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God Eater Burst supposedly is a Monster Hunter clone. I wouldn’t know for sure on account I’ve never played Monster-Hunter a day in my life. Regardless, the story is intriguing! Parasitic life devouring cells have fused together to create nasty creatures called Aragami. Much akin to the angels in Evangelion, Aragami have wiped out most of humanity  thus our last hope for survival  lies in the hands of a bunch of young adults. Instead of piloting living mecha however, each protagonist has a god arch, a weapon that can morph into a huge gun or a large blade. Additionally these weapons are “sentient” thus they can brandish jaws and eat parts of fallen Aragami to salvage beneficial genetic material allowing them to strengthen and modify themselves over time. As you collect various parts you can create new gun forms, new blade forms, and even unique bullets.

The characters are awkward anime clichés for the most part. Your friendly yet air-headed leader Lindow has such pearls of wisdom as “stay alive” and “work together”. The guy is supposed to be a tactical genius yet he comes off as a young clueless Keanu Reeves with long hair from the Bill & Ted days! (He’s also not above assigning you to dangerous missions while he goes on dates. What a tool!)

Soma is the quiet brooding loner with silver hair. Aka, he’s not a team player and he seems to be the love child of Sephiroth from FF7 and Riku from Kingdom Hearts.

Sakuya is the voluptuous modern day “sexy amazon” who gladly flaunts her physical assets for all the see. Luckily she’s also the person who will save your ass on the battlefield due to the fact she’s a skilled medic that can shoot you with healing bullets! (You heard me correctly. Shoot you with “healing” bullets. I’m not making this stuff up!)

Last up is Kota, the upbeat, plucky, and clumsy supporting “bro-buddy” who is the first hapless sap to befriend your silent protagonist. (Actually, Alisa is last but I haven’t met her just yet. Er,sorry!)

Somehow this all works brilliantly. Listening to the characters talk to one another is so cheesy you’ll ruefully chuckle to yourself.  It brings back nostalgia from the good ol days when J-rpgs had wonderfully imaginative back-stories but very terrible characterization.

What instantly gets me invested is the post apocalyptic setting. There’s something about God Eater Burst that is almost “Shin Megami Tensei” and this especially comes into play when you choose your team-mates and go out into the ruined wasteland to hunt the dangerous Aragami.

Each Aragami is a tactical puzzle to figure out. They all have strengths, weaknesses, and unique body parts. Will you attack the legs to slow them down? Will you go for the exposed tail? How about attacking the torso from the side? It’s all up to you and depending on the Aragami in question, your results will vary. Deciding what weapon types and items to equip before a battle is crucial. Aragami have elemental buffs and de-buffs and depending on whether they’re air-born or grounded determines whether or not it’s best to morph your god arch into a gun or a melee weapon.

This may  seem rather common of all rpgs but in truth this game is very fast paced. Your character can dash around to evade attacks, jump to higher terrain, use the gun form, and string together combos with the sword form. Aka, God Eater plays more like Kingdom Hearts and DMC . There’s nothing turn based about this game at all.

Battles are divided into missions. When you’re not risking life & limb to save humanity, you spend your R & R time at a luxurious home-base to chat it up with npcs, buy equipment, craft new items, and mingle with the main characters. God-eaters are literally treated like rock-stars and that’s where my suspension of disbelief kind of snaps. It’s jarring to hear haunting music as you traverse a spooky Aragami infested shantytown one moment only to return to a plush condominium where everything is hunky dory! Granted, god-eaters are not just regular soldiers. The protagonists were literally fused with sentient carnivorous weapons made out of Aragami cells via painfully applied arm bracelets. Maybe the scientists and the military had to entice potential volunteers with fringe benefits! Still, when I heard how difficult citizens  had it in the outer fringe ghettos I felt like a self important spoiled rotten ivy league prep student as opposed to a true hero of the people. The writers may or may not have meant for me to make those comparisons. Any way the pie is sliced, there are many undercurrents of classism, entitlement, poverty, and elitism within God-Eater-Burst regardless of the true narrative intent. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending upon your point of view.

Remember those missions I mentioned earlier? What’s awesome is you can do each mission as often as you want! Need to farm for parts, get a higher rank, or finally got the juice necessary to take on a hard Aragami you were not able to defeat earlier? No problem! God Eater Burst is very accommodating when it comes to allowing gamers to re-live their favorite epic fights.

Character customization is pretty in depth for this type of game. You can choose your gender, hair style, face type, as well as from an assortment of clothes. Additionally you can craft more outfits as the game progresses. However, it is a shame your gender doesn’t effect the plot. Don’t go into this expecting a Bio-ware rpg, okay?

Being this is my first foray into the creature hunting genre, I have to say I’m very impressed! I’ve finally come closer to understanding why many of my gamer friends speak so favorably about Monster-Hunter.

Pros

+ There is actually a decent storyline

+ Combat is fast paced yet rewards tactics over brute force. (Mostly)

+ Characters are likable enough.

+ Aragami designs are large, detailed, and fascinating! They remind me a lot of the demon compendium from Atlus’s Shin Megami Tensei series.

+ Character customization is varied, especially after you unlock everything!

+Easy to understand crafting system

+ Environments are post apocalyptic creating a foreboding mood. (At least when you’re not in your extravagant condominium! Er, I mean your battered military bunker!)

+ Eargasmic soundtrack!

Cons

- Game fluctuates too much between “Dur-hur-hur!” and “This is serious business, ya’ll!”. GEB makes you wonder what it could have been like with a tighter script, more consistent atmosphere, and a better translation.

-The dialogue can be painfully cringe worthy, especially after Lindow says “Survive and stick together!” for the millionth time. That isn’t strategy Lin, it’s common friggin sense!

-At over 200 missions you can expect terrain and certain Aragami to be recycled quite a bit.



 Over-view

I prefer it when Japan stays “weird”. This title has brought back memories of Parasite Eve,Blassreiter,and Evangelion for me. Not many games are this delightfully dark, pseudo scientific, and creative when compared to all the mainstream schlock out there. God-Eater-Burst is that game not afraid to appeal to a niche and as a result many of its’ ideas are absurdly refreshing!

It’s kind of unfortunate GEB pulled a few of its’ punches when it came to dialogue and characterization. While the overall mood and themes have the potential to be horrific, meaningful, eerie, and deeply psychological, the main protagonists mostly act like bad caricatures from a drab Nickelodeon high school dramedy. (Even Lindow who is supposed to be in his later 20’s)

To put it bluntly, the GE series may need more “Persona” and less “Final Fantasy” to reach its’ full potential in the future. (In my personal opinion anyway.)

Faults aside, GEB has been a fantastic PSP game to play thus far! Highly recommended!