Levels

The vast quantity of levels featured in the Earth Defense Force series adds heavily to replayability of the games. This, along with the fact that there are 5 difficulties in most of the games, allows for a very long playing experience if one wants to achieve 100% completion. Below is (or will be) a list of levels in each game.

Many games feature remakes of the same level; for example, Global Defence Force Portable, Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable and 2025 all have a level called Golden Darkness featuring Gold Ants.

Monster Attack
There are 25 levels in Monster Attack. It features a very similar storyline to EDF 2017, but a much shorter version.

Global Defence Force, Global Defence Force Portable & Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space
Global Defence Force has the third-greatest number of levels in the series with 71, and also has six difficulty levels instead of the usual five, adding "Impossible." It is also the first game to have multiple playable classes, with two, a standard infantry class like in all the other games and the Pale Wing, a highly mobile class equipped with a jetpack and with her own inventory of unique weapons. The story takes a slightly different turn as it begins in London (though it also includes Japan), unlike Monster Attack and 2017 which are set exclusively in Tokyo.

The Japan-exclusive PSP port features an additional 7 missions, bringing the number to 78, and the PS Vita remake Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space has the same and adds a new Air Raider class, a variant of the one that appeared in 2025.

Earth Defense Force 2017 & Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable
Earth Defense Force 2017 is essentially a remake of Monster Attack with the same general plot events spread over about twice as many levels. There are a total of 53 levels to choose from, and they can be played on 5 difficulties (Easy, Normal, Hard, Hardest, and Inferno).

The PS Vita version, Earth Defence Force 2017 Portable, includes 7 additional levels, increasing the total number of levels to 60 (with the additions including reworked versions of the levels added to Global Defence Force). Furthermore, this release of the game features the Pale Wing class, unlocked after completing the game once.

Insect Armageddon
Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon is by far the shortest EDF game in terms of quantity of missions. There are only 15 levels to play and just three difficulty levels, and it concludes without actually fighting the Ravager Mothership, leading many to conclude the game was cut short for time or budget reasons. There are four classes, or rather four types of armor that can be used, the Trooper Armor, Jet Armor, Tactical Armor and Battle Armor, the latter three having special abilities.

Earth Defense Force 2025 & Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair
These games follow a similar structure to Global Defence Force and are effectively remakes of it, with the same general plot.

Even without DLC, Earth Defense Force 2025 was the longest EDF game so far, having 85 singleplayer levels in total, with 9 more being online multiplayer only. With the three DLC packs there are 45 more levels so in total the game has 139 levels. Moreover, there are five difficulties and four classes, the Ranger, Wing Diver, Fencer and Air Raider, so 100% completion requires completion of 2,780 missions.

Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair adds 4 additional missions featuring the new monster Erginus and reworks many of the 2025 levels, from minor tweaks to missions that are only alike insofar as having the same name. A few missions have their names changed (eg Wind Break to Wind Shear, Bad Premonition to Ill Omen) and most mission descriptions are rewritten slightly.

4.1 has 49 DLC levels, and like the normal 2025 levels many are reworked heavily while four are totally new. This brings the total to 138 offline missions and 147 online, increasing the 100% requirement to completion of 2,940 missions.

Earth Defense Force 5
Earth Defense Force 5 is another series reboot, telling the story of the first invasion by aliens, now called the Primers rather than the Ravagers. The game has the longest campaign to date without DLC, featuring 110 missions in singleplayer and 111 in online mode. In online mode the opening tutorial mission is skipped, but two online-only missions are added in after mission 107. Unlike previous entries, completing a mission on Normal or Hard also counts as completing it on every difficulty below that. This does not apply to Hardest and Inferno, which must be beaten separately, but does mean that with ideal play it only requires each level to be beaten three times per class instead of five for 100% completion.

The game has two DLC mission packs with an additional 29 missions, bringing the total to 139 in singleplayer and 140 in online mode.