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God Eater 2: Rage Burst continues Bandai Namco’s answer to the popular Monster Hunter series, and is finally out on PS4 & PC. Originally, PSP & PS Vita games, the popularity rapidly grew on handheld with two games in the series instead of the more often releases of Capcom’s Monster Hunter series. Only two means that more time and effort (subjectively speaking) has been used to craft a world and the creatures that inhabit within.
The story behind God Eater 2 follows on three years after the original game, God Eater Resurrection. A red rain called The Black Plague has sparked a pandemic with 100% death rate, and the Aragami are still roaming causing issues around the world. You play the newest recruit to the special Blood Unit of the Fenrir Organisation, starting by taking out smaller Aragami with the rest of your team until you unlock your potential (Blood), a few hours in when attacked after a battle by a larger Aragami. This then escalates you to the Vice Captain position of the ever growing team of heroes.
The gameplay sees you going from mission to mission with interludes between each one. During these interludes, characters may have useful information on upcoming battles after sightings of new Aragami – tips, tricks, general conversation and so on. During these interludes, you can access the terminal and upgrade your abilities once you have unlocked your Blood so you give off different attack attributes via your Arc (Weapon). In this terminal, you can also check mail from other characters, power up your weapons and shields, adding recovered pieces from Arcs retrieved in the field and spend various points that have been earned; you can also customise your appearance, additionally change team mates’ clothing and upgrade various abilities so you will spend a fair bit of time on all this between missions.
Shirrako
The missions, themselves, see you locked into an area with numerous Aragami, initially smaller and slightly easier to fight creatures, and later mixing things up with a selection of smaller beasts and maybe a few larger ones. Missions complete once all creatures within have been killed. Much like Capcom’s Monster Hunter series, you have to use ranged and melee attacks to take down the creatures. In addition, you have items which can be bought, like traps, stun grenades, the likes of which are handy if you need to back off to quickly heal and see what your team are doing. During the larger scale Aragami battles, the creature will try to run off and heal, so you must quickly disengage and follow it, and restart the battle to stop it from healing too much. Here is a big plus on the Monster Hunter games: there are no mid-level loads when chasing after a fleeing creature. You literally follow it to where it stops and re-engage to keep the battle going.
There are different types of weapons, guns and shields available to you. Melee go from short swords up to pole-type arms with a Scythe and bludgeoning-type weapons. The guns, themselves, are also varied enough with sniper & shotgun etc., and you have three different shield types, each with their own pros and cons, as it is essentially small, medium and large, so understandably, the large shield slows movement down when opened, but does absorb a lot more damage. You can add various effects to each weapon/shield type when you pick up items from abandoned arcs, adding extra damage, more hit points, quicker use of items and the like, once you find better replacemet and sell on. As you chain attacks together, your burst mode enables, which makes attacks for the team stronger and uses your blood power. The blood ability is selectable from the terminal and has effects such as ranged blades and area-of-effect attacks. The guns, themselves, have numerous ammo types with shock, explosion, fire and so on, which you can assign at the terminal; these are a learning curve as to what best to use against certain enemy types.
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Retro at heart and lover of all things ’80s, especially the computers, the music and the awesome movies and TV shows! Crazy huge retro gaming collection spanning the ’80s and ’90s with hundreds of tapes, discs and carts for various machines on top of a 600+ strong Steam library that is ever-growing. No I am not a serial hoarder, just a dedicated retro gamer!