Review by Kenji Ratier
Before we dive in deeper into the world of God Eater, a few things need to be clarified before getting to the core of the matter. Yes, Monster Hunter and God Eater are indeed very similar and do belong to the same genre of games. No, it is not just a cheaper knock off with an anime style. While they both share a common structure in terms of mission and gameplay loop, they feel very different from one another. Liking Monster Hunter does not guarantee you will like God Eater franchise and vice versa.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get to the real talk.
God Eater 3, much like Monster Hunter World, is the first entry to the franchise made for home consoles and PC in mind rather than a port of a handheld version. Whilst MH succeeded on all fronts to innovate the franchise and bring in a whole new breath of fresh air to the genre, sadly, God Eater 3 does not revolutionize the genre as much as I would have hoped. It is however a drastic improvement over the previous entries which can argued are somewhat of an acquired taste. If you played and enjoyed the previous God Eater games, there is no doubt you will find this is the best entry to date. If you haven’t experienced the series yet, read a bit more to find out if this might be the one for you. Let it be said right now, this game is very much about its gameplay, if you are looking for a great narrative, or immersive world building, look elsewhere.
Gameplay 8.5/10
As mentioned above, GE 3 shares the same structural core as Monster Hunter: Hunt monsters, called Ash Aragami, harvest materials off their fresh corpses, repeat because you now have this addiction to feast on the blood of the vanquished. In between missions, you roam around the central hub, talking to other NPCs and learning the lore of these creatures and the world they have driven to decay, but most importantly, use the collected parts of the monsters you’ve slain to upgrade your weapons and skills.
The weapon system again shares similarities with the other franchise (I’ll stop name dropping it otherwise you might really start to think this is just a clone). You have your light weapons that hit fast and wide, with more aerial capabilities and your heavy artillery to smash down Aragami parts when they are downed. That is however the only similarity in terms of the gameplay, because the two franchises feel completely different. You might say that MH feels like a Soulsborne type game, where combat animations are exaggerated and calculated. Once you input an attack command, you commit to it. God Eater however feels a lot more like an action character or brawler. Your attacks don’t feel as heavy hitting, and the monsters may not have the same stagger or visual cues that MHW got oh so right. However, you feel like much more of a badass in God Eater. It feels somewhat closer to Devil May Cry (albeit without the level of depth and complexity) in the sense that combat is extremely fast paced and combo driven. You switch seamlessly between ground and aerial attacks, switch to your gun(unlike MH, you use both a gun and close range weapon). Coupled with flashy anime-esque visuals, you get a really exciting combat experience that feels much more dynamic and is in my opinion, a better game to just hop into quickly and relieve some of that anger you’ve been holding in all day at work.
While you can play the game with some friends online, I found that the game did a very good job with the party system in which you not only choose various companions depending on both their weapons and your own, but you can customize their skills to achieve a certain playstyle. For example, I had a fast-paced swordsman with high mobility and stamina, immune to staggers, and that uses his guns to shoot healing bullets to myself and the other party members. Another wielded a heavy hammer and would only commit aggressively when an Aragami was downed to break down his tail or armor. It does a very good job in making you feel in command of your party and puts you in charge of your weeb army, and isn’t that the dream.
One con is that I never really found myself in difficulty. It’s not necessarily a con for me, but I know you gamers nowadays enjoy a game that puts you on the brink of smashing your controller.
Story 7.5/10
Not much to say here, it’s going to be somewhat of an acquired taste. You hunt monsters in a desolate world being destroyed by Ash Aragami and a phenomenon known as Ash Storms. I will say that for having played and watched my fair share of anime storylines, I found it somewhat interesting. But when compared to the massive amount of games in our era that build such captivating worlds, it is true that the narrative falls short of truly hitting that emotional spot.
Some characters are more interesting than others, but in general, I felt like they were all expendable pawns. What really dragged everything down was the terrible dialogue and voice acting. We’ll dive more into sound shortly but I would recommend avoiding the English voices like the plague. Especially in combat where their shortliners can get very annoying. I don’t know about you but I’d much rather have my soldiers shout incomprehensible words in Japanese when slicing some baby monsters. Maybe that’s just my inner weeb coming out though.
Visual 9/10 for character/monster design, 5/10 for the world.
So this is going to come down to a lot of subjective opinions as anime can be a very divisive topic. I for one think the art style is gorgeous. The characters designs are really impressive and whilst I’m not usually the type to rave about character creation, I felt compelled to create the darkest, weebiest Aragami slayer I could. Nothing revolutionary in this area, but nevertheless, a consistent art style in characters helps build a rapport to the world and game.
Perhaps the best aspect of the game is its monster design. This entry in the series seems a lot less constrained to design its Aragami based on animals and the results show. They have this indescribable vibe that somewhat reminds me of a mix of Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry, and Bayonetta, with its unique anime art style.
The less impressive visual feat however is the world design. The style is still very much to my taste, however, I found that the level design served as a background setting rather than an actual world. This also hurts Aragami design because I never felt like creatures were unique to a specific area and that hurts immersion for me. Textures are inconsistent and feel muddy and flat at times.
Another very disappointing aspect was the color and lighting. I mentioned above that the plot involves these Ash Storms. Well, that’s exactly what it looks like. The range of white and blacks are pretty bad. I messed around with various brightness settings but could never get it right. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intended to fit the Ash storm theme, because as you can see from these images, it just seems like a very poor handling of shadows and contrast. Which is really a shame because as a first entry to consoles and PC, they had a big opportunity to build a great world, instead, it just feels like a remastered version of a handheld port. For reference, this was played on a 4K TV.
One last note is frame rate. While it’s stated that I should be getting stable 60FPS I couldn’t help but feel that the game was sluggish at times. I wouldn’t say there were massive frame drops, but it just felt a bit muddy and blurry at times, perhaps due to the fast-paced nature of the combat. There are a lot of things happening on screen however with a dump of flashy colors at times so I didn’t find it to be a dealbreaker while playing.
Audio 5/10, nothing special
This one will be fast. As I said, voice acting is pretty dire. Music is forgettable. Sound effects are okay, but there is just too much going on for it to matter. I did find what was the most lacking were the audio cues when you hit different parts of the monster. Overall, nothing special, but you get a solid anime vibe when you’re all shouting and slashing monster left and right.
7Overall8.5Gameplay7.5Story7Visual5Audio