2024 is the year of EDF on the desktop: the Earth Defense Force / Chikyuu Boueigun / R.A.D. / Reginleiv / Sandlot appreciation megathread

PS5 getting its first game* this week as game of the generation favourite EDF6 is finally released on the west

* actually a PS4 game

https://www.mechadamashii.com/features/features-an-ode-to-sandlot/

Only in R.A.D. can you shrug off getting hit by a cop car, then go to a grocery store and robotically remark on how affordable the prices are with the game's cruddy voice acting. pic.twitter.com/aLA479lLDq

— ZaGorudan (@ZaGorudan) April 13, 2023

Grandma! pic.twitter.com/j0qBq9W9b2

— Reg (@Regaulity) July 23, 2024

The Lookout Point pic.twitter.com/eFj1Kodh7D

— Reg (@Regaulity) July 24, 2024

Have time to continue my playthrough this weekend, will stream it in case anybody wants to see the full scope of this masterpiece. pic.twitter.com/gOpi6gONUA

— Reg (@Regaulity) July 25, 2024

too lazy to effort post about edf so here's another shameless repost, there are dozens of us

https://cohost.org/iiotenki/post/7075022-i-don-t-want-a-singl

I don't want a single video game on God's green Earth telling me their consequences supposedly matter ever again unless those consequences are "you can optionally make your coworkers homeless by destroying their apartment building while fighting off an alien invasion with an unwieldy remote-controlled mech."

I think the power of the Earth Defense Force series is that it is the most genuine game series in the history of humanity. If the dialogue says "there's 1,000 ants coming this way" the game stutters for a second as 1,000 ants instantiate. There's no lie in this game.

— Rami Ismail / رامي (@tha_rami) July 30, 2024

https://cohost.org/iiotenki/post/7103847-it-is-extremely-impo

Bi best friend Nanao (pronounced in this dub as "Nuh-now"): I found a great new job at a local, family-owned green grocer. The owners say I'm like the daughter they never had! But a Kroger opened down the street and the way things are headed, they're gonna put my place out of business. Oh well, gonna make hay while the sun's still shining for a little longer, at least. Bye!

Protagonist and harbinger of 30 billion yen worth of damage wherever she goes: Hmm... I have a giant robot. I care about my girlfriend's well-being. I live in a capitalist society. I could... use the robot... to fix society... and make my girlfriend happy and prosperous. 🤔🤔🤔

It is extremely important to emphasize that uniquely for this level, instead of the usual starting location, the game spawns your mech RIGHT next to the big, bad multinational supermarket, where the Alien Robot of the Day appears to be attacking. Then, after you get a few punches in, the enemy mech is scripted to teleport away from you to go attack a different part of the level.

You will most likely not have enough time to wreck the supermarket at the start of the level as a consequence of regular combat.

If you do as the game has trained you up until now, which is to say, save the local landmarks to make bonus cash, you're expected to follow after the enemy immediately so it can't wreak havoc elsewhere.

But the supermarket is right there at that point. It's either now or never in terms of dispensing justice because otherwise most likely, the fighting won't take you back to this point.

For a game that has been been playing up its super robot and tokusatsu inspirations straight and narrow up until this point, it is a deeply unhinged shift in tone that you don't have to pursue, but are highly encouraged to, and that's one of many reasons is a 10/10 6/10 game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuNBDVXiv5k

ok, time for the effort post. i wanted to copy-paste someone else's takes (and that's what i'll do for the most part, still) but as it turns out it's hard to find written reviews from people who not only like the game but also really get it; plenty of enthusiastic positive reviews out there but none i've found address the real problems with the series.

Kieron Gillen's review of edf3 is one of the better ones:
https://www.eurogamer.net/earth-defence-force-2017-review

rather than quote the review, i'll quote instead some blurbs from eurogamer's 2007 top 50 list, where EDF3 landed the #20 spot (TOO LOW, obv):

Kieron Gillen: Even above Portal, the game I loved most this year.
[...]
Everyone who played the game loved it, but most of them only gave it 7. Because they are all BLOODY COWARDS
[...]
I mean, how can you give a game that's just fun a high score? That sounds suspiciously like crazy talk

Dan Whitehead: This is my litmus test game. I recommend it to every friend who buys a 360, fully prepared to disown them should they fail to recognise its clunky brand of brilliance.
[...]
Include online co-op play in the sequel and it'll be the best game of all time.

(good news for 2007 Dan, that's what EDF4 and later did)

anyway, my edf6 opinions are reserved for a later post so first of all, what exactly is an EDF?

for reference, here's what 5 minutes of gameplay look like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSXB14YM2Z4

i've seen smarter people than me categorise it as a musou game. if Dynasty Warriors is a musou 3d brawler, EDF is a musou 3rd person shooter.

given i've never actually played a musou yet i can't tell how far the analogy holds up. however, i have played plenty edf and can attest that the poster from SA's EDF thread i'm about to quote Gets It, and articulates the core gameplay of the series much better than i would:

The puzzle combat I'm referring to is stage design and how enemy gimmicks interact with each other in cool ways. It's like how Doom enemies have simplistic AI and trivially easy to understand patterns in a vacuum but can be layered together in ways that make them increasingly dangerous. EDF games very, very frequently have enemy layouts that present overlapping problems you have to deal with where you have to compromise on what tools you're bringing because certain tools are good against some enemies and not against others.

gameplay aside, the outstanding voice acting in the localised versions must be acknowlegded.
it intentionally and successfully channels campy B-movie vibes almost entirely without trying to be funny. this videogame radio drama takes itself seriously and even if, like me, you couldn't give a rat's arse about the plot, the game is elevated by the execution being as good as it is.

yet even better than the scripted radio drama are the back and forth ingame "conversations" between NPC squadmates that are randomly selected from a pool of various context-appropriate voice lines and mixed & matched with little care to making sense.
like everything in edf, it's over the top and often nonsensical and all the better for it.

EDF6 is your typical EDF iteration but for the first time ever (or at least since the edf2 to 3 transition) it can be argued that 6 is not an overall improvement over 5. i'm still on the fence about it because i've a long a way to go still in my inferno playthrough but so far that seems to be the case. so what happened this time? spoilers ahead

- most importantly for now, the online play appears to be a tad borked, several people are reporting about synchronisation issues, on console and pc. other than somewhat frequent disconnects in edf4, online co-op worked surprisingly well in all previous titles so this is a big step down

- kaiju/boss battles are traditionally a slog and now they more frequent and more aggravating than usual

- downtime during missions seems worse than it's ever been, historically edf was very snappy in its handling of scripted sequences so having to wait for overlong dialogue to finish or for NPCs to walk towards checkpoints is a disappointing trend

- a lot more tutorialising than usual, though thankfully most of it's handled the good edf way: as part of voice overs that can be ignored entirely without slowing down the action. still, nagl to have the radio drama polluted with such blatant handholding

that's about it for complaints for now, if the 4.1 to 5 transition was a "2 steps forward, 1 step back" deal, the 5 to 6 might be a "1 forward, 2 back" one

much is being made about EDF6's time loop plot and how you need to play 5 first in order to fully appreciate 6, how it recontextualises the series and speculating if the next EDF will be a complete reboot since EDFs 7, 8 and 9 narratively exist within 6.

here's what i think though: i hope they never make one of these ever again. seriously, it's been 20 years, make something else already. something entirely new, RAD2, whatever, just give edf a rest

the whole time loop plot where things get ever more dire and the aliens keep adding new enemies and changing the spawns types in old missions is basically Sandlot lampshading what they've been doing the past 2 decades.

to be clear, while some complain about "asset reuse" and "the same game all over again", i'm not only OK with that but actually in favour of their repeating the same mission archetypes every. single. game.
i want to re-do the old missions with the new classes and/or enemy types, each new EDF being an expanded arrange mode of the previous games is The Point.

i don't want Sandlot to stop making edf because i'm bored of it, i want them to stop because (and this is entirely conjecture) i imagine they only went this long due to commercial/publisher pressure and must be plenty tired of it by now.

lol that spoiler tagging didn't go as planned. oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

EDF is a prime Gamer bad take magnet and one of the silliest is the "mindless" and "turn your brain off gameplay" accusations, which are a good way to tell the person in question has never played more than a handful of levels in the normal or hard difficulty settings, which tbf are very misleadingly labeled "Hardest" (normal) and "Inferno" (hard)

the points this video makes about Doom regarding enemy types, herding, weapon properties, etc also apply to all Sandlot developed EDF games for the most part:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxbVfa8HJg8

some key differences between edf and doom:
- there's an i-frame dodge roll in edf
- from edf4 onwards, there are different character classes with different weapon types and gameplay styles, vertical movement is very much emphasised in 2 of them
- there are no weapon pickups ingame, loadouts are picked before level select (although some levels have vehicles the player can use)
- there are no ammo pickups, weapons have infinite ammo with very few exceptions
- there are ingame HP restore pickups like in doom but there are also permanent max HP upgrade pickups (HP can be capped by the player to a set amount to prevent making the game too easy after repeated plays)
- from edf3 onwards, there are friendly NPC soldiers whose contribution is often essential for clearing a level, the player can kill them with friendly fire but not vice-versa

- and most importantly, the actual Big Problem with the EDF games that is rarely called out: weapon unlocks

there's no "pistol start" in EDF: it's impossible to start the game fresh on the highest difficulty and "solve the puzzles" immediately because you don't have all the required tools from the get-go.
EDF weapons are doled out by an asinine loot system (collect green boxes during a mission to roll new weapons), so the game starts off either plain impossible or mind-numbingly tedious because without the right type of weapon and adequate power level all you can do is play other levels and/or difficulty settings until the weapon(s) you already know you need are randomly dropped.

this is the real issue with repetition in edf, it's not the asset reuse or recurring mission archetypes, it's being forced to re-roll random drops in order to play the game as intended.

if anyone reading this ends up playing the game on PC, do yourself a solid and find a cheat or mod that unlocks everything instantly and have fun playing the real game

i know i'm late to this thread, but good lord how I have not known about Robot Alchemic Drive until now, it looks absolutely incredible

(i think i played a little EDF 3 on Steam and it was pretty good but felt like would've been better in co-op, keep meaning to get back to the series)

ive known about it due to it being an age-old source of funny youtube clips but i didnt know the EDF connection

i've been watching those clips for ages, dunno that i'll ever try to actually play R.A.D., but i gotta say i find the voice acting for Nanao deeply affecting and i'm not joking

> (i think i played a little EDF 3 on Steam

EDF3 is console exclusive, the 2006 original is only on 360 but there are expanded ports to PSP, vita and switch

the only proper EDFs on steam are 4.1 onwards, though all the "EDF" spin-offs have pc ports. but we don't talk about those here because 1) they suck and 2) this is the sandlot thread and the spin-offs weren't made by them

regarding the voice acting, i'm wondering if the same team has been responsible for all sandlot localisations since RAD days because of all the waah, kiyaaahhh and waaargh!s death screams being spelt exactly the same in RAD as in EDF4 and later chat menu entries.
i'd think 2 distinct localisation teams wouldn't by accident pick such similar spellings for the random interjections

https://www.twitch.tv/supergreatfrien/clip/VainSourWheelYee-GRfnR3Pi1l9Emv5X
https://www.twitch.tv/supergreatfrien/clip/DiligentSmoggyPidgeonItsBoshyTime-c9w23ALh4Zry-o5S