Opinionated Slant

Nomming “gods” for fun and profit

I can confidently say that this is the most anime game I’ve ever played...and I’ve played games that are actually based off of specific anime.

The only thing that would make it more Japanese would be if they had the voice actors actually speak Japanese instead of English, but alas, in my version they didn’t do that.

Impractical outfits, impractically large weapons, obligatory ubiquitous monsters ravaging the human population, actual anime opening sequence when you start up the game, pseudo anime semi-profound/semi-insane philosophizing, way too young frontline soldiers who are way too effective for their age, heartless adults who send children out to do their fighting for them, ‘old’ characters who are in their twenties and younger than I am, post apocalyptic cityscapes, annoyingly long exposition dialogue, the reality of a hellish life in which teenagers are sent out from where they live in a tiny bunker to die fighting horrifying monsters because humanity is on the brink of extinction, and...awkward cutesy moments in between the missions?

Yep, the anime is so strong with this one that it has collapsed in on itself and formed a vortex of sheer tropes, consuming everything in its wake like some kind of...I dunno, spinny black hole thingie or something.

Yeah, I’m running a little low on metaphors here.

You’ll either absolutely love these things or absolutely hate them.

Well, I mean you could also just not care about them that much one way or another, but that’s not quite as much fun, now is it?

So why did I get the game? Two reasons. One, it looked like fun, and two, I got two games in one package. I bought God Eater 2 and got the first game included with it, which I thought was a pretty good deal.

Also, costumes.

Costuuuumes.

So, who is the main character of this post apocalyptic shindig? Why, it’s blank/no personality/silent protagonist! I should’ve known.

Step into the absolute nothingness of yet another player self insert and design yourself an amusing looking main character with no voice actor who never talks, except in cutaway scenes where the game says you ‘explain’ something to someone else. This is actually less annoying then I’m making it sound, but if you know what’s going on, all of the nodding and shrugging and pointing in the cutscenes gets to be a little silly after a while.

And it’s not like the character you make in God Eater doesn’t have a voice actor, because they do, it’s just that none of their dialogue is voiced in the story. Instead, you have a collection of one liners, orders you can give the NPC’s, and combat wails/grunts/exclamations. And you can choose the voice set you like at the beginning of the game.

The character creation system is hardly the most in depth I’ve ever seen. An Elder Scrolls game, this is not. But you can add all sorts of amusing flair to your character, such as eye patches, bandages, tattoos, tiny hats, cat ears, microphones, horns, etc. etc. etc. Lots of little things.

 After designing myself a cute character with hair covering her left eye and a cat ear hat, I selected the most amusing voice set I could find and started the game proper.

After sticking my hand into a device that apparently bonds me with my weapon, I pulled out this honking big thing that looks like it weighs more than I do. And from then on, my character had this big ol’ bracelet on one hand that allows me to use the weapon, called a ‘god arc.’

For those of you overly concerned about such things, the creatures you fight are not gods in any way, shape, or form, at least not as we consider such here in western societies. I believe this likely stems from a translation of the Japanese word ‘kami,’ but I’m not absolutely certain, as I only speak fanboy Japanese, which is enough to make a fool of myself with, but not much use otherwise. I think the kami are this concept of ‘gods,’ which are more like immortal spirits than pantheonic deities (Zeus/Thor) or the concept of the all powerful, all knowing Christian God.

So no, you’re not really eating gods in a video game entitled ‘god eater.’ And though there was some controversy about the name originally (I think they changed it at one point, somewhere) nobody really cares anymore. What it really breaks down to is monsters.

Monsters everywhere.

They don’t even call them gods in the narrative, though there’s some handwaving towards the expression. They call them Aragami.

No not Origami, Aragami.

I don’t really feel like going into the gobbledygook that makes up the Aragami origin story or why they do what they do. Suffice it to say, monsters came out of nowhere and started eating humans, eventually driving humans to the brink of extinction, and here we are.

You know what I finally realized when I started playing this game?

Monsters...are the Japanese zombies.

As ubiquitous as zombies are in Western culture and media, monsters like this are just as ubiquitous in anime. They are freaking everywhere. What’s happening in almost every single fantasy anime you’ve ever seen?

Monsters.

What’s happening in soooo many end of the world scenarios in anime set in the modern day?

Monsters.

Comedy anime, harem anime, mecha anime, action anime...if there’s any hint of the supernatural, there are most likely monsters.

Almost wherever you go in anime, monsters are there.

And the God Eater series is a monster hunting game. So, what does this mean exactly?

Repetition.

Endless, endless repetition.

Leave base, kill the things, return to base, watch cutscene if applicable, tweak equipment, mix, repeat, ad nauseam.

This is what the game is. There is nothing else. If you aren’t aware of this going into it and don’t like this sort of thing, you will be an unhappy person if you buy this game. If you do like this sort of thing, or view it as a sort of numb, zenlike experience, you’ll likely be fine.

As for me, there are many things that I do like about this game, and these things are mostly enough to make up for the extreme repetitiveness.

I haven’t beaten it yet, though.

The battle system is actually pretty fun. You run around fighting monsters that are usually much larger than you are, and you dodge about their knees, striking at their nether regions when their back is turned usually.

Oh and you use your god arc to take bites out of them constantly. It changes shape into a terrifying shadow mouth thing that opens wide and chomps on them. This will give you a damage bonus and make you glow while you’re in ‘boost’ mode, in addition to letting you double jump without the associated skill. Boost mode has a timer that’s constantly draining, and the only way you can increase it is to take another bite out of the monster with your god arc.

Mmm, tasty.

These moves also have a chance of reducing the Aragami’s defense in the area you’ve attacked, allowing you to do much more damage to areas that were previously heavily armored after repeated chompings.

Unfortunately, your moves are easily interrupted by any sort of attack from the monsters, many of which have large, sweeping AOE attacks. What this means is that you can be interrupted mid chomp and you won’t get an increase in your boost timer because some creature twenty times your size just sent you flying with a tail sweep or something.

The fights against the larger monsters really feel like David and Goliath scenarios.

I have charged headlong at monsters that no sane individual would want to take on with an army of tanks if they didn’t have to, armed only with an oversized scythe/sniper rifle god arc.

Oh yeah, you can also transform your weapon from a melee mode to a gun mode.

There are a variety of different weapons available for use. The smallest, fastest blades do the least damage and the biggest, heaviest weapons do the most, while the multishot guns cost the least amount of ammo per shot, and the sniper rifles/grenade launcher weapons cost the most. You can custom design a weapon using an intricate system of abilities, stat boosters, and leveling up the weapon itself, most of which cost monster parts and money that you gather while you’re in the field.

You can also use a shield to block most of the damage from a hit and prevent yourself from flying backward and landing awkwardly, if you manage to get it up in time. The bucklers are the easiest to use, but give the least defense, while the huge tower shields provide the most defense, but are harder to get up in time to tank through a hit. Shields also give a static defense bonus, even when you’re not using them.

Your gear is the key to success in this game.

If you aren’t doing well, take a long look at what you have equipped and fiddle around with it until you’ve gotten something you like, or just have much higher stats...cause gear is just about the ONLY way you can increase your stats.

Unlike an RPG, the characters in God Eater do not level up at all. If you are not increasing your stats by getting yourself better gear, you will quickly find that the battles become unmanageably painful. The monsters you encounter get tougher and tougher, but you, weak little human, are only as tough as your god arcs.

The other way to get tougher is to change the skills you have equipped. And no, you don’t actually have any skills at the start of the game. You need to collect skills, and then pay money to learn them from the computer terminals. There are basic skills that reduce damage you take, and other more complicated skills that do a variety of things. You should be on top of your loadout any time you go from one chapter to another in the story, because the difficulty will jump and you’ll get access to more skills and better god arcs in the equipment upgrade interface.

If this all sounds complicated, well...I’m just getting started.

At the top of the screen you have three bars. There’s your HP, your stamina, and your OP bar. HP is self explanatory and stamina is reduced any time you do an attack with a melee weapon, or if you sprint, jump, or dodge. Stamina refills by standing still, and running out entirely will cause your character to hunch over and get their breath back, leaving you completely vulnerable to whatever oversized nightmare fuel is in the area, attempting to squish you into oblivion.

OP stands for ‘Oracle Power’ and this is solely used by your weapon’s gun mode. The OP bar does not regenerate by itself unless you have the appropriate skill equipped, so you can’t stay in gun mode very long. You can get your ‘ammo’ back by switching to your melee weapon and smacking the monsters around for a bit or taking bites out of them.

Interestingly, I found a menu that allowed me to customize my own ammunition for my guns...and then I spent waaaaay too much time playing around with it. It’s stupidly complicated and it comes with a target practice simulator, showing the arc of your shot, the distance between you and the target which you can change, and the damage you deal/OP consumed per shot. And of course you can change the type of shot, from shots that paralyze enemies, to shots that stun the, to shots that add different elemental effects, to healing shots, to...to...

Nope, I can’t do this anymore.

Suffice it to say that if you are a power gamer/master of twinkage, you will probably love all of this stuff. The rest of you may just want to use the base ammunition and switch them out every now and then according to the situation and weapon you have equipped.

I haven’t even mentioned the skills you can rip out of abandoned god arcs you collect and apply to your equipment. You have to play for a while before they unlock that though.

Heck, there may even be some other way to increase your power that I haven’t unlocked yet, because I’m not far enough in the story.

When you embark on a mission at the beginning of the game, you’ve only got one or two NPC’s that accompany you, but later on, you can have a full team of three NPC’s following you around through the levels, chattering on about stuff that’s happening. Most of the in combat banter, I pretty much tune out, but the voice of the radio girl monitoring you while you play can get pretty annoying after a while. You can turn her broadcasts off before you go on the missions if you want.

Interestingly, the AI in the game is fairly decent and the NPC’s don’t get easily killed by the monsters you fight, usually. You can send out orders to your team to split up and search the level for monsters, or consolidate on you, or scatter in a retreat from the enemy, or target a specific enemy for annihilation. If you have NPC’s with healing shots, they’ll attempt to heal you with them once your HP drops below a certain point. Unfortunately, if you’re moving fast, such as attempting to save your skin while a giant monster is shooting rockets at you or something, their healing shot might miss, and they usually don’t try to heal you a second time, or they might not have enough OP to do it a second time, as healing shots are one of the most expensive OP shots in the game.

So that’s kind of annoying.

Your best bet is to include two NPC’s who can heal in the tougher battles, as they will attempt to not only heal you, but each other as well.

And I really hope you like these people, cause it will be a looooong time in the game before anyone else ever gets a healing ability. And no, as far as I’ve managed to figure out, there is no way to shoot yourself with a healing shot, so you have to use items to keep yourself alive in a mission if you’ve got no healers or your current healer is a terrible shot or something.

If you find that your NPC’s are having trouble in the fights, you might want to take a look at which skills they have equipped and purchase new ones for them. The NPC’s you use more often will gain AP, which is what you use to purchase their skills, and man are they chatty about it. You get commentary from the peanut gallery any time you do anything with them. Depending on whose skills you pick at the end of each mission for a bonus, you’ll unlock neat little ‘hanging out’ cutscenes with the characters, which results in improved combat performance from them.

After a while you’ll get alternative versions of the NPC’s with different weapons, skillsets, and outfit color schemes. You can even buy healing shots for a lot of them, which is super helpful.

Unlike you, a lot of the NPC’s are locked to only one type of god arc.

These are ‘old type’ god arcs, and you are a ‘new type,’ which can switch back and forth between guns and melee weapons. Applicably, this means that you probably want the melee only god arcs to be super tough, cause getting in there and mixing it up is all they’ll be doing, and the gun only god arcs should probably be equipped with the healing stuff, cause they’ll be hanging back, shooting at the monsters.

Or you, if you happen to accidentally get in the way of one of their shots.

Though multiple people can attack a monster and not hit each other with their melee weapons, you cannot shoot through your friends.

So don’t try.

It hurts.

And certain NPC’s, who shall not be named, are notorious for blazing away at a monster with their chaingun, no matter who might be in their way, trying to attack it directly.

Annoying. Oh so annoying.

Alternatively, you can also just play cooperatively with someone online. This works quite well, I must say. I was playing with a friend of mine who lives in Malaysia and we experienced no noticeable lag.

It was nice.

When playing cooperatively, you get one less NPC to go on the missions with you, and you can have someone with better equipment help you out on the more difficult missions if you want. You don’t share rewards and the items you can pick up in the missions spawn for each player, so if you pick it up, it’s not gone for the other players.

Very nice.

Other humans will be able to act much more autonomously than the NPC’s, of course, but if there are two people, they will usually take away one of your tagalong NPC’s in absence of any orders to the contrary. If you can get a full team of four, I can imagine shenanigans happening.

“Why did you agro all of the monsters in the mission and bring them back here?”

“Heeeeeeeelp!!”

*shrug*

The cool part is that you can exchange character cards with the other players and then you can use them in non story missions afterwards, even in single player, though of course they will be controlled by the AI. This can be incredibly helpful if you get the card of someone who has much better gear than you.

The game should run pretty easily on just about any recent computer system, as the graphics are only a bit better than later PS2 games. It’s a port from one of the handheld game systems, but it’s a pretty good port, I have to say. It’s stable, no content was cut for the PC, and it’s relatively affordable.

Wow, they didn’t screw us over for once? I’m impressed.

Of course, I haven’t played God Eater 2 yet, so maybe that one is terrible. Hopefully not, though.

I guess I’ve said about all I have to say about the gameplay, which is the main draw of the game. It’s fun, fast paced, and unfortunately hampered by repetitive levels and enemy types.

The only other thing I’d mention is that you can collect a huge variety of costume parts throughout the game. It rewards you for increasing the story by giving you access to new costumes you can make, using rare monster drops that you collect.

Yes, you build clothes out of monster bits.

Don’t judge me man. I didn’t make this game.

So, back to the plot.

You play a teenager who’s been drafted, (or uh...’volunteered’ maybe?) into the God Eater program. After a single bout in a practice simulator with an oversized weapon that probably weighs more than you do, that you shouldn’t even be able to lift, you are sent out with a more experienced member of the program on a simple mission to kill one of the ravenous monsters that have almost completely wiped out humanity.

Things only escalate from there.

You find out that you’re buying time for humanity to finish some kind of ‘Aegis’ project. (Read: shield of some kind) The number and toughness of the monsters you hunt steadily increases, but the tone of the game is pretty straightforward and nowhere near as dark as the story themes would seem to indicate it should be. I mean, you’re stuck in a tiny bunker with a few other teenagers and a couple of higher ranked peeps in their early twenties and you take commands to go outside and fight things that have mostly wiped out all of the human armies and cities.

The areas you can explore when you’re not fighting are limited to the rookie barracks, the more experienced barracks, the medical wing, and the command staff floor. Oh and the entrance area with the store and the big exit door.

This is not much room.

Occasionally, some other random people will show up in this area, indicating that there are more people elsewhere, but you’re not there, are you? If those places are nicer than the bunker, we never see them, and we know that there are multiple other God Eater divisions.

This situation just sucks.

There’s an abrupt tonal shift a little ways into the story, as some random dude you don’t even know gets killed by a monster right in front of your face.

Pay attention kids! This is serious. Did you see what happened to good ol ‘whatshisname?’ Now random NPC’s you’ve only just met are going to be sad. You don’t want that, do you?

Oh and your squad leader has one rule:

“Don’t die.”

I’ll let you guess what happens to the easygoing, affable dude, as you progress through the story.

Go on, guess.

Anyway, after a bunch of blablabla from the resident glasses scientist in between missions, you move on with your genocidal quest to hunt the Aragami into extinction before they do the same to you, right up until you find one that’s in human form.

Yeah they have bullshit shapeshifting powers. Where do you think the humans got the god arcs from?

This is actually the high point of the game’s story for me.

The human form Aragami girl eats other Aragami exclusively and she has no real starting personality other than being motivated by hunger. Shenanigans ensue, involving making sure she gets enough to eat, (don’t want her wondering whether or not humans are ‘yummy’) teaching her how to speak and interact with other humans, and eventually finding her something to wear other than rags. Along the way you discover that she’s not the only human/Aragami hybrid and there are some cute friendship/bonding moments with her as her personality develops. Also, she’s fairly effective in combat, being a sort of Aragami super-predator.

Her comments about the other Aragami while she fights are pretty amusing.

I don’t know how the game ends, because I keep doing every single extra mission available, before I progress with the story. This gains me the valuable monster parts I need to ensure that my equipment is up to snuff and my character can strut her stuff in style (or in a ridiculous pinstripe suit, or whatever I want).

The monsters keep getting bigger and nastier though.

 Anyway, fun game. You should give it a go if any of this sounds interesting to you. In the meantime, I’m going to put my cat ear hat back on, grab my scythe and my friends, and get back out there and hunt.