Chikyuu Boeigun 2 actually came out in Europe as Global Defence Force. The only Japan-exclusive game in the series is EDF1.
Oh wow, I honestly did not know that. I'll eat my humble pie over here
Also played online with a friend for a while, netcode seems solid. It's weird that your characters carry over between offline and online, but your online campaign progress is separate. Combined with the weapon level and armor limitations I'm guessing it's to avoid having high level people just totally carry people through their first playthrough or something maybe? I see that there are options to disable the limitations but they're not selectable, so not sure if you have to beat the game first to do that or what.
Also did not realize that Armor pickups scaled differently for the different classes, like my Wind Diver was only get 1 point of Armor for every 2 pickups, whereas the Ranger gets 1 point per 1 pickup. It actually makes sense with the classes, just hadn't thought about it.
Edit: Oh, found the Armor pickup to actual Armor gained conversion per class:
Fencer 0.58
Ranger/ Air Raider 0.464
Wingdiver 0.232
Also just found out that in order to lift the weapon level/armor restrictions you have to
which is fucking crazy. The limits seem to be high enough where if you have weapons at that level you're going to steamroll it anyway, so I'm not sure why they bother having that unlock requirement. I was thinking it was just on a first playthrough to avoid players getting totally carried or something, weird.