Made In Abyss is a fantastic anime. Part Steamworld Dig, part of life, and a whole lot of shock value, it’s a top-tier anime worth watching. If you have Amazon Prime, the first season is available on Amazon Prime with subtitles, and the second season has just been released, but is not yet on streaming services aside from HIDIVE.
In fact, for those of you who have already seen the series, it’s hard not to agree that it was perfectly made for conversion to a video game. All the signature design elements are there, the concept fits well, and even character designs contain solid potential gameplay elements. Perhaps that’s why publisher Spike Chunsoft and developer Chime Corporation decided to take up the task and turn the anime into Made In Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness (which is quite a mouthful).
For fans of the series, the first part of Made In Abyss (we’ll skip the full title) will sound pretty familiar. The game literally copies the anime to include a few parts of the show as a movie. The entire plot and script are pretty much indistinguishable from the show, apart from the lack of detail in places. As the story lifts for your build, the basic mechanics of the game are also introduced. Made In Abyss consists of home area segments similar to those in first person dungeon games with menu driven areas where you talk to people, buy and sell supplies and items, and get quests.
When you’re not in town, you’ll be “looting caves,” which involves entering the Abyss itself, fighting strange creatures, and harvesting the strange items that lie within. You start out with a pickaxe and some food and essentially have to explore areas as you head to predetermined waypoints. It’s also more challenging than you might think, as you’ll get hungry and have to fight and eat the inhabitants of the Abyss to survive. You also can’t just walk back up when your health is low, because the ‘Curse of the Abyss’ causes ascent sickness. Only going up about 6 meters is enough to take out Riko, the main character from the anime and in Hello Abyss, the introductory part of the game. Reg, her partner, does not suffer from ascension sickness, but he is just following Riko’s lead.
Every time you get sick, you have to pause and wait for the disease to subside. Ascend too quickly and you start vomiting, the screen pulses purple and you lose all the food in your stomach, forcing you to eat to regain your stamina and move on. This means a slow crawl up every time you have to return to the surface (assuming you can still do that. If you dive too deep into the caves, you can never return anyway.
As you walk through the Abyss, you can pick up a variety of items, including useful plants, broken gear, and Abyss treasures that you can sell for money (but not in Hello Abyss). You can also use your pick to hit enemies, even on a rope or cliff when they inevitably attack. There are also evasive maneuvers and you can target enemies to hunt them down more effectively. Oddly enough, the fight is remarkably awkward and Riko feels unapproachable. It’s easy to hit the wrong button and also switch from a weapon to a fishing rod or food, and if enemies corner you, you’ll quickly take a lot of damage.
You can also climb up and down cliffs and ascend or descend with Reg’s help into different areas that you wouldn’t be able to reach on your own. Watch your stamina though, because if you run out half way up the climb, you’ll just drop dead. Plus, you can literally just fall off cliffs and they’re everywhere, creating stressful movements that have you crawling instead of running so much that you literally feel limited by your surroundings. Made In Abyss is remarkably ruthless and Hello Abyss gives you just a taste. Autosave points are only at the beginning of areas, some of which are quite long. The only other way to save is with a balloon, but you’ll have a limited inventory weight before you overload and you’ll only have a limited number of balloons even if you find and repair broken ones. Any enemy or trap can kill you instantly or knock you into the Abyss and it’s game over and a lot of backtracking if you’re not careful.
The weird thing about Made In Abyss is that Hello Abyss is mandatory. It really, absolutely, unequivocally shouldn’t be, but there’s no way to play the main part of the game, Deep In Abyss, without completing Hello Abyss first. That’s an absolute shame because while that introductory part is only about 3-4 hours, it feels like about 15 because it’s so poorly paced. Reg constantly chatters in your ear and won’t shut up, you die and return, half of the game’s mechanics aren’t introduced, and then the whole of Hello Abyss is abruptly over and halfway through the anime’s first season ends with no rhyme or reason. It’s honestly quite irritating because Hello Abyss is definitely going to ruin the Made In Abyss experience for most players. It’s just not fun at all. With ice-cold pace, too many cinemas, and a plot that just cuts off like it’s paralyzed, it serves no real purpose in letting players go through it. Sure, you need to learn the basics, but this is definitely the wrong way to go about it.
Deep In Abyss, on the other hand, is the main body of the game and noticeably superior to the forced introduction. Instead of following the anime, you create a new cave raider and follow an original story set after Reg and Riko make their trek down. Now you can visit all the shops, buy better gear, upgrade your character, level up, the whole nine meters. After Hello Abyss, it feels open and refreshing, albeit immensely challenging. This is by no means a forgiving game and if you start at level one, the moves you were used to from Riko are now gone and you have to earn them back. That was especially painful and confusing with the climb jump. However, you can allocate earned points however you like and create a much more powerful character, assuming you survive.
Things are tougher here in other ways too, like enemies constantly reappearing as you try to craft food to satisfy or cure your ever-present hunger. Climbing ropes and ramped walls also become more menacing with vicious butterflies (yes, you read that right) constantly attacking. You even have to earn the right to eat on a rope so the butterflies don’t kill you. And that’s just the beginning. Deep In Abyss continues down past the inverted forest, the 3 . inrd4e and finally 5e layers if you have the strength and guts to get this far. Each tier is made up of a myriad of individual sections filled with vicious enemies, weird items, and even weirder landscapes. It’s strange to just be on the 5. to ende low though, as strange as it was to abruptly end Hello Abyss at the entrance of the 3rd. The anime references seven layers of the abyss and hints at more, but if you don’t take the game there, it feels unfinished.
That’s not quite the case as the crafting mechanics, upgrade system, and overall design of the game are pretty good. Unfortunately, between climbing sickness at the slightest incline, unresponsive and awkward combat, and a plot that leaves something to be desired, Made In Abyss doesn’t live up to its potential. That’s not to say it’s not a good game, just that it could be much better and generally only fans of the anime will be patient for its flaws. Even weapons are frustrating in Deep In Abyss, suffering accelerated wear and deterioration similar to Breath of the Wild, one of the most frustrating mechanics you can put into a game. If you have a weak pickaxe to fight against constantly returning enemies and it breaks every 15 hits or so, it’s pretty tedious to hunt for items to craft another while getting bitten to death. Item degradation is one of the worst mechanics in modern games, and a few hits on squirrels definitely shouldn’t break a pickaxe. Sure, you can eventually make stronger stuff, but the majority of players won’t wait for that marginal payout.
Ultimately, Made In Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness is a weird mixed bag that fiddles with the introduction so badly that many players don’t bother moving into the more playable part of the game. For the few that do, their experience will still be dampened by lackluster controls and frustrating mechanics that should have been soft-pedaled in favor of playability. A streamlined combat and climbing system would have worked wonders for this game, but here we are. If you’re a fan of exploration games, crafting, and anime, this will still be a fun game, assuming you’re okay with the remarkably high difficulty. However, the majority of players will probably feel like their time is quickly being sucked into an abyss. That’s a shame, because all the ingredients of a classic are here; they just haven’t been realized unfortunately.
This review is based on a digital copy of Made In Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Made In Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness is also available on PS4 and for PC on Steam.
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