Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
The online coop also has weapon level and armor restrictions. Pity the two modes don't carry over to each other.
I have one of the power ST series AR's that does 100+ damage per shot. Works well enough that I swat just about anything that gets too close and I use it to swat hectors. I am finding I am using my MEX 3 a lot even against swarms because three lock ons with 200+ damage a pop per missile is worth it. Oh and the missiles are pretty fast.
Who watches the watchmen?
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Finally beat the game with the ranger on Easy. While not overly difficult it is a sufficient challenge that you need to fight the final battle smartly.
Next up will be the Wing Diver. She has some seriously powerful weapons and good mobility so I think I may have an easier time with her in the final battle.
Good levels to grind are 11, 71, and 83. 11 and 71 for weapons and 83 for armor. Grind on the appropriate difficulty for better weapons and on normal on 83 for armor.
Who watches the watchmen?
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Ok I have beat the game on Easy with all four classes.
This is a game that will keep you busy for a rather long time. Each class requires its own tactics to get the full benefit out their various abilities.
Farming for gear and health is still a big part of the game but the improved graphics and different take on similar levels from EDF 2017 is nice. There is a strong gnudge to play the game coop with various bits of equipment or benefits really only coming in handy during multiplayer. The air raider as the weakest class in most need of a partner.
They revist some missions with different building layouts, different level layouts, and even different enemies.
You will find yourself using buildings and alleys a lot to shield you from enemy numbers or to buy you precious time as you move through some of the harder levels trying to reach much needed health.
The enemies are pretty well balanced for their various difficulty levels as are the weapons found in those levels. The NPC allies are a lot better this time around. Not only can they fight but they seem better equipped in general and capable even on Inferno to a certain degree. That is not to say they won't get the shit mangled out of them on a regular basis but they are less helpless then compared to their 2017 counterparts.
There is greater variety in weapons models across the board which is nice. Even the generic Ranger Teams have some variance with Officers and Troops with differing weapons being distinguishable by helmet colour.
There are an assort of new enemies that are both cool and also frequently maddening.
The current worst of the bunch are the dragons. They not only fly but they breathe fire and like to maul the player. They like to land on top of the player making missiles and rockets a non-option for fighting them. The next worst enemy are perhaps the wasps which can swarm and spam a lot of attacks. Thankfully the wasps don't maul the player just shoot metal stingers. Red ants are pretty nasty. They do almost nothing but grab and maul you. They are tougher then regular ants and they swarm more easily. When mixed in with other enemies they are often bad news as they disrupt players ability to do crowd control.
The final boss is actually kinda tough if you don't have weapons that can deal with its specific challenges. You will be using the buildings and roads to your best ability a lot. Only the giant wasp bosses are roughly as hard. Their attack tosses the player and you can find yourself juggled by the repeat attacks on higher difficulties.
The biggest draw back is that they brought back the non-reloading weapons which is just stupid. This includes healing weapons and deployables.
My take on the classes. From Easiest to Hardest.
Ranger: This is just like playing the first game with nearly the exact same weapon types. Can also only equip two weapons. A lot of your old strategies will work for this class. You no longer have access to the bombs and turrets though. You will likely find yourself using the Assault Rifles, Rockets, Missiles, and snipers the most. The Shotguns are ok but they are often outdone by the AR's or Sniper Rifles. Grenades can be hard to use sometimes. The Various special weapons are a mixed bag without the explosives and turrets. This now includes healing/repair weapons you can't reload. Pretty much the easiest character to use as they don't have any gimmick.
Wing Diver: The first character with a Gimmick. Can equip two weapons. The female Jump Jet/Jet Pack character with energy weapons. Great speed and mobility with the ability to get up on top of buildings and fire down on enemies below. Some weapons really drain your energy but most are easily managed. The character is basically a Fragile Speed Cannon. With the lowest health gain in the game the character tends to be squishy unless you put a lot of time into them. However her large variety of weapons which run off of energy are surprisingly powerful and good for crowd control. Not too hard to learn to play but you will die quickly if you get cornered or caught with your reactor cooling off.
Fencer; The Tank and Walking Artillery Platform. Can equip up to four weapons in two pairs. Has some of the most absurdly powerful weapon sets in the game. Also has four weapon slots two per set. Which allows the player lots of flexibility in various levels. You can also dual wield most of your weapons. Yes that includes Gatling guns and even some of the melee weapons. However the character is kind of slow and their movements have momentum. If you want speed you need to put a melee weapon in at least one set so you can use the dash feature. Also helps that this character has the fastest health growth out of all of the characters. The shields can be handy but the sniper cannons and powerful missiles are a huge plus. The shields can help you survive situations where you are overwhelmed by fire power.
The momentum of the character makes it a little hard to control and the different control layout can sometimes throw you if you switch from playing one of the other characters. But otherwise I like this character, followed by Wing Diver, the most.
The Air Raider. Sadly this character shares movement and health gains with the Ranger but not the same number of weapons. Can equip two weapons and a vehicle. Also the only character who can carry bombs and turrets. Support Strikes are really neat but require enemies to be killed to reload. Kills made by allies and your strike thankfully count towards reloads. Same goes for reloading vehicles. Sadly the generic weapons pool sucks a lot. Not a good character for fighting drop ships or saucers. Also generally weak against aerial enemies. The turrets can be handy for general enemies and can be reloaded before the ammo runs out. The best parts about this character namely the vehicles and the air strikes are not always available due to story reasons or being underground. Many airstrikes have zero ability to target flying enemies making their use limited. Various vehicles are good for both ground targets, bosses, drop ships and enemies in general. The Rail Gun Tanks and the Missile Tanks are usually your best vehicles until you get more advanced Battle Machine mini mechs and attack choppers. Sadly this is the most frustrating class to play.
edited 15th Mar '14 7:43:16 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
Pretty flower
How many maps are there? 2017 only had like 4-5. Granted they were huge and the different mission start points did a fair job of disguising that fact.
#IceBearForPresident
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
They use differing tile sets across all of the levels with variations on each set forming a sort of series of sub sets which are used across the 85 missions. Please note these general sets can have their own variations that are not worth noting in detail.
Something to know about buildings is they don't just fall down when hit but seem to have separate damage thresholds or their own health. Explosions, hectors, mechs, and big tanks can sometimes plow through the buildings.
Urban Settings The most common over arching layout.: FISH and CHIPS (Fighting In Someones Home and Causing Havoc In Peoples Streets) No you don't get to go into buildings.
Big Urbana: Lots of tall buildings and roads. There are also plenty of medium building sand some smaller buildings. You will see sky scrapers under construction as well as completed ones. Lots of alley ways. There are also large open parking lots or park areas. Big streets make for natural pathways flanked by the building clusters and alleys.
Medium Urbana: A mix of small urban structures, big buildings, some medium sized building, power line towers, and radio towers. May have a canal in it.
Canal Street Urbana: "Bridge over the River AIEEEEEE!"
Little Urbana: Mostly small buildings and homes. Looks like a suburban area with some radio/cell towers and bridged canal somewhere on the map usually. The buildings can be really densely packed on their streets but there are usually plenty of rather open areas. They also tend to have these stone pyramid shaped hills on which the antennas sit.
Big Urbana:The second variety of Canal Zone Urbana is big city canal. They have bridged canal with homes and small businesses on one side and big city buildings on the other. There is more of a shallow stream with path ways on either side often crossed by smaller foot bridges that cross at the bottom of the canal.
Ruins: Ghosts of Battles Past, present, and future?
Recent ruins have little difference from old ruins. Both have many flattened buildings and rubble piles with a few buildings still standing.
Harbor: This ain't no safe zone. A industrial harbor area with large warehouse buildings, smaller storage buildings, and stacked storage containers. There are loading cranes piers and docks and of course lots of water. Usually fairly sizeable. You visit this setting a few times.
Tunnel Time: EDF and the Underground Adventure.
Comes in three flavours.
Urban Tunnels start out in a shopping mall then lead into subways. The bug tunnels cut through subways and under ground ways into various brown dirt caverns and tunnels.
Deep Tunnels are dark grey in color bigger in general then urban tunnels with bigger caverns and open spaces.
Dirt tunnels. Brown tunnel spaces that are similar to the deep tunnels only well brown with no streets or subways to be found in them.
Beach Zones: Everybody knows Ravagers can't surf.
A large beach zone enclosed by high hills. Not a lot of variance here.
Countryside Zones: The Hills have compound eyes.
There are a few takes on this.
Hills with a stream valley and some plateaus above the stream.
Hills and valleys. Pretty self explanatory. Very hilly terrain with channeling valleys and ravines.
Descending hill plateaus. A series of Plateaus that form the hills often descending onto a small plain or valley area.
Unique outside of extra missions packs. Plains land. Mostly flat with a few small hills at most.
Unique Exterior map is the impact crater map. A large and deep crater found towards the end of the game. enemies are around the edges in some spots but most are inside or flying above.
edited 15th Mar '14 7:35:12 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
Steam version is out. The PC-port is surprisingly solid, which makes it - less surprisingly - the best version of the game.
Fear the cinnamon sugar swirl. By the Gods, fear it, Laurence.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
How are the requirements?
Who watches the watchmen?
From the store page
:
MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7 64bit, Windows 8.1 64bit Windows 10 64bit Processor: 3 G Hz 2 Core Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 7870 / NVIDIA Ge Force GTX 660 Direct X: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 8 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X 11 sound device
RECOMMENDED: OS: Windows 7 64bit, Windows 8.1 64bit Windows 10 64bit Processor: 3.2GHz 4Core Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 7970 / NVIDIA Ge Force GTX 760 Direct X: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 8 GB available space Sound Card: Direct X 11 sound device
Apparently it has trouble with certain AMD drivers at the moment, though.
Display options are very limited, and it's still meant to be played with a controller, but other than that it works quite nicely thus far. I've only seen the framerate drop when it's ridiculously hectic, and it's still running better than the console versions did in optimal conditions!
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Not too bad at all really.
Who watches the watchmen?
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
EDF: 4.1 Shadow of New Despair definitely plays a bit differently. I like some of the level changes. Like more tanks from the outset makes it feel like a proper military response. The tunnels are pitch black and you have to light up the tunnel walls or with a new air raider summon which is kind of cool in and of itself.
Enemies feel a bit more aggressive even on easy. Also it looks better on PS 4.
Who watches the watchmen?
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Earth Defense Force 5 TGS comes out in Japan next year.
I've been slowly playing through the game on online co-op. I wish the levels you played online carried over to offline and vice versa. I've still been sticking with Ranger and plan on playing Wing Diver once I'm done with that.
Right now I'm finding shotguns generally more useful than A Rs, if only because they're good for killing enemies that happen to get too close to me really quickly, and they're good for the flying drones.