Zone of the Enders Review
October 1, 2024
Zone of the Enders is a game that simply oozes early 2000s anime energy, the intro music feels like a mix of Toonami's drum and bass tracks with soft female vocals that are very reminiscent of the likes of Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone complex. The game's story take heavy inspiration from the Gundam series, not surprising as Gundam X's Nobuyoshi Nishimura worked on the character designs. Tell if you've heard this one before, a floating space colony being attacked by enemy forces who are after new prototype mechs which leads a young boy to end up in the pilot's seat of the new powerful model and has the responsibility of fighting thrust upon him. These events might be familiar to you if you've seen the original Mobile Suit Gundam, the main character Leo's outfit is even reminiscent of Gundam's protagonist Amuro Ray's clothes during the first episode. That's not to say that ZoE takes everything from Gundam, the designs of the Orbital Frame mechs are very unique. The main mecha Jehuty despite being one of the most human looking machines has a beastly quality to it, the enemy mecha are a mish mash of odd shapes, looking more like monsters than robots.
The bulk of the game will see you traveling to different areas of the Jupiter space colony, trying to escape so that the Jehuty unit can be sent to Mars. Each part of the colony you go to is it's own little biome, where you'll need to dispatch enemies and handle tasks needed to progress to the next part of the story. An interesting concept introduced in the damage sustained to each part of the colony will remain consists through the entire game, unfortunately it doesn't really amount to much outside your final ranking.
The best part of the game hands down is controlling the Jehuty itself, the controls are relatively simple but gratifying to use. You have access to sword and gun attacks that are both mapped to the square button, your distance from the enemy deciding which you use. The major factor is controlling distance between you and your enemies is the burst which allows you to either shoot across the screen on short bursts or one long boost. It takes some getting used to but bursting is essential to avoiding damage as even after leveling up your Jehuty you can still get your shit wrecked if you're not careful. Darting across the screen, shooting multi-shots at enemies before closing in for a close quarters sword fight is simply the best. Nothing feels better than pulling of a burst attack right as the enemy blocks, allowing you to go in for the kill. One of my favorite attacks is your burst shot which has Jehuty focus it's energy into a single blast. If ZoE nails one thing, it's making you feel like a genius anime mech pilot. The only real negative is that sometimes the camera gets in the way but I never found it to be a glaring issue.
The boss fights are where Zone of the Enders really shines, they serve as an excellent test of both your combat and maneuvering skills. Each boss sports a unique design along with a mid-fight transformation, although most of the pilots are just generic bad guys that will make fun Leo for being a kid. The fights are punctuated with excellent high pumping techno tracks that do a great job setting the scene and getting you into the fight. It was always satisfying figuring out the bosses pattern and what sub weapons were best used on them, I myself got a lot of use out of the Gauntlet sub-weapon.
It's a good thing Zone of the Enders feels great because it unfortunately doesn't have much in the way of content. You'll often find yourself having to re-visit previous areas in order to fulfill some task to progress. A lot of the time you don't really get any clear direction on what you're supposed to do and are basically expected to just go looking around all the previous areas. Even with all the back tracking you'll be looking at a total of 5 hours max for your first playthrough, I've never played a game this short scrape so hard for playtime. I can only assume the game suffered from a rushed development cycle.
The story didn't really grip me also, the English voice acting is very of it's time and while I'm used to it, I can see someone today having a hard time getting into it. The protagonist Leo spends a lot of the game whining about his predicament which while understandable from a narrative point can get annoying to hear over and over, but I did find his developing friendship with the on-board artificial intelligence ADA to be pretty cute.
While Zone of the Enders suffers from a underwhelming story the core gameplay carries the game with it's length making it a perfect title to throw on for an afternoon. There's definitely something to say about releasing the game under it's original price tag (I guess Konami knew what they were doing bundling the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo) for what you can get it for today it's an easy recommendation. If you're a fan of mecha anime you owe it to yourself to play Zone of the Enders.
