Edens Zero follows the story of the anime and comic book series of this game’s namesake. The story follows Shiki Granbell and his friends across space as they go on a grand adventure to save humanity. Without spoiling too much of the story, you are on a quest across space and time to save humanity from an evil demonic robot and nothing in this story is exactly what it seems.
The story is very well told through dialogue and the over abundance of anime style clips. The story in this game had me needing to know just what’s going to happen next and how it will ultimately conclude. I went into this game never watching the anime nor reading the comics. In a way I am glad I did because this was a great way to experience both of those mediums in an interactive way along with additional story elements that are unique to this game.
Edens Zero is a third person 3D action role-playing game. You control a party of four characters at once and can swap on the fly which is nice; with there being a total of eight playable characters.
Edens Zero is the spaceship in the game of which not only serves as the games namesake, but also as your hub area. It is here that you can purchase and sell equipment and items, cook food to buff up party members, take on quests, learn new skills, talk to NPCs, and even expand the ship and unlock other areas to explore.
Quests can take the form of running around the ship talking to people or taking items from one person and giving it to another, and can also be instances where you’re transported to a specific area or planet to take on various objectives. The on planet or in area objectives could be anything from chasing someone down to get information or an item, or surviving a set amount of enemies that are coming after you to try and stop you from completing the end game objectives or current quest objectives.
Each character you play as has their own set of moves, a special attack, and what I like to refer to as an ultimate attack. You gain the ability to use the latter two attacks by doing regular attacks and causing damage to enemies that you’re fighting. Special attacks can give you the ability to do things like alter your weapons to do more damage or cause a gravity sucking vortex to bring all the enemies to you. The ultimate attack you can use is one that does a ton of damage and has a really cool set of anime clips that go along with it.
Running around in 3D environments with 3D Anime style characters is really a nice experience and with so many quests, and over 700 pieces of equipment you can unlock, there is no shortage of content here to keep the game going for hours of entertainment.
Edens Zero is one of those games that you will either really like the look of or you wont. For me, games that feature anime style characters look really impressive if done right. I also much prefer 3D environments with an anime gloss over everything rather than having the game having a 3D environment with everything being sprite based.
Going into this game knowing that it’s based on an anime and comic book series, really had me questioning if I would like the direction the art of the game took. But they really hit it out of the park with this. I mean I have said this before in other reviews and I will say it here too, this game really is a work of interactive art. This game is a comic book/anime that has come to life in a beautiful and interactive way.
All of the environments you run around in look less like 3D models and more like they are hand drawn and brought to life by magic. The anime style of the characters look like they just popped fresh out of your TV screen or off the page of the comics. Their look, facial expressions, animation, everything is as smooth as silk. I don’t think that this game could graphically look any better unless they went with a more realistic approach as opposed to an anime take.
I don’t think that a realistic approach to this game would have worked at all. To me it feels like it would be totally out of place and would make a lot of fans and gamers question just what the developers were thinking. So I am really pleased with the anime direction this game took and they didn’t decide to just go off the rails and make it as realistic as possible.
For this review we were offered the game on Xbox. I played the game on an Xbox Series X and for a game like this, there is no way it wouldn’t perform well. While it performs as best as one would expect a game like this to perform, the game did in fact surprise me a bit. With as big of a game as this is, I was thinking that there would be really long load times.
Well when you initially load the game for the first time or a save game, it does load a little slower than I expected. But after the initial longer than anticipated load time, all subsequent load times were only really a few seconds, maybe at most 45 seconds to a minute.
Edens Zero is a video game based on an anime. With that kind of basis, the sound has to be great right? Well just like the graphics in this game, the sound seems like it too is lifted directly from the anime. I mean it very well could be. Though truthfully I think it’s a combination of music from the anime with original arrangements for the game. Regardless of where the game got its music, it’s amazing. I mean it’s up beat, edgy, it just sounds really really good! Aside from the music, you have the voice acted dialogue of the characters.
Now to my surprise, it seems like every character is voice acted. I think that in part this is because it’s based on an anime. I don’t think that if the game was based on say just the comic book series or a game that isn’t based on any other medium, would we see so many voice acted characters.
Another aspect of this that comes to mind is the fact that the developers likely took some of the dialogue from the show and recycled it into the game. Some would say that this is lazy. I believe that this enhances the experience rather than hinders it. Not only does it help solidify Edens Zero into the medium space of the series, but it fits seamlessly.
Though I do wish they had an English dialogue option for the voices, I feel like they didn’t have one for authentic reasons. I mean this is a Japanese anime that has been subbed in English. The fact that it tells the events of the anime and comic book, it makes sense that it would be subbed and not have a dubbed option.
As with the music in the game, I feel like the sound effects were also lifted directly from the anime. I mean there is nothing wrong with this, again I think it gives it an authentic feel given the direction the game went for. All of the sound effects sound like they would be in an anime and none of them sound out of place or off.
Edens Zero is one of those games that is rather polarizing. I mean you either love it for what it is or you hate it. Fans of Edens Zero should definitely check this game out and play it. The game does a great job from what I’ve researched of telling the events of both the anime series and the comics in a very interactive and unique way. Along with that, it also provides its own elements of canon to the series that serves as a nice addition to the overall story. If you enjoy anime in general or action RPG games, you should also check out Edens Zero. The game is a stunning graphical work of art that plays and looks incredible.
In my experience, there aren’t many games that can do trans-media well. No I am not talking about any orientation of anyone or any representation. What I am referring to by trans-media is a game or media work that spans across multiple mediums. In Edens Zero’s case, it spans a video game, anime series, and comic books or manga. It also serves as a very unique and fun way to not only experience the elements that it brings to the table with the original elements to the canon of the series, but also to experience the entirety of the anime and manga or comic book series. I would most definitely recommend this game to everyone. As a work of trans-media art, it really is a unique, engaging, and very fun experience.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.