God Eater 2: Rage Burst is a huge game that puts together some simple concepts to create a deep experience, while trying to fend off worldly linear limitations to its body of work. There’s a lot of detail in that single sentence, but all of it’s relevant once you get through this review. So, without further delay, let’s dig into this puppy.
The gameplay design for GE2 is pretty simple on the outside. You play a new recruit for a monster hunting group known as the Blood, who are trained to take down a group of monsters called the Aragami. The Aragami have taken over the group’s mangled home planet, so there is a lot of reason to take down these creatures. The creatures come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and level of viciousness, so there is an endless supply of baddies that are unique, who push the player to constantly rethink the way their weapon loadout is configured and leveled.
Before we get too much into the loadout for players, the Aragami are an interesting antagonist in the game. Developer Shift did a superb job of putting together vicious creatures with unique abilities and things that look absolutely batshit crazy, sometimes like creatures straight from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (really nutso stuff, but beautiful nonetheless). What’s even more interesting about the Aragami is how they each attack. Sometimes their attacks are obvious, while other times they tend to do unexpected, supernatural moves that are brutal and unpredictable. They’re a great group to keep God Eater 2 interesting. They’re enormously clever and add a lot of value to the game’s intrigue, design and function.
So, how do you battle such things? You prep your warrior and his/her God Arc. The God Arc is a weapon that changes from blade to gun to shield and finally to predator form. The first three forms are what they’re named. While GE2 combines all of these forms into one single weapon of choice, each form is treated individually when switching in and out loadouts. For example, you can upgrade the blade or you can upgrade to a more powerful gun or a bigger shield. Each works independently of the other when you’re changing them out. The fourth element of this combo, the predator, stands out from the rest. This changes your weapon into a gigantic chomping jaw that looks like the thrown away child of Spider-Man’s Venom villain. It’s creepy, but effective and direct. It gives me chills when I use it in the game, as it is quite visually horrifying to see in action. I’m not sure why, but I’m positive it will produce nightmares in the near future.
Nightmares aside, the loadout scheme and reward system that caters to it, especially when you find things or you defeat large enemies, plays a huge role when it comes to replaying or continuing interest with God Eater 2: Rage Burst. You have to keep the action interesting and going, just ask Bungie about this with Destiny. Anyway, GE2 does a clever job with juggling what you can use against the Aragami throughout the game. This is a huge plus for the gameplay.
Shifting gears, the Aragami aren’t an easy bunch to go up against, even with fancy weapons. I’m highly impressed with the artificial intelligence in GE2. I was worried after the first few stages that I would just be hunting down mindless beasts that independently just go from point A to point B. The game honestly started feeling like a dumbed down version of Capcom’s Monster Hunter. Then I went on my first difficult mission and realized that these suckers, when properly prompted in the perfect area, will come after you in groups and relentlessly attack you until you die. I felt that by mission seven in the game and had to constantly run around, hit the monsters, then continue to run again. Their attacks were fever pitched and methodical. Shift did a great job of having the monsters recognize when the player is at a disadvantage. Vicious stuff, but impressive to see in action.
Now, once you’re in the middle of an intense battle with multiple beasts an element of gameplay may work against you, depending on your gaming experience, and that is the controls. The idea of having a single weapon that contains multiple options is a great one. It certainly makes sense, especially within the context of the game and story. The execution of remembering what changes the blade into a gun or into a shield, or both, can be complicated when your brain is yelling ‘Oh, my GOD!! Hurry the hell up! SWORD! NO! SORRY! GUN! WAIT!!!! SHIELD!!!! F*** IT! RUN!!!! WE’LL REGROUP!!!!’. It might be my age, but I had a helluva time trying to remember in the heat of battle how to switch to a specific weapon. The game certainly gives you enough real estate to reset and remember, but when you’re trying to pull something off quick, it can become annoying in a hurry. The controls aren’t bad, but they’re a bit complicated at times. This is the biggest caveat I had with the title, but, again, it could be just the reviewer (me).
Bringing some positive back up in the conversation, the landscape built for battles are pretty big. Like I said above, you’ll have enough real estate to work with if you need to recover your senses in battle and bring things back again. You’ll see the girth of the land during the first battle. There is more land than enemies, which offers up some great practice ground to traverse when the time is right. The harder missions present more narrow landscapes during battle, which do challenge the gamer, as well as offer up a variety of fighting scenarios and sensible loadouts for particular situations.
With that said, the environments do have a bit of linear flavor to them. You’ll find yourself not being able to go into certain areas for no good reason, such as trying to take a shortcut through a clearly shallow pond, but not being able to do so. The game keeps the active areas pronounced, while discouraging much exploration via invisible walls. You’ll get some exploration value by collecting shiny objects on the ground, which are generally scattered all over the place, but for the most part there is a bit more restriction to traveling than what you would find in bigger games like Skyrim. It doesn’t hurt too much of the overall package, but it does stutter the entertainment value just a bit.
Overall, God Eater 2: Rage Burst’s gameplay is driven by a bevy of missions, some great enemies and a variety of different loadouts to take care of business. The shortcomings are outweighed by these things, those shortcomings being the linear landscape and the controls (again, could be the reviewer), so understand you’re going to get a lot of good action with a variety of different ways to do things. Good stuff overall.
On the presentation side of this game, it’s mixed. The characters and the Aragami are neat. They are visually creative, not quite Final Fantasy XIV, and fun to watch in action. The environments and the interactions with other characters look like something straight from early last generation consoles d. The environment landscapes are plain textures that are more repeating than unique. While massive in scale, they’re certainly restricted in difference. They are a couple of notches below the landscapes in Star Ocean, which were gorgeous, but not very detailed in some areas. In short, the characters and enemies are fantastic, but the environments they live in are plain and very last generation graphically.
The story and music are fine in the presentation package. The story is neat and involving. I like ‘we’re the last hope’ sort of stories, as it works well here. They add an edge to everything and actually put something at stake for the gamers to work towards. The music is solid and helps push the atmosphere quite a bit. Everything combined equals out to an engaging experience.
Presentation aside, the overall game is worth a go. If you’re a fan of the series, including the anime, then you’ll feel right at home. If you like your action with some creativity mixed in, then you’ll love this title. Depending on your feeling towards anime-based gaming that contains a hint of RPG with a heavy dose of sword swiping, you may or may not love this title. It all depends on your tastes. For me, I enjoyed God Eater 2: Rage Burst. It was a break from other current reviews I’m doing and something I would happily come back to if a third installment was created and brought over to the North American shores.
Anyway, onto the summary.
