Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 (Switch)

It’s time to join the fight, the ravagers have returned it’s down to the Earth Defense Force to take control. World Brothers 2 is the second in the voxel spin off for the classic franchise, Yuke’s have developed this with D3 publishing and it’s just dropped on Nintendo Switch, let’s see how the port fared.

When I first played my first EDF game, back when 2017 dropped on Xbox 360, I never thought I’d spend as much time on it as I did, I still never got all the weapons, I think 1 evaded me. Anyway I was infected by the loveable charm of the game. It’s simple premise and vast amounts of levels enemies and difficulties, gave my friend and I hours of enjoyment. The games have gone from strength to strength with additions through each piece of the franchise, however only so much can be added before it starts to feel stale.

To that respect we’ve seen a pivot with World Brothers, the voxel style and the lesser “seriousness” if you can say that, style of World Brothers feels like a breath of fresh air in the series. The plot generally remains the same however this time after the Dark Tyrant has been defeated, a new foe, Gaiark has controlled the ravagers and now, the aliens are attacking the planet, in many different forms. The game will start with giant ants and bugs, but these will rapidly change into spiders, giants robots and ufos, each level will put you into a decent sized playing arena, to do your battles. These will be based on different locales based around the world, London, Egypt and other places around the globe. The plot isn’t the greatest, but in EDF it’s never the main selling point, it’s the action and there’s a lot of that.

The main hook of World Brothers 2, is at least for me, a rotational 4 player team, where at the start of each level you’re able to pick 4 team members, each with a different movement ability, like a roll, jump or even a jetpack, and another special exclusive to a character, this can be something like a special attack or a buff to your team, whether it’s health or attack power, and each can be upgraded too, some health points can increase the more you play with each character, making you able to take more and more damage as you progress, and you’ll end up getting battered further into the game.

There’s over 100 characters to collect here, again with each one having their own abilities you’re able to create a roster that fits your needs perfectly, each character will be unique visually too, with loads of regional based characters, with some especially charming models, they all fit well and look great in the voxel style, there’s also a great amount of DLC for the game too, with as of right now 18 packs of new characters, weapons vehicles and reskins, so if you do get through and collect everything there’s still some extra bits to get hold of. Speaking of vehicles there’s a good variety of tanks, speeder/hover bikes and helicopters at your disposal, but don’t get too reliant on them as they’re not as tough as they look.

You don’t have to fight through on your own either, with World Brothers 2 containing local and online multiplayer, so you can grab a comrade and slay aliens together. The Switch holds up coop pretty well, with very few frame drops docked even when the action gets intense.

In the game each level with have a few objectives, these are all usually based around destroying each enemy, as mentioned the amount of enemies will vary, but the objectives usually stay the same, sometimes you’ll be sent to underground levels to fight off some nests, but these never really give any different gameplay loops, just kill everything, occasionally shoot some mini nests, and crack on. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but again with an EDF game, fans don’t need changes to an already classic formula. As mentioned levels will be based around world locations, but each level feels spacious to traverse, despite only being on a pretty small area, the edge of each level unlike the big boy EDF games leave you with an edge you can fall off and receive a small bit of damage to one of your characters.

Controlling the game is a breeze, with your main trigger being your attack, changing characters through the d-pad for instant access and each special having its own button too, there’s no fancy button press combos and your special attack charges over time, and activated using a press of the right stick. The only real critical thing to note is how sensitive default controls can be, but that can be changed through the menu, and if you really fancy it gyro controls can be added here too, normal movement does feel good though and navigating the varied levels is pleasant, especially with my anyone with the jetpack.

With so much going on, on screen the music is a real mix, the main menus keep things pretty upbeat, but once in the heat of a level things are much more serious with a dramatic score to keep things in check, however once you’re shooting this takes a backseat. There’s quite a bit of decent voice acting here too, with narrative coming through in the level through some of the NPC’s and quite a few random quips will be spoken throughout each level too. It does add a bit of volume to the levels and makes it feel less monotonous.

World Brothers 2 has enough to keep old fans of the franchise to keep them going for a decent while until the next adventure, new players will look in with a sceptical view, like I once did. However there’s a lot of good fun here with so many options and literal content, there’s definitely something here to keep you going for a long time.