Earth Defense Force 6 First Impressions

There are 4 different classes to play as in this game. Ranger, Wing Diver, Air raider and Fencer. I will be comparing the classes in this game to their EDF5 counterparts as this is a direct sequel to it.

Slight disclaimer. I mostly played air raider and ranger in EDF5 and air raider in EDF6. So while I will be covering Wing Diver and Fencer as well, I apologize for any errors I make and will be using my limited experience of them in EDF5 to help

1. Ranger

As your standard man on the ground, they do not do anything fancy unlike the other classes. They do however, have the most versatile kit of them all with everything from your standard rifles, shotguns and rockets to flamethrowers, heal guns and grenade launchers. Ranger has you covered with whatever you need regardless of the mission.

He has 2 weapon slots, a support slot and a new backpack slot. support slots can have vehicles or passive items that help you out in some way, the former needing credits you get from killing enemies to call in. If you were wondering where his grenades have gone then look no further than the backpack slot. The new slot contains items like his grenades and all the turrets he stole while the Air Raider was staring at drones.

While other classes can beat ranger out in mobility or mass destruction. He has the weapon selection to bring whatever you need to the table.

2. Wing Diver

Very squishy and very mobile, wing divers are real glass cannons with their jetpack and lasers of death. Everything in their weapon slots and their jetpack needs energy from a core to power so management of your energy is key.

She has 2 weapon slots, an energy core slot and a backpack slot. The different energy cores affect max capacity, recharge rate, flight consumption rate and can have some extra effects like faster weapon charge and faster flying. Her backpack slots contains energy and plasma based devices including plasma grenades, energy swords and a deployable shield.

Putting all of this and a fact she gains more health slower than all the other classes. She feels like a class you play hit and run with cheap energy cost weapons or hang back with some real monsters and sniper.

3. Air Raider

The guy who left human companionship behind for a drone swarm. His kit is mostly drones in which you shoot/throw a beacon, drones goes out to shoot it and then returns to you and that is how they reload. Be careful with firing while moving as some are very slow and can end up taking forever to get back to you, causing a very long “reload”. The drones range from miniguns and shotguns to mortars and giant lasers. He also gets some air strikes to call in via smoke grenades, beacons you shoot or ones that give you a arial view and can adjust at will, some requiring credits which you get from killing enemies.

He has 2 weapon slots, a backpack slot and a vehicle slot. The backpack slot contains drones you summon and then discard when done with, non reloadable life venders to keep you and allies healed and guide lasers/beacons to help guide lock on weapons for other classes, required to use with the big fencer missiles.

Air raider is great for sitting back and letting your drones/air strikes do all the work for you

4. Fencer

The big guy in a ton of armour. Fencer is your heavy weapons platform and capable of carrying weapons as long as a ranger is tall 1 handed. He gets everything from massive hammers and shields to cannons and miniguns that look like he ripped it off a vehicle. With his long reload time on most guns and movement that takes a lot of getting used to, he is probably the hardest class to understand and not for beginners.

He gets 2 weapon sets, each with 2 weapons which you can switch between at will. All his weapons have an alt effect which can be a dash, a high jump or a zoom. He also has 2 support slots which can help him dash/jump more, reduce recoil on his more high rate of fire guns and just walk around faster.

I want to put something here on playing him but frankly I don’t understand this guy well myself.

The game is fairly straightforward in objective. Kill until everything is dead or a certain point is reached where it says completed. As you go through the missions, new types of enemies will appear to give some variety. The game focuses on quantity over quality as it throws a lot more at you in later missions instead of making everything suddenly very tanky, that is what the higher difficulties are for.

Any enemy you kill has the chance to drop health, armour or weapon crates. Health crates heal you in the current mission, armour crates increase your maximum health for future missions with different classes getting different health scaling from them and weapon crates which drop weapons from a level range which is determined by mission number and difficulty, majority of armour and weapon going to the class you are playing and the rest distributed between the other 3.

The game has 5 difficulty levels with enemy health and damage scaling up as you increase it. You do have NPC allies who get stronger at higher difficulties and they can make or break your run sometimes with their damage and ability to draw aggro.

Each of the maps in the game is decently sized but you can hit an edge if you are not careful. They do reuse the maps a lot with you just spawning in different areas and some buildings starting destroyed, this can make it look like a whole new map sometimes and in my opinion is a great way to reuse assets. EDF6 has also reused some maps from EDF5 but added some ruins and craters to add to the post apocalypse look.

All the terrain is destructible with some being destroyed by small arms fire and others by explosives. Air raiders especially are masters of making sure cover doesn’t exist and increasing sight lines, benefit or disadvantage depending on the situation.

The game supports 2 player split screen and 4 player online multiplayer. You can make your own room in which you control mission, difficulty, who can join and armour/weapon limits. The last one requiring 70% completion to turn off. The limits allow you to host public games and not end up with people coming in with high level equipment and steamrolling the missions.

There is friendly fire in this game which the percentage you take going up with higher difficulties, so be careful where you aim your rockets.

EDF6 has some weird controls which thankfully can be fully remapped if you wish. Some people might not like jump/roll/fly on L2.

• Ranger has sprint toggle on L3, backpack on R1, vehicles on X and weapon swap on triangle
• Air raider has backpack on X, vehicles on triangle and weapon swap on R1
• Wing diver boost on L3, backpack on R1 and weapon swap on triangle
• Fencer has alt effects on L1/R1 and weapon slot on triangle

D-pad is used for the built in chat system which uses folders of commands, some voiced, and gestures you and any NPCs under your command perform, you can even use this in combat as the chat menu doesn’t stop you from moving and shooting at the same time. You also have a shortcut wheel which is accessed via the touch pad, but it is very sensitive.