Starting off on the PlayStation Portable back in 2010, The God Eater franchise has been around for sixteen years, but realistically only has three titles in those sixteen years. God Eater 2: Rage Burst, much like its predecessor God Eater: Resurrection, is an updated port of the PlayStation Portable sequel to God Eater. Those who played Resurrection will be right at home with Rage Burst as the mechanics are exactly the same.
God Eater 2: Rage Burst Review
The story of God Eater 2: Rage Burst puts your newly created character into the infamous Blood Unit. This Unit is established for the special God Eaters who harness the hidden powers of Blood to defeat unique Aragami that even the most seasoned God Eaters can’t take down. The game’s story, much like everything else in the game, takes a long time to get going – around fifteen to twenty hours to precise! Weather the storm early on though, and you’ll find that when the story gets going it’s actually quite good. A new plague has begun ravaging the Far East branch known as the ‘Red Rain” and the Blood Unit must investigate what’s causing the Red Rain and help find a cure for its victims.
For the first fifteen hours you spend time getting to know your team in the Blood Unit while going on special companion missions with them. Each member brings with them their own unique personality and quirks, but I found that the Blood Unit just doesn’t have that same connection to each other that I saw in Resurrection. As the story progresses you encounter God Eaters from Resurrection such as Alisa and Kota who can join you on missions but without that special Blood ability your Blood Unit brings with them to battle.
Rage Burst assumes you have played Resurrection; at least that’s what it seems like. The controls and tutorial are not very good and a lot of the game’s mechanics and special moves take a long time to even unlock. Mechanics like upgrading your weapons are things that you unlock fifteen hours into the game, but thankfully you can craft new ones to keep you from feeling underpowered. Learning to switch your bullet type or even craft your own ammo was only taught to me when I was well over ten hours into the game. Even though you are told you can do something, truth is you can’t until the game shows you you can, which led to a lot of pointless internet searches to figure things out. Everything is just kind of thrown at you with little to no information early in the game and you’re simply just left hanging wondering how to do it.
On the positive side Rage Burst 2 is full of items you can craft, modify, and upgrade. Crafting brand new clothing items allows you to make your God Eater as unique as you want. Crafting your own bullets can really give you an edge in battle even though it is somewhat difficult to understand. The best part about it all is that Rage Burst is very generous with the crafting materials you can acquire. After completing missions you are rewarded with lost God Eater relic weapons that you can use to improve your own weapons. Equipping these lost relics on your weapon allows you to add extra damage from melee attacks or increase your ability to heal your party members.
You also get plenty of materials from completing missions and using your God Eater to “eat” the Aragami by holding down the Triangle button, which will allow you to steal materials from your foes. The only time I felt like I needed to grind for materials was in the later half of the game as the materials I needed only dropped from rare and very difficult to kill Aragami.
Pick-up-and-play missions
Rage Burst 2 is the perfect type of game to play in small bursts. Each mission can be completed in about ten to fifteen minutes. Combat is simple, but fighting can get pretty difficult if you don’t prepare properly. Preparing for your encounter will go a long way in determining how easy a mission will be. Each Aragami comes with its own elemental weaknesses and equipping the right ammo and melee weapon can make most fights a breeze. Rage Burst allows you to use any of the six weapons at your disposal, from long spears to giant hammers – everyone will find something to enjoy. Your weapons can also turn into four different types of guns that you can switch to on the fly with a simple tap of the R1 button allowing for long range battle if you don’t like to get your hands dirty.
At first, combat took some getting used to, but once mastered it becomes very addicting and the game becomes hard to put down. During combat you have plenty of options to choose from to take down these giant beasts. You can target their weak points with your guns and chip away at their health; go in and shatter their armor to reveal the meaty parts, causing critical damage; or you can even set traps to stun and poison your foe. There are options for everyone and everything.
Your party members are also some of the most competent ones I’ve experienced in a long time. Your party members will exploit enemy weaknesses, heal themselves and you whenever needed, and lay traps to keep the Aragami from fleeing and healing itself. Throughout my entire time with the game, none of my party members ever fell in combat and when I fell they would wait until the coast was clear to come and revive me.
Rage Bust offers four player co-op allowing you and your friends to take down Aragami together which at first is easy and simple, but for those looking for the bigger challenges it will take some serious skill, preparation, and teamwork. But when you get it right and take down that uber powerful Aragami, it’s intensely satisfying.
Graphically the game didn’t get as much of an upgrade I was hoping. Rage Burst received the same graphical upgrade that Resurrection did. The environments are as bland and boring as you can get for an apocalyptic world with massive open areas with nothing too neat to really look at. It also doesn’t help that there are so few locations for you to visit. The character models on the other hand look competent, keeping their unique anime look.
Much like Resurrection, Rage Burst’s soundtrack is pretty damn good. The awesome opening animation was accompanied with a catchy theme song and the music only got better after that. Mixing J-Pop with heavy rock and classic instruments like pianos and violins worked incredibly well. The voice acting is another story though. For the most part it’s competent but it’s not great. Returning characters like Alisa sound just fine while newcomers like Nana and Romeo make me want to turn their voices off. The voiceovers also sound like they were recorded and added into the game after it was finished. You can hear the voices as if they were dubbed into the game with a patch. It’s hard to describe but the voice overs sound more like a fan project was modded into a game that didn’t have voice overs from the start. Once you hear it you’ll know what I mean.
PSVita/PS4 Differences
Much like Resurrection the two versions of the game don’t vary much outside of the slightest graphical differences but in all honestly you will hardly notice the difference. The Vita version in my personal opinion looks much sharper and colorful compared to the PS4 version but that could be due to the smaller screen size. However, it’s actually the version I would recommend as the controls also fit better on a handheld. The other major difference is the price. The PS4 Version will cost you $59.99 while the Vita version is only $39.99, and you will also get God Eater: Resurrection free on PS4 with the purchase of the Day One Edition of the PS4 copy. Rage Burst unfortunately doesn’t offer Cross-Buy but does include Cross Save between the two versions of the if you choose to buy both copies.
God Eater 2: Rage Bust doesn’t change much from its predecessor but that’s not a bad thing. The shear amount of customization is easily overwhelming at first but becomes so damn satisfying when you can craft exactly what you need to take down that massive Aragami. Story and characters could have used a little more work, but the returning characters easily make up for that. Just don’t be discouraged from its dated graphics, weird voiceovers, and repetitive locations. Rage Bust has a lot of to offer and plenty of content to keep you playing for a long time.