Byte Size – God Eater 3
The God Eater series is not something I am familiar with, lets have that out in the open. As a sci-fi soap opera, I’m sure it would be interesting to delve into this ravaged version of Earth, but as it stands being a virgin in the God Eater universe I’m a little more dazed and confused than leading the charge.
The game begins with a bunch of God Eaters (err, heroes) being chained up in a prison and let out to perform superhuman fights against shadowy monsters called Aragami, before humbly going back to their cell for some protracted dialogue.
Once out in the wild, you find yourself revisiting a relatively small map a few times over wielding an enormously oversize weapon (err, God Arc) with which you can heavy or light attack the beeJeezus out of the big beasties. Beating them senseless builds up some combo meters which you can use to unleash a devastating Burst attack or link up and enhance a combo with one of your party.
The other useful aspect of the God Arc (err, weapon) is that it can be transform into a projectile weapon to shoot the beasties from afar. Also handy, until you start unearthing the old chestnut of bullet types and various beasties having various resistance – most likely the versus the load-out you are carrying. My absolute favourite thing about this and probably the entire game is that you can build up customised bullet types from a range of functions. Effect, Area Effect, Homing, Ballistic, Laser bearing in mind that the more complex your bullet is, the more ammo it will use up and that ammo is a bar that needs to be guarded via melee combat. Phew.
As the story progresses your band of heroes grows and you find yourself with the goal of building your own Port (err, homebase) and meet plenty of interesting characters along the way. Mostly leaving you to wonder at what science fiction engineering masterpiece is keeping those breasts in that blouse.
There is plenty of loot on offer and crafting can be learnt to not only create essentials, but also more glamorous costumes for your God Eater. Even the hunt for loot seems to miss the target, keeping an eye out for tiny glowing sparks, not even a visual indication fo what is, just a speck of light on the floor and they can be a pain to pick up in the middle of combat.
On the whole its an enjoyable romp, purists will no doubt love it to bits, but I find the cycle of really very short combat sections followed by wandering around the hub having to have conversations before being able to move forward somewhat distracting. The combat is fun to a point, but given some of the controls and the reliance on remembering how or when to use certain combos it never really gets past the hack and slash approach for me.
