Less is Vore
Given that I’m not even a couple days worth of play into a hunting game others dump hundreds of hours into mastering, I feel it’s a little bit early for me to be saying ifGod Eater 3is worth picking up. That said, from these limited impressions, Icansay that the game is so far shaping up like an exemplaryGod Eatergame, which is a slightly backhanded way of saying that it’s quite a bit like the previous entries in the series, particularlyGod Eater 2: Rage Burst.
If the above statement appeals to you the way it does to me, that might be all the information you need to decide to play. The rest can read a bit more.
God Eater 3(PS4 [reviewed on a PS4 Pro], PC)Developer: Marvelous First StudioPublisher: Bandai Namco GamesReleased: June 18, 2025 (JP), July 15, 2025 (NA/EU/SEA)MSRP: $59.99
The elevator pitch forGod Eater 3remains much the same as before: TakeMonster Hunter, sex it up with more explicitly anime-style character design and monstrous monsters, add a single-player narrative for people dissatisfied with the competition’s approach to storytelling, and then send it off into the wilds.
For the newbies in the readership, that meansGod Eatertrades in the fantasy-medieval, naturalistic aesthetic and tone ofMonster Hunterfor an edgy, sci-fi, anime post-apocalypse. The world has been all but destroyed by the all-consuming monsters known as Aragami, and only one group of warriors can stem the hungry tide: The God Eaters. Wielding transformable weapons called God Arcs, they chop, smash, and shoot Aragami for a living, all the live-long day.
That’s the general setup, butGod Eater 3moves the timeline a decade forward fromGod Eater 2and double-dips on the Armageddon. Indeed, the civilized remnant that survived the apocalypse that established the first two games has been destroyedagain, this time by the “Ashlands”; giant storms of corrosive microbes that eat everything, human and Aragami alike, rendering the surface almost completely uninhabitable.
Even regular God Eaters aren’t immune to the Ash, and all that’s left are underground settlements linked by armored caravans. A new generation of “Adaptive God Eaters” have some resistance to working in the Ashlands, but they’re also hated and feared by the regulars. Your customizable character – and their buddy Hugo – are practically slaves in their home settlement, forced into restraints whenever you’re not out in the wasteland killing monsters for uncaring prison guards.
This moody narrative suits the game’s over-the-top sense of style well, but I have to admit it’s quite familiar to a veteran anime fan like myself. The plot beats give me flashbacks to any number of edgy sci-fi shows, particularlyMobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans(hint: you’re Mikazuki), or evenFreedom Wars, the Vita-based hunter game fromGod Eater‘s original crew at studio Shift.
The mechanics are similarly familiar, as well, with all the weapons from the earlier games returning, plus two new ones: The dual-bladed Biting Edge, and the axe-like Heavy Moon. The “Blood Art” system fromGod Eater 2has been modified into the “Burst Art” system, and is even more customizable. Players can tweak a surprising amount about nearly every aspect of their combat style, from the properties of their chosen weapon to the color of the visual effects released when performing a Burst Art. But at a core level, the game hasn’t changed much sinceGod Eaterfirst appeared on PSP.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing per se (sequels should be expected to be like their forebears, of course), but it may dampen the hopes of folks thinking that innovation is what’s needed to secureGod Eater‘s future.
As for me, I’m at least having fun learning to master the two new weapons and grappling with some of the less thoroughly explained subsystems. Beyond that, it’s a fact that hunting games in this particular style only really reach their stride after a comparatively long period of acclimation. With luck, that time – and the release of our full review ofGod Eater 3– will come soon.
