All you can eat.

Kill the big monster to get the parts to make stronger weapons and armors to kill the even bigger monsters- so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

It’s a familiar gameplay loop but one of brilliance in its simplicity and addictiveness.

God Eater is one such series that subscribes to that design philosophy and even though it never quite received the commercial success of its contemporaries like Monster Hunter, it has carved out a niche for itself with its anime inspired aesthetics and fast paced combat.

Having played and enjoyed both of the previous entries of the series, I had high hopes for the sequel.

The cast of GE3 is a fairly likeable, albeit, unremarkable bunch.

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PS4, PC
Played on: PS4 Pro
Patch: 1.20
Length: 40~ hours to complete all the missions

As the ever spreading Ashlands continues to engulf the habitable world, turning everything into toxic ash, a new generation of God Eaters called, “AGEs” are created to combat the threat. Even though these AGEs are endowed with great powers including the ability to survive in the Ashlands, they are shunned by the rest of society as monsters and kept locked away in cells until they’re needed for a mission.

As one of the newly minted AGEs, it’s your prerogative to combat the threat of the terrible Aragami responsible for the Ashlands and help create a world where humans, God Eaters and AGEs can live in harmony.

While the initial setup of GE3’s story is promising enough, the plot and the various characters surrounding it came off feeling rather cliché. The inspiring leader Hugo with his many ambitions, the care-free slacker Zeke and uptight, duty bound Claire are all characters I’ve seen before, realized more cohesively in other titles with better narrative. That isn’t to say that the characters are irritating as I found them likeable for the most part but not enough to get attached.

Given the strong anime influence, during the interludes between missions, there would often be long cutscenes and I found they were getting in the way of me dropping into the next combat encounter. Of course, this isn’t exactly a visual novel or a story focused RPG so I wouldn’t weigh the lackluster story on it too heavily but given the promising setup and beautiful opening animation, I was hoping for something more to latch onto.

Fast attacks and even faster movement is the name of the game.

As for the combat, it all starts with the variety of weapon types that promotes different play styles. The Lance has a great reach and perfect for those that like to employ hit and run tactics. The Hammer has the shortest reach but can devastate downed foes with rapid crushing blows that can destroy even the toughest armor.

One of the new weapons to the series, “Biting Edge” are Dual Blades that can change forms and combine together allowing me to attack multiple body parts in quick succession at the cost of expanding stamina.

I was also given a choice between four different ranged weapons and three shield types, each with their own strengths and weakness. While I won’t go into details about each and every type of weapons and shield, I found messing around with different loadouts to be quite enjoyable.

With each melee weapon, there were three associated skill slots that would level up and unlock new skills that I could try and fine tuning the perfect loadout for my play style in training mode was a great deal of fun on its own and reminded me of what I often did with fighting games.

I could further customize my equipment by attaching abandoned god eaters armaments that served as passive skills, like increasing my native HP/Stamina and more.

Finally making that piece of equipment you’ve been farming for is always satisfying.

On the battlefield, I could quickly dash and use homing attacks that allowed me to dash through the sky towards my foe and despite the fact that this maneuver was heavy on the stamina usage, I found myself using it constantly to get around. The freedom and speed of movement in God Eater is unparalleled among its contemporaries and I relished in it.

In response to the speed at my disposal, many of the Aragami were also quick on their feet and often attacked relentlessly. However, despite the aggressive nature of many of the monster types, I found the experience to be a sorely lacking in challenge as I never once failed a mission by dying too many times during my full playthrough of every single mission in the game. Although I don’t think it’s necessary for a game to be challenging to be good, when I can keep using outdated equipment to dispose of newly introduced enemies with relative ease, it doesn’t exactly incentivize me to keep crafting better weapons and shield.

With my intense mobility, I was able to dash in when the Aragami was unaware and devour them in order to enter my “Burst” state to increase all of my abilities for a time, all the while meeting the requirement to unleash my acceleration triggers for even more power then go absolutely berserk on the enemy and nearly every mission was completed in less than 5 minutes. There was some pattern recognition required to dodge the more dangerous attacks from special types of enemies that could utilize devour attacks on me on my allies but mostly, after seeing it once, I found it a cinch to dodge completely.

It’s true that I would say that I’m probably more adept in this genre of games due to my familiarity but I felt the previous entries in the series offered more of balanced experience.

MVP!

As for the online component, I was able to create or join other people’s lobbies and play through the various missions the game has to offer in that way but after being spoiled by the seamless flare up and drop in style of multiplayer in MHW, I found the process to be a bit tedious.

Fortunately, Assault Missions that allowed for up to 8 members to participate in special missions were much more enjoyable as it really felt like we were toppling a difficult foe by working together. Well, at least when we aren’t killing the big Aragami in less than a minute that is.

Despite the lack of challenge and somewhat underwhelming story, I still found myself thoroughly enjoying the fast paced combat, and as I continued to experiment with different weapon types and skill loadouts losing countless hours, I knew the niche that God Eater has carved out for itself is most certainly well deserved.

Fun Tidbit – 1.2 Patch introduced certificate missions, new cosmetics and more. There is supposed to more free content on the way including brand new story missions and Aragami which I’m sure to boot up the game to check out.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.