Earth Defense Force 6 review: All You Need is Kill

I was about 12 missions into EDF6 when my understanding of what I was playing completely changed. I tend to go into games I’m reviewing blind; I want my eyes fresh and my mind open. Show me a trailer or two, and I’m good. I’ve played Earth Defense Force games before, so I knew the score: giant insects (shout-outs to EDF 2025), alien frogs, unmatched scale, and absurd dialogue. I was expecting a camp masterpiece. I was not expecting that. As I sat down to write this review, I debated how much I should say about EDF6’s story, but with an opening like this, I suppose I have to say something. If you’d like to go in blind (and I heavily recommend that you do), skip the next two paragraphs.

Earth Defense Force 6 is a direct sequel to Earth Defense Force 5. Humanity has won a major victory against the invading alien Primers and their God-King-Emporer-Diety-Thing at the end of EDF5, but it’s mostly a moral one. 90 percent of Earth’s population has been wiped out, and they might have been the lucky ones. The EDF fights on, but resources are scarce and the soldiers are so hungry they’re fantasizing about eating giant ants. You’re kinda doomed, which only becomes more obvious when the Primers show up again, and play their trump card: time travel, sending you to an even more doomed timeline with giant War-of-the-Worlds-but-infinitely-more-goofy-robots.

This isn’t your first rodeo, so you stomp them. After you assault the Primer’s mothership in a last-ditch effort to pull it out of the fire one last time, the screen flashes white and the words “The Earth Defense Force 6 Begins Now.” And when you regain control… the menus are completely different, and you’ve been transported back in time to the events of Earth Defense Force 5, but this time the invading aliens have new toys. But they’re not the only ones who realize they’re in a time loop: you and one of your buddies, a weapons development scientist, are aware, too, and you’re fighting back with new tech of your own and knowledge of what’s changed. So the aliens send something back in time to get an advantage, you kill it, and the Primers reset the timeline again. Every time, your squadmates are increasingly amazed by this alien-murdering savant who seems to know exactly how to beat everything the aliens are throwing at you, even though he’s a rookie. It’s all very All You Need is Kill/Edge of Tomorrow in the best possible way.

If you’re just rejoining us, this story decision also has a couple of nice gameplay ramifications. The first is on EDF6’s pacing. Just when you think a scenario has run its course and developer Sandlot can’t possibly do anything new with it, you’re off to the next one, and you’ll have to adapt your tactics, class choice, and weapons to compensate for the new stuff being thrown at you. Nothing in EDF6 overstays its welcome. It’s like a great song: the chorus comes right when you want it. The other smart thing that this allows Sandlot to do is reuse many of the assets from EDF5 without it feeling cheap or out of place. Context is everything.

Speaking of context, there’s something you have to understand about EDF6 before we go any further. This isn’t a pretty game. EDF has always been a series on a budget, and you’ll notice that as soon as you boot up. It’s not going to win any awards for its visuals, but there’s a reason for it: there are a lot of enemies on-screen in EDF6 at any given time. Swarms of ants, fleets of drones, massive motherships, and kaiju that wouldn’t look out of place in a Godzilla film. We’re not even talking about the giant frogs, the wobbly War-of-the-Worlds robots that grab at you with claw-machine arms or shoot a million lasers at you, or the giant spiders. Arachnophobes, beware. And, of course, all of them explode into a million pieces and mountains or gore. Oh, and everything - and I do mean everything - is destructible. Don’t like that building blocking your shots? Get rid of it! There are few problems in EDF6 a rocket launcher won’t solve.

So EDF6 isn’t a looker, but it’s got it where it counts. At its heart, it’s still an arcade game, openly proud of a lineage the rest of the industry seems eager to leave behind. As before you’ve got four classes: the Ranger, your standard all-around grunt perfect for solo play; the all-female Wing Divers, jetpack sporting badasses who zip around the sky with energy weapons and emphasize a high-risk, high-reward, in-your-face playstyle that is a lot of fun, but takes a bit of work to master; my personal favorite, the Air Raider, a support class that summons drones, missiles, bombers, and driveable vehicles like mechs and crawlers to get the job done; and finally, the Fencer, an exo-suit powered soldier equipped with gatling guns, howitzers, massive hammers, and portable shields whose exceptional firepower is offset by his lumbering movement. 

All of them are fun, and as you kill enemies, you’ll pick up armor and loot, improving the weapons you have and earning access to new ones, as well as boosting your survivability. I’m generally not a fan of loot in video games, but EDF6’s system works not only on a narrative level, but a gameplay one, too. Every weapon is viable in the right situation, and you’re always getting new stuff to try out. It isn’t always obvious what a mission will call for ahead of time, but it’s easy to back out and try again if you lose, and you’ll generally keep some of what you earned during failed attempts.

When everything comes together, and it often does, especially when you’re playing with a group of friends, EDF6 sings. You haven’t lived until you’ve used an Air Raider’s mech to tear through an army of Machine Men or a Ranger’s sniper rifle to tear through flying saucer-shaped drones. There are minor frustrations: sometimes it’s not always obvious what the right answer is in a particular mission or what you’re supposed to do, and you’ll have to pay close attention to your commander’s orders and what your squadmates are saying to keep track of your mission objectives. At the time of this writing, EDF6 also requires an Epic Games Store account even if you’re playing on Steam, as I was, which is a little odd. It doesn’t affect the online experience, which worked smoothly for me, but it is worth noting, at least for right now. Sandlot has promised to remove this requirement in a future patch.

EDF6 is by far the largest EDF game, with nearly 150 missions, excluding the DLC, so you’re looking at a good three dozen hours on your first playthrough, and there’s plenty of replayability because of the other classes and higher difficulties. And man, is it a good time. So grab your crew, pour yourself a drink or three, and get ready to listen to some of the most “they-hired-this guy-off-the-street-to-voice-this-character-for-five-dollars” line reads you’ve ever heard. No, EDF soldiers, the giant alien frogs don’t look like us, but I love that you think they do. And yes, you can still sing the silly fight songs. If you’ve played EDF before, you know the drill. If not, man, I’m jealous; you’re going to have a great time. EDF6 is a welcome throwback to the era of the AA game at a time when everyone and everything takes itself far too seriously, and I’m glad EDF6 is finally making its Western debut. Earth isn’t going to save itself, you know. Say it with me: EDF! EDF! EDF!

Earth Defense Force 6 is available now. A code was provided by the publisher for this review.

Will Borger

Contributing Editor

Will Borger is a Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction writer and essayist who has been covering games since 2013. His fiction and essays have appeared in YourTango, Veteran Life, Marathon Literary Review, Purple Wall Stories, and Abergavenny Small Press. His games writing has also appeared at IGN, TechRadar, Into the Spine, Lifebar, PCGamesN, The Loadout, and elsewhere. He lives in New York with his wife and dreams of owning a dog. You can find him on X @bywillborger.