EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1 The Shadow of New Despair

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Overwhelmingly PositiveOverwhelmingly Positive · 96%2016

$19.99

US Steam price, checked 6 h ago

The verdict

A chaotic, cheesy B-movie horde shooter with huge explosions, four distinct classes and lots of weapons. It's best with friends. Skip it if you'll play solo, dislike grinding, or want polish; EDF 5 is the better entry.

Great for

Co-op players with friends who enjoy campy, explosive, repetitive horde shooters

Main risk

Playing solo: repetitive missions, RNG-drop grind and clunky UI wear thin fast

What players love

Chaotic, satisfying explosions

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 positive reviews

“firing a plasma launcher into a big group of giant ants does something to my brain that i don’t think any other game can.”
Steam review · 12.5 h played ↗

“Even as someone who's afraid of spiders, they become a lot less scary when you're given a shotgun and a rocket launcher that can both level a city block in a single shot.”
Steam review · 46.3 h played ↗

“Shooting big bugs feels great, everyone around is yelling, explosions everywhere.”
Steam review · translated · 35.5 h played ↗

Great with friends and split-screen

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews

“Get in a lobby with one or two friends and you're guaranteed to have a ton of fun with this game.”
Steam review · 46.3 h played ↗

“My son and I play this game co-op regularly, and the splitscreen mode is perfect for just blasting aliens and bugs for a few hours.”
Steam review · 19.7 h played ↗

“Solo is boredom and grind, duo is grind with a little fun, trio is fun, and in a four-player squad piloting a giant mech is indescribable.”
Steam review · translated · 92.9 h played ↗

Campy, goofy B-movie charm

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 positive reviews

“It's ridiculously campy like a bad Japanese monster movie, but fun as can be.”
Steam review · 7.2 h played ↗

“its absolutely goofy and doesn't take itself serious in any ways, but I think that is what makes this game so great.”
Steam review · 4.9 h played ↗

Lots of weapons, classes and missions

Mentioned in ~1 in 14 positive reviews

“825 wepon's across all 4 classes that are all powerful or stupid but fun 89 missons”
Steam review · 18.9 h played ↗

“lots of unlocking weapons and satisfying progression system”
Steam review · 53 h played ↗

Better than Helldivers for some

Mentioned in ~1 in 15 positive reviews

“Really fun game, it's like Helldivers but better.”
Steam review · 14.2 h played ↗

“If you dont have a PC that can run Helldivers, or Arent a fan of Arrowhead. This is The closest thing.”
Steam review · 60.6 h played ↗

Addictive, easy pick-up-and-play loop

Mentioned in ~1 in 25 positive reviews

“I just really like that I can pick it up, spend 10 minutes on a mission, get my action fix and leave or come back for more.”
Steam review · 12.8 h played ↗

“It's the most f*cking addictive gameplay loop and is so damn fun.”
Steam review · 54.9 h played ↗

What players complain about

Repetitive missions and tedious grind

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews

“Game is fun on its first loop, after that its a painful, unfun grind that serves no purpose but to inflate gameplay times to look good to shareholder boardrooms.”
Steam review · 60.7 h played ↗

“Mission 10 spiders, then mission 20 spiders, and so on up to mission 89.”
Steam review · translated · 8.5 h played ↗

“Mindlessly repetitive. Plays, looks and feels like a cheap mobile game.”
Steam review · 1.9 h played ↗

Terrible UI and clunky PC controls

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 negative reviews

“you can forget playing on keyboard and mouse because you will have to deal with the floatiest and slowest controls you ever did see”
Steam review · 7.8 h played ↗

“The UI makes me not want to play games anymore.”
Steam review · 0.6 h played ↗

“How someone managed to screw up MOUSE LOOK this bad, I will never know.”
Steam review · 0.1 h played ↗

Crashes, memory leaks and sound bugs

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 negative reviews

“it's terribly optimized and even if you have a system well over the recommended specs there is no guarantee that the game won't crash.”
Steam review · 70.9 h played ↗

“a sound bug cuts the sound after startup and even today there is no clear solution or fix”
Steam review · 5.8 h played ↗

RNG drops and brutal difficulty spikes

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 negative reviews

“hundreds if not thousands of crates and I was still missing very useful weapons that should've been dropping this whole time.”
Steam review · 108.6 h played ↗

“This game is horribly balanced.”
Steam review · 26.8 h played ↗

“The difficulty jumps are a little too absurd for my taste.”
Steam review · 13.8 h played ↗

EDF 5 is the better choice

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 negative reviews

“it's just that it's completely obsoleted by EDF 5 now.”
Steam review · 99.2 h played ↗

“The fifth is better in everything; there's no point touching this one when the fifth exists.”
Steam review · translated · 1.2 h played ↗

Kicks and toxic public lobbies, dead online

Mentioned in ~1 in 15 negative reviews

“Need friends to play this, all "open" servers are meant to be private so you just get removed from any "Servers" on that are even up.”
Steam review · 207.1 h played ↗

“aside from either really high level players or a few groups of friends who will let you wait in lobby for ten minutes and then kick you before the new mission starts don't buy if you're solo”
Steam review · 4.7 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Playable

Minimum

OSWindows 7 64bit, Windows 8.1 64bit Windows 10 64bit

Processor3 GHz 2 Core

Memory4 GB RAM

GraphicsAMD Radeon HD 7870 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 （2GB Model or higher）

Storage8 GB available space

Recommended

OSWindows 7 64bit, Windows 8.1 64bit Windows 10 64bit

Processor3.2GHz 4Core

Memory8 GB RAM

GraphicsAMD Radeon HD 7970 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 （3GB Model or higher）

Storage8 GB available space

OSWindows 7 64bit, Windows 8.1 64bit Windows 10 64bit

Processor3 GHz 2 Core

Memory4 GB RAM

GraphicsAMD Radeon HD 7870 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 （2GB Model or higher）

Storage8 GB available space

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