EDENS ZERO Preview

My prior exposure to manga creator Hiro Mashima’s work was like two episodes of the FAIRY TAIL anime when it first released, and the ability to immediately recognise his art style and ask, “Is that from FAIRY TAIL?” Nothing against him, I just never got around to it — there are 328 episodes, it’s a time commitment. Now, the creator’s follow-up only has 50 episodes of anime, but perhaps that means EDENS ZERO will fit into a single videogame?

We’ll ignore the mobile game (service ended in 2024) and the RPG Maker game (made by Hiro Mashima himself), because this is the first third-person action adventure game set in the universe. Developed and published by Konami, it’s releasing in a couple of weeks, and I figured the trailer looked fun enough, so tried it out.

Since playing this, I’ve looked up the first episode of the anime, so while EDENS ZERO seems to directly follow the story of the manga, it has been adapted in some ways, such as Rebecca meeting Shiki inside the town. It’s a bit hard to gauge fully, having not experienced the story before, and the fact that the first 15 minutes was mainly cutscenes jumping way ahead of each other.

Shiki is a kid, Rebecca turns up, now they’re in space, then there’s a massive ship, suddenly half a dozen characters are introduced in 15 seconds… The pre-release version I played saw the first part of the tutorial in what I assume to be many hours into the game! And then at one point, the story just restarted and I got to play from when Rebecca arrived at Granbell Kingdom. If the game actually starts like this, it’ll be super confusing for newcomers… Hopefully, it’s just something they did for this build!

The best way I could think to explain the actual gameplay of EDENS ZERO is comparing it to a Like A Dragon (nee Yakuza) title. You start pretty railroaded, there are lengthy cutscenes, get into fights with random toughs, then at one point you’re given free rein to run around and do whatever you like. Obviously, it’s difficult to tell how much freedom the game will give a player after playing a few story missions and a bit of open world for 90 minutes, but I liked what I saw!

Since this is a shonen story, that means action, which also means fighting. I played with Shiki and Rebecca, and it appears that there will be a few more playable characters in the full game. Shiki fights with his fists and gravity powers (oh yeah, he has gravity powers), and Rebecca has guns (her cat turns into them, no big), with both usable at any time by pressing a button. When you embark on a quest, you can pick whichever members of your crew you want to accompany you.

The combat felt good, with normal attacks, finishers, and specials. Curiously, there are two different finishers, so that took some time to get used to, having never encountered it before. One of the special attacks has a cooldown timer, the other you need to fill up by doing a certain amount of damage to enemies. Locking on seemed to switch to a random enemy, rather than the next closest, but other than that, I quite enjoyed the combat.

The graphics aren’t anything special, if I’m being honest, but they adapt Mashima’s style perfectly well. The city I got to explore on the planet of Blue Garden was quite impressive, as you unlock the ability to fly (again, gravity powers) and I got to explore it from the air. There was also a motorbike, and the full game will have other vehicles, so Konami did a good job of creating a place that feels good to explore by land and flying. However, there were quite blatant blurry textures in places.

Fans of FAIRY TAIL and EDENS ZERO will be very familiar with how sexualised the women’s designs are. Well, if you watched the anime and saw how exaggerated the breast movements can be (I watched a clip), then rest assured: Rebecca has jiggle physics. One of her attacks rapid-fires in a line, and for the two seconds that you cannot move her buttocks also vibrate. I only noticed that when I was watching some footage I recorded, but panty shots and bouncing bosoms are aplenty.

The voice acting is only available in Japanese, which is a bit of a shame since the anime was dubbed in English, but I’m not averse to reading subtitles. The actors were all great, the music is uplifting, and the sound effects have the oomph they need. From an audio standpoint, it’s great.

While I can’t say whether it does a good job of representing the manga, I’m definitely looking forward to EDENS ZERO releasing on 15th July for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.