Edens Zero Review
Anime-based video games have developed a notorious reputation over the last decade – thanks in no small part to an absolute glut of half-hearted arena fighters. There have been a few anime games that have moved the needle in a more positive direction by doing something genuinely original, like One Piece: World Seeker or Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, but there’s real untapped potential in how anime franchises could be translated into video games. This is especially true in the RPG space – a genre that feels like a surefire fit for so many anime. Unfortunately, Edens Zero is a prime example of how you don’t adapt an anime series. It’s a game of sadly unrealized potential, where a few good ideas are buried under an avalanche of rote systems and monotonous presentation, failing to add anything of value to its source material.
Edens Zero is a new party-based RPG from Konami, based on the space fantasy anime and manga of the same name by Hiro Mashima (creator of Rave Master and Fairy Tail). The series follows a naive and headstrong young boy named Shiki Granbell, a wielder of powerful gravity-based powers, who sets out on a spacefaring adventure to find a mystical entity known as Mother.
If you’re familiar with any of Mashima’s work, you’ll already have some idea of what to expect from Edens Zero, as it heavily follows many of the author's typical tropes and storytelling techniques. There’s the bubbly heroine, a cute sidekick, the cool secondary guy who forms a friendship-rivalry with the main character, etc. But what’s always been most interesting about Edens Zero is how the series’ storytelling style evolves. The early arcs feel very typical of young adventure shonen, until the story starts pivoting more into a dynamic space opera. Edens Zero’s highs can’t match up with its contemporaries, but the way it blends shonen pulp and weighty sci-fi storytelling is genuinely fun.
That helped Edens Zero carve out its niche, and it’s precisely why this game feels like so much of a disappointment. There was room to capitalize on the nature of this story and universe, but it never quite feels like Konami’s Edens Zero knows how to do that.
For better or worse, Edens Zero is a full-fledged RPG, complete with an action combat system, unique party members, character skill trees, open world exploration, and everything in between. But it often feels like Edens Zero is trying too hard to be an “RPG” with all those systems you’d expect, instead of focusing on what unique elements this universe could bring to a role-playing game.
Structurally, Edens Zero is split into two halves: a linear story mode that has you playing through the canonical story, and an open world exploration mode that has you tackling quests on the expansive planet of Blue Garden. The further you progress in the story, the more quests and options you’ll open up in Blue Garden, on top of simply having more party members to play around with.
But the story of Edens Zero is emblematic of a major recurring issue with anime games – why should you play this game over watching the anime? The answer here is, you shouldn’t. As someone who genuinely enjoyed both the manga and anime, I hate to say that Edens Zero, the RPG, doesn’t add anything to elevate the narrative experience. It actively makes the story worse by stripping out some context and substituting a bulk of the presentation through static dialogue screens.
Mashima’s artistic style flourishes through his expressive characters, and that’s sadly just not something this game capitalizes on, despite strong voice performances. Yes, there are some nicely animated cutscenes, but most of Edens Zero’s presentation feels remarkably boring. The story follows the exact beats of the anime, but oftentimes shortens or truncates story events. This is expected for a game adaptation, of course, as you don’t necessarily want to recreate every frame or moment – but the biggest sin of Edens Zero is how it overloads you with dozens of battles with a handful of enemy types. This means a story beat that might last one or two episodes in the anime now becomes an hours-long, mind-numbing affair.
Edens Zero plays a bit like a cross between a Tales game and a Dynasty Warriors game, with each character having their own distinct abilities and moveset. You have a basic attack and a strong attack that can be comboed together, and then each character has their unique ability on top of that. For example, Shiki can create a gravity well that draws in characters, while Weisz can drop a handful of different self-shooting turrets.
The pronounced differences between characters add a lot of variety initially, and it is fun how each moveset leans into the personality. But the big problem is that the combat system is shallow, failing to evolve in any meaningful way.
As characters level up, they gain skill points, unlocking stat boost skills and new moves, but everyone’s skill tree is heavily gated by story progress. That means you’ll more often than not just have a stock of points ready to use until you clear a specific section of the story. At the same time, the extra moves gained are simply added onto the existing combo system – meaning you’re largely just hitting the same moves over and over again.
Edens Zero’s progression just feels frustratingly lackluster. There’s no real sense of your characters improving or growing, and while there’s an equipment system, you mostly just buy whatever’s new at the latest terminal. There’s no sense of hunting for the best equipment or coordinating character/equipment builds – everything is just dumped on you with story progression.
Therein lies the major issue – a worse version of Edens Zero’s narrative with combat that starts strong but grows stale. Of course, there’s an entire second half of the game with its open world, and that’s where some of Edens Zero’s best ideas lie, though still a bit underbaked.
At any time when you’re aboard your starship (the Edens Zero), you can choose to pursue the next story mission or jump straight into the open world. You can use Shiki’s gravity powers to fly around the expansive world of Blue Garden, and it feels surprisingly good to do so. There’s a certain kind of novelty in seeing the world of Edens Zero come to life, being able to poke around the futuristic cities and grassy plains of Blue Garden – zooming through the air like Superman whenever you get tired of walking.
While exploring, you can undertake dozens of quests from the local guild and stumble upon little story moments where you help citizens solve their problems. Some of these quests and moments you stumble upon do add some new story elements and help flesh out the cast of Edens Zero in some charming ways. There’s even one particular feature I genuinely like, in how it enhances the themes of the series at large. As you progress through the story, the characters you meet will start appearing on Blue Garden as your “Friends.” You can talk to these characters for little rewards or extra quests, and while it’s a small feature, I think it smartly illustrates the core themes and ideals of Edens Zero – of forging and cherishing connections.
When aboard your ship, you can also see Star Ocean-esque bonding events with your party members, little vignettes that build on their relationships with Shiki. These aren’t nearly as fleshed out as what you’d see in Star Ocean or Tales, but they do provide some nice little inflection points for characterization. Your ship also holds Edens Zero’s two minigames, massage and torture, as well as a cooking mechanic to prepare meals you can use while out in the field. I know I’ve said this already, but again, these elements feel like they’re included here only because an RPG has to have them, not because this game specifically benefits from their existence.
It’s frustratingly clear that Edens Zero had a limited budget. There’s a noticeable lack of polish to the entire experience, whether you’re talking about textures constantly popping in on Blue Garden or the general weightless feeling of combat. I wish this game had been given more time and room to do what it wanted, because there is some layer of ambition here. You can see how a grand space anime like Edens Zero would be a prime fit for an expansive RPG, but too much of the execution in the game is simply too messy and ham-fisted.
There simply aren’t enough engaging and worthwhile gameplay elements in Edens Zero to make it worth experiencing a worse version of the story. Superfans of the series might find something to love if they dig deep enough – but Konami’s Edens Zero, more than anything, is another grim reminder of the unrealized potential of anime-based video games.