Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

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BulletMagnet
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Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

Post by BulletMagnet »

The shmups Twitter has been following this offshoot for a bit, but I haven't seen it mentioned here; figured now's a good a time as any to start a thread now that there's a trailer. No idea what the odds might be for a localization (or whether the thing will be good enough to merit one), but even though I'm not personally a huge EDF fan I do dig the cheesy/campy style it has going, so hopefully it'll turn out decent.
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Re: Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

Post by MachineAres 1CC »

BulletMagnet wrote:The shmups Twitter has been following this offshoot for a bit, but I haven't seen it mentioned here; figured now's a good a time as any to start a thread now that there's a trailer. No idea what the odds might be for a localization (or whether the thing will be good enough to merit one), but even though I'm not personally a huge EDF fan I do dig the cheesy/campy style it has going, so hopefully it'll turn out decent.
Agreed, I heard about this a few weeks ago, and while there is a fairly good chance it'll come out in the West, it'll take a while, cause there's usually around 3-6 months at least for them to localize the EDF games, but then there's also a lot of D3 games that they don't end up bringing to the West seemingly because they're "too niche" or cringe-y anime stuff, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.
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Re: Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

Post by iconoclast »

I'd bet anything it comes out in the west. EDF is D3's biggest series (by far, I think) and they seem to be going all in on it between EDF5, this game, and Yuke's EDF game.

This doesn't look very good imo but I hope it'll be decent.
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Re: Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

Post by M-KAY »

They also did a live gameplay demonstration during a D3 stage presentation at TGS if anyone is interested in raw unedited gameplay footage and not just a trailer . It starts at the 5:05 mark in this video. I didn't find it very impressive tbh but could be fun enough for a few playthroughs.
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Re: Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

Post by BulletMagnet »

Out in Japan on the 22nd.
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Re: Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

Post by hamfighterx »

BulletMagnet wrote:No idea what the odds might be for a localization (or whether the thing will be good enough to merit one)
So I bought this off the JPN PSN Store today, and I'd say the odds for western localization are EXTREMELY good based on the fact that all menus, story, and in game text are already in English by default - both on my US and Japanese accounts. They could seriously throw this on the US/UK stores today and it would be a fully localized game. There's some spoken Japanese in the in-game cutscenes/radio chatter, but that's all subtitled in English. It's very rare to see any written Japanese, and even when you do (like a controller button function picture in one of the option menus) it's also presented in English.

As for quality... First time I tried playing, I spent 10 minutes and immediately decided to quit and do a Mahou Daisakusen run instead... Not a great first impression. However, I went back to it several hours later and started enjoying myself more. All of the below are first impressions from like an hour with the game, so I'm no expert yet and haven't seen all of the game - but enough to get a better sense for what's going on.

When you start out, it's awfully visually confusing. Target-able bugs look like they're in the background, enemy fire is often a little hard to identify if you're used to more traditional STG bullets, and it's a little hard to figure out whether you're performing well. As you play more, you'll catch on. Oddly enough, the first level is a lot more confusing than the next few in terms of how much is going on in the background and knowing what you're supposed to be shooting/dodging. It's a full widescreen display, mostly vertically scrolling (and always shooting upwards) with some camera panning/zooming as you progress through each stage. Enemies can be pretty large, but aren't all that detailed - everything is 3D modeled in Unity, but gameplay is a strictly 2D shooting affair. It's not a looker by any stretch of the imagination, and some levels are uglier than others (2nd level underground ant tunnels are a lot of boring reddish-brown, but something like the stage 3 city area has a nice color palette and some decent background elements).

Controls are simple: 3 buttons (defaulting to all shoulder buttons: L2, R1, R2 - and you can control your character with d-pad or left analog stick on a standard PS4 pad). Shoot is R2. You pre-select two weapons before each mission, and can swap them on the fly with R1. L2 along with a direction does a quick dash. You start out with 2 weapons, but can permanently acquire more weapons in 5 categories - from long range fire types, to focused lasers, strong short range blasts, homing weapons (huge on-screen box in which your homing weapon will lock-on to enemies a la Panzer Dragoon, but much slower rate of fire than most weapons), or strong but slow sniper weapons. You're stuck with the two weapons you selected prior to entering the mission, as far as I know, so choosing the right two weapons for the job and making sure they complement each other is a major element of strategy.

The main gameplay mechanic is an energy meter shared between shooting (both weapons) and dashing. Dashes take something like 1/4 of your bar, weapons deplete the energy bar at a different rate depending on weapon. If your meter runs out, you basically "overheat" and will be unable to fire and will move slowly for several seconds before the meter recharges to full. You want to avoid this overheating, which you can do by stopping your fire to let the energy bar recharge - after a brief delay with very slow recovery, the meter recharges quickly to full. Balancing some weaker/slower weapons that deplete the bar slowly with switches to your other weapon (which might be something like a super fast meter-depleting but powerful close range attack) is your moment to moment focus, along with blasting the bugs and avoiding projectiles. You also end up leveling up your armor/HP bar over time - speaking of that, it's one big life bar on the left hand side of the screen (weapon energy is on the right side), you can take multiple hits, and when you hit 0 life you fail the mission.

Levels seem to be broken into sub-parts, and you can continue a failed mission from the beginning of each phase. First you'll start out with a typical flying/shooting portion with weak popcorn enemies. Then with a brief in-level transition scene, you'll enter a sort of "challenge" phase where you're on a single screen and need to kill as many enemies as possible as they pour onto the screen, with a reward based on # killed (it sort of gives me the classic Galaga "Challenging Stage" vibe). Then you'll have a final short jaunt through some more enemies as you move to the boss fight.

Considering the 2980 yen launch price tag (roughly US$27), it feels like this game will be a tough sell. The presentation is a bit rough and it doesn't really offer anything too novel on the STG mechanics side. However, big EDF fans will probably get some enjoyment and be used to the series' trademark jankiness. And STG fans who want to try everything may find something to like. This would be a phenomenally cool bonus with EDF5 or something (who knows, maybe it could be for a future western EDF5 localization), or even as a cheaper PSN release. But as a stand alone game, the price point is really pushing it considering what's on offer.
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Re: Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

Post by BulletMagnet »

Cheers for the impressions, guess we'll have to keep an eye out and see if they plan on sending this our way in some form...
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Re: Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

Post by soupbones »

hamfighterx wrote:
BulletMagnet wrote:No idea what the odds might be for a localization (or whether the thing will be good enough to merit one)
So I bought this off the JPN PSN Store today, and I'd say the odds for western localization are EXTREMELY good based on the fact that all menus, story, and in game text are already in English by default - both on my US and Japanese accounts. They could seriously throw this on the US/UK stores today and it would be a fully localized game. There's some spoken Japanese in the in-game cutscenes/radio chatter, but that's all subtitled in English. It's very rare to see any written Japanese, and even when you do (like a controller button function picture in one of the option menus) it's also presented in English.

As for quality... First time I tried playing, I spent 10 minutes and immediately decided to quit and do a Mahou Daisakusen run instead... Not a great first impression. However, I went back to it several hours later and started enjoying myself more. All of the below are first impressions from like an hour with the game, so I'm no expert yet and haven't seen all of the game - but enough to get a better sense for what's going on.

When you start out, it's awfully visually confusing. Target-able bugs look like they're in the background, enemy fire is often a little hard to identify if you're used to more traditional STG bullets, and it's a little hard to figure out whether you're performing well. As you play more, you'll catch on. Oddly enough, the first level is a lot more confusing than the next few in terms of how much is going on in the background and knowing what you're supposed to be shooting/dodging. It's a full widescreen display, mostly vertically scrolling (and always shooting upwards) with some camera panning/zooming as you progress through each stage. Enemies can be pretty large, but aren't all that detailed - everything is 3D modeled in Unity, but gameplay is a strictly 2D shooting affair. It's not a looker by any stretch of the imagination, and some levels are uglier than others (2nd level underground ant tunnels are a lot of boring reddish-brown, but something like the stage 3 city area has a nice color palette and some decent background elements).

Controls are simple: 3 buttons (defaulting to all shoulder buttons: L2, R1, R2 - and you can control your character with d-pad or left analog stick on a standard PS4 pad). Shoot is R2. You pre-select two weapons before each mission, and can swap them on the fly with R1. L2 along with a direction does a quick dash. You start out with 2 weapons, but can permanently acquire more weapons in 5 categories - from long range fire types, to focused lasers, strong short range blasts, homing weapons (huge on-screen box in which your homing weapon will lock-on to enemies a la Panzer Dragoon, but much slower rate of fire than most weapons), or strong but slow sniper weapons. You're stuck with the two weapons you selected prior to entering the mission, as far as I know, so choosing the right two weapons for the job and making sure they complement each other is a major element of strategy.

The main gameplay mechanic is an energy meter shared between shooting (both weapons) and dashing. Dashes take something like 1/4 of your bar, weapons deplete the energy bar at a different rate depending on weapon. If your meter runs out, you basically "overheat" and will be unable to fire and will move slowly for several seconds before the meter recharges to full. You want to avoid this overheating, which you can do by stopping your fire to let the energy bar recharge - after a brief delay with very slow recovery, the meter recharges quickly to full. Balancing some weaker/slower weapons that deplete the bar slowly with switches to your other weapon (which might be something like a super fast meter-depleting but powerful close range attack) is your moment to moment focus, along with blasting the bugs and avoiding projectiles. You also end up leveling up your armor/HP bar over time - speaking of that, it's one big life bar on the left hand side of the screen (weapon energy is on the right side), you can take multiple hits, and when you hit 0 life you fail the mission.

Levels seem to be broken into sub-parts, and you can continue a failed mission from the beginning of each phase. First you'll start out with a typical flying/shooting portion with weak popcorn enemies. Then with a brief in-level transition scene, you'll enter a sort of "challenge" phase where you're on a single screen and need to kill as many enemies as possible as they pour onto the screen, with a reward based on # killed (it sort of gives me the classic Galaga "Challenging Stage" vibe). Then you'll have a final short jaunt through some more enemies as you move to the boss fight.

Considering the 2980 yen launch price tag (roughly US$27), it feels like this game will be a tough sell. The presentation is a bit rough and it doesn't really offer anything too novel on the STG mechanics side. However, big EDF fans will probably get some enjoyment and be used to the series' trademark jankiness. And STG fans who want to try everything may find something to like. This would be a phenomenally cool bonus with EDF5 or something (who knows, maybe it could be for a future western EDF5 localization), or even as a cheaper PSN release. But as a stand alone game, the price point is really pushing it considering what's on offer.
Nice impressions!

I picked this up last week as well - really liking it, despite all the visual jank.

One thing to note is the grind you need to do in order to unlock all the weapons.

During runs, you get Armor and Weapon drops. Armor drops are straight forward and add to your life meter during the next run. Weapons are blind boxed and won't be opened until you finish a level. If you die during a level, you're given the choice on where you would like to continue from (beginning, middle or final). Because you lose your weapons pick ups if you die before finishing a level, you'll want to always choose "Beginning" so you pick up weapons drops again. Otherwise, you'll finish the level with little to no weapon pickups.

I found the weapons make a huge difference in the enjoyment of this game - and your performance. I've gone back and replayed levels over and over again to score new weapon drops. From what I can tell, there are a lot of weapons to try out in the game.
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Re: Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

Post by BulletMagnet »

Headed to Steam next week (credit to the Shmups Twitter for the heads-up).
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Re: Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter

Post by Kyle »

It's out now on Steam! Gogogo
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