Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain Reviews
I wouldn't recommend Iron Rain over Earth Defense Force 5, since it fails to deliver the distilled, charming experience I adore from the Sandlot series.
Is this an EDF game that EDF fans will enjoy? Honestly, I ended up feeling fairly disappointed. Which is a shame because I think there are a lot of neat ideas here. Weapons feel rather underpowered across the board, and enemies just have far too much health for their own good. Couple this with incredibly annoying AI, and it’s just a very frustrating experience. Suffice to say, it’s pretty lackluster compared to the mainline EDF titles. The game took me 10 hours to beat, though I put about a total of 30 into it with harder difficulties. At a $60 price tag, I can’t really recommend it. A sale might make this a more tempting offer. Overall, if you’re looking for a good EDF game, I’d give this a pass and look into the mainline titles instead.
Iron Rain echoes Insect Armageddon as a spin-off that tries to take the well-loved series in a new direction. Unfortunately, it drained out a lot of the charm that made the older titles so fun to begin with.
A more grounded approach and a fresh coat of paint fail to address the series' inherent flaws, as the cheesy charm of fighting giant insects is lost in the process.
As fun as it can be on occasion, Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain is too flawed for me to fully enjoy. The heaps of technical issues and unbalanced and repetitive missions, combined with a fairly dysfunctional online mode, make Iron Rain an unfortunately bland mess.
If you're a fan of the previous titles, go ahead and buy Iron Rain, you're not going to be disappointed by this one. If you're not a rabid fan of giant bugs, give it a miss or pick it up in a sale. It's a giggle after all if a little frustrating.
Everything about it makes sense, and it’s a better game at the end of the day due to the added polish. However, it’s not nearly good enough to get recommended with the games it’s now competing with and has lost much of its original appeal along the way.
With a different developer, Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain brings a lot of new elements to the series that can revive or break a certain nostalgia and familiar style of its veteran fans. Still, it's still a fun EDF-esque game and a great way for newbies to get their first taste of Earth Defense Force.
Review in Czech | Read full review
It’s a different kind of EARTH DEFENSE FORCE, but not necessarily a bad one. IRON RAIN carries on the B-movie schlock in a new series, all in good fun. It’s like the newer Starship Troopers movies, they have newer CGI but it’s still not that great, and it has changed many things about it that you’re used to. You still watch of course, because it’s a good time. EARTH DEFENSE FORCE: IRON RAIN is bug-squashing fun at its finest, with some changes to core systems you may or may not like.
Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain is more of the same Earth Defense Force, and that’s great for fans. You will still spend your time battling giants, trying the save the Earth from certain doom. Even for how cheesy the acting can be, for how slow it feels, and for how janky the animation looked, I still had fun doing it.
I personally think Earth Defense Force: Iron rain is pretty good, maybe not so much my style of gaming as I didn’t feel the “nag” of wanting to go back and play it more like I usually would with many other games, the storyline is nice but I also think if I were to play the previous games I would understand the game and enjoy it more! I am going to give this game the thumb culture silver award as it did open my eyes to a whole new genre of gameplay, I just didn’t have the ” I NEED TO PLAY NOW” feeling towards it.
When compared to the other entries in the series, Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain is a major low point. The various changes that improve on the formula are outweighed by other design choices that actively hurt the title's overall appeal. The actual combat still has some of the magic the series is known for, and even if online co-op is barely there unless you coordinate with others beforehand, the game is still fun to play with friends. If you're new to the series, playing Iron Rain won't be so bad, but if you've already killed bugs several times before, this title won't be able to scratch that itch again.
Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain sacrifices the franchise standards of city scale battlefields and hundreds of enemies for the sake of flashier graphics, but in doing so loses some of the unique charm the series offers. The grind required to unlock exciting weapons undermines the fun potential, unless you're looking to spend a lot of time with the game.
For more on Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain, check out our interview with series producer, Nobuyuki Okajima, where we discuss the series and more.
What hurts the game the most isn't the lack of follow through on its initial critical gumption, but rather a lack of compelling drama in its later levels.
Unpretentious entertainment that drags too many technical and artistic aspects too outdated today.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain plays around with the concepts players have gotten used to with previous EDFs. Classes are open, and the new Prowl Rider offers a new flavor of play that hasn't been seen in the franchise before. Weapons are open, giving more player freedom in terms of character loadouts. But Iron Rain loses some things from the main series, notably the huge swarms of enemies in favor of larger, more meaningful enemies. It's a fine entry in the EDF franchise, but it doesn't step far beyond its predecessors sadly.
Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain makes a few much-needed tweaks to the old formula, but it's still just another bug hunt.
Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain is definitely a very different experience to past games in the series.
Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain improves on class and loot mechanics but fails at delivering an entertaining level design. The new war movie inspired presentation falls flat compared to the previous B-movie horror aesthetic.