Title: God Eater: Resurrection
Format: PlayStation Network Download (PS4 7.5 GB) (PSV 3.36 GB)
Release Date: June 28, 2016
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Developer: Bandai Namco Studio / Shift
Original MSRP: $19.99
ESRB Rating: T
God Eater: Resurrection is also available on PC.
The PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita download versions were used for this review.
A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.
PS Nation Review Policy

God Eater: Resurrection is a third-person, squad-based action game where you build your own character to battle the Aragami with interesting characters from the God Eater universe. The Aragami are strange, ravenous monsters that appeared in the 2050s. Mankind has been able to harness the power of the Aragami – Oracle Cells – to forge weapons that are the only effective means of killing them.

Gameplay:
Having not played God Eater the first time on the PSP, I would say that the gameplay here is very similar to Freedom Wars on PS Vita. You have a custom character, a base set of stock clothes, and one of each weapon type to customize your character.

Once you have finished the introduction and the tutorial you’re taken to the main base, or hub, where you can interact with the NPCs and teammates, craft weapons, shop, and choose your next mission. The missions are divided up into levels of difficulty, with one single story mission inside each group that will change as you progress the main story.

You’re free to replay any mission after you’ve completed it once, and on subsequent playthroughs of a story mission, you’re allowed you to customize your team members.

The controls are a bit different than similar types of games I’ve played before, but are fully customizable. You’re given one melee weapon which can also be converted into a gun with the tap of the R1 trigger. You can swap the different melee weapons at any time before the mission, as well as the different types of guns.

The melee weapons range from knives and swords, to large hammers, axes, and scythes. As for the gun types, they’re your typical sniper rifle, shotgun, rifle, gatling, etc.

When you start a mission, you’re usually placed on top of a ledge it doesn’t actually start until you proceed forward. However, the clock starts running as soon as the loading screen is finished.

Some missions allow you to pick up to three or four team members and customize your team while the story missions usually have you and another main story character. Once you beat the mission that introduces the main story character, they are then choosable for the optional missions.

The earlier missions, in difficulty Levels One and Two, are pretty simple, consisting of fighting multiple low-level Aragami. Once every few missions, you’ll go up against one or two tougher Aragami, but none of it seemed too difficult.

The game seems like it’s packed full of different weapons, equipment, and costumes as well as many different missions. As I progressed the story in the second difficulty level, more and more optional missions would pop up. Mainly these are good for collecting materials and currency to beef up your characters.

You’re also able to customize the other NPC fighters by going to the terminal in your quarters and customizing their loadouts. It also seems like later in the game you’ll be able to change the NPC costumes and different weapon sets.

Overall, the game seems good to mediocre gameplay-wise. I do think it’s a lot of fun and it definitely performs well. While I wasn’t completely blown away, it is a good one to consider if you’re into Monster Hunter type games.

Rated against Monster Hunter, I think this one is much more fast paced and fun to play and definitely has a better story to it. The story is definitely the portion of the game that I enjoy the most. While it’s not anything too original, it has some pretty interesting characters and lore.

There were a few issues that I had with the game, such as no health bar for the enemies. As your team is hacking away on the enemies, it seems like it takes forever to take the larger ones down.

Without as health bar, it leaves you completely clueless about how much damage you’re doing and how much further you need to hack on the enemy before they finally die. There’s also no Easy Mode, so the enemies can’t be made easier so you can just get through the game.

Another huge issue that I had is that the Share functionality isn’t integrated well at all. If you want to take a screenshot or video clip, the game does not pause when you hit the Share button. So, if you hit the button to go into the Share menu the game keeps right on going.

This is particularly frustrating if you’re trying to take a snapshot of a movie sequence, you’ll end up missing all of the dialog if you’re not careful.

Also on that note, there doesn’t seem to be any way to pause during a cutscene at all – even when hitting the PS Button, when you come back to the game after a while, the cutscene is already over.

If you hit the Options button hoping to have the cutscene pause, it will abruptly end the cutscene and you’ll need to reload to see it. Since the cutscenes are not accessible in an archive somewhere, you’re kind of stuck reloading if you accidentally hit a button during the scene.

Visuals:
On the PS4, the game plays very well and is very smooth. I didn’t have any lock-ups or any slowdown. All of the character models are nice and crisp, and it has a fairly nice art style.

On the other hand, the PS Vita version took quite a hit in the graphics department. However, it does seem to run pretty well, so I suppose the developers had to sacrifice some visual quality in exchange for better performance. If you don’t plan on playing this game on the go, I would definitely recommend getting the PS4 version over the Vita version.

Audio:
As far as the audio is concerned, it sounds pretty good on both the PS4 and PS TV. The game makes good use of surround sound, and the back speakers are well-utilized.

The soundtrack is pretty good, and I really enjoyed the music. I didn’t feel the music was too repetitive and I’m also happy that you’re allowed to customize what music plays when you replay missions.

You’re able to choose the exact song that plays, the default song for the mission, or a random song. This is a feature I wish more games would employ.

The voice acting is all well done and is only in English. The Japanese voice tracks are unfortunately not available.

Online/Multiplayer:
The game offers both Cross-Save and Cross-Play functionality, along with full online co-op for both story and regular missions. There doesn’t seem to be a ton of online activity. At first, I couldn’t find a single team to join, but later in the afternoon, I managed to find someone to play with.

If you’re hoping for multiplayer game with tons of sessions to join, this one isn’t going to offer that. If you’ve got a friend or three, and you’re looking for something to co-op together, this is a great game for you.

I was able to play for an hour or so with a group of people and we went on several of the optional missions together and one of the more difficult story missions. The connection seemed very stable and I did not get kicked off or disconnected the entire time I played.

I also did not experience any lag or slowdowns during multiplayer and we had four human players with us. I would say, as far as online multiplayer goes, this game is well done.

The Cross-Save functionality works extremely well. You can upload your progress from your PS4 to the server and then download it to your PS TV or PS Vita, and vice-versa, without a hitch.

Conclusion:
Overall, I think God Eater: Resurrection is a decent game with a pretty good story. I really like the whole idea of the God Arc weapon system, where your gigantic blade turns into a huge mouth, devouring the Aragami.

I’d say that if you enjoy games like Freedom Wars, or other squad-based four-player action games, you’ll probably enjoy this one. There’s plenty of customization and things to find, bordering on excessive, so someone could spend tons of time in this game making their character look awesome and maxing out weapons.

I would most recommend this to people who have a group of friends who are looking for a good co-op game to play together. Since it’s Cross-Play, it doesn’t matter if your friends have a PS4, PS TV, or a PS Vita – everyone will be able to play online together and progress through the story.

While not perfect, God Eater: Resurrection is a solid game with a good story, and definitely worth checking out.

Score:

* All screenshots used in this review were taken directly from the game using the Vita’s built in screen capture feature and the Share functionality on the PlayStation 4.

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