Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair

Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair is a next-generation update of Earth Defense Force 2025. 4.1 comes with improvements made to make the EDF appear to be actually at war - for instance, multiple tanks appear throughout the earlier stages, including the first level, which had not appeared there in 2025. There are 89 missions in in singleplayer with 98 online, with the full online level count increased to 147 with DLC.

There are new enemies such as the Erginus, essentially an updated Saurous. The game now has 825 weapons and devices spread across the four playable classes, with highlights including the new Walking Fortress Balam.

Prologue
2013—An unknown signal came from outer space, confirming the existence of extraterrestrials.

2015—To prepare for a potential emergency, humanity establishes the Earth Defense Force (EDF).

Most people hoped that the extraterrestrials would be wise and benevolent beings, and that humanity should welcome them with open arms.

Until that fateful day in June of 2017...

An armada of spaceships appeared at the edge of the solar system, surrounding the Earth and attacked all humanity. Throughout the Earth's crust, they planted nests for hideous overgrown creatures, which bred underground before burrowing up to swarm human cities from below. Every time the EDF attempted to counterattack, the Ravagers deployed a new weapon deadlier and more cunning than the last.

Humanity was clearly losing, with no hope in sight. The whole world was dying, blast by blast, and humanity was going extinct. In desperation, the EDF launched a suicidal infantry attack directly against the enemy mothership.

And on that day, humanity won its greatest victory ever. The elite unit Storm Team, against all odds, delivered a fatal strike to the mothership's only weak point. Slowly, it plummeted to the ground and exploded.

With the loss of their mothership, the Ravagers were forced to retreat. All over the world, survivors sung a hymn of victory.

Over the next year, the EDF regrouped with the remains of the world's national militaries and collaborated to root out the last of the giant creatures from underground. With their extermination, the world rejoiced again, and reconstruction of humanity's great cities began.

Though the scars of battle were deep indeed, the Ravagers' technology ironically gave humanity the tools it needed to rebuild quickly. United by the outside threat, the people of the world joined together in a time of peace.

Eight years passed. Reconstruction was nearly complete worldwide. Some believed that humanity had endured its final trial, and that the reward would be everlasting peace and prosperity.

But on June 28th, 2025, an emergency warning rang out all over the world.

Deep underground, a new plague had just been born.

Official Website Plot: Bugs, Bugs Everywhere
2013 was the first year we spotted them. We had no way of knowing what they were back then; just blips and warbles on the scanners, far out in space, slowly heading our way. Some of us hoped they were elder beings, coming to share their wisdom or take us to a better place. We all hoped that, really, but some of us had the foresight to plan for other possibilities, and that's how Earth Defense Force was born.

It took four years to corral the world's militaries into assembling and equipping a joint task force. By the time all the petty politics were out of the way, we scarcely had time to train the troops. Not knowing what to expect, we ran EDF through every sci-fi scenario we could imagine.

Then, in 2017, they arrived. And they opened fire. Not just from the sky, with their starships and battle machines, but from underneath the ground as well, with swarms and swarms of giant mutant insects. We called the aliens Ravagers, and across the globe, they lived up to that name. Only EDF, with their specialized weapons and training, stood a chance. Finally, after the bloodiest war in history, EDF blasted the last Ravager off the planet.

We thought that was the end of it. It had to be. But now, eight short years later, humanity's worst nightmare has come true: What we'd faced had only been the first wave. The Ravagers are back, with new enhanced creatures and machines. Fortunately, EDF has stayed vigilant all this time, and they've put those eight years to good use. With new weapons, new units, and even giants of our own, humanity is ready to go another round, and by the time we're done, they'll never want to come back again.

Cover Synopsis: Kill It With Fire
Nobody likes bugs. Especially when they're fifty feet tall and eating your city. Gear up with hundreds of deadly weapons and vehicles to smash those creepy-crawlies for good.
 * Pick your exterminator: the trap-happy Air Raider, the dual-wielding Fencer, the versatile Ranger, or the flying, deadly Wing Diver.
 * Team up with other squadrons to eliminate enemies with advanced alien weaponry and devastating war machines.

Soldier Classes
Like EDF 2025, 4.1 utilizes four classes, with a new record for the series of 825 weapons spread between them. Players have the ability to change armor colors for all classes. The four EDF soldier class divisions are:
 * Ranger: flexible and adaptable basic infantry with weapons suited to just about any situation. Based on the previous Storm 1 and Infantry classes.
 * Wing Diver: An airborne class that use high tech energy weaponry and jet packs. Based on the Pale Wing.
 * Air Raider: A support class specialized in the assistance of infantry, able to deploy health recovery field generators and force shields, summon vehicles into the battlefield and order air raids over designated targets.
 * Fencer: A heavy soldier equipped with a powered exoskeleton and jet boosters, able to carry outsized weaponry, melee weapons and use a special shield. The class is able to use two pairs of weapons.

Gameplay
EDF 4.1 is a third-person shooter. The player takes on the role of a member of the EDF's elite Storm Team, selecting from one of four classes detailed above and using a huge range of weaponry to defeat giant insects and alien robots in a series of missions. The game features a limited inventory, with each class having between two and four "slots" to which the player can assign weapons on the equip screen prior to deploying. There is no way to change weapons once a mission has begun, short of selecting "retreat."

Almost all weapons are limited only by reload times and have infinite ammunition; the X / X ammo display indicates how many shots are remaining in the current magazine out of the maximum, not current and reserve ammunition as in most shooters. A few weapons buck this system and have limited shots; this only occurs for special weapons or those mounted on vehicles. The missions take place in one of sixteen roughly 1km x 1km maps which the player is free to move around in as they wish, with settings including cities, mountain areas and underground tunnels. In general, missions are won by destroying all enemies, though in rare cases they may be based on destroying a specific enemy or lasting a set number of waves or set period of time. Most maps feature fully destructable buildings and structures, and there is no penalty for damaging them. NPC soldiers can be encountered and "recruited" if they have a red triangle over them, providing supporting fire and amusing radio banter. There is no penalty for killing them, either.

Five difficulty levels are available: Easy, Normal, Hard, Hardest and Inferno. They give corresponding increases to the speed, attack power, defensive power and attack rate of enemies encountered, and starting with the mission Crimson, higher difficulties will also add additional enemies including powerful Mutants to standard enemy spawns in some levels, or have spawners deploy Mutants after set conditions have been reached. Any mission can be attempted on any difficulty level as long as it has been reached on at least one difficulty level.

Enemies defeated will have a chance of dropping one or more Items on death. These are large boxes that are marked as green dots on the minimap, and are collected by walking over them. There are four types; small and large health instantly recover the character's hitpoints. The other two only do anything if the current mission is successfully completed: the red box marked "armor" will offer a permanent upgrade to that class' maximum health at a rate determined by the selected class (requiring several before any effect is seen in-game) while the green box marked "weapon" will give one random weapon unlock at the end of the mission, with the level of the weapon based on the current difficulty and mission number. The weapon unlocked is randomly assigned: it is always one for the class being played, but not necessarily one they do not already have. Unlocking a weapon multiple times does nothing: unlocking it once allows that weapon to be equipped to all of a character's weapon slots if they feel so inclined.

The missions, with a few exceptions, do not contain pre-placed vehicles. Only the Air Raider is able to equip vehicle drops in a special reserved slot, though a Ranger can drive one summoned by an Air Raider and the other two classes can use secondary positions if the vehicle has them; all four classes can drive the new Walking Fortress Balam. Vehicles and the Air Raider's support strikes use a system of "reload credits" to replenish themselves.

In all modes a character can replenish health using either special healing devices belonging to the Ranger and Air Raider classes, or from the health boxes randomly dropped by enemies. If the character's health reaches zero in singleplayer they are dead, and must retry the mission: there are no saves or checkpoints during a mission. Death means that all items gathered in the current mission are lost, but there are no other penalties.

In split-screen and online modes, a character is not dead if they run out of health, they are instead downed. A character who is downed will remain in place and can still be moved around by physics effects. Long-term effects belonging to that character like Air Raider guide beacons will continue, and their own weapons will reload while they are downed, though they cannot change the one that is selected. At any time, another character can get close and revive them. The revival process is instantaneous and transfers half of the reviving character's remaining health to the downed one: this occurs even if half of the reviving character's health is more than the downed character has in total. It cannot be done if the reviving character is at critical (red) health.

There are four modes of play in 4.1: singleplayer, split-screen co-op, versus and online.

Singleplayer
The singleplayer campaign consists of 89 missions, with the player selecting a class from the four available and a difficulty setting. They are allowed to use whatever weapons and armor they have accumulated regardless of the difficulty setting.

Split-Screen Co-op
This is an offline multiplayer mode where two players use the same save file with the screen split vertically. It still only uses the 89 singleplayer missions; the additional Online missions are still not available. Both players can set up their own control preferences, but inventory selection has to be done one player at a time. Once one player's inventory menu is selected, the other is "locked out" until they are done.

All Armor pickups are assigned to both classes after a mission is completed (if both are the same class, the reward is doubled), but only the class that actually picked up a Weapon item will have one awarded at the end of the mission.

Both classes being used will gain the singleplayer completion credit for the mission at the difficulty being played. Everything the second player does will also be added to the achievement / trophy progress of the first, since they are using the same save file.

This mode can be a very useful way for a single player to assist themselves; for example, getting a class weak in a particular level through by playing it as a strong class (the completion credit is awarded even if one character is dead) or using a support-focused Air Raider to occasionally use a Guide Kit or healing items to help out the primary character.

In the PC version, only the player on the left can use the keyboard and mouse.

Versus
While most players are likely to forget this even exists, it is available: it is mostly useful for testing out weapons. Versus can only be played in split-screen local mode. Matches take place in maps that have no enemies, the only goal being to kill the other character; there are no respawns, with the match ending as soon as one character dies (or both do). Players can select any of the sixteen maps along with the "weather" (time of day and cloud conditions) in outdoor levels.

Versus works like co-op in terms of character selection, using character data from the currently loaded save file. Classes will have the health they have on that save file and whatever weapons have been unlocked, and can choose whatever ones they like.

Since there is no way for an Air Raider to generate reload credits in this mode, even strikes and vehicles which cannot normally be called in at the start of a singleplayer mission will start with a full set of Credits.

Online
This mode uses a lobby system that allows up to three other players to join a game set up by the first; players can either join a lobby set to public, or be invited to join using the PS4 or Steam friend system. Progression in this mode is separate to singleplayer, and the mode has 9 additional missions inserted into the standard progression, bringing the total to 98. Unlike 2025, DLC mission packs use the same lobby as normal ones.

Online mode features a weapon level limit and health limit. The level limit is based on the current difficulty level and mission, while the armor limit is also based on the class being played; Fencers have the highest Armor limit, while Wing Divers have the lowest. Inferno mode has no Armor limit.

In online mode all players will be awarded whatever Armor and Weapon items the entire team collects; it does not matter who picked them up. However, action-based trophies / achievements will only count those of the player themselves. Players cannot pause the game; pressing start brings up the normal pause menu, but action continues to occur.

As in 2025, in Online mode enemies receive a health boost based on how many players there are. These numbers have been altered from the original and a new damage boost as also been added: in general the enemies end up with slightly less health, but are more dangerous while they are alive. Shield Bearers are an exception, and have an additional 1.2 added to their per-level health modifier, so for 4 players they have 3.6 times more health.

This appears to be designed to prevent players grinding through online level completion in solo-only lobbies, since a Hector becomes a fearsome opponent even on Easy with more than double health and almost triple damage and only level-limited weapons to fight it with. Notably, there is no similar multiplier for split-screen mode. It should also be noted that while the health and damage of allied NPCs and vehicles and the damage from scripted artillery and airstrikes scales with the difficulty level, it does not scale for multiple players, and so some missions like Brute Force become much harder with multiple players since almost all of the Hectors in the mission will survive the airstrikes that are supposed to kill them.

The selected difficulty level also affects the level of friendly fire damage; it is never off, but is only 100% in Inferno. Attacks by other players will also have no knockdown effect unless a higher difficulty is selected.

Among a player's stats will be a percentage figure for "completion:" this is the percentage of the 1,960 possible combinations of mission, class and difficulty in Online mode. At 70% online completion. the armor and level limits can be disabled. DLC missions have their own 70% requirement not influenced by completion in the main campaign.

Version differences
As well as the HD textures, improved effects, improved netcode, stable frame rate and a vastly improved lighting engine, a substantial list of changes have been made:

Click to show, includes some mission change spoilers


 * Caves are now pitch black with soldiers and the Depth Crawler using lights that follow their point of aim to see.
 * Distance blur and bloom effects used to hide low-detail models are largely removed.
 * The game now supports 21:9 ultra-widescreen monitors.
 * Changes to PCs as follows:
 * The bonus per armor pickup is slightly lower for all classes.
 * The Wing Diver, Fencer and Ranger are able to "recover" from knockdowns (respectively using the Wing Diver's booster pack, the Fencer's thrusters if they have a suitable weapon set equipped, and the Ranger's roll).
 * Ranger gains 4 variations on Slug Shot Shotguns which fire a single powerful shot which can penetrate multiple enemies. In addition the Cascade Iota and UMAZ Grenade Launcher (different from UMAX) are added to extend these weapon chains with high-level versions and keep them usable. There are also general damage buffs to high-level Ranger weapons to make the Ranger more capable on Inferno (for example, the Stringer J9 now does 18,000 damage per shot instead of 8,000).
 * The Ranger's evasive roll now destroys small obstructions such as fences and cars.
 * NPC allies following a player character Ranger will be healed any time the Ranger picks up health, for a slightly lower percentage than the health pickup would normally give (11% and 21%).
 * Wing Diver gains two "Spark Lance" weapons which fire powerful short-range reflecting beams, and buffs to all Rapiers. Multi-hit effect is removed from many electricity-based weapons (eg Idunn and Thunder Bow), meaning that they cannot do several times the damage stated on their item card.
 * Fencer weaponry is largely unchanged, though shields have been buffed. They can now destroy minor obstacles just by touching them, their booster jump can be aimed, and their side-thrusters are more powerful.
 * Air Raider has the biggest changes:
 * An entire new progression of Depth Crawler vehicles which can be used in underground missions, as can the SDL1 bike (rather than leaving the Air Raider without any vehicle to use on these missions and thus substantially weaker),
 * Four deployable variations on the Walking Fortress Balam.
 * Multiple SDL1 motorbikes can be requested on the same credit (2-3).
 * Most vehicles with weapons now have a red laser sight to indicate their point of aim. These bend on indirect fire weapons.
 * General vehicle buffs: Armored Vehicle Grape has decreased recoil (it is no longer necessary to slowly drive forward when firing) though cannon damage is reduced, and Naegling Self-Propelled Rocket Launcher has double the ammunition. EF31 Nereid's gun does more damage, BM03 Vegalta revolver cannons deal more damage and missile pods have doubled ammunition.
 * The Air Raider can have three vehicles on the battlefield instead of two. As before, summoning further vehicles will cause the oldest one spawned to explode.
 * Damage and splash radius on Air Raider limpet guns has been reduced but fire rate and reload speed has been increased, presumably to make them more useful and less dangerous at close range. Limpet Snipers are the exception, and do more damage, but still have reduced splash radius.
 * All Wireguns do about one-third as much damage (eg Caesar Wire ZD from 80x12 in 2025 -> 26x12).
 * Fire support calls from Whale now use a more precise gun-based marker rather than a grenade.
 * The absurdly powerful Artillery Team Cannon strikes now cost 2,700 credits instead of 1,800, and start with only 540.
 * Bomber strikes and missile strikes now do not exceed the altitude of Earth Eater plates and can be used effectively even if they are present.
 * All calls for fire support used a location marker that was the same size rather than displaying their actual area of effect on the minimap. This appears to have been fixed in a patch in the PC version.


 * Roughly half of all existing missions have been changed in some way from their EDF 2025 incarnations. Mostly this is by the addition of more NPCs and / or by changing the part of the map the mission takes place in, and some also have new enemy layouts. This can be anything from making a mission more dramatic (eg Reconvene) to making it easier (eg Waterside Bugs, which now places the target tunnel exits in the town map's broad, open river rather than the city outskirts map's sunken ornamental stream) or harder (moving Air Force from City Outskirts to the park in City map 2 with the Mothership almost directly overhead). Perhaps the most extreme example is City Flaws where the only thing the 2025 and 4.1 levels have in common is they are both called City Flaws.
 * Several missions, especially in DLC packs, feature less literally translated titles, eg Bad Premonition is changed to Ill Omen (except on the online lobby creation mission select menu, where it is not), or Four Kings of Nightmares is changed to The Four Horsemen.
 * Online HP limits for skill levels other than Inferno are rebalanced: max HP is decreased on Easy and Normal, and increased on Hard and Hardest. Weapon level limits are also slightly altered.
 * As noted above, Online mode health buffs for enemies depending on the number of players have been rebalanced, and enemies also now get a damage buff depending on the number of players.
 * The BMX10 Proteus in the online-only mission Mountain Giants now scales its stats to the difficulty level rather than being a fixed level 28.
 * General corrections to mission descriptions, in particular early missions referring to enemies as if they are singular are now plural.
 * NPC vehicles appear in missions. The NPC soldier AI still cannot get into vehicles the player has called for; these vehicles spawn with crews already inside and either follow predetermined paths or stay in one position and act as turrets; they do not suffer recoil effects from their weapons (not even NPC E651 Titans), have infinite ammunition, and like normal NPCs are incapable of dealing friendly fire damage. The player is unable to get into NPC Titans or Epsilon Armored Railguns to use their secondary weapons, and the vehicles never use them themselves. NPC Walking Fortress Balams do not follow predetermined paths, but simply pursue and attack whatever enemy is nearest to them regardless of what it is.
 * Missions generally feature more NPC allies, in particular often featuring NPC Fencers and Wing Divers in missions that did not originally have them.
 * NPC allies now carry a wider variety of weapons, including high-level gear such as Wing Divers carrying MONSTER sniper rifles. NPCs also now have a proper two-weapon inventory; while many have two of the same weapon, some have different ones: for example, in City Flaws the Ranger squad have assault rifles and shotguns, and the Wing Diver unit have Thunder Bows and laser rifles.
 * NPCs who have been recruited to follow the player character now display a health bar above their heads; this bar is visible even through walls, making recruited NPCs easier to keep track of.
 * Harder versions of missions now add mutants to the standard enemy spawns: for example, in the Hardest version of the mission Crimson, dark crimson ants are added to the final wave.
 * Gold Ants and Silver Spiders, only previously seen in DLC, can be found in higher difficulty versions of standard levels, eg Charge Phase 1 and Charge Phase 2 on Hardest or Inferno. The only time they appear outside these difficulties in non-DLC missions are the online-only Demon Army and Surrounded! on Hard.
 * Retiarii will now release their web-pull if they take significant damage rather than needing to be killed as before.
 * Dragons have decreased health and flame damage.
 * Red Drones now drop up to seven items when destroyed.
 * Shield Bearers now drop items when destroyed.
 * Tunnel Exits no longer drop items when destroyed.
 * Shield Bearer AI has been changed, they now actively seek out enemy groups to protect rather than trundling around aimlessly. They are also much faster. NPCs are more aggressive towards then and will generally destroy them on their own if they are alone, meaning the "leave a Shield Bearer alive" method of gathering items no longer works as well.
 * Crashing transports now destroy all buildings under them when they explode.
 * DLC missions now use music from Earth Defense Force 2017.
 * Dark Green and Light Green Ants are added to DLC missions.
 * The player character model on menu screens is always shown as a full-body model rather than defaulting to waist-up, and cannot be zoomed in to the old view.
 * DLC missions now use the same online lobby as normal missions, and only need to be selected separately for singleplayer.
 * A eight-direction radial quick-menu for a selected set of chat commands been added to minimise the need to dig through the nested D-pad command menu.
 * NPCs will verbally respond to certain chat commands by the player.
 * A "spot" function is added to allow a player to indicate a particular target or point of interest for co-op partners.
 * Armor pickups are represented by a number in the mission summary screen rather than dozens of repeats of the word "Armor."
 * The Wing Diver's energy bar no longer has "Wing Energy" written next to it.

Vehicles
All vehicles featured in EDF 2025 return. As before, they are normally only available if called in by the Air Raider class, though a few missions feature pre-placed vehicles. Vehicles can only be driven by Air Raiders or Rangers, though any class can use secondary gun or transport positions.

Two vehicles are exclusive to this version:
 * Depth Crawler, a lightly armoured four-legged vehicle able to jump, side-dodge and walk on walls. It can be deployed underground, and is armed with a machine gun similar to the secondary driver's weapon of the Titan tank and two other weapons which vary depending on the specific model.
 * Walking Fortress Balam, a colossal robot controlled by a single soldier which attacks with punches and stomps, and is specifically designed to be used to fight the new monster Erginus. Certain versions also feature secondary guns. Unlike other vehicles, Balam can be driven by any soldier class. A special version of Balam is found in certain missions with stats tied to the difficulty; this Balam's stats and damage can exceed those of the maximum level Balam F-Type on Inferno; for example, the one dropped in Battle of the Giants has 999,999 health.

Enemies
Most Enemies that have appeared in previous titles will return. Enemies include:
 * Ants
 * Crimson Ants
 * Queen Ants
 * Hornets
 * Spiders
 * King Spiders
 * Retiarius
 * Dragons
 * Greater Wild Dragon
 * Drone Gunships
 * Elite Drone Gunships
 * Flight Vehicles
 * Shield Bearers
 * Hectors
 * Blue Hectors
 * Shield Hectors
 * Deroys
 * Large Deroys
 * Carriers
 * Large Carriers
 * Argo
 * Quadruped Fortress
 * Mothership
 * Earth Eaters
 * Brain

New Enemies
There will be new enemies or stronger variations of them in Earth Defense Force 4.1. Some examples include:
 * Erginus a.k.a Giant ravager
 * Elite form of the Erginus

Mutants
As seen in the images, it looks like Mutants will be part of the story. New Mutants have been revealed, as well as some returning mutants.

Returning Mutants are: New Mutants are:
 * 'Golden' Ants
 * Gold Queen
 * 'Silver' Spiders
 * Silver King Spider
 * 'Yellow' Dragons
 * 'Red' Dragons
 * New 'Red' Hornets
 * Red Death Queen
 * New 'Dark' Red Ants
 * Purple Retarius
 * "Fast" and "Slow" Hectors
 * Elite Shield Bearers (red emitter and much larger shield)
 * Green Ants (large and small) (DLC only)
 * Red Ravager Flying Vehicles (DLC 2 only)
 * Huge tunnel exit (DLC 2 only, spawns "boss" giant insects)

Missions
A list of mission descriptions with strategies is presented below, for both this game and 2025. Including DLC and online-only missions, there are a total of 147 missions.

Downloadable Content
4.1 features more extensive starter DLC content than 2025. Most of the original DLC such as the BM03 Vegalta Gold returns (though the Pure Decoy Launchers are new designs and the old ones are not available), but there are more additions such as a series of themed E551 Gigantus tanks. There is also a gold Depth Crawler to allow new players to acquire the vehicle quickly.

The DLC mission packs have been consolidated somewhat with the tiny "Special Forces" DLC folded into the two others. The two mission packs are now called Time of the Mutants (mostly missions from 2025 DLC2: Mutant Rampage) and Extreme Battle (mostly missions from DLC3: Beyond Despair). Much like the main missions, many of these have been altered (for example, due to the much larger number of "red" enemies, Bloody River no longer has its old gimmick of low-armor "mass produced" Red Drones), and a few like the fearsomely hard God's Army are totally new. There are now a total of 49 DLC missions rather than 45.