Reconvene

Reconvene is the first mission in Earth Defense Force 2025 and Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair. Eight years after the end of the war with the Ravagers and seven after the supposed extermination of the leftover Giant Insects, a report comes in that more have appeared in a city (presumably) in Japan. While the EDF believes it to be a prank call, they are not willing to leave it to chance, and Storm Team is deployed to assist a force of Rangers in investigating.

Objective
2025: Emergency dispatch request. We have reports of "huge bug" sightings. Probably a prank after so many years, but I want you to check the location.

4.1: Emergency dispatch request: We have reports of giant insect sightings. Probably a prank after so many years, but better safe than sorry.

Storyline
Obviously, it turns out that the call is no hoax with the presence of the giant insects being confirmed by a news service, presumably Aurora Situation Report, before the EDF force even arrives. The Ranger unit and Storm Team are quickly engaged with a force of Ants attacking fleeing civilians. HQ requests a report, and the infantry reports they are engaged with giant insects, which HQ says is impossible.

As the mission goes on, the EDF soldiers note that the giant insects were supposed to have been wiped out, with the final one being killed during an operation in Arizona a year after the conclusion of the war of 2017. One Ranger questions if the extermination was a lie, but his comrade notes it doesn't matter because the bugs will soon be an endangered species. The EDF is confident in their ability to wipe out the bugs before they can spread, and the Rangers and Storm Team easily defeat the group they encounter.

4.1 Changes
The mission takes place in City 2 (the map used in Setting Sun in both versions) rather than City 1. Rather than heading past City 1's plaza area and turning right towards the central park, it starts near the small park with a hill in City 2 and turns left, ending in the large park with overhead walkways and an elevated rail line along one side.

Four NPC E551 Gigantus tanks are added to the mission. Like any other NPC, their health and damage output scales to the current difficultly level, and they have infinite ammunition for their cannons and cannot deal friendly fire damage. One will support Storm Team and the Ranger unit against the initial wave of Ants and then deactivate its AI, not even returning fire if Ants from the second wave attack it. The others will immediately head to the right and loop around to fire on the second wave of Ants when it is nearly destroyed, after which one soldier comments "all right, we got tanks!" and HQ orders the infantry to stay close to the armor. They will then stop on the road that runs through the park and mostly deal with the third wave of ants themselves, after which an additional and very large fourth wave of ants appears at the far end of the park and HQ has the added line "Keep the giant creatures away from the tanks!"

It does not actually matter if the tanks are destroyed by the final wave, and the mission as before ends when the last ant is dead.

Enemies
2025: 3 waves of black Ants (no acid spray attack), 25, 20, 35

4.1: 4 waves of black Ants (no acid spray attack), 50, 40, 35, 90 (!)

Online Limits
As a one-off explanation for this first mission, each difficulty has a set range of drops which increases as the campaign goes on; there is no rarity system to weapon drops per se (it only feels like it sometimes), instead at higher difficulties the range of possible drops is broader and so it is less likely a specific desired weapon will drop. On Easy and Normal the range is 4 levels, on Hard, 12 levels, on Hardest, 55 levels, and on Inferno 60 levels.

2025
Since the only enemies in this level are nerfed Ants that cannot use their ranged attack, it is very easy to beat regardless of difficulty in EDF 2025. Ants have a both visual and audio cues for their charging bite attack, a rearing motion accompanied by a chittering sound, and if the player character is caught they should switch to a non-explosive weapon and shoot the Ant holding them. The civilians will keep the Ants distracted for a substantial period before they even try to attack the Ranger unit or Storm Team, giving plenty of opportunity to deal with them at range. This is a good mission to get used to the controls and blow yourself up a few times, and can easily be beaten on Hard with just the default weapons.

For some basic information, there are four types of items that can spawn from enemies; the green crates marked WEAPON will unlock a random weapon at the end of the level for the class being played in singleplayer. In split-screen co-op a weapon is only unlocked for the class that picks the crate up, in online multiplayer each player gets an unlock for each weapon crate the team collects regardless of who grabs it. The level range of unlocked weapons is based on the difficulty setting and current mission. The assignment of weapons is random and the same weapon can be given more than once, which does nothing.

The red crates with ARMOR printed on them will increase the player character's maximum health at the end of the level. The bonus only applies to the class actually being played as, each has a seperate health bar. A set number of Armor crates are needed to actually gain one point of Armor, otherwise the total is rounded down to the nearest whole number. Fencers gain 0.58 health per armor pickup, Rangers and Air Raiders 0.47, and Wing Divers 0.23. Unlike weapons, in split-screen co-op both classes being played will get the bonus from all Armor crates picked up in a level, regardless of which character grabs them; if both characters are the same class, the amount of armor gained is doubled, which is useful for farming. In online multiplayer each player gains the full amount of Armor picked up by the team for the class they are playing as.

With both types of pickup it is important to note that there is only a short amount of time after a mission ends to collect them before the remainder are lost, so it is important to either grab them during the mission proper or leave a few enemies alive to give some time to run around grabbing boxes.

The other two crates, a white cube and white oblong with yellow borders, are health pickups. These restore a set portion of the character's maximum health, around 15% (appears to be 10/65) and one-third respectively. Obviously this means the higher a character's maximum health is, the more points of health they will gain by picking one of these up. These only restore the health of the character that picks them up, except for the Ranger in 4.1 where they will restore a slightly lower amount of health to any NPC soldiers he has recruited (11% and 21%). Picking up health when already at maximum does nothing but waste a health pickup.

If the player is a Ranger or Air Raider they should get used to rolling to get around faster, which is done by holding the stick diagonally and pressing jump. If a Fencer, it is time to learn to dash cancel, a very fast method of getting around which becomes essential on higher difficulties. This involves pairing a shield with a weapon with a side-thruster (such as the default Blasthole Spear). By using the shield's Deflector alternate function (the button that creates a flash forward from the shield rather than simply holding it up) the animation at the end of the thruster dash can be skipped and the Fencer can dash again immediately, and this can be done for as long as there is still energy left in the shield. It can later be done even faster if a Javelin Catapult or Twin Javelin Catapult is used instead of a shield and fired to cancel the end of the dash animation (javelin cancelling), though this does leave the Fencer without a shield in that weapon pair.

A Wing Diver should learn the basics of their Wing Energy. This bar controls how much thrust is available for flight; taking off requires more than staying in their air, and most weapons also reload from it, requiring a set percentage of the bar which is drained over a specific amount of time; if the weapon has no stated reload speed, it is instant. If the bar is completely depleted it will turn red, the Wing Diver's flight pack will change shape and start venting steam, and they will be unable to fly or reload weapons until the "emergency reload" has completely refilled the energy bar. An emergency reload does not seem to take any longer than just allowing the bar to refill by itself.

One useful trait unique to the Wing Diver is that she does not need to have a weapon selected in order to reload it like the other classes do, though this also means there is no way to avoid the energy drain of a reload if a weapon is emptied. This means that a player can select a pair of the same weapon and cycle to a loaded one while the empty one is reloading to keep up a constant rate of fire, which is very useful with the Idunn and Thunder Bow weapons in particular.

It is also worth noting that level geometry is "real:" it is actually possible to climb stairwells and fire escapes if a building has them, and a Wing Diver is able to land on window ledges.

4.1 Strategy
The massive added final wave (which contains ten more Ants than the entire original mission) means this mission is actually relatively challenging to solo if the player decides to jump to Hard with just their default equipment as was readily possible in the original game. Since no civilians spawn with this final wave, it will immediately make for the tanks and Rangers, which is most likely also where Storm Team currently is.

It is probably wiser in 4.1 to jump to Hard in the much easier next mission and return to this one with the equipment gained by doing so, since Spreading Disaster has not been ramped up nearly as much.

When returning it is best to bring explosive or spread weapons; it should not require very high-level weapons to beat this mission on Inferno once the player has got a few hundred extra health to survive if they mess up.