After exhaustively playing Earth Defense Force: World Brothers I was delighted to cover Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2, the sequel to the aforementioned Earth Defense Force: World Brothers. Aside from Earth Defense Force: World Brothers (which shall henceforth be known as “the first game”) I don’t have a lot of experience with the Earth Defense Force series. My understanding is that it’s a series of missions where you’re fighting giant bugs and that’s the long and short of it. I’m happy to report that Earth Defence Force: World Brothers 2, much like the first game, is just that. After playing the first game, I could think of a million things that could be improved but the Earth Defense Force games didn’t strike me as the type to make sweeping changes. Did they?
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2
Developer: Yuke’s
Price: $50
Platforms: PS5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, and PC
MonsterVine was provided with a PS5 code for review
No! But World Brothers 2 does implement some nice changes that help the game considerably. The rub is simple, you choose whether or not you want to play solo, online, or couch co-op, pick a mission, pick four brothers to play as, and go. Each mission has a set amount of baddies that will either roam the battlefield, spawn in waves, or come via spawners that need to be destroyed. Once the baddies are dead, you get a little story bit and the mission ends. While I remember a few story beats from the first game, the narrative isn’t what shines in these games. That said, World Brothers 2 did kind of throw me for a loop.
In the first game, the earth gets shattered and you’re tasked with taking on missions to fight back the aliens, which are bugs, and eventually fight a mothership. Once you take out a mothership, a piece of the Earth comes back together. Oh right, everything is voxels. This is cool because there’s destructible terrain and buildings, adding a level of complexity and devastation to the gameplay. So the voxel Earth is in pieces and as you destroy motherships a piece reattaches and Earth gets that much more complete. World Brothers 2 has the same overarching narrative, but there’s a mysterious dragon creature with these diamonds around his shoulders that explode when you take out a mothership. In the clip they show, he always looks at the diamond before it explodes and it makes me laugh every time.
I didn’t expect there to be quite so many missions. Because World Brothers 2 is primarily a multiplayer title, you can choose an emblem for your team and it’s just a little image splayed behind the team at the deploy menu. Mine’s a corn dog with ketchup and mustard on it. You unlock emblems by hitting milestones, killing enemies, saving teammates, and completing missions. Just looking through the emblems I found one that required you to complete mission 103. The first game only had 60 missions. So I was a little shocked to see over 40 missions added to the main campaign. Until I hit a story beat…
The level variety is primarily composed of cities, fields, or underground. The underground missions are interesting because some brothers have abilities or SP moves that are supposed to come from the sky and don’t work underground. They were just useless in the first game but in World Brothers 2, these brothers are given different SP moves when they’re underground which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, airstrike abilities and the like that aren’t SP moves remain the same. There was a series of underground missions where the teams were stuck underground and eventually got split up. Finally, after 3 missions, the teams get back together, fight off a few waves of baddies, and the ceiling collapses to reveal the outside world. Reveling in the beauty of the sun, a giant ring (it’s a box, they make a comment on it in the game, voxels remember?) appears and becomes a portal sucking all the brothers in. In the very next mission, you learn you’ve been sent to the past.
Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting time travel but, based on the way the brothers take the news they’ve been sent back in time, I’m betting other EDF games play with time as well. The World Brothers come from other EDF games or are supposed to be representative of the country they come from. This seems like it could get racist real fast but it’s more comical than anything. Representing Argentina are the Gaucho Sisters, who are just really good snipers that shout lines out about returning to their ranch and their description is about how the aliens abducted her livestock named after The Beatles. It’s all very lighthearted. Although I have to say I’m a little disappointed that the descriptions are the same as the descriptions used in the first game.
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 Features New Characters and Time Bending Missions
There are quite a few new brothers as well, although I’m unsure of the total number. The brothers can get a little wacky too. For example, there are Hockey Brothers, Hope Brothers, Apple Sisters, Bear Brothers, and one of my favorites, the Frankfurt Sisters. Frankfurt Sisters come from Germany and they have a sausage strapped to their back. Hitting the L2 button has her wield it like a sword by jumping forward and chopping through enemies. Her SP move is A Clockwork Sausage, which sets down a grill and puts four sausages on it and a bunch of big red circles on the ground. All the enemies gather around as it creates a huge explosion. I think the primary appeal of World Brothers is creating a cohesive team of brothers and not just playing solo.
Each brother has a weapon proficiency they start out with and an owned weapon. If they’ve got their owned weapon equipped they deal 20% extra damage with it. Weapon proficiency is like handguns, sniper rifles, special weapons, etc… and their proficiency goes up when you collect duplicate brothers. When you start a mission, a series of pink exclamation points will be on the map indicating brothers to rescue. If you rescue a brother you’ve already rescued before, that levels up the existing brother and gives them a new weapon proficiency. Guns can be as simple as a long-range sniper rifle to throwing drones at the enemy that hover over the enemy and shoot bullets down at them. The weapon variety is wild and it’s fun to just experiment with weapons and brothers.
The enemy variety has widely increased from the first game’s offering. Whereas the first game really only had a few different enemy types and some palette swaps, World Brothers 2 might double the enemy count, not including palette swaps. More noticeable is the enemies feeling more animated. I was fighting a group of giant lizardmen with guns when one of them dropped to the ground on his butt and started kicking away at me while shooting. Another one, after taking a few hits, dropped his gun and started running. Had I not played the first game recently, anticipating the sequel’s release, I may not have noticed a lot of these things. Considering the demand, I imagine they could have just pumped out a duplicate game to not much resistance. The additional touches are very nice.
Even the bigger enemies have a wider variety. In the first game, there was a big Godzilla enemy to fight and when they wanted variety, they shrank him a bit or made him bigger. In World Brothers 2, I’ve run into several variants of Godzilla and Motherships. Each one with a different moveset and fun animations. Hives are also present again, giant voxel structures that spawn bees, but the AI will detect if you’re hiding inside of it and shooting it at an angle that prevents you from taking hits. This made the hives a lot more tolerable in the first game but made them more difficult in the second. Prepare to use ranged attacks on these new hives.
I think of World Brothers 2 as an online title. It’s fun with other people. If you screw up, there’s someone else there to help you out. Playing with a friend has really made the experience better. Unfortunately, there’s just not that many people playing online. After release I checked online games for 3 nights at various times, but all after 17:00 (-5 GMT) to 22:00 (-5 GMT) and there were very few public rooms available. I would also create a room and see how long it would take for someone to join and usually, nobody would. I can hardly fault the developer for not releasing it to bigger fanfare and having a bigger audience, but it did hinder my experience a bit and was noticeable.
I like the improvements Yuke’s made to the first game. While they could have phoned in the development of World Brothers 2, I was greeted instead with a completely new story, lots of new brothers, and enough enemy variety to keep me entertained through the end. I was pretty impressed with the end product and think it’s a pretty good addition to the EDF franchise. I also had a really great time playing with my friend and others online, even if my online time was limited.
The Final Word
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 offers a brand new story, and lots of new brothers and enemies. While the online community leaves a lot to be desired, World Brothers 2’s improvements over the first game remain significant enough to recommend.
MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
