The Earth Defense Force in the West has had such inconsistent releases when it comes to timing over the years. I got into the series through the PS Vita version of Earth Defense Force 2, but have since played every game available on PS4, PC, Switch, PS Vita, and Xbox 360 through backward compatibility. I consider this one of my favorite franchises out there, and I always enjoy playing EDF. The wait for Earth Defense Force 6 has been too long, but it is finally here in the West on PS5, PS4, and PC (Steam and Epic). Having now played it on Steam Deck and PS5, it feels great to have such a content-packed and excellent EDF game, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind about it. I’m going to cover them and focus on the PC version played on Steam Deck for this Earth Defense Force 6 review. It is worth noting that as of this writing, Earth Defense Force 6 has not been tested by Valve on Steam Deck so it isn’t marked as Playable or Verified yet.
I consider every Earth Defense Force game as basically standalone, but Earth Defense Force 6 is a proper sequel to Earth Defense Force 5. Despite that, I have no qualms in telling anyone to start with this one if they are new to the series. Are all your friends getting Earth Defense Force 6 and you don’t want to miss out? Grab Earth Defense Force 6, but I hope you go back and also play Earth Defense Force 4.1 and Earth Defense Force 5 when you can. With that out of the way, Earth Defense Force 6 builds on Earth Defense Force 5’s base in just about every way. There are enhancements to classes, new weapons, many new missions, older missions, new maps, old locations, and much more. This feels like the most content-packed EDF game yet, and is incredible value for its asking price.
Since this review is going to focus on the Steam Deck version of the game, I won’t spend too much time on the story. I will say that Earth Defense Force 6’s narrative is stronger than past games, and you will get the most out of it if you played Earth Defense Force 5. This is an Earth Defense Force for fans of the series first and foremost. Newcomers will still find a lot of great writing, humor, and everything we love about Earth Defense Force’s dialog here. Yes, that includes the same English voice option. You can choose Korean, Chinese, and Japanese voice options as well on Steam if you’d prefer those.
Earth Defense Force 6 is structured similar to Earth Defense Force 5. The game is split up into the offline mission mode that has the main campaign, online mission mode letting you create rooms or join rooms with friends and randoms, and the split-screen mode. Don’t expect a drop-in drop-out online experience here. Calling this Earth Defense Force 5.5 is pretty accurate, but that isn’t a bad thing in most ways, just that this isn’t the major new step forward for the franchise that some might have wanted. I look at it as an “if it ain’t broke" situation, because the last thing we need is another Iron Rain.
Before getting into the PC port and the options, Earth Defense Force 6 uses Epic Online Services for multiplayer. I don’t know if this specific situation requires you to login or something since I’ve done that before, but I wanted to make a note of it. The only crossplay on PC is between the Steam and Epic Games Store versions as far as I can tell. I had access to the PS4, PS5, and Steam versions of Earth Defense Force 6, and I even tried creating lobbies and searching across platforms. PS4 and PS5 can play together, but PC is separate sadly. Hopefully the next Earth Defense Force is built for crossplay from the start.
On the control side, Earth Defense Force 6 is similar to Earth Defense Force 5 where it forces you into the input you used on the title screen. On Steam Deck, pressing any button results in that controller being set. Tapping the touchscreen results in the game forcing you into keyboard and mouse and so on. To play the game docked, I had to make sure I press a button on my bluetooth controller so it lets me play with that. The re-ordering controller menu didn’t seem to work perfectly here. I hope this specific thing can be fixed, but given Earth Defense Force 5 is the same, I don’t think it will be addressed. Speaking of controls, you can rebind controls for each class from the game settings menu.
To test Earth Defense Force 6 online multiplayer on Steam Deck, I had two specific situations set up. The first is normal multiplayer with a friend. Inviting my friend to a room I created was a bit finicky and required using the d-pad communication menu to send an invite through Steam (or Epic). Once done, my friend joined in and we played online without issues. He was in another continent and we had no issues over wifi playing missions. The second thing I tested is Steam Remote Play together. This isn’t close to an ideal way for two people to play, but I wanted to see how Earth Defense Force 6 splitscreen gameplay looked and ran on Steam Deck. It drops below 30fps regularly in splitscreen unsurprisingly, but it still worked. I imagine the console version will be similar here.
With the online and control details out of the way, Earth Defense Force 6 has the same PC port features as Earth Defense Force 5. This means the graphics options are a toggle for anti-aliasing (with a live preview on the model next to the menu), a toggle for shadows, and anisotropic filtering (off to 16x). The Earth Defense Force 6 graphics options menu also lets you adjust the screen setting. This lets you choose display mode, toggle letterbox, and adjust resolution. Earth Defense Force 6 runs at 16:9 on Steam Deck despite showing 800p support in the resolution option.
When playing Earth Defense Force 6 on both my Steam Deck OLED and LCD models, performance was similar. When playing solo, expect to see around 40fps as an average regardless of your graphics options. I turned everything off to test, and then everything on to test. It didn’t make much of a difference outside shadows in some maps. I didn’t play at a lower resolution as of this writing since that frame rate was fine with me for playing on Steam Deck. I did play EDF2 on PS Vita and EDF World Brothers on Switch after all. For what it is worth, Earth Defense Force 6 doesn’t even hold 60fps locked on PS5 so this isn’t really surprising. Don’t expect it to run like Earth Defense Force 5 does, at least not yet on Steam Deck. I noticed it runs a bit better with the newest Proton GE, but stability was an issue with multiple crashes when I tested. I stuck to playing on Proton Experimental (bleeding edge) and only had 2 crashes in 20 hours of playing on Steam Deck. I’ve put in well over 50 hours into the game on PS5 and not had a single crash there.
The PS5 version of Earth Defense Force 6 has PS5 Activity Cards support and loads very fast, but performance is not perfect in any of the three graphics modes. The modes are 4K (better speed), 4K (better image quality), and full HD (better speed). I play on a 1440p monitor so I stuck to full HD for the best performance. It can’t hold a locked 60fps even there. I’ve not had time to test the PS4 version of the game on PS5 via backward compatibility to see if that gives the most stable frame rate yet. If I do get around to that, I’ll update this. The 4K better speed seems like a good compromise between a higher frame rate and performance. I would not recommend the 4K image quality mode at all. It feels like that is better suited to Sony’s next console given how it runs. Check out a screenshot from the opening when using PS5 Activity Cards below:
Regardless of the platform you play on, I recommend looking at the camera settings under game settings. I stuck to Camera Type 1 and also increased the rotation speed. The defaults were too claustrophobic for my liking.
Earth Defense Force 6 also ships with a lot of DLC from day one as usual. I want to make it clear that the base game has more than enough content for its asking price. I don’t have access to any of the DLC yet, so I cannot comment on the weapons or missions yet. I will be playing them in the future and likely reviewing the DLC packs since I did enjoy DLC in prior games.
For a game that can’t even hold a locked 60fps when running at 1080p on PS5, Earth Defense Force 6 on Steam Deck runs and looks a lot better than I expected. The game itself is a fantastic sequel to Earth Defense Force 5, and it might be my favorite game in the series yet. I’m looking forward to replaying many missions with friends and also getting the DLC packs in the near future. The wait for Earth Defense Force 6 in the West was long, but the payoff is absolutely worth it.
Earth Defense Force 6 Steam Deck review score: 4.5/5
