There's a good variety of cores so you can tailor her to your play style. I like the one that increases forward boost by 100%. You can zip forward, blast an alien in the face, then backflip away. There's also a core that massively buffs your energy and weapon charge rates but makes you almost unable to fly.
Plays much more like in 2 Portable. Air strikes are much, much cheaper than before (a basic bombing run used to be like 6000 credits in 4, now it's like 1000) and anything dropped by the gunship (plus some of the missile and sat strikes) reloads on a timer rather than credits. Gunship attacks in particular are super quick to reload, machinegun-type attacks take 3 seconds. Often I don't even bring a direct weapon anymore, just gun turrets and air strikes. Tag anything with the machine gun beacon and it gets mowed down. Order a large area attack by a bomber and flatten an entire attack wave at once. Unlike 2 Portable your main attack is no longer the 150mm cannon so there's less risk of suicide.
Great post! I'm starting my playthrough with Air Raider now. I played the two tutorial levels (which are terrible for all classes but especially Air Raider) and then the first outdoor level. Such wonderful toys! I have the vast majority of weapons unlocked so I'm quite overwhelmed.
I'm using level 87 Approaching Monster Balls for Inferno weapon farming. You can run upriver and hide in an alcove just before the small waterfall. Enemies can't reach you. I also feel like mission 101 with the green ants will be easy to farm with the right air strikes.
Not if you stand behind some napalm strikes.
I went standard. The extra weapons are all low level gimmicky stuff. I will buy the DLC when it comes out though.
You should give them another go, but they aren't radically different than the last game. The tank guy is really, really fast when you use the dash and boost jump (he was in the last game - it's just not immediately apparent).
Experiment with the weapons and see if you can find ones that work for you. I felt the same way you do at first but I adore Wing Diver now. I had to unlock a lot of stuff before I was happy.
I'm not sure how much time it took, but there are over 100 missions and even normal mode is a challenge.
I only got one no-charge-and-release sniper, and it was hilariously weak. Like shoot 15 times a frog and no visible damage weak while playing on normal. I guess I have to keep playing and pray for better weapons.
The good snipers are charge and release I'm afraid. There's an insane one that completely drains your battery TWICE to get a full charge!
Around 40 hours.
Yeah, 3 (2017) and 5 are reboots.
I've gotten used to it, but it never feels as good as before
I've put another 30 hours in 4.1 this Christmas and your post hurts to read lol
Note: Only the Ranger gets to run. Wing Divas can do a forward dodge in midair and keep that quick momentum, Fencers can equip upgrades to their boost or jump jets. Air Raiders still gotta keep rolling.
It's always that way. Sometimes your only high level weapon is in one of those useless columns and you have to improvise with the thing.
Diva dodge sounds good. Ranger needed the boost lol. 200+ hours and never touched Air Raider :D
Even though the Wing Diver has some brilliant weapons, I've been really frustrated with the plasma cannon line. You get some really good cannons at lvl 10 and 15, but I'm up to lvl 50 weapons and still waiting for one which is better.
I've got nearly every plasma cannon in the game and none of them make me happy. :( The one I use most is level 70-something and fires a big single shot. The ones above it aren't as useful.
I haven't played Diva or Pale Wing much in the past but weren't the plasma cannons always garbage?
I can only speak for this game, but the plasma cannons with a large blast radius are god-tier. I was using the lvl 15 one up until the last few missions of my online hard playthrough. You need the big core to use it (which basically prevents flight) but that gun can kill dozens of mobs per hit and destroy most bigger targets in a few hits.
I feel worse for the frogs. They're slaves, and they're easier to empathise with because they look just like humans.
Just like the last game, there's never much reason to use one, especially since a lot of her weapons deal with crowds better+won't kill you if an ally walks in front of you. At most, her grenades are good since they cost 0 energy. The only reason I can think of to use one is as a make shift sniper rifle because her long range game is pretty limited. I'm getting level 50 weapons and still using the level 20 Monster rifle because all her other sniper rifles have terrible DPS/energy costs.
My go-to weapons from cheesing mission 87 on Inferno a bit are the Bolt Shooter ZF (sniper) and Gleipnir Alpha. The bolt shooter's only drawback is the immense power cost for a reload but it outputs 18 devastating volleys before you have to do so. The Gleipnir is even cheesier with a Big Core since it reloads faster than the previous shot depletes. I wish I could get a turret that works like the Gleipnir for the Air Raider.
Seriously, did they nerf the Air Raiders turrets? They use to be mandatory last game for me. Now I can't tell if they're doing anything when I use them, it's just air strike air strike air strike air strike air strike air strike.
I love that Stardust Cannon. I've almost finished upgrading this absolute beast. Since Effective Range would make the gun more dangerous to use maybe it's perfect right now.
That one guy must think the rest of the EDF are insane.
No but I think they were always mediocre. The damage doesn't seem to scale up much. Air strikes got a major buff tho.
