemy spawn points, as they will continue to spew forth their vile contents until destroyed. Sometimes there are vehicles to play around with, – which are pretty clunky to control but can be extremely effective in their destructive capabilities even if they handle like a 1985 Ford Fiesta with a knackered steering column.

Whatever you are doing, Earth Defence Force: World Brothers 2 is all about having fun. It looks lovely, with some great music and an absolutely crazy amount of voice acting – every single brother or sister is voiced in a stab at their native accents, as you can imagine often with very funny results. The dialogue is as cheeseball as ever, with a lot of repetition, but it doesn’t ever get annoying for me, this is part of what I expect from the EDF world. It is, for my money, the best and most enjoyable title in the series since the immortal Xbox 360 instalment first hooked me on the concept. It feels like a game that I would have dreamt of during the Dreamcast era, and fills me with the same sort of joy that SEGA and Nintendo are capable of evoking.

Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 is super accessible and very easy to get into, but deceptively difficult to master. Gung ho tactics will only get you so far, and despite its jolly nature, things do get quite dark and a sense of peril sets in when things start to ramp up and the sheer scope of the alien threat starts to overwhelm your team. Despite feeling like one of the ants you are blasting at the cusp of your adventure, this seemingly insurmountable set of odds never stops being fun. An absolute corker of a game.