by GOD EATER: Resurrection! It’s Anime Monster Hunter!
So real-quick, GOD EATER: Resurrection used to be a PSP game that was ported to Steam and the PS4. They removed the “Blood Arts” skills for the Steam/PS4 release (which some people claim completely ruined the game, but I wouldn’t know) but added bullet customization among a few other things. The bullet customization is biblically deep but ultimately a mechanic that can be ignored if desired, considering there are other avenues for playing the game that don’t require it. It is a “Monster Hunting” game, a genre popularized by the release of “Monster Hunter” for the PS2 in 2004. What sets GE:R apart from its focus on a more anime-style story, art and combat and is much more reasonably paced (fully completed in 80 hours as opposed to MH’s several hundred). And of course, true to the Monster Hunting genre of gameplay, while there are a variety of stats, weapons, equipment and skills to customize, there are no experience points or levels.
I always wanted to try a Monster Hunting game, considering the love so many people have for them. I can definitely see the appeal–there’s something about a Monster Hunting game that lends itself to a feeling of victory much more through skill and less through grind. True, I spend a lot of time grinding in GE:R, but that’s because I thought the weapons were cool and I wanted to build them–in truth, I could have easily built one good weapon and just played through the story missions without pausing to grind at all. But I’m getting ahead of myself–what is GE:R?
In GE:R, you take the role of a self-made character who joins a special elite force of fighters known as “God Eaters” who are the last hope for humanity. Monsters known as Aragami have invaded the earth and are rapidly evolving int more bigger and stronger entities, overrunning much of the world. On the edge of the ruins of civilization, you protect the last remaining people on Earth, only through the power you gained from the organization you work for, who injected you with Aragami cells. There’s a decent amount of side plot, but the main story involves an Aragami that evolves into a human girl. Rogue members within the organization (including yourself) take the girl in and raise her as a human–learning about the Aragami as they go. Eventually it’s discovered that the operation that the organization had been working for since the beginning of the game was actually a farce. The “Ark Project” was not a way to save humanity, but only to save a few thousand people by blasting off into space, while accelerating the Aragami apocalypse due to some mystic mumbo-jumbo nonsense about prophecies and the end of the world. The organization’s leader kidnaps the Aragami girl and hooks her up to a machine that catalyzes this apocalypse, but you kill him anime-style at the end to thwart his evil plans. The machine kills the Aragami girl but because she’s now the spirit of the apocalypse (or… something) she speaks through the world and flies up to the moon, sparing the world from the apocalypse by turning the moon into a giant flower. Yeah, it didn’t make much more sense in the game either.
Overall the game was fun, and I definitely recommend it at Tier 2, but I’m not sure that the Monster Hunting genre is for me. My biggest problem with it, is that while true–the level of my success was dependent on my “skill” most of the fights could still be ground through traditional JRPG style. As long as you stocked up on healing items and played with half a brain you can make an enormous number of mistakes and still pass the mission. That didn’t stop me from optimizing my character and playing as efficiently as possible, but the lingering voice in my head kept telling me that I didn’t actually *need* to be playing this well. Again, I’m really happy that there was a decently high skill ceiling to the game, but I just have to compare it yet again with Dark Souls. I know nowadays this is actually viewed upon negatively (with critics saying things like “not everything needs to be like Dark Souls”) but it’s true. In Dark Souls, being skilled at the game wasn’t just a side-project–it was mandatory for playing the game. This made victory against creature rewarding. In GE:R, true–it feels good to solidly nail a mission against a monster taking minimal damage but… not nearly as rewarding.
The supporting cast of party member were relatively fun–each mission you get to take around 5 characters with you, some of whom are very important to the plot, others who were practically background characters, but still with their own little quirks and personalities. The developers really did their best to make each party member unique–right down to having customized AI for each. For instance–one of my favorite characters is Kanon, a clumsy girl who uses a massive canon to heal and fight (guns are also your healing weapon if you equip healing bullets… that sounds dumber when I type it). Unfortunately though, in GE:R, friendly fire is definitely a thing, and Kanon actually has AI that has her target players with her gun. To this day I’m not sure if that’s because she’s clumsy… or just plain evil. Gina prefers to fight from a range and will actually target enemies farther away than normal characters. Alisa focuses on supporting you with Bursts (game mechanic). It’s pretty cool.
Overall though, I felt the game was a bit shallow, suffering from the pitfall many JRPGs fall into of being wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle. While there was a nice mechanical skill ceiling, reaching that ceiling often meant doing the same repetitive attack motions for five to ten minutes a mission once mastered. Guns overall were imbalanced–ridiculously underpowered unless you build a few specialized bullets in which case they are overpowered. While there were several weapons to choose from, the distinctions between them weren’t terribly interesting–essentially giving one or two extra skills in combat, but not much beyond that. Still fun, but not very complex. At any rate, I actually bought GOD EATER 2 intending to play it first but GOD EATER 1 came free packaged with it, so I thought I’d play them in chronological order. I’m sure I’ll give GE 2 a try soon and see if they improved anything. (Keep that in mind as the Steam Link below links to GE 2’s page, since GE:R comes free with it).
