Review #208: Gods Eater Burst

 Gods are yummy.

 Monster Hunter is kind of a big deal in Japan. Namco wanted a piece of Capcom's pie, so they decided to develop their own take on the idea. The result is Gods Eater Burst, which is Monster Hunter if Monster Hunter ever went anime. As a matter of fact, Gods Eater Burst is the localized version of God Eater as well as the God Eater Burst append/re-release.

 The story is set in a post-apocalyptic future where a new race of creatures, the Aragami, have infested the Earth and mankind fights for survival. Humans wield God Arcs, weapons capable of hurting these beasts, since the wielders must get injected with Aragami Cells in order to use them, but must also keep a bracelet with the Bias Factor in order to keep them in check. Now then, the setting, the world of Gods Eater Burst, I totally adored, I loved the concept behind Gods Eater Burst, although the story is pretty weak. You play as a 'New-Type', a God Eater that can freely switch his God Arc from Sword Form to Gun Form, and happens to be a mostly mute hero, it's kinda weird how they decided to give him or her only a couple of lines, either make him mute all the way, or give him more lines! This is a problem, because midway through the game, your character takes the backseat, and the supporting NPCs become the main driving force behind the story, with your character just.. being there along for the ride. The plot is weak in just how unoriginal everything is, you'll see the plot twists coming from miles away, and every character is pretty damn cliched. Firstly, the art-direction is disappointingly pandering, the females wear almost no clothes, and definitely no underwear, something that the game will let you know, each of the three major female NPCs cover the underboob, cleavage and side boob clothes, because Japan. They look terrible

 It's not just a terrible art-direction, the character themselves follow archetypes that you've already seen countless times. See Soma? The loner? He's like that because he is tired of seeing friends die, so he doesn't want to get close to others, like 200 other Japanese characters before him. And what about Alisa? She's Asuka Langhley through and through, the New-Type that comes from another branch and has some mental issues. The dialogue can get pretty cheesy as well, I couldn't help but roll my eyes every single time the 'big bad' opened his mouth. The game is divided through difficulty tiers, each tier having up to 25 different missions, but only 4-8 of them are mandatory to advance the storyline. After finishing the 6th tier, you'll see the credits, and then you'll be able to go up to the 10th tier, these four tiers being the Burst Storyline. Burst is better written, but it goes full anime. It's not a very interesting story, but it's better written than the main scenario... but it's much more ridiculous. At least your character has a bigger part on this plot! I appreciate the game having a Story, but it's definitely not something to be looking forwards to.

 The game plays basically like Monster Hunter. First of all, you create your character, which can be a male or a female hero, but you get a very few clothing options. Don't worry, you'll be able to craft more. However, I felt the color variety on each piece was very lacking, there's a lot of red, black and white, with not nearly enough Yellow, Orange or Purle, to name a few. Also, a lot of the clothes are very... flamboyant, your characters don't look like people that are about to slay giant monsters. And it's a bit jarring, having these very anime and colorful characters fight these huge, dark, badass monsters. Well, most of them, this being a Japanese game, of course that there are some enemies with female torsos and bouncing breasts. Because Japan. That said, your main hub is the Den, it's here that you can chat with NPCs, buy supplies or craft them, alongside equipment, and pick your missions. As mentioned before, missions are divided through tiers, there's 10 different tiers, plus the post-game Challenge Missions, which total to over 250 missions(only 75 are mandatory to finish the game). Even more if you download the free DLC. And the Japanese version gets even MORE DLC, but because of 'reasons', Namco didn't localize them. Shame, as they added new monsters and equipment.

 While there's a lot of missions, there's not a whole lot of variety. There's only 6 different areas, each one is about as large as two of Monster Hunter's 'sub-areas', however, there's no loading times when moving around, which in my book is a plus, but you'll be seeing the same areas over and over again. There's also only 9 'big monsters' and 3 weaklings. However, each monster gets at least one variation, and they come in 'Fallen' or 'God' variations. Fallen Variations only change the color of the monster, while God variations have slight changes to the 3D model. That said, they each monster and all of its variations behave the same. They may have slightly different attack, for example, the Chi-You and its god variations(Hera and Sekhmet) have the same 'Burst' attack, but the Gods' cover a different area. The Vajra and his two variations are the only monsters with different attacks, but it's mostly in how they work, as they reuse the same animations. Also, the other thing that changes with the variations are the resistances and weaknesses, as well as their weakspots, but otherwise, they are the same monster, but with a different color. Burst adds more 'Variations' to the strong monsters(Arda Nova and Ouroboros), and a new monster, the Hannibal, while the DLC adds Venus, and entirely new monster, and Caligula(A Hannibal variation).

 Now then, from difficulty 1 to 6, while you are fighting the same monsters, they will get stronger, damage and resistance-wise, more aggressive, and they will also gain new attacks as you go up the tiers, so it does feel different when you go up against them again. Burst is a bit.... dull in this regard, monsters don't gain any new attacks, they just get stronger and become damage sponges. It's artificial difficulty really, you are fighting the same exact monsters, except that they can one or two shot you now. To be honest, by the end game I just stopped switching weapons before each fight, or using healing items, since the game wasn't hard, for reasons I will talk about later, it just wanted to eat up my time with damage sponges. And you can argue that Monster Hunter monsters are damage sponges as well, but challenge is a big part of Monster Hunter, this game is not hard.

 If I were to describe the game, I'd call it an easy Monster Hunter. For instance, you can take up to three NPCs alongside you. These NPCs are pretty good at dodging(interrupting your combos with projectiles) and can revive you indefinitely. Kinda. Y'see, when you 'die', the NPCs have 30 seconds to get to your body and give you half their health bar. They've got almost limitless healing supplies, so you can just keep dying and dying, and they will revive you. In over 50 hours of gameplay, they only failed to revive me in time twice, and even then, you get two respawns(Which consume part of the hunt's reward). This is why, eventually, I just stopped buying healing items, and took bigger risks, since the CPU were so reliable in keeping me alive! This can create bad habits, since you don't get such leniency upon death! What's more, enemies in Monster Hunter will go after you if you try to heal without waiting for an opening, not so here, you can just heal in front of their faces. Scavenging for items on the environment doesn't require nets or pickaxes, you just press circle over the shiny spots on the ground. Furthermore, you have a lot of mobility in this game, compared to Monster Hunter, sidesteps are fast, you can jump around and run much faster, all which consume Stamina, but it recovers fairly quickly. You can also use your God Arc to take a bite out of an Aragami, which puts you in Burst Mode for a while, granting better mobility(Double jumping!), and faster stamina recovery, alongside special Bullets.

 Equipment in Gods Eater comes in threes. Your God Arc is made up of three parts: Sword, Shield and Gun, each of these also come in three varieties. Just as with Monster Hunter, weapons have upgrade trees, and you upgrade your equipment with money and items savaged from your prey. The game has a very neat 'exchange' store, where you can trade some materials for others, which can lessen the pain of grinding, when it comes to getting the material you need for your next upgrade. There's many types of damage to take into account: Crush, Sunder, Pierce, Blaze, Freeze, Thunder and Divine, naturally, enemies have different resistances and weaknesses, plus, they may be weak to certain damage source on only some of their limbs. Monsters also deal damage from these sources, and you have three slots of optional equipment to raise your resistances... or other buffs(Or debuffs!) if you prefer. I only cared about these at the start of the game, as soon as I realized just how reliable my team were(About midway through difficulty 7) I stopped caring and stuck to my Wild Yang sword and my Health items. It's an easy game, there's no need to concern yourself with these stats.

 The biggest issue this game has are the controls. As far as melee combat is concerned, the controls are great. The camera can be a bit of a handful, but you can use the digital pad to maneuver it or just tap the L button to position it behind you. You can also use the L button to lock the Camera on an enemy, and most of the time it works well, but sometimes it will choose a terrible angle to get locked at, still, just tap L to 'unlock' it, move it around with the digital pad, and lock onto an enemy again. Using items in the heat of battle can be a bit finicky at times as well, but you'll get used to it after a while. I mentioned that your character is a New-type, and can switch between Sword and Gun Mode at will. Well... the Gun is very unwieldy. You can't lock onto an enemy with the gun, instead holding the L button will put you in 'aiming mode', where you use the digital pad to move the reticule around. Yes, move with the analog pad while aiming with the digital pad, both which are on the same side of the PSP layout. It works terribly. When I used the gun, which is suggested as some Aragami are better dealt with by using the bullets you steal from them, I relied mostly on jumping and shooting, preying I would hit. I did. Most of the time. There's also a fairly in-depth bullet creation mode, and if you use guns mostly, you may get a kick out of it. I just searched for some good combinations online and called it a day.

 It sounds as if I'm mostly being critical, but the game is a blast. I like the fact that it's a more accessible Monster Hunter. I love how much mobility it allows you, in order to move around and dodge attacks, things like stopping a mid air combo with an air block to block an incoming attack, for example. It feels good, and gives it a fairly different flavor to the more methodical MH. Most of the monsters look very cool, and it's fun to fight them. Upgrading your weapons is always fun and rewarding, and trust me, there's a lot of weapons. And the controls? Easily remedied with a console port... which God Eater 2 got!

 While I disliked the art direction on the human characters, the graphics, on a technical level, are phenomenal. Character's hands look a bit... pointy, but otherwise are really good. And the best part? Even when fighting three giant monsters, with three other NPCs... the framerate remains steady. It's amazing. And the environments, while few, look great as well, further selling the idea of a post apocalyptic earth. Graphics get straight As all the way through. Music is very... Japanesy, there's a lot of songs with lyrics, and they fit the game very well, while I'm not gonna be humming the songs any time soon, I don't think there was a single track I disliked. Voice acting is really good as well, the Japanese names are pronounced a bit... off, but no biggie. That said, good voice acting can't save a bad script, heh!

 Gods Eater Burst might be a shameless rip off, but it's a quality rip off. If you like Monster Hunter for the challenge... nope, skip this one, but if you like the franchise for, well, the gameplay, Gods Eater Burst gets the highest of recommendations.
 8.5 out of 10.