God Eater 3 Command Guide: How to control your NPC allies and deal with multiple Aragami

God Eater 3, like many other hunting games, has a multiplayer aspect where cooperation among players will make hunting these large monsters much easier. What distinguishes this game from most of them is that it provides NPC team members that can actually help you in battles. And as with prior God Eater games, you are also able to issue specific commands to determine these NPCs' movements and behaviors.

While the game's tutorial missions did teach you most of the gameplay mechanics, this particular feature does not really get covered in detail. If you are new to the God Eater series, you can read this guide to catch up on the method to give orders to your party members.

How to open the Command Menu

By default, pressing the touchpad will open up the Item Menu. From here on, you can press Triangle to finally access the Command Menu. The button prompts here are the same as the Item Menu: Press L1 and R1 to scroll between the entries, and hit Square to execute the highlighted command.

You can also change the setting in Options to have the touchpad to prioritize opening Command Menu, remember the last menu opened, or even lump both the Item and Command menus together in a single row.

The commands in this menu are mainly split into 3 categories. The first one, Signal, delivers a direct command to NPCs nearby the player.

• Gather - Instructs nearby NPCs to follow the player; will apply until they have gathered close enough to the player.
• Search - NPCs will spread out to look for Aragami on their own and then engage any Aragami they come across.
• Disperse - Setting this signal will make NPCs scatter away to random directions and standby afterward.
• Hold - Tells NPCs to stand where they are and not move while waiting for further orders. 
• Converge - While all the above Signals will only work for NPCs within your vicinity, this one is a Signal All command that applies to the whole map. Converge is a wide-range version of Gather where the player launches a flare to tell all NPCs in the map to come to their position.

The next category Order (Target) will decide how your NPC members will team up on the enemy Aragami.

• Focus - Setting this order will make all NPCs attack the same Aragami the player is currently fighting against.
• Spread - If this order is set, NPCs will attack other Aragami than the player's target.
• Free - This is the default order set where your NPC allies will attack any Aragami as they wish.

The last category, Order (Tendency), determines NPC's aggression level towards Aragami during the mission.

• Hostile - After setting this order, NPCs will become very aggressive. They will actively chase Aragami that retreats to a feeding point and will not even let them have a rest.
• Normal - The default behavior where NPCs will cease engaging retreating Aragami and will not attack until an Aragami has turned hostile on them. This situation is particularly useful if the player wants to take some time to recover or safely land a charged devour attack on a recovering Aragami.

Practical usages of commands

Commands will be very helpful when you head to missions with multiple medium or large Aragamis appearing at the same time. Just like other hunting games, one of the challenges in this genre is having to fight against multiple large monsters in the same map. But with God Eater 3 having helpful NPCs along with a robust command system, you will be able to strategize your approach in such situations even on single player mode.

You will want to keep a close eye on the full map, which you can view by pressing the Options button. Large and medium Aragamis will be marked with bigger blips, and their arrows also indicate their direction of movement and line of sight.

While many Aragamis will only detect God Eaters by having them in their line of sight, there are some species that are sound-sensitive that can and will head towards locations with battle sounds. It is highly advisable to prioritize these sound-sensitive Aragamis first while keeping an eye on the location of the other Aragami and using Gather signals to keep your team on the move.

Here is the list of sound-sensitive Aragami species in God Eater 3:

• Kongou
• Sariel
• Quadriga
• Nevan
• Fallen Nevan
• Havakiri
• Fallen Havakiri
• False Idol
• Fallen False Idol

In the case that fighting multiple Aragamis at the same place becomes inevitable, there are a number of ways to split them up. You can set the Target Order to Spread, attack the Aragami that's easier for you to beat by yourself, and distance yourself from the rest so you can focus towards that one Aragami. You can also throw a Stun Grenade and scram by telling your team to either disperse or follow you.

If all else fails or if you are sure the current target already has low HP, you can have your whole team focus attacking the Aragami and hope it either dies soon or retreats to a distant feeding place.