I finished it once on normal playing a bit of all classes.

Would have been a nice niche budget title if not for some of design choices that are there just because 'it always was like that', plus some other genuine issues and the price... well, it's not a cheap game either, especially if you count DLC garbage.

It rarely goes on a good sale on Steam, I would look for alternative official stores for a better price.

EDF series is about you killing hundreds of monsters and aliens using increasingly better weapons as you progress and unlock them.

You have 4 classes to choose from:
- Ranger: uses mostly conventional weapons like rifles, shotguns, snipers, rockets, missiles
- Wing Diver: flying class that uses energy to keep afloat and to shoot its weapons, often weapons need to be pre-charged to fire and energy management is important because same energy is used for flying and shooting
- Air Raider: class that uses airstrike laser markers, drones, off-map artillery smoke grenade markers and vehicles, also has some direct combat weapons but usually more gimmicky than other classes
- Fencer: power-armor class that can be slower and less maneuverable than others, but wields 2 sets of 2 weapons one for each arm like autocannons, miniguns, rocket pods

Game is mission-based, each mission you will face a bunch of enemies and your goal is to usually just kill everything. Defeated enemies may drop crates of 3 kinds: healing (large and small, they will obviously heal you and AI friendlies), armor (they will increase max HP of one of your classes) and weapons (they will give you random loot or upgrades for loot you already have, but can also contain items you already unlocked, you won't always get something new). Those crates need to be picked up because at the end of the mission uncollected crates won't be automatically collected.

+ Combat
It's still satisfying to mow down hundreds of giant ants and I mostly enjoyed new enemies even though I prefer to fight mutated animals rather than robots or giand alien troopers.

+ Progression
It's always cool to unlock new stuff, test it if it's good and start using it.

+ Story
Actually kinda decent?

Reminded me of a manga: 'All you need is kill'

As any time travel story it gets messy if you think too much about it. So don't think too much about it.

- Crates
Collecting crates was always a thing in the series and it's never been 'good' or 'fun'. It actually gets incredibly tedious to the point where I don't find the game playable without a mod that collects all crates at the end of the mission.

- Camera
Camera is fully static behind your back and will happily obscure everything if you are looking up at a flying enemie trying to shoot it, but there's a bush at your feet.

- Clarity
Bodies or parts of bodies of large enemies will obscure your fire and vision. Near the end of the game the amount of lasers and other light-show effects turns the screen into an incomprehensible, unwatchable mess, and that's even before your character starts getting ragdolled by missiles again and again.

- Last mission
Garbage. The last boss has long periods where it cannot be hit by anything and lots of weapons are simply useless against it.

- Slow story missions
Some missions are basically unskippable cutscenes where you don't even shoot and there are way too many of them. Some other missions are glorified cutscenes where you do a very specific thing or use a very specific vehicle in a very specific combat scenario tailored for it. None of that is fun.

I won't bash the game for having graphics that look old. I'll take old graphics if it means the game runs well and loads quick and this one does. But I feel like the focus should be more on QOL (does anyone who doesn't huff glue actually enjoy collecting boxes?) and camera (I swear, if I have yet another Kraken body completely obscure my sight as I'm trying to aim at his 15 buddies, I will go ballistic)

I'd give EDF 6 a
Not recommended verdict is mainly for the stagnation and price. I only recommend it if you can find a deal on it somewhere like GMG.

for soldiers brave and strong

If you thought Earth Defense Force 5 was hard, this is harder... and better!

The changes to each class from the previous game may be minor, but they contribute to this game feeling smoother to play. Definitely still a Coop game first and foremost, so grab friends for this campaign. At the time of this review, I have almost 100 hours played and I've yet to reach the end of the campaign on Hard difficulty. I'm going to need to mentally prepare myself for when I replay the game on Hardened / Inferno.