Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 on PS5
With this release, there have been four spin-off releases in the Earth Defense Force franchise (not counting the 4.1 Wing Diver game). I have various problems with Insect Armageddon and Iron Rain, but World Brothers is where I felt they nailed it. While the other two skewed too far from the core concept, World Brothers perfectly captured the EDF spirit. I was excited to see how a sequel would improve on the already excellent first game, and I was happy with what I found.
If you played Earth Defense Force 6 when it was released a few months ago, there are some sizeable differences between the two. In contrast to the mainline EDF games being on the grittier side and their stories being downers, World Brothers is all color and cheer. Whereas you control one character in the normal games, you craft have a squad of four characters in WB from various classes that you can quickly swap through in missions. The other biggest difference is graphics, as World Brothers looks like it was made in Minecraft.