➤ God Eater 3, the review 🎮

God Eater 3 can count on a terribly fascinating setting, a post-apocalyptic scenario in which humanity has been decimated by the spread of mysterious Oracle Cell, energy molecules that devour everything they encounter and take the form of enormous, unstoppable beasts: the Aragami. Forced to take refuge within the walls of fortified cities, the survivors have found the only weapon capable of facing these monsters: the God Eater, special warriors compatible with Oracle Cells who in the transformation process are tied to large high-tech weapons, i God Arc. The latter are hybrid instruments, capable of assuming three different configurations: the starting one, which can be a broadsword, twin blades, a war hammer or an ax; a firearm equipped with varied bullets and firing modes; and finally the shape of jaws, when energy cells emerge from the device that bite enemies to inflict massive damage or recover resources once we have defeated them.

The first two episodes of the series basically told the development of these events and the progress of a war desperately carried on by a few, courageous fighters, who often move aboard huge motorized Caravans to find safe passages between a landing place and the other. In God Eater 3, however, the situation takes on even more disturbing contours, when the appearance of poisonous ashy clouds and new and more powerful Aragami pushes the human race to find a further solution, namely Adaptable God Eaters, or GEAs, capable of resist the ashes and therefore take charge of the most risky battles. The problem is that over the years these warriors have assumed the status of real slaves, even very young children caught among the poorest classes and forced to fight for life, or to sacrifice themselves if necessary.

The protagonists of the game are part of such a group, they live in a prison and see the light of the sun only when they are sent on a mission to face the Aragami, but fortunately things change when they encounter the busty Hilda Henriquez, owner of a Caravan and a safe harbor, Chrysantemum: the woman proves to be a faithful ally and allows the GEAs from Pennyworth to work for her, assuming the burden of the very high penalty for their release. The cargo that Hilda is carrying is in fact very special and she needs someone who is able to defend the expedition from the terrible Cinerei Aragami. But what's so important about the ship?

In short, the plot of God Eater 3 starts from very solid foundations, but soon turns on a series of stereotyped solutions, also and above all as regards the characters: it remains enjoyable for those who appreciate this type of narration, but in reality it is. it's just one of the many dated aspects of Bandai Namco production. The protagonist himself, who we can create using a simple editor at the beginning of the adventure, has the usual problem of being mute, and this element takes on frankly absurd connotations during the dialogues, which are resolved with a nod of the head where it would have been enough to engrave at least some "yes" and "no" to limit the problem. In short, identification seems to have been a top priority for developers, but with a faceless and voiceless protagonist, you inevitably lose involvement, wasting ideas and situations that with a different representation might have been more effective.

Gameplay and structure

The protagonist problem calls for continuity for the God Eater franchise, but that's not the only limitation of this new chapter. The philosophy that moved the authors was to change the cards compared to the second episode, evidently considered by many to be too slow and more cumbersome than usual, and therefore to introduce mechanics capable of speeding up the action, smoothing the edges of a ' experience that too often became frustrating, especially when the Aragami could move with agility and our character could not even reach them to hit them. The novelties of the gameplay; first of all the charged attack, which allows you to quickly project yourself towards the target after having hooked it, shortening the distances in an instant to score a few hits or to prevent the monster on duty from escaping and going to one of the sources present at the inside the scenarios, which allow you to recharge your vital energy.

There are several new maneuvers, but from the point of view of immediacy the "bite" on the fly certainly stands out, which transforms the God Arc into jaws much more quickly and makes the procedure, still long and tedious, necessary in practice obsolete and useless. for transformation. By choosing a balanced weapon, both for the blade and for the rifle shape, you can in short be very effective on the battlefield, completing even the most complex fights in a matter of minutes. Is there a problem with the difficulty level? Well, in our experience, by completing the campaign within twenty hours (but without completing all missions secondary, indeed leaving out a lot '), we happened to incur in the game over only once.

This undoubtedly means that the new approach makes the game easier and the necessary adjustments have not been made to avoid this phenomenon, but it is also true that teammates controlled by artificial intelligence, suitably enhanced, are allies. powerful, who not only know how to inflict enormous damage on enemies but are always careful to get back on track when we are on the ground. Our feeling is that the action survival genre goes in short to the new vision of God Eater, but at the same time it is not explained why the authors did not want to dare even more, revolutionizing a frankly cumbersome and not very customizable control system, born with the original controls in mind for PSP, and allowing a faster management of the God Arc, perhaps with the possibility of transforming it into a rifle by simply pressing the left trigger and then opening fire with the right, thus making the remote attack much less woody and slow to use.

The problem, however, is upstream: the formula of God Eater 3 is dated, and it is even more so since Capcom renewed the genre with Monster Hunter: World. Instead of looking ahead, the developers did the opposite, thinking of returning to the mechanics of the first God Eater rather than trying to bring the franchise into 2019. We realize that an operation like Bandai Namco is already carrying it out with Code Vein. but throw away such a suggestive and interesting lore by publishing a distinctly old-gen title, and proposing it to price full, it does not seem a far-sighted choice, quite the contrary.

In addition to the gameplay there is in fact an evident structural problem: the approximately one hundred missions available, between main and secondary, all take place in the same six or seven scenery: discreetly large but terribly generic settings, devoid of any interactive element and almost always completely disconnected from the narrative, that is to say from what the characters should find once they leave the Caravan. The battles are resolved quickly, and so the whole system takes on the characteristics of a not too clever expedient to artificially increase the duration of the game, but forcing us to always do the same things and always face the same enemies. Some Aragami have been added, it is true, and the roster of monsters is therefore quite rich and guessed, but the reasoning remains valid.

Cooperative missions and assaults

God Eater 3 includes a cooperative multiplayer mode that comes in two different forms. On the one hand, the standard cooperative, available for four participants, which can be accessed through the terminals present in the base and is organized with simple rooms. On the other of the special assignments, the assaults, in which up to eight players work together to take out a very powerful Aragami within a time limit, bringing home rich rewards in case of success. We were able to try both options, encountering some small latency problems perhaps due to the country of origin of other users.

PlayStation 4 Trophies

God Eater 3 allows you to get a total of 32 Trophies, unlockable on the one hand by completing the actions necessary to complete the missions of the campaign, therefore defeating every single Aragami that we will face; on the other hand by carrying out more particular operations, which perhaps revolve around the cooperative mode, special missions and the crafting system.

Graphics and sound

The dated nature of God Eater 3 inevitably extends to the technical sector, and this unfortunately represents a negative surprise. The series was in fact born as a cross-platform product for PSP and PlayStation Vita, therefore castrated at the origin, and the second episode landed on the platforms of the current generation only in the form of a remaster. In short, we expected from this third chapter, the first designed specifically for PlayStation 4 and PC, a substantially better visual rendering, and instead we found ourselves faced with very generic graphic solutions, to highlight a low production value. Aragami are probably the coolest thing the game has to show, along with a couple of cutscene made by an animation studio with controfiocchi, but otherwise we are not there: the characters have improved only slightly, they still have static hair and fabrics, and their appearance appears extremely stereotyped, with a fan service (see Hilda's gigantic boules) which often seemed out of place.

The most significant scene is when the team reaches the Chrystantemum dock, which should be a beautiful place and instead shows itself as the old-gen graphics fair. A very similar speech can be made for the scenarios, which as mentioned are too few for the number of missions and appear generic, devoid of personality. On PS4 Pro you can select two different modes, 4K e 1080p, but who knows what differences are not noticed, apart from perhaps a slightly greater fluidity in the second case. We played by selecting the dialogues in Japanese with subtitles in Spanish, noticing some nice tricks of our local translators ("do you take it, madam?") And appreciating some music from the soundtrack, which, however, are repeated to exhaustion in the phases between a mission and the other, when you go around the base in order to carry out the obligatory interactions for the progression of the story. Some of the effects felt downright ugly to us.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Price 70,98 € Resources4Gaming.com

6.0

Readers (12)

6.3

Your vote

God Eater 3 is a traditional action survival that comes out of time, fielding a particularly limited structure and mechanics that are revised and more dynamic than the second chapter, but still linked to a cumbersome and outdated conception of this trend. It seems that the series has not yet managed to put its old-gen origins behind it, but debuting with the first chapter designed specifically for PC and PS4 with a product of this level, sold at full price, seems to us a sensational own goal and a serious mortgage on the possible future of the franchise. Which is a shame, because as pointed out several times, the setting of God Eater is very fascinating and deserves a more inspired, curated and courageous representation.