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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.
Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the game
Visually, God Eater 2: Rage Burst, I feel is a mixed bag. The Anime movie, when first loading, is nice and sharp as are the menus and the title screen. When you are in the hub between missions, you have fixed viewpoints similar to what you would see in Resident Evil & Final Fantasy. The characters generally look decent. However, if you change their uniforms and clothing, they will still be in their original dress during cutscenes, and when they are standing around the hub area. The detail here looks good with sharp-looking textures and high detail assets. The environment in this hub area is also similarly nice-looking. Now, once you get into the game world, the textures and detail on the Aragami and, again, human characters is sharp-looking. The special effects of both your Arc, Blood abilities and the attacks on the creatures do all look great. I have noticed, though, that the environments look like something from late PS2 to early PS3/XB360 – quite muggy unrefined texture work on water, walls and the ground. It is functional, but much like other conversions where they originated on a handheld system, they are a bit lacking by today’s standards. The only other gripe I really have with the graphics is, at times, when you manage to corner a monster you won’t be able to see your character no matter where you move, it zooms right in against the side of the creature or a wall -quite easy to get out but can end up costing you a bit of health as you can’t make out what is going on.
The sound on God Eater 2 is similar to other JRPGs: piano and string melodies mixed with rock guitar, including drums & synth music. It makes the music really stand out and gets the heart pumping when battling the larger Aragami. The effects noises come though nicely when attacking creatures, whether using guns or your melee weapon; meaty thunks and crunches when contact is made, the same can be said when monsters attack you or are running off. Cutscenes are all voiced in English, and I have read that some players are a bit unhappy with not including the Japanese audio with English subtitles, but in all fairness the English voice work is generally good-to-excellent, much like watching Anime with English audio. Yeah, it may sound a bit goofy at times but not over bearing. If players want the Japanese audio, why not import the game: PS4 is region free!
There is also a multiplayer component to God Eater 2. You and a few other real players, that are at the same level, can take on various co-op missions. Great thing about this, is that everyone is working within a team, and one-player can, for example, do crowd control for the smaller enemies and a bit of healing, while the other players can concentrate on a larger enemy, it works well enough and enjoyable. Whilst playing single player, you will notice that NPCs will, in most cases just attack what you are going for.
All in all, God Eater 2 is a decent game; one that can be enjoyed for hours on end, or simply a single mission if you are short on time. Visually, it has come across from portable systems nicely, and the sound work on PS4 is thumping. Additionally when you purchase God Eater 2 you get God Eater Ressurection for free on both PS4 & PC Steam. This is the original remastered game, so you have everything within the God Eater Universe. My only real gripe is that, after numerous hours playing, the story is a bit long-winded and drawn out, and the mission structure is generally the same thing over and over.
If you like the Monster Hunter series of games or even just fancy something that is a bit different to your military grey shooters and western RPGs, then God Eater 2 could well be that something.
God Eater 2: Rage Burst is out now on PS4 and Playstation Vita.
Important info:
- Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
- Players: Single player, multiplayer
Sound: Phil Brewster and Danielle Hunt
Cast:
Leah: Tara Sands
Nana: Cassandra Morris
Male Customization Voice #16: Kyle McCarley
Other voices: DC Douglas, Nicolas Roye
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GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT |
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| OVERALL | 8 |
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!
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