PREVIEW: Earth’s Dawn offers fluid brawling and expansive mechanics on Xbox One

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Earth’s Dawn is a brawler which heavily relies on Japanese art for its inspiration. The story is narrated in Japanese with copious amounts of subtitles. The visuals are also similar to ones you would find in traditional anime. Earth’s Dawn tells the story of the resistance to take back the planet from an invading species. Humanity has nearly been wiped out and aliens are everywhere. For some odd reason they’ve mostly taken over the United States and it’s your job to take it back.

In order to fight against the overpowered aliens, humanity has fused basic armor with alien tissue. This allows even the most basic solider to combat the extraterrestrial threat with ease. However, it’s not that simple. Every level gets harder and harder and you have to constantly craft new armor and strengthen weapons to stay one step ahead of the enemies. Sometimes this means that you have to repeat some missions in order to grind materials.

Crafted weapons features five categories including swords (one-handed melee), longswords (two-handed melee), guns (one-handed ranged), bows (two-handed ranged) and shuriken (melee and thrown) implements. Apart from armor suits, there are masks, goggles and large exoskeletons bizarrely named exceed units. Also, remember to salvage old weapons and armor because it’s a great way to reclaim some materials. I learned that the hard way and could’ve advanced even further without grinding.

The gameplay is simple but it requires a lot of combos to make sure enemies don’t damage you too much. Earth’s Dawn is a side-scrolling adventure which focuses heavily on finishing moves. Dodging is also important. Remember to use your firearm to weaken enemies and remove their shields and then take them out with your blade.

The game also packs a skill tree and 100 missions. What’s unique is that depending on the mission you do, the story changes based on that. I was shocked when I played this game because I never expected so much depth. Apart from that, there are additional missions and equipment available from the original Japanese release.

The skill tree has to be the most confusing aspect of them all. As you level up, you can “wire” many skills together to increase your damage or defense. From my understanding, you have to equip a skill and then “link” it to another skill. For example, linking attack to a weapon skill increases your damage considerably. While I understand the other aspects of the game now, the skill tree still alludes me. I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing but it’s complex and that will definitely add to the game’s replayability and how far you can customize your character. I think it probably just takes time and a lot of experimentation to understand. I wish I had a wiki.

Before you begin the game, be sure to play the tutorial and play close attention. If you just gloss over it you’ll be confused throughout the rest of the experience. Learning all the mechanics on your own is impossible. Thankfully, the tutorial is thorough and guides you through everything, even how to take out difficult foes.

Summary

Overall, Earth’s Dawn is a fantastic brawler that is not only challenging but also very complex. The addition of role-playing elements, especially the skill tree which allows you to “rewire” your character is something I haven’t seen in a game before. For fans of titles like Battletoads or Sacred Citadel on Xbox One, this is a must-buy. Earth’s Dawn releases towards the end of October so definitely keep an eye on it.

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