EDF Sandlot games - graphics quality, why are they so "bad" 😂

I do love reading the threads on Gamefaqs, Reddit, Steam, etc about the graphics quality of Sandlot EDF games. Why does this game has PS/2 graphics? Why people play this junk? Why don't they use a decent game engine like Unreal? I just laugh my ass at the stupidity or dumbness of the naysayers.

First and clear point. Sandlot had only two paths. Either go for a hectic environment with as many simultaneous enemies, bullets and destruction as possible with the obvious graphics quality trade off. Or go for a game with good graphics and then have just a few enemies at the same time in nicely detailed but totally or almost static backgrounds which is what happens in 99%+ of the games these days. They decided long ago to follow the first path. If you want the second path go play another game or go for Iron Rain.

Second. Sandlot is a very small company, so what they've achieved is still remarkable. They seemingly have no John Carmack, Tim Sweeney, Johan Andersson, or similar level guru. Even so, they still have managed to create and improve a game engine that handles a remarkable number of graphics entities at the same time. Is it perfect? No, but it's still very good and it creates an awesome gameplay experience, completely unique if people mostly bothered to really learn it. Do remember that it's not only graphics that are involved. There's physics, movement patterns, environment (added in EDF 5), hit detection, and all this adds a lot of requirements for computational power.

Third. They took some really hard chances and succeeded. How many developers ported, adapted and fine tuned reasonably their proprietary engines to run on the Vita, where there's nothing even remotely similar to their games specially in performance? Or on the Switch where they're making strong inroads?

Fourth. Do realize that many of the constraints of  Sandlot's engine is not only on the graphics processor but also on the main CPU itself. Controlling the huge amount of entities, from bullets, enemies, enemy parts, NPCs, and their physics properties when necessary requires a lot of computational power that the graphics processor can't handle. So they have 2 bottlenecks, the CPU and GPU.

All major games engines have been developed to provide graphics quality and fidelity over sheer numbers of moving objects. It's what the market wants (I won't discuss the quality of gameplay of the vast majority of the gorgeous games that are produced these days, I find that almost all of them are a boredom festival in gameplay). So no Sandlot can't use any usual game engines like Unreal, CryEngine, and even worse something more generic like Unity or GameMaker.

As a example it's clear that Epic are the company that takes more advantage of Unreal Engine. It's not difficult to see why, they have the unique inside knowledge and extremely vast financial resources and consequentially manpower in numbers and quality to achieve that. Even so it's not unusual for Fortnite, which clearly is a remarkable game in production quality (not talking about gameplay...), to have slowdowns or graphics glitches and other issues. If you even remotely want to compare the number of entities that are at the same time on screen or even on the map and their characteristics with a EDF Sandlot game, well you really have a IQ problem. Is Fortnite it a more optimized game overall? Surely, but again it's like comparing the capabilities of rocket building at Jet Propulsion Labs and a team of students at a small university. Could Epic make a game with the characteristics of a EDF Sandlot game with Fortnite quality graphics for instance. No? For two reasons. The hardware, even current generation consoles and high end game PC's can't handle it. And worse, all processor and GPU development is again 99% geared towards quality and not quantity because it's what the market wants.

Another usual comment that makes me laugh is that there are plenty of games that have more action and enemies than Sandlot ones. Which ones?

There is one (yes 1) that followed a sort of similar approach. The game is World War Z, from Saber Interactive. For starters they also created their own game engine, Swarm Engine, which seems dumb as bats because accordingly to the usual commenting genius on the threads they could have used Unreal or anything else 😂. OK, the answer is that clearly they're just as stupid and incompetent as Sandlot. Moving on. I played World War Z enough to see what they achieved. The numbers of enemies are really high but they followed different paths from Sandlot. Enemies are mostly blurred entities which are much less complex polygon entities than Sandlot ones. Enemies move in concentrated hordes at high speed which create a lot of opportunities for compromises, as for instance you don't have to generate all the hundreds of enemies as most will be out of sight (Sandlot does the same as everyone else, but they have much less chances to take advantage of tricks due to how the game is done). A few (really few) enemies will become more defined when they're attacked or attacking in close quarters, but at the cost of blurring and make more compromises on everything that is not focused. And you don't have a gazillion bullets and explosions at the same time on screen, neither half a city crumbling at the same time. The graphic quality of enemies is largely inferior and they're much less complex entities in World War Z compared to EDF Sandlot games, and environment is a lot better on WWZ compared to EDF Sandlot games, but still graphics quality is clearly not stellar in WWZ. Both games made compromises to achieve what they wanted, and both games are not alike. In gameplay WWZ is the more usual boring brainless shooter, it's still fun, but has no depth, strategy or flair like Sandlot games have (my opinion of course, sales numbers say otherwise).

The crumbling city missions with termites in EDF are look a likes and probably Saber took a peek at them.

Ultimately they're just different games, only probably similar in that they were both so dumb to use proprietary engines and so incompetent because they don't have Borderlands 3 quality graphics which was so, so easy to achieve... 😂

Sandlot does evolve in a few things from game to game. The environment is better on EDF 5, than on 4.1. They removed the dragons, oops wrong, they were not actually removed, tadpoles are dragons (their movement and attack pattern is exactly the same as in 4.1 even down to the blue tadpoles / red dragons behavior, it would have been a waste to throw away all the work on them) , and they were substituted for a enemy with a clearly inferior polygon count and physics complexity (how many times you have tadpoles stuck on buildings or the ground compared to dragons...?). They clearly try to optimize the game as much as possible but there will always be compromises to be made. But unless they clearly reduce the number of enemies and their complexity (no more deroys, giant insects, motherships, etc), the number of bullets on the game from NPCs, enemies and players, and reduce movement patterns the game won't improve much in appearance even for next-gen.

So before you open your mouth think what you're saying... Or just create a better game than Sandlot, if it's that easy.

The game producer, Nobuyuki Okajima from D3 Publisher, has already said that they prefer to add more enemies and zaniness, over quality and fewer glitches, so we can hopefully expect that for the next generations of more powerful consoles and PCs. Please, please let that be true, same gameplay quality and more brain teasers. That will be absolutely awesome.

I wouldn't mind at all having more games with crappy graphics, sound and other compromises but a really good gameplay.

EDF 4.1 - Air Raider and its quartet of wonder setups

In EDF 4.1 there's 3 weapons setups that are stellar for the hardest missions. These will make many hard and messy missions easy to handle. And the winners are:

- Epsilon Armored Blast Railgun E, Guard Post M3 and Life Vendor ZD.

This setup will work on missions where you have a reasonable number of NPCs, focusing on keeping them alive. They're reasonably competent with small stuff, and you can deal with big stuff with the Railgun. The Railgun machine guns aren't very good but can still help with small stuff if needed.

Best missions to use: 84 - Scorching, 82 - Battle to the Death, 78 - Heaven's Army and 77 - Fallen Flagship.

- Epsilon Armored Blast Railgun E and dual ZEXR-GUN.

This will work really nicely when you have big stuff to handle, and lots of small stuff that will not come continuously. Pity turrets didn't rebuild in the background like they do in EDF 5.

Best missions to use: 83 - Massive Mobilization , 75 - City Flaws, 69 - Tower Siege, 67 - Giant Ship, 66 - Teeth of the Universe and 61- Bug Tower

- Naegling Self-Propelled Rocket XEM and dual Strafe Plan C (Bomber Charon).

Strafe Plan C is no Phobos from 5 but they had a terrific characteristic in 4.1: all, or most, enemies would follow the bombers so you could use the Naegling on them in peace. So if you keep amassing points and sending them, and using Naegling to kill stuff while they do it, some missions will become very easy. When I learned how to use them I even tried to see which missions could be done with this setup. Not a lot unfortunately😋.

Best missions to use: 76 - Monster Camp and 37 - Dense

It's also the best way to solve Demon Army, mission 96 online. 2 AR's with this loadout can make most of this mission a joke, except at the end when it's a pain to kill the flying vehicles that will be under the map.

Almost, almost managed to do Waterside Bugs with this setup once but this one is very hard.

- Vegalta AX, Guard Assist Gun G and Life Vendor ZD

- Vegalta AX, Guard Assist Gun G and Power Assist Gun MG

Epsilon is no panacea for every mission. I did come to terms that Vegalta can provide a good solution for some missions, particularly if you need the flexibility of close attack with a few long-range ones. The problem is that it's easy to get destroyed, that's why the Guard Gun is essential, and many times the Life Vendor too. Power Assistant Gun can be crucial in solving a few missions as fast as possible to avoid other issues. Vegalta's bigger problems are the danger of self-damage from using the cannon and its awkward movement.

A late addition to the list, which changed from a trio to a quartet.

Best missions to use: 77 Monster Party, 78 Labyrinth of Light, many of the DLC missions

The EDF western games syndrome - Part 2 - Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain

Oh boy. It's clear how this is going to be...

I'm perfectly open to all kinds of games. I would love for a similar game to EDF to show up (closest things are Dead Nation and Alienation, and by closest it's still really far, only similar in vague terms of gameplay).

I don't even own yet EDF Iron Rain. I played it for 2 hours on a powerful PC of a friend who liked the game (but doesn't like EDF 4.1... 😁) and had mostly finished it and almost everything unlocked.

It's crystal clear to anyone that EDF Iron Rain is not a EDF Sandlot game, and that was likely the objective. But that is precisely the main issue with the game. EDF Sandlot games are really good because of the gameplay. They have fans because of the gameplay. But that wasn't replicated or used in Iron Rain. If they tried it was a fantastic success like in IA.

The story is reasonable? Seems so. There's a lot of customization? Yep. There's a new class, the Prowl Rider? Yes, he's there and it's moderately fun to play.  I could not care less about a story or customizations, that so many people insist on asking Sandlot to add, when the game is a boredom fest to play. Does customization change the gameplay at all? I know I didn't experience it but it's a awful grinding fest like IA. Yes I know Sandlot games clearly don't excel in that dept either.

The NPC are dreadful incompetent and dumb. Some enemies are nice. Some graphics and animations are dreadful, some are good. There's no hordes. Small maps. Few missions. No strategy, just mostly dumb shooting / slashing. Ouch...

Yuke's did try and probably even did a decent job and yes they introduced a more different and better game than IA. Many people even do enjoy the game, but many people enjoyed IA too (how on earth can that be possible...😋😁). But this was a disaster in the making because like in Insect Armageddon, they removed the most brilliant aspect of EDF, and tried to make something that's it's not like it. Which again is fine, but then just call it Iron Rain. This is like selling a new Coca Cola that is Fanta. No matter how much you call it Coca Fanta, it's most likely not either and not good. This is the biggest issue with these games, they're not even remotely relate to Sandlot games except in theme, that is kill bugs. So do the smart thing market them as different games not EDF ones. As a brainless shooter is slightly fun, sell it as such a game. But they don't and shoot themselves in the feet.

D3 and Yuke abandoned the game shortly after the release, no wonder. The game wasn't successful in the west and a complete flop in Japan. Yes it's still miles better than Insect Armageddon, but it's still light years away even from EDF 4.1.

I'll buy it once it's less than 5 euros... Mostly for laughs. 🤣

I don't think they have learned the lesson and we'll see a third take. D3 is even owned now by Bandai Namco the japanese equivalent of  EA / Activision smartness, so we can surely expect that.

Last. I see so many people asking for Prowl Rider to be added to the Sandlot games. I truly hope not, I'm 99.99% sure it will be one of the worst decisions and dreadful mistakes Sandlot will do to the game. The class simply does not fit into the Sandlot style of gameplay.

The EDF western games syndrome - Part 1.5 - EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1 WINGDIVER THE SHOOTER

This will be really short...

 Yes I know this isn't exactly a games for western audiences, it was a game for EDF fans.

First issue. Why was the title all in caps ??????? They needed to shout it?

Second issue. Who on earth thought a 2D shooter would work with a giant weapon grind? And with pseudo 3D enemies?

Third and last. The game is a weak shoot'em up. The game is a weak EDF game. The game is a weak game.

This sums it all up. It was a flop and it was justified to be one. Sadly wrote more than the game deserves.

It's a error to try to milk the cow of the core fans with pointless games.

Best games of all time on all platforms

This is an always difficult list to make. I've played a ton of games in my life, but some do stand out above everything else. The most troublesome is to be objective and not subjective. I'll try that.

Platform games

Easy.

- Super Mario series. Since Super Mario 64, Nintendo crafted what simply defines a platform game. I read eons ago an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto that they started the games by working on the Mario movement and controls and that's what it's all about. Fluidity and joy.

- Ori series. Microsoft did hit gold when they bought Moon Studios. Ori was built on the same principles as the Mario games and it shows. It's simply a joy to play these 2 beautiful games. Hope there's a third

- Rayman series. Some brilliance and originality along with great gameplay

Honorable mentions. Iconoclasts, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Fez, Celeste

LittleBigPlanet series (mostly 1 and 2) deserve a mention for truly fantastic and original ideas, lousy games, unfortunately. Rare's games from their golden age (Banjo's games, Donkey Kong Country, Knight Lore) are still quite good but have not aged that well. Psychonauts 2, seems very interesting, the first was good but not enough.

Racing/driving games

- Kart series, Nintendo. Simply the best and most fun, not pure racing but very well done brilliant gameplay and with decent AI

- Forza Horizon Series. Another Microsoft smart buy. These games are good and really enjoyable to play

Honorable mentions. Gran Turismo series, Blur (a game with half-decent and interesting AI, but plagued with other issues), Burnout Paradise (dumb but fun)

Shooter / Twin Stick shooters

- Geometry Wars series. Simplicity is sometimes the best approach, a fine example of this

- Dead Nation. Best Housemarque game by far.

- Assault Android Cactus

- Robotron: 2084. Yep, still that good, a simple concept but a really good one

- Ikaruga. A synonym with extreme difficulty

Honorable mentions. R-Type series. Alienation (could be the best of all, a true pity of too much RNG downgrading the game). Gradius series. Radiant Silvergun. DoDonPachi. Sine Mora.

FPS Action

- Horizon Zero Dawn. A decent story (not important but better than a bad one), interesting combat, and good enemies. As a whole miles away from all similar games anyway.

Games with no specific genre

Or that don't fall exactly into other categories

- Journey. Not exactly a game, but a really good experience

- No Mans Sky. A launch disaster that evolved into something awesome and unique. Best continued development of a game ever. Kudos to Sean Murray.

- Sandlot EDF series. A series of games like no other.

- Elite Dangerous. Be prepared for hundreds of hours of gameplay to be good at it

EDF 5 - Wing Diver's road to Inferno's end

Not really a fan of the Wing Diver in EDF 5. The charge before mechanics are more a nuisance than a benefit. People say she was overpowered in 4.1 but it wasn't the case, quite the contrary as now you can overcharge a really powerful weapon, use it and will not have any effect in your energy. The main benefit of her was that it become easy and reliable to really manage energy. You had weapons with a clip, knew how much you could use them before getting into trouble, then played the game according to that. Now it's the opposite. You never know when you'll go into emergency charge. Having to hold the weapon charge is a absolute crap even worse with the annoying beeps. I do find myself only using Rapiers and not much else. Stardust Cannon is a interesting weapon but very dangerous to use unfortunately. 

The fun of the WD was the guerrilla tactics and sneak somewhere and wreck it then fall back, recover and repeat and that is a lot more unreliable if you're wasting uncontrollably a lot of your energy pach charging weapons continuously. Frankly even the Ranger seems really interesting compared to her now. Or the fencer... Crap.

Mission 106 - Suicide Squad

This mission is surprisingly easy for the Wing Diver, considering it's one of the last. There's 4 waves and if you handle them correctly it's easy to survive.

I used the Mirage 15WR and the Gleipnir α both roughly half upgraded, with the VZ Plasma Core. The VM Rush Core is probably good too, but mine is so basic in stats it's unusable.

Consider all waves position from start, looking at the WD NPC squad.

Capture both ranger squads, and while hopping to the WD squads use Mirage on bees. The rest of the 1st wave will come form your back, throw Gleipnir towards them and hop back to the WDs. Stay between the 2 buildings near the WDs for minor protection against bees and tadpoles. Always keeps firing Mirage, which is a really very good weapon since it will stun most enemies and eventually kill them, being particularly effective against bees and spiders. The main point is breaking their movement and attack, so that NPCs and you have a easier life.

When there's a few enemies, stop firing so that Gleipnir can have time to rebuild. Hop around picking health and weapon crates.

Second wave will come from roughly the map sides from the position  of the WD squad. the best way to handle is to leave the ranger NPCs near the original position of the NPC WD squad and fall back to your start position and beyond. Shoot Gleipnir near the rangers and fall back shooting Mirage first to bees coming from front right and then the pillbugs coming from left. The WD squad will likely cover your ass with the stray enemies.

Third wave, coming from same positions, same strategy. Try to get surviving rangers towards WD start position, then fall back. Shoot Mirage at bees and tadpoles. Start to walk to the left, as the Grim Reaper squad will eventually spawn there and you want to capture them. Help the NPCs, then stall to rebuild Gleipnir.

Last wave will com from all over the map borders. The best place to go is the corner back from start position, since the bees will come from there and they'll head for your spot making their original one free. Stay in the middle, shoot Gleipnir, then goto the place with few bees. Shoot back, and start to rotate again to left. Eventually the Ranger squad with the sarge will spawn in the right end of  elevated area with the tracks and will move to further forward from along them where the NPC WDs were. They'll usually have a pretty nice life, with nothing to do, as you likely won't even need them. Concentrate towards the end in picking crates, it will only go berserk if you make a big mistake (I made a few small ones in the video).

The mission is usually pretty bad in weapon drops, and they'll be all over the map or at least over a really large area. It's not unusual that 1 or 2 pillbugs from the last wave (or the 3rd) are stuck in buildings.

https://youtu.be/0EESzzfP2Ng

Mission 98 - Coastal Defense Line

There are 2 ways to solve this mission: focusing on big enemies (cosmos and colonists) or focusing on small enemies (drones).

The problem with the first approach is that the 3rd wave of drones is really bad as it brings 3 imperial type 2 drones which are a absolute pain to deal with and can wipe you out in one attack. The Ranger has a better life in this strategy as his sniper weapons are more effective, and the Emerald is more useable for stray drones than WD's homing weapons.

So the second strategy is easier but you need quite upgraded weapons, and the Big Bang core (for its 200% weapon recharge). You just need to be careful and really retreat during the 3rd wave of drones to avoid a imperial one reach you. Without the help of the final cavalry's WDs and Fencers bringing down the transports will be a pain.

At any point the NPCs on the beach are wiped out, without the cavalry arriving there's 99.99% chance you're dead too.

https://youtu.be/kjWMHTpLtFE

Mission 91 - Sparking Abyss

As would be expected this mission is easier for the WD than for other classes. I used the Monster GZ and Power Lance ZA. From start fall to a plateau in your left. If you go all the way to the left you can destroy with Monster the rightmost tunnel, which drops ants and it's the one you'll really want to get rid first. Then go up to the area with the cave I talk about in the AR run. It's seldom that pillbugs will go that far, but all ants will. Once all ants are dead your life will be a lot better.

Once you think all ants are dead (red dots in ceiling are ants for sure...), descend first bridge and go to central pillar zone (where I descended with DC in AR's video). If you stay there it's very rare you'll get pillbugs. Snipe the 3 cosmos with Monster. If they don't die they will usually go inactive humming below the pillar at the bottom of the cave.

When there's no cosmos in berserk mode or they're all dead, proceed with care along the bridge below that will go directly to the tunnels. Destroy the central one. You can then rest in a ledge just above where this tunnel was, I stayed there a few times, only was hit by a pillbug once. From this location, you can hit easily the remaining tunnel.

Return to the bridge leading to the tunnels, and stay at the top near the pillar, pillbugs will all line and try to climb it. If too many come at the same time, just fly upper.

If there's still cosmos alive at the end it won't be very problematic, although usually they'll be under a ledge at the cave bottom just under the central pillar.

Mission 73 - Light Defenses

The WD has a reasonable easy way out of this one. Bring your most powerful and less energy consuming Rapier and a Powerlance or similar with a reasonable range (120m+) to avoid surprises.

While capturing NPCs, your first goal is to go inside the labyrinth of shields and destroy the spiders anchor at front, then deal with the other spiders one in back and finally the bees one which is right of this one. This will destroy the spawns for almost all troublesome enemies. Then recover everything going outside to the map borders. It's very important to get rid of all the bees now using Powerlance mostly, with spiders coming second. Don't ignore any gold ants of course, the single silver spider will be easier to dismiss.

NPCs should be all dead or very near that. When it's possible go to oversized anchor and destroy it. Recover if necessary and destroy the 2 black ants anchors.

All that will spawn now is red ants, which are a joke to deal with using the rapier.

Destroy all shield bearers, pick crates and destroy the final red ants anchor.

Bring a core that helps with flying and / or dashing.

Lego Games on consoles - which ones are good, which ones are bad

Lego Games has always been one of my favorites. Not only I loved Lego bricks as a child, the main magnet towards the games is the humour and silliness, along with some well crafted worlds and clever situations. The story isn't a plus for me in games, if I want a good story I watch a movie, or better read a book. Even so some of the Lego Games have reasonable crafted stories anyway, and the ones based on licensed properties sometimes are successful in following the original story.

There's a reasonable gap around 2012 between the games. Previous to this date games had no dialogs and the story was told by animated sketches with grunts. After 2012 games have voice dialogs to convene the story. I do think the humour was much better and generally more accomplished on the older games. This was far more difficult to do, as it's like the difference between making humour in silent movies and movies with recorded sound.

Console games

2007

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

This is a compilation of the 2 original games of what can be considered a "Lego game" (2005's Lego Star Wars: The Video Game and 2006's Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy). They're both really well done games with lots of humour, silly situations and some good intros. The plot line of the first 6 movies is sparsely followed, it's not perfect but not bad. Graphics and details is largely inferior compared to newer games, but were good for the time and were improved in the compilation from the original GameCube  / PlayStation 2 / Xbox versions. The game engine was in its infancy, several things are still very basic.  It has co-op play but in a limited manner, as both players would be only able to move in a shared window with border limits. Even though it's the first game(s) it's still one of the best and you should really not miss it.

2008

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

Considering how exceptional the original material for a game that explored humour could be, this one is good but not stellar. It follows sparsely the story of the first 3 movies. There's a few clever ideas but nothing really fancy.

While being inferior to the 2 Star Wars previous games, it's still a good game to play.

Lego Batman: The Videogame

The first super hero based Lego game and it's quite good. The plot is original, and reasonable. It plays differently from previous games, you can play hero and villains missions.

It's much better than Indiana Jones which was released in the same year.

2009

Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues

A sequel to the first Indiana game, the first to have trophies on PS3, as the others already had on the xBox 360. IJ and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the worst of the 4 movies, the plot is just dumb and there's less silliness and humour. Not that IJ and the Temple of Doom was a good one either. Although many people love this game I find it inferior to even the first Indiana game.

They added a creator which was more or less useless, and force you to finish a completely pointless and boring replay that adds nothing if you want all achievements / trophies.

This one I would recommend to just skip.

2010

Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4

Telltales being a British company it would have been dreadful if they made a bad Harry Potter game. It doesn't disappoint. They follow the plot of the original story remarkably well. There's plenty of good humour and silliness. The hub is quite good, and is well integrated in the game. Graphics and gameplay that had evolved since the first Star Wars Saga are even better here.

Only downside is that it's a buggy game, thankfully not much at least in my experience, but it's worse than previous ones. They probably tried to push the game engine too much and the problems showed up. It's still one of the Lego games I do recommend that you shouldn't miss, Harry Potter fan or not.

2011

Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

I was probably expecting too much of this one. Having loved the Complete Saga I was hoping this one to be better. The game was reasonable until I got to the first battle between armies, in which you control one side. When I saw it and started playing I was thinking, wow this is amazing. Really, really short excitement time, when I saw how absolutely dreadful and pointless theses missions are it was a absolute pain to do any of them. I thought it would have strategy but there's none, it's mostly dumb as bats squads on your side and vehicles so slow you'll fall asleep driving them, and stellar armies and leaders on the other side. Unless you cheat (hint use Super Speeder) many of the timed battles I think are impossible to achieve. I did try but lost my patience.

The space battles are good and cleverly done. Major drag is that you must return to a central point in the hub to change characters.

Another one I recommend skipping as you'll likely be bored to death to fish the battle missions too.

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game

I'm not a fan of Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Still like with Harry Potter, clearly there were huge fans of the movies at Telltales and they made a really good game. It has the best humor and silliest situations of all the Lego games. It has very clever and original uses of the game mechanics. It really could be a stellar game. But it's not due to bugs, bugs and more bugs. The game would freeze a ton of times. It finally come to a section in the boat's hull where I had to move bombs, and there it was a absolute nightmare (rebuild of the PS3 disk each time😑😐). The game would always freeze and I could not progress. When I thought I couldn't finish it  and was going to throw the towel I decided to try another character besides Jack Sparrow, and amazingly the game did not crash. Well it did in other areas, but I was able to finally finish the boat area. Don't use Jack Sparrow unless you need the compass...

If you forget the bugs it's even the best overall, followed by SW complete Saga and both Harry Potter games. Problem is if you're unlucky and get the freezing nightmare...

Lego Harry Potter: Years 5–7

Like the first Harry Potter game this one is very good too. There isn't much to add, just a sequel with the same qualities. And the bugs too unfortunately.

Still highly recommended like the first.

2012

Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes

This one had a first: the first Lego game to add dialog. Original dialogs, since Lego Batman games have original stories.

Lego The Lord of the Rings

Another first: not dialogs, that were launched in the previous game, but movie dialogs, with scenes using original dialogs from the movie.

2013

Lego Marvel Super Heroes

Lego City Undercover

2014

The Lego Movie Videogame

Lego The Hobbit

Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

 

2015

Lego Jurassic World

Lego Dimensions

2016

Lego Marvel's Avengers

Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens

2017

The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game

Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2

Lego Worlds

2018

Lego The Incredibles

Lego DC Super-Villains

2019

The Lego Movie 2 Videogame

Portable console games

2013

Lego Legends of Chima: Laval's Journey

2014

Lego Marvel Super Heroes: Universe in Peril

Lego Ninjago: Nindroids

2015

Lego Ninjago: Shadow of Ronin

EDF 5 - DLC 2-8 Inferno weapons farming solo AR

A ton of silver spiders, and just that 😂😑😑😑😑😑. Not only do they have a gazillion armor, but their movement is also very varied and unreliable. It's very usual to see a spider jump half the map to your back, and in the case of this mission, it's not only one. The main issue is how fast you can be in a sea of webs and even one of the supplied 175k+ armor Nixs will melt in 1 or 2 secs.

It can be done just using them but the number of ammo in all 4 Nixs is not exactly enough, but not very comfortable to be safe.

There are 4 Nixs along with a squad of WDs in each in 2 of the beaches, to the back left from start. The WD NPCs have tremendous issues leaving the main beach, even the group in the smaller beach is sometimes slaughtered as it gets to the main beach from their initial position.

2 places will spawn more than 10 silvers if you pass near them, the jp wiki mentions 3 but the one by the beach will the spiders spawn anyway if you go near it or not. The easiest to know is the bridge (where you start in the infamous easy to farm mission 87) and in the mountains near the river to the left and right of this bridge. I do think it's possible that on some occasions and runs they will spawn anyway, at least it seems to happen.

There are 165 silver spiders in this mission. Considering that they usually drop 2 crates (but can also be just 1 or 3), it's at least 330 crates. Remember that only 128 crates can be on the map at the same time and the goal is crate collection, not zipping through the mission.

Essential weapons:

- Heavy Bomber Phobos Z Plan 4. I think I tried every weapon to see which ones could kill, delay or cause havoc on the spiders to help. This was the only one that worked. It's also easy to use since you can just exit a Nix and launch it without aiming, it will be in the direction you are facing and you just need to step back a little to avoid getting hit.

- FZ-GUN MX or ZEXR-GUN. The first are the best towers to handle silvers, as they stun them and can do that to several at once. However, for collection purposes, the ZEXRs can be more useful. You can also use the DLC KM6 Plan X18 if you have it, but unlike the Phobos won't stun and blast spiders, and it won't kill them in 1 attack unless they're in the center of the attack pattern

- Guard Assist Gun G. These will help tremendously in the survival of the Nix. A major plus is how fast they rebuild. Not easy or a good idea to apply during the more stressful Nix changes,

- Blacker E9 or E10, for its speed, it's the best escape vehicle. You can also try a Grape. The Nix Assault is also quite good.

Armor: 1000+

surviving until the vehicle arrives isn't easy. After that you either manage or not, no armor will save your ass if things go berserk

Plan:

Drop the turrets to your back around the start position. Your goal is to capture the NPCs and stay near the blocked tunnel entrance, so spread the turrets in a way that covers the enemy's approach from their spawn points. When near the tunnel, start throwing Phobos attacks, with some luck 1 or 2 silvers will die, enabling you to call the vehicle. You'll probably be able to call 3 or 4 Phobos attacks but after the second it's likely a new wave of spiders will have spawned outside the map to the tunnel side, so throw the Phobos to that area.

Surviving until the vehicle arrives is unreliable. Keep moving slightly, shoot a Guard gun pellet to the ground to help if you want. When the vehicle arrives, use a Guard pellet on it and enter it. If it's a tank run away immediately to the beach by the right track. If it's a Nix Assault you can stay in the start area and clean up the 2 initial spider waves.

Your Nix Assaults have 90k armor, the 4 that the mission has provided on the beaches have almost twice that. Once you reach the smaller beach capture the WDs, enter a Nix if necessary (it will be mandatory if you're in a tank), and proceed to the next beach. The Nix Asssult is fast and its jumps are huge but be careful as sometimes it's a hindrance. It's also really easy to get into an uncontrolled fall on them or be stuck in slow motion during a climb. The NPC WDs have some real troubles crossing the area between the 2 beaches, often they will get stuck in that area and will be massacred by the spiders.

From this point on, the whole idea is to get from the end of the big beach to the start area, killing a few spiders at these ends, to avoid spreading too much the crates. Once you hop back to the other area, prepare turrets, rebuild Guard Gun and summon new Nix Assault if you want and have it, and pick all the crates you can.

You just have to be careful when the last wave of 60 silvers spawns at the end of the bigger beach. This wave will destroy your Nix if you're not careful, so get away from that point if you're near when they spawn. Once you've done this mission a few times it does become reasonably easy.

Take advantage of the last one or two spider groups that can be spawned at the end, as these can also provide a few weapon crates.

With the ranger and WD something similar can be done but takes more time and you have to be a LOT more careful. The lack of the Guard gun means the supplied Nixes can fry in a snap, you can't leave turrets to do your job while you're picking crates and you can't summon further Nixes (if that was your choice). The AR has a huge advantage here.

EDF 5 - Air Raider DLC weapons analysis

The AR seems to be the neglected child when it comes to DLC weapons. Most are plain insipid or not useful. Granted he received the best kit in the main game towards the end.

DLC 1 - Level 100 - B10 Mortar

Like all other Artillery weapons, they're useless. Too slow and too difficult to pinpoint.

DLC 2 - Level 108 - T2HS Rocket Cannon

A Gunship attack, just a high-speed version of the level 86 one, as they share the same stats. Insipid.

DLC 1 - Level 102 - Heavy Bomber Phobos J Cluster Bombs 

A bomber attack that is overall inferior to the Phobos Z Plan 4. The extra damage from the cluster bombs won't likely kill many different enemies from the Phobos, the hit area is smaller and it's very slow to arrive. Phobos Z Plan 4 remains king of usefulness.

DLC 2 - Level 106 - Combat Bomber KM6 Plan X18

An interesting variation of the KM6 that has 18 planes in a star pattern. The pattern isn't useful for all occasions but it can be used in a few missions, but its huge area is a problem in missions with enemies on standby as it becomes difficult to avoid them. Hefty reload points, more than 3000 when fully upgraded, which makes it hard to use on most missions as the majority of enemies will wield usually less than 100 points. It's interesting for levels with lots of silver spiders as these provide 1700 points for each kill, but they will only die if they're hit by the attack center, and unlike with the Phobos they are not spread around and stunned. Even on mission 108 which has a huge number of enemies, it's a difficult weapon to have available for regular use. 

DLC 2 - Level 110 - Heavy Bomber Vesta E Plan X2

Like all napalm bomb Vestas it's nice but doesn't work all that well. It's not efficient and many enemies will not be hit by hit. Unlike KM6 and Phobos, it won't be a major help to solve any mission.

DLC 1 - Level 106 - Lionic UA45XE

The Lionics are fun but won't solve any problems. This one it's still the same crap.

DLC 2 - Level 107 - Limpet Splendor ZAM

Another pea shooter, yay... 😂

DLC 1 - Level 104 - ZEX Rapid Launcher

A faster shooting version of the Launcher with more rounds that deliver less damage. It's rarely useful due to the issues I described for the lower turret. Ends in a snap too.

DLC 2 - Level 111 - ZE Blaster

A really powerful turret. Probably best DLC weapon for the AR. On city missions, you can install them on walls or other environmental items to take down transports. Only slow as hell to turn around, but massive damage and stuns enemies.

DLC 2 - Level 112 - Absolute DZ Bunker

An even better version of a good shield, providing twice the durability. although it must be said that the level 89 one was enough for me until now.

DLC 1 - Level 102 - Powered Titan

The Titans are fun but more useful in multiplayer games. They're slow as molasses and need several players to really take advantage of them.

DLC 2 - Level 106 - Blacker E10

The Blacker's main point is its speed and that you can now install bunkers on its top making it a speedy fortress. The weapon can be useful, but it's imprecise, it has a ton of recoil and it's easy to destroy the tank and NPCs.

DLC 1 - Level 101 - Caliban Support Vehicle SA Turbo

The Caliban is not that useful, especially in solo play. They have reasonable speed, and provide health recovery but 0 ways to defend themselves, don't heal NPCs and it still takes time. There are more interesting options in vehicles.

DLC 2 - Level 108 - Armored Vehicle Grape SRXE

The Grape is difficult to control but it has smashing speed and its weapon has an auto-aim. If you can master its controls you can do amazing things with one. There's one Japanese player that you can take a few driving lessons from and strategies, he's a master with Grapes, it's on the video recommendation pages.

Still, the Grape isn't foolproof for mistakes in EDF 5, like it was in 4.1. You can turn it on its sides and upside down a lot easier than it was on the older game.

DLC 2 - Level 107 - N9 Eros Vulture ZAM 

I do hate the heli controls in the game, so this one is irrelevant to me. Specs seem reasonable.

DLC 1 - Level 104 - Nix Saber

An exoskeleton with laser swords. It's cool but ineffective.

DLC 2 - Level 112 - Nix Assault

A quick movement exoskeleton like the Red Guard, but marred by inferior weaponry. The explosions are the same as the Nix Grenadier EZ ones, but you have 2 sets there. The Grenadier is no big deal either. Tried to use it on several missions but either the Red Guard or Nix ZC were always much better options. The machine guns are interesting but they have damage fall-off, so they're only good at close range.

EDIT

Well, opinions can change. He's not actually that bad and can be useful when speedy movement is crucial, like on missions 100 and DLC 2-8 and 2-12. It has a tendency to skid after landing from a jump so be careful if you exit it, it can stop quite away from you.

DLC 2 - Level 103 - Depth Crawler V

The best Depth Crawler, with enough armor and firepower to withstand many thorny situations. Very speedy, sometimes even too much as it's difficult to stay correctly in the ground in narrow tunnels. Very useful anyway. This is probably the best vehicle of the DLC ones.

DLC 2 - Level 110 - Strike Barga

Like helis, Bargas are not my cup of tea. But let's face it the armor of this thing is huge.  The problem is that measly spiders and gold ants melt it in a snap. Control sucks too, not as bad as the heli but not far. Still using a Barga once in a while it's cool, and they have more possibilities in multiplayer.

Conclusion

Very few interesting weapons for the AR in the DLCs. The Blacker and Depth Crawler are simply evolutions of previous ones and not very dramatic ones, the DLC Barga does have a huge armor, the Assault will come in handy in a few missions. And in weapons, only the ZE Blaster is really useful or different from main game weapons. The KM6 Plan X18 is too costly in points to be viabke, 

A big disappointment.

EDF 5 - M98 Coastal Defense Line Inferno weapons farming solo AR

Messy mission = AR rocks

This one isn't as fun as 94, or as hectic but still a bit of a mess.

Ideal weapons:

- Heavy Bomber Phobos Z Plan 4 to help kill colonists, and damage Cosmos

- ZEXR to help with flying enemies

- ZEX Launcher for the same effect. Don't use the ZEX Launcher when the tadpoles are present, you'll likely regret it... 😋

- Nix ZC will be much more useful here, but Red Guard can also work

Weapons don't have to be fully upgraded to succeed.

Armor: 1000+

Can be done with base armor, but due to how hectic the mission is, it's difficult not to be hit, especially by drones.

Plan:

There's a small group of NPCs ahead of you, capture them and when you reach the road install ZEX Launcher to the sides and activate, send ZEXRs to the beach and activate. When the colonists are on the beach use Phobos on them, sideways with a narrow side to the right seems to work better. It's difficult to aim Phobos as the red hit area becomes too small and not hitting the 2 exoskeletons NPCs becomes hard. There are 3 groups of NPCs on the beach that could be useful but unless you kill ALL colonists that appear which is unlikely it's a bad idea to try to get them, so just move around the road, and summon your exoskeleton when you can. As soon as the number of drones is small rebuild immediately the ZEXR as it will be essential next.

The big ship will drop drones type 2, so install ZEXRs if you didn't and activate them, do the same with Launchers when they're ready, staying in the exoskeleton as much as possible. Nix ZC is good for drones, use missiles, and machine guns on them. When colonists are on the beach, use Phobos on them. Concentrate Nix ZC bullets and cannon on laser colonist, if you're using Red Guard use canister shots on him.

Reload ZEXRs when possible (few drones are present). Keep summoning more exoskeletons when you have points.

The last wave of drones type 2 will show up, with imperial ones. Use ZEXRs, Launcher, and Exo shots on imperial drones. Cannisters from Red Guard will work on imperial drones, but Nix ZC will be much more efficient with bullets and cannon.

When the cavalry arrives, it's important to capture WDs that show up in the middle of the group before they go to the beach (probably to the right of where you're), then capture both large fencer squads on each side of the WD squad, which although slow is equipped with cannons, they will handle Cosmos. Ranger is impossible for now.

At this point mission is won. Jump to the beach over the fight and pick crates, mostly weapons and health. Don't shoot any cosmos from now on! Try to bring down the right transport dropping tadpoles, as it has no point existing except annoying.

Either the NPCs or NPC Barga will handle the heavy cosmos, which one is irrelevant but for the sake of NPCs always keep picking up health crates. Tadpoles will massacre Barga eventually.

Once all cosmos are dead and you pick up everything then sit quietly under last transport, NPCs will bring it down alone. That's why auto farming isn't possible on this one.

https://youtu.be/_NlksS3H5UU

This becomes a lot easier if you can use the ZE Blaster instead of the ZEX Launcher. The ZE Blaster lasts longer and is more effective, even though slower at tracking enemies. You can use any vehicle you want, although some will be dreadful to take down the transports, remember NPCs will do that if necessary.

EDF 5 - Air Raider weapons analysis, what's good, what's bad

EDF MOST BASIC WEAPON INFORMATION

If you want a specific weapon you need to find out the mission range where you can get it and play those missions. For EDF 5 use the weapons wiki:

http://weapon.edf.jpn.com/5_eng/a.html

and then cross-reference with the Japanese wiki weapons drop level by mission (use Chrome's or 

Edge's built-in translator if needed, just to see the chart it's not)

https://w.atwiki.jp/edf5/pages/373.html

or use leafierlemon's site:

http://leafierlemon.com/edf5/calc.shtml?lang=en

This is the answer to "where can I get x weapon". Yes, you'll have to dig it for yourself and yes it takes time and effort to find out all you'll want. EDF is like this, get used to it.

Again weapon drops are totally dependent on RNG, you can play the same mission 100 times and never get the one you want even if it's within its range of drops.

Moving on...

In the plethora of weapons for each class, there are only a few that are really useful and problem solvers. Some weapons, although mighty fun to use are not reliable or useful enough to help with the final goal, which is finishing the missions. I'll try to detail the ones that are good for practical purposes, and just mostly ignore the ones that aren't. Do realize that many weapons are not really helpful in inferno, due to enemies' speed, aggressiveness, and armor. Inferno is a completely different beast from even hardest.

No weapon is perfect, they all have pluses and minuses. There's no essential weapon, but a few are the most useful to solve the vast majority of missions.

In 4.1 the AR had the Epsilon Railgun, which was so good that he could be called the Epsilon Railgun class. Although the Ranger inherited it was a poisoned gift, as now it's mostly a toy.

Most of the Air Raider weapons require planning, brains, and knowledge of the mission. He's the most overpowered class by Inferno end in EDF 5 due to the sheer power of his air attacks and vehicles.

Artillery Units

These are almost useless now. They have not changed much and that's the problem, the others have and they're much better. They require you to send a grenade-like flare. The first problem, this is imprecise. Second, it takes really quite some time for the attack to occur, so unless it's a static enemy forget it. Third, they require points, so if you make a blunder you're stuck with your other weapons until you get more. Chances that you really hit the enemies you want and/or miss your NPCs are slim, so they're now, as they almost always were, in the toys department.

Pity as Cannon Gun DZ (almost 1.2 million damage) could be good for hives for instance, but I tried and it's too unreliable. Can be awesome if it does the job, dreadful if it doesn't which is the usual result. There are better choices with bigger success stories. Update. Cannon DZ can be useful especially against silver spiders on online inferno, as its big damage will help kill them faster (DLC 2-8...)

Gunships

The gunships were largely improved from 4.1 and are very useful. There are 2 groups, and they're easy to use with a gun-type marker, long-range, a zoom function to help precision shots and reload over time and not points.

A few important notes:

- the attacks are done with an angle that is varied since the gunships are supposedly circling the map (yep somewhat ridiculous), so they sometimes don't work, if there are buildings or shields in their path; sometimes the effect is opposite and can be dreadful by hitting other enemies you don't want, so you can't use them on some places (DLC 2-1

- attacks can miss the target or not do the damage you need, so take always that into account

- they can fail on high speed enemies even if they have the beacon, like big tadpoles and red drones

The Minigun / Vulcan are strong machine-gun attacks that will penetrate enemies but will not destroy the environment. If there's a chance of NPCs and you being under the enemies they're the better choice

The others are cannons variants. They vary from single shots in a small area with several rounds before reloading, to 1 shot with a lot of shells over a wider area. The most useful I found are:

- the 150mm Cannon ν Lapis (and similar ones) are good to selectively destroy environments and enemies, even big ones although these will require multiple shots, but it does help.

- the 105mm Rapid-fire Cannon Z (and similar ones) are better to handle colonists, cosmos, and bigger enemies, but they will also probably shred NPCs if they're in the area near the enemies due to their large attack radius so be extremely careful choosing and using this one. They also penetrate and destroy everything in the blast area, so are useful for destroying the environment

120 cannons and Rocket cannons will not pierce through enemies so they won't hit ones under transports or motherships.

Bombers

This was the most improved group of AR weapons. They now put a marker on the ground that will give an idea of where the attack will hit and the area with the corresponding pattern of the plane's path. These are the bread and butter in many missions and they usually produce very good results if well used. Some are useful, others are not thought.

Do realize that each bomber attack is done at a different height, so some will not be useful on a few occasions. Unfortunately except for trying to see if it works as you need or not, there's no other way to know. Z4 and FX dor instance can hit the outpost core when the hatch is open.

- Heavy Bomber Phobos Z Plan 4 (and the hard level counterpart). Phobos is a bombers attack that covers a wide area with considerable destruction, even hitting low flying enemies and deroys, with only cosmonauts and bigger enemies usually surviving its power. Considering the damage to the small stuff and the overall wreck that it causes, the Phobos is now likely the most useful weapon in AR's arsenal in any mission that has a reasonable number of enemies, especially ground ones. And it's the most awesome and fun weapon to use anyway, absolutely no other weapon in the game beats leveling down the city and enemies with a Phobos. 😍😋

The level 43 Heavy Bomber Phobos Plan 4 ages pretty well too and it's still very useable in inferno. Fully upgraded will kill small stuff in inferno (even deroy legs) and its huge and practical hit area is always a plus.

- Combat Bomber KM6 Plan Z4 (and the hard level counterpart). KM6 is a machine gun attack similar to Phobos but without explosive damage. It works surprisingly well against flying enemies. The high-level version has a narrow path, but it does have 4 bombers in a row so the damage is considerable. Their biggest downside is the usually very narrow area they cover. Although it can be used over yourself and NPCs don't expect it to be foolproof, several times you'll end up dead or a lot of your companions will be gone. Is it sometimes necessary? Yes, but don't believe the optimists that it causes no issues, because I've had plenty of proof otherwise. Due to their larger hit area, they're particularly dangerous to use over vehicle or exoskeleton either yours or NPC ones. As an example, a KM6 attack will likely destroy your Naegling if thrown over yourself.

- Vestas are visually fun but except on mission 101 (Crumbling city) where all enemies are very weak and the terrain is mostly flat, so it will work nicely, for the remainder of the missions I struggled to find any use for them. They take too much time to come, which means there will be a large time gap without them doing anything. And the attack will follow any terrain blocks like buildings, environment parts, and enemy ships flying by, so many problems can happen. Red ants are only slightly slowed by them and not stunned, and big stuff too.

There are some variants with napalm bombs, cluster bombs, and one bomber Phobos but they're not practical, do enough damage or solve issues like these 2. Some are fun to use but won't ultimately help solve missions.

Missiles

The missiles are mostly the same as they were in 4.1. Like there the most useful are the Tempests, but due to the time they require to arrive and guide, its use is mostly against inactive enemies or far ones crushing NPCs. They do deliver huge damage to a large area usually wiping out near NPCs too. They're problem solvers in a few missions, making solving them considerably easier.

The Lionics and Cruise Missiles are not problem solvers in inferno especially. They require constant aiming which is difficult at inferno speeds and you'll either waste most of it or hit the wrong enemies or usually structures/terrain. Lionics for instance can have up to 45 shots, so aiming them all takes too much time, and as a bonus it takes forever to reload. Although fun they should be ignored.

Satellites

These have been very improved and they come with a freebie, a hysterical and laughable female operator.

Spritefall is much more effective in EDF 5, although its usefulness diminishes a lot by Inferno time as their damage and spread are not useful to handle anchors for instance. I tested all 3 best Spritefalls (Power Mode, Maximum, and Destroy all fully upgraded in power except the last which was at 9 but even at 10 would be useless) in mission 95 Drop Location which has a lot of large anchors from start and neither of the 3 destroyed the any, but by comparison, the 3 best Bulge Laser (Beam Mode D, Beam Mode F, and Beam Mode Z which I had the first of these at level 8 and the others at 9 in damage) did the job. Spritefalls can be useful in a really few situations like destroying cannons in the outpost base (stellar for that), enemies in a group in standby, or while attacking NPCs (the NPCs will probably be toast) but it's not a good general use weapon in inferno. My biggest gripe with them overall is their ability to destroy NPC units besides enemies, and to me NPCs are an amazing and fun help.

UPDATE. It does have some uses in Inferno and I thank Vlady for pointing out that, and can even make some missions a piece of cake when cleverly used with other weapons (85 Incoming Larvae and DLC 1-4 Reclaim Base 236 for instance).

Spritefall Shooting Mode is a single shot sniper-like weapon. It's quite useful sometimes, but only if you don't miss it, as its low points requirements mean you always have another to use again.

Bulge Laser Beam has been improved over 4.1 too. Its huge damage over time is great to handle anchors especially the huge ones which nothing else can (except Tempests but they're not practical on most occasions), heavy cosmonauts, deroys, and even big enemies like giant bees (doesn't work very well on king spiders as depends on what phase of their movement you get them and not even Z I think can kill a silver king, bulges work even worse with queen ants as they don't stun them (well very few things stun queen ants except WD rapiers) but will be able to kill or damage seriously any of them). In many cases, it's also a "use and forget" weapon that will do its job which is always an awesome trait. I rarely used them in 4.1 but use them a lot on 5. Bulges penetrate the mothership and they're quite useful for the mission where she shows up on and needs to be destroyed.

Limpet Guns

Limpet guns are usually the worst choice to make in AR weapons. If you want to use rifles and shoot things, play the Ranger. For personal defense, you should and must aim to rely on turrets, NPCs, and vehicles, which to make things even simpler are all much improved in EDF 5. Except for the extreme and very few situations where it actually is required they should not be used at all. They're slow, impractical, mostly inefficient, and above all disable efficient use of the AR weapons that will really solve missions because you're wasting your time using this junk.

The Limpet Splendor and its ME variant were rather nice to use in tunnels against weak enemies. However, the new turrets render them useless in 5.

The Sniper is useful only in the cases where the target is too far or unreachable for other weapons, or in the case, you need to piss just one enemy in a mob, in the ground, or flying (although there are other better choices for this effect). Fully upgraded the Limpett Sniper ZD does considerable damage at 5k per shot, and you have 3. It's also interesting that you can activate the bullets when you want which is nice to install in a convenient place and use later. However, stupidly it's the only sniper in the whole game that has no zoom, which is even more stupid when most gunships, satellites, and missiles have one. Yes, sadly there are missions in that it needs to be used (update, wrong, all missions in the main campaign and DLC can be done without them).

In multiplayer it's an insult and a sign you don't know how to play the game because all other classes will be a gazillion better at defending you than you doing it yourself.

Do yourself the biggest favor possible while playing the AR, play without them it will improve your class success and fun tremendously.

Stationary Weapons

There are 2 groups in these, the robot bombs and the turrets.

The robot bombs are really fun to use, but again won't, unfortunately, solve any of your missions in inferno (wrong, surprinsingly they do help a lot on a DLC one, 2-10

The turrets are one of the essential weapons of the AR. People who say they suck, simply don't have the slightest idea how to play the AR. The wonderful feature of the turrets is that they enable you to use efficiently the other weapons and vehicles you have, as they do their work alone and are usually reasonably efficient in that.

The only issue with them in EDF 5 is that you can't equip 2 or 3 of the same equipment. That is a PITA. However, they now can be installed in vehicles without the certainty that they will wreck it faster than the enemies would, which would happen in 4.1. Even better unlike in 4.1 they will reload even when you're not holding them. There are 4 major groups of turrets:

- ZE Blaster, a new laser turret in DLC 2, it's very powerful and quite efficient for several ground and flying small enemies and great to take down transports if you can use them for that effect. For big ones, it's a mixed bag. Just snail slow to turn around and sometimes doesn't work due to angles. Reasonable search and hit range, better than ZEXRs. They last a long time.

- FZ-GUN's, a wonderful new turret very efficient on tunnels where you can bottleneck enemies and reasonably efficient against mobs of silver spiders and gold ants in some ground missions, as they stun enemies and last a loooonnnng time. However friendly fire in NPCs can be problematic. Surprisingly they're very effective applied on top of Depth Crawlers in tunnel missions, as they don't damage the vehicle, but still damage NPCs and you if you're out of it. Very short range though

- Launchers, turrets with explosives that have a long search and hit range, are nice to help level down city areas, but will spread enemies that don't die easily. Even the last one the level 72 ZEX Launcher won't one-shot kill any enemy in Inferno, which many times will be a problem. They're a really bad option with tadpoles (as they were with dragons) as they home on you and NPCs, and the explosions will not only kill the tadpoles... They're reasonable against bees and drones. Also, work reliably against Colonists and Cosmonauts. And they can also make Erginus and Archelus stop and jump back, although is not guaranteed, nothing is guaranteed with either of these two. On tunnels exclusively if you can bottleneck all enemies on someplace where they can't reach you. The problem is how volatile things are with them on the map, things can go awesome or self-destroying in a snap.

- ZEXR and siblings, the essential turret for ground missions, and even good in cave ones. The only issue with them is that you can only have one in EDF 5.

The next available one, the ZE-GUN10, is sadly deplorably bad in everything, making the ZERA-GUN the only other option for Inferno. But it's a bad one, as it only has 2 turrets and it doesn't do much damage. Still, exoskeletons are much improved in 5, and combining the use of both will be crucial.

To take advantage of them, level down the whole area in city missions, unless you can funnel the enemies reliably through a narrow section. In city missions put turrets in areas where there's no rubble, buildings, or other objects that will get the bullets instead of the enemies. Put them on intersections, one for each path. Try to put them on upper areas that can overlook where the enemies will be coming from. 

Remember now you can throw turrets further away, by looking up. When there are just a few enemies and you have NPCs or a good vehicle, rebuild them to make them available for the next onslaught, as turret management with knowledge of what's going to happen next is essential to easy success. And wonderfully you can now install them easily and without issues in Depth Crawlers, Blackers, Grapes, and even the helicopters. If you master the techniques of using them efficiently you'll see why they're wonderful helpers and the limpets (and the suppress gun toys) are mostly wasting time trash.

Support Equipment

These are divided into 2 sections. Guiding kits and enhancement posts and guns.

Guiding kits are only useful in multiplayer if there's a Fencer equipped with Leviathan, Phoenix, and other missiles that require them. There's an extreme situational use in a single player with a Naegling to concentrate all missiles on a single big enemy. Can also be used as a Tempest simplifier but on most occasions, it will be a waste of a valuable slot.

Enhancement posts and guns are useful. There are 3 groups, one for providing health-related items, another to enhance the power of the attacks, and another to reduce the damage of enemies. Power enhancement does not work for turrets and airstrikes. You can use them on exoskeletons or Bargas but should put them at their feet. Guns are usually more practical for vehicles when you need to use them quickly, as they're easier to target and apply, have much better reload times but have much less range, so not that helpful for NPCs. Life-related items have no reloads, when you used the initially provided number that's it. Life enhancements were more interesting in 4.1 since only the Ranger could heal NPCs in that game.

You can't stack power and guard effects, only one will be applied. You can stack life-related items, but you'll spend them faster.

3 enhancements can cover a huge area. These are the level 58 Offensive Territory, the level 31 Zone Protector, and the level 75 Zone Protector. Don't be too happy though as the enhancement ratio is small.

Special

There are 2 groups here too, with one containing 2 subdivisions.

If I already ranted at the limpets the Suppress Guns are true toys and/or jokes. Can't even understand why Sandlot wasted their resources on this, probably listening to the whining people who don't have the slightest idea how to use the AR. The AR is no Ranger if you're wasting your time with pea shooters you're not doing your job.

The other group contains the Decoys and Shields. Decoys were vaguely useful in 4.1 as their health was ridiculous. They're much better on 5, but still, its use is mostly in city missions where you're able to hide them from enemies that can't destroy buildings or find them easily like ants. On open field missions, it's more difficult so seldom useful but can still be used (103 Tornado is an example). However decoys can be installed inside shields, so they're an option in multiplayer with 2 or more ARs present as it's lesser problematic to use 2 weapon slots. Avoid using explosives or missiles (even Phobos) near them. Other big issues are the long reload times and the fact that they can only be installed on the spot you're. Decoy [Yellow] has a longer duration than Decoy [Silver] but a much weaker armor.

The shields are a great use of a weapon slot in many situations. The good ones are the Absolute Bunker and Electromagnetic bunkers, and the Electromagnetic Wall. The latter is useful by being much taller and will be a better option when you have a static group of NPCs relatively close together, and especially if they include exoskeletons, as the Absolute and Electromagnetic Bunkers don't protect them, but they're not useful if there are airborne enemies. Still, shields require some training to use well and you're advised to watch videos to see what's the best way to install them. They have long reload times. Bunkers are excellent to install on vehicles. 

If you're using Supress Guns you don't even deserve to use this class...

Dumbest Sandlot idea on EDF 5.

Tanks

Tanks were the area of the Special One in 4.1, the Epsilon Railgun. Unfortunately, it was given to Ranger in 5 as a poisoned gift as it was nerfed so much that is almost in the toy's territory.

The Blackers are much faster and more useable now, but shooting angles are still bad and it still has a ton of recoil. The weapon is reasonable but hits a big area so it's very dangerous to use for close enemies as there's always a chance of some enemy or NPC going by, so self-defense sometimes is a self-attack too. It's also easy to hit your NPCs that are further away due to the imprecision. But you can install shields on them and you have a zippy mobile armored powerhouse. In city maps where there's usually a road covering all perimeter, these are pretty good if you need a zippy transport to drive around, although there's a better but a lot more difficult to handle option in the next group.

The Titan is mostly a multiplayer weapon. It needs 3 people to take full advantage of. It's absolutely crawling slow. In everything...

Ground Vehicles

These include 3 classes of vehicles: Naegling Self-Propelled Missile Launcher, Caliban Support Vehicle, and the Armored Vehicle Grape.

The Naegling Self-Propelled Missile Launcher will automatically track enemies and send guided missiles toward them. It's a useful weapon in many situations but marred by a few issues. Ridiculous armor and bad camera angle on most occasions you're moving and shooting or trying to. You'll likely need to drive back to use it so it doesn't help. Sadly can be toppled much easier than it was on EDF 4.1, in that game you could rest assured that it would be always in the correct position or would really quickly revert to it. Still learning to use it well can help a lot on a few missions, as the AR doesn't have anything else similar, so don't underestimate it. It will one-shot most smaller enemies, and it's especially effective against flying ones. It will knockout Blue tadpoles and silver spiders.

The Caliban Support Vehicle is fast and provides armor recovery but it's mostly a waste as there are better options and you're using your only mobility possibility in a vehicle that won't kill anything. In single-player is even worse, it will have its uses in multiplayer mostly if multiple ARs are present.

The Armored Vehicle Grape is a weird vehicle. It has difficult controls and it's hard to master but has blistering speed, and some come with a good auto-tracking cannon. If you learn to use it well it can be awesome, but it's a really hard road. Like the Naegling the road is harder than it was on EDF 4.1, you can topple it way more easily and be in an awkward situation quite easily

Powered Exoskeletons

This class of vehicles has been extremely improved in EDF 5 over 4. In EDF 2025 they were absolute snails. They got better on 4.1 but not much and had miserable armor. In 5 some have huge armor, some have huge mobility, and some even both.

Of the plethora of exoskeletons available 2 clearly stand out.

The level 87 Powered Exoskeleton Nix ZC, for its versatility and raw power. Yes, it's slow but it has tremendous attack and defense weaponry and a varied one for all occasions. A powerful machine gun with good range, good for ground and aerial enemies; a good cannon good for big enemies on ground and air, even colonists and cosmonauts, just marred by very few shells; a good burner with plenty of fuel, great to handle near enemies big or small; and a few missiles to handle anything, but very useful for flying enemies. It's a fierce war machine and can handle huge battles single-handedly.

It's only difficult to make headshots in cosmos and frogs as the machine gun ammo will curve down slightly at the end and has a reasonable variation in hit area. Can still be done but it's somewhat luck-dependent. The aim for the shoulder howitzer requires training too.

The level 80 Nix Red Guard, has fantastic mobility, but much inferior weaponry compared to Nix ZC. You're stuck with a good burner or a canister with a few shots, which is still respectable, but it can't fight a full-fledged war like the Nix ZC, not even close. Canisters are not explosive, which sometimes is good as you won't hurt your mech with the blast, sometimes is bad because you really want or need to blow up things. Still has a reasonable armor.

If you time it correctly you can jump almost continuously and cover big distances in a snap.

Unfortunately, you can't apply shields effectively to exoskeletons unlike Blackers and Depth Crawlers. But you can apply power or guard guns bullets to them. Or apply turrets to its legs or body...

The improvements of the exoskeletons are absolutely dramatic in EDF 5 from 4.1. The beyond arthritic BM03 Vegalta AX which is basically the Nix ZC had 20k armor, in EDF 5 Nix ZC has 104.4k armor, more than 5x times as much. It does have slightly less revolver ammo and missiles, but the walking speed and rotational movements make it night and day to use the EDF 5 version.

The Nix Grenadier EZ is mildly interesting but it has too many chances of damaging itself and even worse sometimes wiping out the NPCs, so either of the 2 previous ones is always a better choice. The Nix Destroy Cannon has similar issues.

Special Weapons

Another 3 groups of vehicles here are BMX10 Proteus, Barga, and Depth Crawlers.

The BMX10 Proteus is a cross between a barga, an exoskeleton, and a titan tank. It's supposed to be used by 3, one controlling the movements, and another 2 on each gun turret. Even on the single-player has its uses, but it's seldom. The gun turrets are slow to activate and use, and have very limited angles, a pity as it could be a request available shelling powerhouse like the HU04 Brute SA9 (which is now a Ranger weapon 😑). Movement is slow and clunky almost like the Titan. It has reasonable armor, but exoskeletons evolved a lot in that area too.

The Barga well is the Barga. It's similar to the Fencer in many things, you'll either love it or hate it. The controls are dreadful in everything, movement is horrendous and it can be eaten alive by ants, spiders, and bees in a snap. It's fun to use in small doses. I don't rely on him to solve anything, too unreliable (perhaps on 100 with the DLC one...). Crates picking with him is an absolute nightmare.

You can't avoid the Depth Crawler on EDF 5. Some cave missions are not solvable without a reasonable use of them. The controls have been improved but it's still weird to use, and they're still inverted when you're on the ceiling. Also due to clipping issues in caves, it's quite easy to be in an awkward position or outside the map. At least you can apply turrets that won't destroy it and shields to them now.

The EDF western games syndrome - Part 1 - Insect Armageddon

The first attempt to make a EDF game that would be more appealing for western audiences was Insect Armageddon. Of course the notion of what is more appealing to western gamers is discussible, as everything in life. D3, the EDF publisher owned Vicious Cycle and either them pitched the idea or D3 asked them to take a different approach to the series.

Insect Armageddon was born, or probably more correctly spawned, and although it was relatively successful the game is almost a total disaster.

The first issue is that the bugs are mostly bugged. They home on you like idiots and their movement is absolutely dreadful. They disappear in the ground and reappear again in mobs, which I don't think was a idea, but a solution to handle game engine breakdowns. The flying enemies are as laughable as the ground ones. The animations of the small enemies are really, really bad, either ground or flying were so laughable, and not in a sense that was expected as the game has a serious tone. There are a few interesting big enemies though. The mantis was a great idea and well executed. The bomber spider wasn't bad either, and the concept of breeding batches of smaller enemies was nice. The hectors were acceptable, more serious than their main series counterparts.

The second issue was the total lack of strategy the game required. It's just absolutely deplorable brainless and pointless shooting, unfortunately typical of many western shooters, nice for "skilled" players. There was no need to plan or think how to solve the mission, just shoot you'll do it. The enemies home on you all in a line as straight as they can. Again development cuts hopefully, the enemy behavior of Sandlot games has been developed and improved for years, it's not something that can be amateurishly copied.

The third issue was the dreadful weapons. Every crappy weapon was basically the same junk and felt the same way using. All you had was slightly better versions of the same junk. With a bonus of a even more dreadful RNG grind than in the Sandlot games to get them. Frankly the only fun weapons were the Pesticide ones, as at least these would actually kill things.

Fourth issue, enemies were bullet sponges (or the weapons were just crap as per previous point). I was so tired of endlessly shooting the stupid ant queen, I just quit the mission, got the Pesticide gun and did it that way, as every other gun was pointless to deal with her (kind of killing a Erginus in inferno with a level 30 or 40 rifle in the main series). It was boring and stupid.

Fifth issue. The game was plain easy. Dumb enemies? Check. No strategy needed, just brainless shooting? Check. Can get weapon that can make all missions even more brainless? Check. Just a few dumb missions? Check.

Sixth issue. Gigantic boring grinds. How can someone complain about Sandlot games grinds, and then play and finish all this junk? Weapon grinds. Armor grinds. Survival game grinds. They probably wanted to add more.

Seventh. Beyond incompetent NPCs. Well, it must be said that until EDF 4.1 Sandlot wasn't much better either on the same department.

Eight. The classes were made to mirror the ones in Sandlot games, but only Storm was decent, which is no surprise, it's a western FPS so a ranger like class it's all that matters. Jet and tactical were just deplorably bad, although Jet had the best Pestocide gun 😁

There were some other saving grace ideas. That the NPCs were able to recover the player, but usually inept to do it. Hum... I think that's it 😂

The game could have been just "Insect Armageddon". Then it was just a stupid, pointless and dumb game. The worst idea overall was labelling this a game in the series, which is a insult. It's just light years away from the Sandlot games, something that even the game series producer acknowledges.

And apparently they were happy with the experiment and decided to have another go. I'll talk about that later. Well, third time is the charm, so I guess we'll see that too.

And it's a wrap.

PS If you really enjoyed IA, it's likely you won't enjoy the Sandlot games. Sorry...

EDF 5 - DLC 2-11 Inferno weapons farming solo AR

I've settled that this seems to be the best way to solve this one. I must say the most important idea come from the Japanese EDF wiki blog, and that was to use 2 Tempests instead of 1, as I had tried with 1 and it did not work at all and I had dismissed the Tempest as useful here. I successfully did the mission with a weird range of weapons, from ZEX Launcher, ZEXR, various gunships, artillery, bulge lasers, and mostly the Nix ZC but it was 1 success in 20 or so tries. It was partially fun... The main problem is always surviving the start, so it was usually a pretty fast end, and it will be on most occasions.

EDIT

Once I had the highest gunship attacks all almost fully upgraded it becomes viable and more reliable to do this with them. Details below.

This is the last approachable mission of DLC 2. Missions 12, 13, and 14 are peachy, even though they can be done they take time and care, lots of it.

Tempests run

Essential weapons:

- Tempest AT, it must be on the first slot, mine has 9 stars damage

- Tempest ATS, it must be on the second slot, mine has 9 stars damage. The reason that the Tempest should be in the first and 2nd slot in this order is that you should immediately at the start summon both, and the ATS seems to be faster than the AT. If you change the order you call both missiles it will be unlikely the 2nd will hit more than 1 Erginus. This can probably be sill successful with lower damages specs on both weapons, I had them with these the first time I tried so can't be sure. Other variable specs, range, and reload points are not crucial for the plan, but the higher the better of course. Although it's weird I do think different star ratings can give small but different speeds to Tempest missiles (not mentioned in the stats and neither damage, reload points or beacon distance would imply this).

- Vulcan Cannon M2, to do "small" damage when you don't have Tempest or it's not smart to use them. The Vulcan has the advantage that it seldom kills your NPCs, unlike the 105mm Rapid-fire Cannon Z as an example. You should not use multiple shots gunships either (I did but not on this strategy)

- Nix Red Guard, mainly the speed for crates collection, but amazingly its 2 weapons do work pretty well with Erginus and Archelus, Nix ZC is also an excellent choice and much more powerful, just very slow

Armor: 1000+

you can be one-shot with less than 5000 armor in this mission in a blink. In one run one Archelus did 60k+ damage in one attack to my Nix ZC, beats me how but it did happen. Basically expect to die in one hit if it's direct contact with one of the enemies. People claim it's easy to do this mission with WD and Phalanx ZAT, but I assume they have a gazillion armor, as with the 1500ish I have it's death after death no matter how far I go for the most unseeingly reasons, as the Erginus and Archelus have huge hit areas of their own and just a small movement of them, not even an attack, it's immediate death

Plan:

Immediately look to the ground and call in the Tempest AT, followed immediately by the Tempest ATS. Yes summoning Tempests by using the ground under you is the fastest way to start the process. Remember you can drive later the Tempests to its goal. While using the Vulcan preferably on the Erginus fighting with the NPC Barga, change to both Tempest and aim them to the Barga or the most convenient Erginus, the one in the middle of the fight. Keep rolling / moving right from start. Hoping that the Barga doesn't get destroyed before the first Tempest arrives, unfortunately common, hit the Erginus that is in the middle of the 3 or at least 2. Your Barga will be history at this point if it was still up (actually in one run the Barga survived the first Tempest, I thought I stored the video but didn't). The Erginus will be stunned for just a sec, which hopefully will be enough for the ATS to arrive (you switched to that one didn't you...). Curiously on 2 or 3 occasions one of the Erginus died from the first Tempest, which means that the NPC Barga did kick his ass for a while. Pity, it's so seldom this happens, which also explains why mission 100 is ultimately an RNG bore, and although this one is not as bad as 100 yes it's still highly RNG related.

If you're very lucky all Erginus will die. Erginus hit by both Tempests will die, if hit by just ATS are almost dead, and 2 to 4 Vulcan hits will finish them, if just hit by the Tempest AT not even half their armor is gone.

Each dead Erginus / Archelus will replenish both Tempests. It will also likely give enough points to summon a new Nix.

Everything going fine and provided you managed to almost reach the end of the map to the right, surviving Erginus will focus on the 2 squads of NPCs that were at the start (yes, you can't capture them...). Actually, it's very important to reach the end of the map and stay there before calling the Tempests again, because if you don't it's highly probable that at least 1 of the Erginus of wave 3 will spawn really near you. If any of the first 3 Erginus goes to you it's likely game over unless you manage to survive until the Nix arrive, which is not impossible, but hard.

If necessary, and you're able to handle the enemy near you (use Nix cannons and burners to make it go back even if it's not much, exit Nix, aim Vulcan on the enemy, enter Nix again, rinse and repeat until he's dead) deal with him. After or if it wasn't necessary, the next 2 Erginus will spawn to the end of the map from your position, that is the far left from start (that's the reason for not going left at the start). They will all aggro around the 3 squads of NPC rangers that were near you at the start. They can be wiped out in a snap, it's not uncommon.

Do the same with both Tempests and try to hit the biggest number of Erginus possible, with both missiles. At some point, another 4 will spawn, 2 near the initial NPCs, and 2 in the far back, that will usually stay around a squad of fencers that will spawn in the far left front from start or they'll usually also crush the 4 NPC EMCs that spawn in that area.

Keep rinsing and repeating the 2 Tempests thing, using the Vulcan on the deadest  Erginus if you missed and did not score a kill. The best Erginus to hit will be the one more violet, and with less vibrant light blue. Archelus will seem rotten and diffuse, the green tones will all disappear and will be all brownish as they're dying. Not easy to see from very far. Yes, Archelus and  Erginus move too fast and like to party together making it hard to follow a specific one.

2 Archelus will show up. Continue with the same action, focusing on the ones you prefer. Archelus don't die with 2 Tempests, at least with the level 9 ones, so deal a few more Vulcan shots to finish them, or let the hopefully alive EMC's and tanks do that. 

Do this until there are 2 enemies left. If you have a few tanks and EMC NPCs alive, pick crates. If not at least try to soften both enemies or kill one of them, to make things easier. EMCs are quite powerful and can wipe out either beast quickly so don't waste much time. In my experience, EMC's are alive at the end on roughly 1/3 of the runs.

Unfortunately, Erginus and even Archelus corpses take a looooonnnnnnng time to vanish, so this is sometimes annoying. Also, you can be stuck under an enemy corpse, and not unlikely that you'll have to wait for it to vanish before being able to move.

Hope you're lucky and also can manage this. It's not very hard, and easier for the AR than mission 8, and also a reasonably higher mission in drops quality. There's also a crucial difference in that 8 will likely give problems at the end, in this one they will likely be at the beginning.

https://youtu.be/wJrmNeF3_lA

Gunships run

Essential weapons:

- 3 best gunships you have in damage, range, and reload time, all must be nearly fully upgraded. Vulcan Cannon M2 and 105mm Rapid-fire Cannon Z are the most effective, 150mm Cannon D and T2 Rocket Cannon as the third option. Combat Bomber KM6 Plan X18 if you have it can work nicely too, especially with the first 3 Erginus

- Nix Red Guard, mainly the speed for crates collection, but amazingly its 2 weapons do work pretty well with Erginus and Archelus, Nix ZC is also an excellent choice and much more powerful, just very slow

Plan:

Almost the same plan as the Tempest version. Go right until the map border, while delivering attacks to preferably the same Erginus. You'll still be hitting the NPC Barga due to the large blast area. Keep recycling and shooting all gunship attacks, it's sometimes difficult to be on the same enemy, just use them on another.

If you manage to not get much attention once the Barga is destroyed just follow the same process, hit preferably the same enemy but don't be picky. Don't think you can keep Erginus and Archelus at a distance, they can still attack you even if you're continuously shelling them.

When there are 2 enemies left and they have already had a few shots, or more depending on how many EMCs are still alive, hop in a Nix and pick crates.

https://youtu.be/XfzVvVZT8QA

Which one is best, this or Tempests? Depends mostly on the weapons you have and how upgraded they're. They have almost the same issues, you'll probably have a slightly bigger chance of surviving this way if attacked by an Erginus if it's not at the start and you're not stuck as it's the case if the Tempests fail. But the start is still a lucky game with the Tempests clearly having a huge advantage if you get a triple kill with them at the start.

Last hints and info:

- if you don't kill any Erginus with the 2 initial Tempests, and fail the ATS on all 3, forget it, it's almost impossible

- I would advise against leaving both Archelus alive at the end, especially if most NPCs are dead, as they will team together against you and it's really hard to deal, and all the full ammo of a Nix Red Guard will probably not do much beyond 50% damage to the armor of one

- unfortunately, you'll be wiping out many NPCs while using Tempests, as you can't ask the Erginus and Archelus to stay away from them when the Tempests are arriving. Dumb idiotic beasts could be more cooperative...🤣

- if you blast a Tempest near you, you will survive if you're inside the Nix, however Nix no more and unless the enemy is gone, all other Nix's you had around were wiped out too, so there's a "slight" chance you're still in real trouble 😋

- you'll be able to do this mission successfully 5 times in a row, then fail 10 or 15, endure it's worth it

- I keep reading on Reddit, Gamefaqs and Steam how awesome the EMCs are and that they fry Erginus and Archelus, It's so surprising the number of these missions in that all 4 EMCs are wiped out in a snap by 1 or 2 of them... 😂

- one of the major drags of the layout if you don't choose the Nix ZC is that you have no simple way to bring down buildings and they can be in the line of sight for Tempests. Well, it could be done with Tempest but that would be overkill and they wouldn't give points to replenish them 😋. Changing the Vulcan for a 150mm can help but you'll usually be doing damage to NPCs too. They're already being crushed by the Erginus and Archelus, don't need more help for that

- there's a large RNG factor in this mission, generally, most NPC vehicles and squads will be wiped out, but on some games, it's the opposite. Anyway, when you see the WD blue dots coming up and down from the front slightly right of the map from start, it's a bad sign or wrap up time as it's the last NPC squad that can spawn and means most if not all of the others were wiped out.

- remember you can play the mission split screen with 2 controllers with the AR and another class, just ignoring the second, and the game will spread the majority of the weapon boxes between these 2 classes.

- my record of simultaneous Erginus kills stands at 4 (2 from the first wave, 2 from second). Sadly only did this once and forgot to save the video. This requires a ton of luck.

- you can only get weapons 91+ in this mission, so it's almost only DLC weapons that will drop

Solving this mission with Ranger or WD

Well according to what you'll read elsewhere, including in the Japanese wiki, doing this mission is a piece of cake with either the Ranger or Wind Diver.

I must be one of the worst EDF 5 players as for me it's absolutely not. Ranger will need an almost upgraded level 103 Buster Shot and the WD either the level 107 Phalanx ZAT (preferably) or level 101 Rapier Super Nova. Yes, it can be done with base armor, because until you have a large pool (2.5k+) it's a one-hit death.

The problem is the weapons of both classes have little range, so you must be near the Erginus and Archelus. This is where the problem starts. The hitbox of them is not only huge, it's unreliable. They just need to move, walk or run near you it's a gamble if you'll be alive or not.

The most difficult part is surviving the first 3 Erginus. Many of the runs the NPC Barga will die as soon or very close to when you're arriving within the action (remember your weapons have little range...). There's no time to kill one, let alone 3.

There's also mention that while hitting them they will retreat. It's a lie, it will approximately half the time, as in the other half it will still charge on you (yes, you're dead).

Now include that one Erginus can jump almost half the map and kill you instantly while you're trying to kill another, that until you get the tanks which is sometime after there's 5 Erginus around and that until then all you have for distraction is the 2 initial ranger squads that a single Erginus can wipe all out in one attack, that I've been hit by stray bombs from an Archelus that is half the map away, you get the idea. This is just the cherry on top. If I survive the first 3 by killing 2, there's a 50% chance of finishing it after that. But surviving and killing a few of the first 5 is dreadfully difficult as it's so easy to just die.

I succeed once every 20 or 25 runs.

The giant difference with the AR is that you're able to 2 shot Erginus with some luck but more importantly from a distance. And there's always the chance you'll have a 70k+ armored exoskeleton to hide with good firepower.

Either I'm playing the wrong game or the comments are from people with 10 or 20k+ armor...