EDF 5 or 4.1?

[HomelessFlea]

Which is the better buy?

[AimlessEagle]

If you have the coin, I would say EDF 5. It has more content in general and it´s the superior version I would say.

However, that does not mean 4.1 is bad whatsoever. Also tons of fun!

The question is whether you find the difference in price significant enough to consider one over the other.

[Plumber]

short explanation is both; 5 is better overall but 4 has a lot going for it that surpasses or is done uniquely from 5

[Lost Question]

EDF 4.1 is the end of the ravagers. EDF 5 is a soft reboot of the series the threat being the primers (edf 6 takes place 3 years after edf 5 and the primers are back), edf 5 has more weapons edf 4.1 has a better song quick speak song

[Fireborn]

It depends. I've played and beaten both, but I'd lean toward 4.1

As was said, its part two of it and 3 (released originally in the west on console as EDF2017 and EDF2025) but you don't need to play 3 to get what's going on in 4.1. They aren't that complex of games.

Things they have in common:
4 classes of soldier with their own advantages and disadvantages.
A LOT of missions (4.1 was over 80, and iirc 5 has over 100)
A LOT of weapons for each class and category. (Though some are outright joke weapons, and others are of questionable use even if not outright jokes.)
Killing LOTS and LOTS of enemies.
Weapons are gathered randomly from a pool of drops for that mission. (So, some can take a lot of farming to specifically get.)

That said, outside of making Fencer's enhanced movement a feature (which slightly nerfs it) and Air Raider's strikes having a better UI, I feel like a lot of stuff is downgrades in 5.

For one, it having so many missions makes a lot of them feel like padding. The very first mission is a literal tutorial with a scripted follow sequence. And many still serve the "Introduce enemy" function, but then are followed by another functionally identical "introduce enemy" mission. The worst of which is the drone's missions. You have one in which the mothership drops several very large waves of drones on you, which is then followed by a smaller mission in which a few dozen drones are idling in the air until you aggro them.

Following on from that... the english localization and dub is definitely worse. 4.1 is campy, but 5 is often just bad acting. I can't say if its true to the japanese script or not, but a LOT of things are just clunky wording or weird, like they did a single draft machine translation and had the people read that.

Finally, I really dislike the star-upgrade system on the random drop tables. I already held the random drops to be the worst aspect of the games as they stood, and it gives some purpose to the repeat drops, but it feels like the weapons were intentionally nerfed to give it reason to exist. Like you're just getting them back to where they should be instead of gaining power on the weapon.

They're both fine games when you're in the mood for a simple "kill all the things" type of experience. But I do wonder what they'll keep and what they'll undo for 6.

[Onlysane1]

I just got both, and I think I'll prefer 5 because picking up the same weapon rewards multiple times will upgrade that weapon in 5, while in 4.1 you get nothing.

I'll probably be playing through both games, though, but for now I'm gonna stick with 5.

[Bob]

4.1 had far better missions

5 has better class gameplay overall

[Riku]

both~~~~~

[Macona]

Both are good but the qol improvements of 5 gives it to edge in my opinion.

The online lobbies are also well populated because its the latest game available. I imagine there will be an exodus when 6 comes out in a year or 2, so best to get it before then

[Bullett00th]

Originally posted by Bob:

4.1 had far better missions

5 has better class gameplay overall

I've only played early game of EDF5 but so far that's the case, and painfully so

[Kain]

I've only played a bit of EDF 4 and playing a lot of EDF 5, there are some changes to classes and some quality of life improvements in EDF 5 that are very noticeable. Plus, I think the story of 5 is absolutely amazing, 4 seems to be good too, but it gives you the impression you're late to the party.

EDF 5 for me seems to be the perfect place to start playing the series, then you can play the previous ones if you really enjoy it.

EDIT - Also 5 has the biggest numbers of missions of any EDF game, so you def will have enough content, I'm halfway through the game and so far it's not feeling repetitive... I mean, no more than the game's nature would lead you to believe and in part I think it's due to the campaign in how they pace some set pieces in unpredictable ways.

[Seinekar]

5 is quite an straight-forward upgrade of 4.1 in most aspects.

The only point (imo) of getting 4.1 would be saving money or just to play both and enjoy more missions.

Also (again, imo) some enemies of 4.1 looked aesthetically cooler than 5 (like the teleportation ships)

[Kain]

I also thought the Fencer looked way cooler in 4.

[Yal]

Originally posted by Fireborn:

but a LOT of things are just clunky wording or weird, like they did a single draft machine translation and had the people read that.

From what I've heard, this isn't far from the truth (for 4.1 the devs hired a translation studio, for 5 they figured "meh, we could just do it ourselves this time, it doesn't look THAT hard")

4.1 has a really good script if you like ham, plenty of immortal lines like "It's red! That means it's stronger!!".
5 has more polished gameplay (e.g. chaining dashes as Fencer is an actual mechanic now instead of a glitch that gives you carpal tunnel syndrome) and a lot more missions, but the sheer amount of missions gets exhausting. As one of my friends put it, "you do everything twice, once with frogs and once with greys".

Also notably 5 has a new mechanic where you keep half the loot if you fail a mission (less or more depending on difficulty) and part of your new weapons/HP gets spread to classes you didn't play - as a newcomer to the series those two things will be very helpful since you'll probably fail a lot and mess around with all different classes a lot trying to find what strategies works best.