God Eater Resurrection Ranking: B
This is one of the most anime games I’ve ever played. That’s not a pro or a con – I’m just saying.
So in the near future, within the lifetime of many people reading this review, these single-celled organisms (Oracle Cells) appear out of nowhere and begin eating everything. As they eat, they grow into multicellular organisms, and those begin to take the form of gods – people refer to these as “Aragami.” Or, at least, the game tells us the Aragami take the form of gods, even though I can tell you that Chi You wasn’t a bird and Susano-o wasn’t a giant scorpion. Anyway, the Aragami continue eating and growing until much of non-Aragami life in the world goes extinct.
Fenrir, a biotechnology company, develops technology and weapons that can fight the Aragami. The weapons, in particular, are called God Arcs, and only a select few people can wield God Arcs – these are called God Eaters. You’re a rookie God Eater who just joined Fenrir. Go forth with your comically giant anime sword that can deploy a shield or turn into an equally comically giant anime gun and kill some animals that have the names but not forms of gods!
Despite my irreverent tone, I liked the plot of the game and really liked the characters. Each time you go into battle, you team up with up to three other God Eaters. In single player, those are all NPCs, but they have such good characterization that I really felt like I was fighting alongside three other people. A few, such as Soma, get pretty solid character development as the plot progresses. It’s great for immersion.
The gameplay, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. When you’re fighting one Aragami, the game’s not bad. These things are big and strong and you’ll need to learn attack patterns and respond accordingly. Most people, including myself, will tell you horror stories about the first fight against the Dyaus Pita. After a few encounters, I’d learned the Pita’s patterns, and he became very manageable.
But the game, at many points, throws multiple Aragami on you. The camera is pretty close to your character, so it’s hard to see what the Aragami right in front of you is doing, much less be able to monitor and respond to the other three around you. So you’ll get hit by something, and then something else will hit you before you can get up, and so on, and you can’t do anything about it. If you like watching your stunlocked character get helplessly gangbanged to death by multiple giant monsters, boy do I have the game for you. That…sounded less dirty in my head, I promise.
I also hate how Aragami will run away from you. They’re much faster than you are and can leap over walls and whatnot, so you’ll spend a good chunk of every mission just chasing them around. It’s not a huge deal, but it gets really annoying.
The game has severe technical problems in multiplayer. It’s so much fun to team up with your friends to go take down a giant monster…except if you play with more than one friend, the game’s liable to freeze after a mission, necessitating you Alt+F4 out. Then you have to repeat the mission, because the game didn’t get to save. Also, let’s say you disconnect from a multiplayer game. You can’t rejoin. The others have to leave the game and remake it, and you can join that. It’s just such a broken system made all the worse because how awesome would an actually functional multiplayer God Eater be?
Anyway, I want to say a few words about the plot in more depth. So as I mentioned, Aragami eat stuff, and they grow/change based on what they eat. For example, an Aragami that continuously eats trees may become capable of photosynthesis. What a particular type of Aragami eats is governed by its Bias Factor; more specifically, an Aragami will not eat something with the same Bias Factor it has. This means a Chi You will not attack or eat another Chi You – they have the same Bias Factor – but will attack or eat an Ogretail, because Ogretails have Ogretail Bias Factors and not Chi You Bias Factors. In the same way, all God Eaters require constant infusion of Bias Factors; this prevents their God Arcs from turning around and eating them.
This concept forms the basis for how the remaining humans in the world have survived. They’ve built settlements surrounded by walls laced with all kinds of Bias Factors. By putting every Bias Factor known into a wall, chances are any given Aragami that approaches the wall will sense a matching Bias Factor and will thus leave without attacking.
From here, some people came up with a plan known as the Aegis Project. The plan is simple – build an artificial island with a gigantic wall around it, then move all of humanity to this island. Basically, build a much bigger version of the settlements that already exist.
Enter a guy named Johannes von Schicksal. He concludes that eventually, some Aragami might develop a Bias Factor that isn’t present in Aegis’s wall; therefore, the Aegis isn’t a permanent solution. His alternative permanent solution is the Ark Project, where he puts a select few chosen people onto spaceships and sends those out of Earth. He creates an Aragami that can eat literally everything, called Nova, and once Nova has eaten the entire Earth (including the humans who weren’t lucky enough to be on the spaceships) in an event known as the Devouring Apocalypse, the people on the spaceships just wait until Earth’s livable again and then return to begin anew.
To build these Arks and create the Nova, he siphons resources from the Aegis Project, effectively dooming it to failure. I like how the game portrays him – he’s definitely wrong, but he has good intentions, because he really does want to save humanity. That said…this guy makes no sense.
First of all, why does he think that after Nova’s finished eating the entire Earth, Earth will eventually become livable again? For all he knows, we’d just have no Earth and a giant Nova floating in space where Earth once was. Now the game does actually show a Devouring Apocalypse – without getting into details, Nova ends up eating the moon and not the Earth – and in this, the moon terraforms, but (1) nothing in-game explains why this happened and (2) Nova’s still on the moon after this event. Even if Johannes somehow knew that Nova would eat the entire world but then somehow recreate the world, Nova would still exist on Earth, so how does he figure humanity would ever return to Earth?
Now if you’ve played the game, you’ll know the Nova that ends up on the moon is, in fact, very benevolent toward humans (I’m simplifying here), but the point here is that Johannes couldn’t possibly have known this would happen. In fact, his plan hinges on Nova not being benevolent, since he wants Nova to eat Earth and wipe out all life on the planet. So the logical conclusion of Johannes’s plan, from Johannes’s perspective given what Johannes knows, would never lead to a scenario in which Earth is inhabitable after the Devouring Apocalypse.
Secondly, how many times in human history has any solution been permanent? That’s right: none. “Aegis isn’t a permanent solution” is terrible justification for scrapping it. Consider this from the perspective of the people who came up with and greenlit the idea. There must be something Aegis can do better compared to the bases humanity already has; otherwise, there would be no reason to sink time and resources into it. Think about how difficult something like this would be to create today, in the real world, and then consider how much more difficult it would be if humans were near extinct in a resource-starved, post-apocalyptic world in which obtaining the materials needed to build the wall required sending a limited number of people to kill giant monsters and collect their parts.
Aegis therefore must represent a step up from the state of humanity in the world of God Eater. That’s how solutions usually work. We do things that make life better while understanding we’ll still have problems and maybe even make new ones. We solved the problem of “horses can’t travel large distances” by inventing cars. We solved the new problem of “driving a car is hard and potentially dangerous” by implementing a licensing requirement. We solved the still-remaining problem of “some distances are still too long to traverse” by inventing planes. We solved the new problem of “planes are gigantic, clunky, and inefficient” by building things like jet engines. And so on.
Aegis isn’t a permanent solution and everyone knows that. The people, after moving into Aegis, will continue researching Aragami and anti-Aragami technology. They’ll continuously upgrade the wall. God Eaters will still be going out to fight. There are next steps after Aegis. Had Johannes not done what he did, humanity would’ve had the chance to take those next steps.
Johannes thus either has an incredibly oversimplified view of human progress or he doesn’t have faith in humankind to continue progressing. Both seem unlikely – he’s supposed to be an accomplished researcher and he gives a speech in-game about how humans will always use their intelligence and find ways to survive. But then in the same speech, he makes it clear that he despises humankind, calling humans “weak and petty and pathetic.” He makes the standard misanthropic argument that humanity is self-destructive, calling humans “Nova in another flesh.” Then he turns around and says the Devouring Apocalypse is inevitable, but humanity should be the ones to get out of it on top? Is this guy on humanity’s side or not? What does he want? Why does he want it? What sort of insane troll logic did he employ when he executed his plan?
That about wraps it up for this game. I’ll talk about the sequel sometime. For now, here’s my Avatar Card. I love how the game allows you to name your custom bullets and since this is the most anime game ever, I named my bullets after anime:
This is one of the most anime games I’ve ever played. That’s not a pro or a con – I’m just saying.
So in the near future, within the lifetime of many people reading this review, these single-celled organisms (Oracle Cells) appear out of nowhere and begin eating everything. As they eat, they grow into multicellular organisms, and those begin to take the form of gods – people refer to these as “Aragami.” Or, at least, the game tells us the Aragami take the form of gods, even though I can tell you that Chi You wasn’t a bird and Susano-o wasn’t a giant scorpion. Anyway, the Aragami continue eating and growing until much of non-Aragami life in the world goes extinct.
Fenrir, a biotechnology company, develops technology and weapons that can fight the Aragami. The weapons, in particular, are called God Arcs, and only a select few people can wield God Arcs – these are called God Eaters. You’re a rookie God Eater who just joined Fenrir. Go forth with your comically giant anime sword that can deploy a shield or turn into an equally comically giant anime gun and kill some animals that have the names but not forms of gods!
Despite my irreverent tone, I liked the plot of the game and really liked the characters. Each time you go into battle, you team up with up to three other God Eaters. In single player, those are all NPCs, but they have such good characterization that I really felt like I was fighting alongside three other people. A few, such as Soma, get pretty solid character development as the plot progresses. It’s great for immersion.
The gameplay, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. When you’re fighting one Aragami, the game’s not bad. These things are big and strong and you’ll need to learn attack patterns and respond accordingly. Most people, including myself, will tell you horror stories about the first fight against the Dyaus Pita. After a few encounters, I’d learned the Pita’s patterns, and he became very manageable.
But the game, at many points, throws multiple Aragami on you. The camera is pretty close to your character, so it’s hard to see what the Aragami right in front of you is doing, much less be able to monitor and respond to the other three around you. So you’ll get hit by something, and then something else will hit you before you can get up, and so on, and you can’t do anything about it. If you like watching your stunlocked character get helplessly gangbanged to death by multiple giant monsters, boy do I have the game for you. That…sounded less dirty in my head, I promise.
I also hate how Aragami will run away from you. They’re much faster than you are and can leap over walls and whatnot, so you’ll spend a good chunk of every mission just chasing them around. It’s not a huge deal, but it gets really annoying.
The game has severe technical problems in multiplayer. It’s so much fun to team up with your friends to go take down a giant monster…except if you play with more than one friend, the game’s liable to freeze after a mission, necessitating you Alt+F4 out. Then you have to repeat the mission, because the game didn’t get to save. Also, let’s say you disconnect from a multiplayer game. You can’t rejoin. The others have to leave the game and remake it, and you can join that. It’s just such a broken system made all the worse because how awesome would an actually functional multiplayer God Eater be?
Anyway, I want to say a few words about the plot in more depth. So as I mentioned, Aragami eat stuff, and they grow/change based on what they eat. For example, an Aragami that continuously eats trees may become capable of photosynthesis. What a particular type of Aragami eats is governed by its Bias Factor; more specifically, an Aragami will not eat something with the same Bias Factor it has. This means a Chi You will not attack or eat another Chi You – they have the same Bias Factor – but will attack or eat an Ogretail, because Ogretails have Ogretail Bias Factors and not Chi You Bias Factors. In the same way, all God Eaters require constant infusion of Bias Factors; this prevents their God Arcs from turning around and eating them.
This concept forms the basis for how the remaining humans in the world have survived. They’ve built settlements surrounded by walls laced with all kinds of Bias Factors. By putting every Bias Factor known into a wall, chances are any given Aragami that approaches the wall will sense a matching Bias Factor and will thus leave without attacking.
From here, some people came up with a plan known as the Aegis Project. The plan is simple – build an artificial island with a gigantic wall around it, then move all of humanity to this island. Basically, build a much bigger version of the settlements that already exist.
Enter a guy named Johannes von Schicksal. He concludes that eventually, some Aragami might develop a Bias Factor that isn’t present in Aegis’s wall; therefore, the Aegis isn’t a permanent solution. His alternative permanent solution is the Ark Project, where he puts a select few chosen people onto spaceships and sends those out of Earth. He creates an Aragami that can eat literally everything, called Nova, and once Nova has eaten the entire Earth (including the humans who weren’t lucky enough to be on the spaceships) in an event known as the Devouring Apocalypse, the people on the spaceships just wait until Earth’s livable again and then return to begin anew.
To build these Arks and create the Nova, he siphons resources from the Aegis Project, effectively dooming it to failure. I like how the game portrays him – he’s definitely wrong, but he has good intentions, because he really does want to save humanity. That said…this guy makes no sense.
First of all, why does he think that after Nova’s finished eating the entire Earth, Earth will eventually become livable again? For all he knows, we’d just have no Earth and a giant Nova floating in space where Earth once was. Now the game does actually show a Devouring Apocalypse – without getting into details, Nova ends up eating the moon and not the Earth – and in this, the moon terraforms, but (1) nothing in-game explains why this happened and (2) Nova’s still on the moon after this event. Even if Johannes somehow knew that Nova would eat the entire world but then somehow recreate the world, Nova would still exist on Earth, so how does he figure humanity would ever return to Earth?
Now if you’ve played the game, you’ll know the Nova that ends up on the moon is, in fact, very benevolent toward humans (I’m simplifying here), but the point here is that Johannes couldn’t possibly have known this would happen. In fact, his plan hinges on Nova not being benevolent, since he wants Nova to eat Earth and wipe out all life on the planet. So the logical conclusion of Johannes’s plan, from Johannes’s perspective given what Johannes knows, would never lead to a scenario in which Earth is inhabitable after the Devouring Apocalypse.
Secondly, how many times in human history has any solution been permanent? That’s right: none. “Aegis isn’t a permanent solution” is terrible justification for scrapping it. Consider this from the perspective of the people who came up with and greenlit the idea. There must be something Aegis can do better compared to the bases humanity already has; otherwise, there would be no reason to sink time and resources into it. Think about how difficult something like this would be to create today, in the real world, and then consider how much more difficult it would be if humans were near extinct in a resource-starved, post-apocalyptic world in which obtaining the materials needed to build the wall required sending a limited number of people to kill giant monsters and collect their parts.
Aegis therefore must represent a step up from the state of humanity in the world of God Eater. That’s how solutions usually work. We do things that make life better while understanding we’ll still have problems and maybe even make new ones. We solved the problem of “horses can’t travel large distances” by inventing cars. We solved the new problem of “driving a car is hard and potentially dangerous” by implementing a licensing requirement. We solved the still-remaining problem of “some distances are still too long to traverse” by inventing planes. We solved the new problem of “planes are gigantic, clunky, and inefficient” by building things like jet engines. And so on.
Aegis isn’t a permanent solution and everyone knows that. The people, after moving into Aegis, will continue researching Aragami and anti-Aragami technology. They’ll continuously upgrade the wall. God Eaters will still be going out to fight. There are next steps after Aegis. Had Johannes not done what he did, humanity would’ve had the chance to take those next steps.
Johannes thus either has an incredibly oversimplified view of human progress or he doesn’t have faith in humankind to continue progressing. Both seem unlikely – he’s supposed to be an accomplished researcher and he gives a speech in-game about how humans will always use their intelligence and find ways to survive. But then in the same speech, he makes it clear that he despises humankind, calling humans “weak and petty and pathetic.” He makes the standard misanthropic argument that humanity is self-destructive, calling humans “Nova in another flesh.” Then he turns around and says the Devouring Apocalypse is inevitable, but humanity should be the ones to get out of it on top? Is this guy on humanity’s side or not? What does he want? Why does he want it? What sort of insane troll logic did he employ when he executed his plan?
That about wraps it up for this game. I’ll talk about the sequel sometime. For now, here’s my Avatar Card. I love how the game allows you to name your custom bullets and since this is the most anime game ever, I named my bullets after anime:
- Enraiha: the legendary fire sword from Kaze no Stigma
- Dragon Slave: Lina Inverse’s infamous black magic spell from Slayers
- Yukihime: encompasses two references, one to Yukihime from UQ Holder (she specializes in ice attacks) and another to Yuki Kusakabe from Demi-chan wa Kataritai (she’s a Yuki-onna, a snow woman)
- Silver Cartridge: the name of Natsuki Kuga’s CHILD’s ice cannon attack from Mai-HiME
- Chrome Shell: named after the domed mobile cities in Chrome Shelled Regios, which are all run by electronic fairies (the show’s weird as hell)
- Railgun Type III: references Mikoto Misaka, the third-strongest Esper in A Certain Magical Index, who controls electromagnetism and uses it to propel metal projectiles at enemies
- Moon and Stars: references Tsukasa, associated with the moon, and her husband Nasa, whose name translates to “starry sky,” from Tonikawa
- Arrow of Light: in Spy x Family, Yor teaches Anya how to throw a ball by telling her to treat it as an arrow of light (side note: since Yor has hilariously superhuman levels of strength, when she throws it, it actually does become an arrow of light)