Time really does fly. If you had asked me when Earth Defence Force 5 was released, I would have told you “a few years ago”. It was actually released eight years ago. Eight years! It’s a testament to the quality of the game that I still so keenly remember it, I guess. So naturally I jumped at the opportunity to play it on Switch 2.
It’s a very fine port of an outrageously entertaining game. I’m sure if you were to place the game side-by-side with the PlayStation 4 original, you’d probably find areas where it was compromised. Having not played EDF 5 in eight years, I only have a general memory of it, but we’re talking about a game that is very… busy… at the best of times, so it would make sense for this port to lose a frame or two here and there and some texturing over the original. Then again, the Switch 2 is a fairly powerful console, so perhaps not.
Either way, what is important is that the game is totally playable on Switch 2. This means you can wade into a horde of a thousand enemies and blast away at them with all the Starship Troopers-style glory you can imagine and have a great time doing so. If you’ve never played an EDF game, it is basically that; in just about every mission you’ll be squaring off against hordes of massive enemies that make Dynasty Warriors seem restrained. There are four different classes to choose between, and you’ll end up picking up a huge range of weapons to rain death down with, so it’s got a Gauntlet vibe at times, if you remember that classic series.
Or to try and describe it by referencing other properties – it’s like Starship Troopers meets Gauntlet and Dynasty Warriors meets Godzilla-size enemies (with you as a human). And if that doesn’t sound awesome to you, then I don’t know what to say other than you’re clearly no fun.
As you can probably guess, this game gets even more fun in multiplayer. It’s not the kind of game where you’ll be devising and executing strategy. It’s more a “point the gun at the enemy and pew pew” style experience, but it’s just thrilling to wade into the frenetic mess with allies and have to quickly duck away to heal them or revive them when the waves do catch an ally by surprise and down them. Given that there are well over 100 levels to work through, this is a game that can fill in months of multiplayer sessions if you can get a group together.
For all the action – and there is a lot of action – it is also worth remembering that just like Starship Troopers, EDF is a satire, and actually a pretty smart one at times. This is easier to register and parse while you’re playing now, because the chatter has subtitles, which I don’t believe the original game had. You can also see the damage that your weapon is doing now – a feature that all the looter shooters in the years since have popularised, so if you find yourself struggling (and some of the missions do have surprisingly sharp teeth), you can try other weapons and approaches to see if there’s a better loadout for that mission.
But back to the satirical themes. It’s difficult not to laugh when you come across lines like “We’ve already lost thirty per cent of the earth’s population/Thirty per cent? That doesn’t sound too bad,” when it’s delivered in a very B-grade sci-fi tone of voice. But then you come across a line like “We think that these weapons are autonomous battle drones and I’m afraid their targets are… humans/Unmanned killing weapons, huh?/If we let them run rampant, it will result in unimaginable casualties. We must shoot them all down.” That’s when it becomes abundantly clear that like the best satire, EDF actually has a point.
And sadly, given the world that we now live in, where we have autonomous battle drones blowing up schools and weddings and power plants and whatever else causes maximum misery to civilians and communities, so, just as Starship Troopers was a scathing critique of America’s potential to fall into fascism, EDF has become a satire of where it is right now. Amazing how prescient the developers ended up being about a decade ago.
As I noted in my review back on PlayStation 4: “To use one more quote – this time from Starship Troopers, a film that Earth Defence Force 5 is heavily reminiscent of in its action: “Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.” EDF 5 too is incredibly violent. That’s a big part of its appeal and a big part of its message. As a game, EDF 5 is such a massive leap from the previous title in the series, in every way, that it feels like it belongs in a different series entirely. And yet, for all its nonsense, giant monsters, and ever-escalating explosions, there’s also a sense that this EDF, more so than its predecessors, has also remembered that something can be B-grade, and still convey some kind of message of worth.”
As it turns out, EDF 5 is even more on-point in 2026 as it was in 2018, and I’m glad that it got a re-release on Nintendo Switch 2 to remind us of that. It’s a wildly entertaining game, incredibly funny and, like the best satire, somewhat significantly less amusing the more you think about its various symbolisms, themes and allegories. This is right up there with the best example of B-grade Sci-Fi art we have in video games.
