Made In Abyss: Binary Star Falling Into Darkness
A game based on the manga/anime series Made In Abyss, and one game I desperately wanted to be good. Instead, it's quite poor, and something that no fan of Made In Abyss should touch.
The game features tow modes: Hello Abyss and Deep In Abyss; the former follows series protagonists Reg and Rico as they descend into the abyss in search of Rico's mother, while the other allows you to tackle the exploration with your own character. Deep In Abyss is also not available until you have completed Hello Abyss, which in truth is a glorified tutorial I'm struggling to complete.
Pretty much every movement option is slow, from the standard walking cycle, to climbing, and descending ledges via Reg's extensible arms. A stamina meter dictates what action you can perfomr and for how long (with the exception of walking), resulting in being able to run short stretches and climb walls that seem tailored exactly to how much you can climb with a full stamina bar.
The original work tells (and shows) in great detail the dangers of climbing back up the abyss, calling it a curse: nausea, headaches, loss of the sense of direction, and even worse. The encroaching curse in the game is represented by a purple frame slowly growing all around the screen, and that is triggered even when jumping. Standing still slowly reduces curse buildup, and I've had the curse taking its effect only once, when I triggered it on purpose out of curiosity.
What happens when climbing a wall? You stand still, stamina is only consumed when moving alongside the wall. This is kinda stupid and removes all of the tension of this action, and characters in Made In Abyss are very fragile, and most drops will kill you outright.
In fact, pretty much everything will, and the game doesn't skimp on gruesome deaths...in Japan the game is rated CERO Z and M17+ in America.
Aside of the painfully slow movement options, you can only carry a limited amount of weight, or be encumbered and become even slower. You need to keep track of HP, hunger, and "exploration stamina", which can be recovered by cooking food using ingredient scavenged all over the place.
About half of the items present in the game are useless in Hello Abyss mode, as you don't go back to the base camp to sell them, and story checkpoints give you enough materials to carry you through Rico and Reg's story.
The game is full of either puzzling or bad design choices.
For example, just before setting for the abyss with Rico (a non-return point in both game and original work), I wanted to create a manual save. Only that developers placed two NPCs in front of the only manual save point in the game, so I'm relying autosaves instead. There are no checkpoints other than reaching the new story beat, and more often than not you'll be forced to go through stages multiple times because a stupid error or because you're losing patience due to how slow actions are.
I've found myself exploring during the night, and the game never tells you that clicking on the right stick turns on the light Rico has on her helmet.
Reg has a lifebar, and once incapacitated you'll have to wait a while for him to come back. He's much better at combat than Rico, but he oftens get stuck in the most basic terrain in an infinte loop of jumps, seems to be unable to climb walls, doesn't teleport to your location when too far away, but he always appears when you have to rappel down ledges. He also never shuts the **** up, constantly going "Rico, I sense danger nearby", and Rico replying "what to do...?". It's absolutely irritating.
Also, cutscenes with QTEs. Please stop.
And don't make me fight things after tutorialising on how it's much better to run from danger.
And tutorials on things you cannot do in Hello Abyss mode (like creating a tie-down point to descend ledges, because you have Reg).
Item description is lacklustre: I was poisoned, and was chomping down on food to keep me going (I didn't want to restart a stage again), with no item telling me "cures poison". I had some gauzes, which according to the description fully heals and can used to treat leg and arm injuries. I used one, and magically the poison goes away.
I'm told Hello Abyss mode lasts for about two hours, and I'll keep on playing to see it through, but damn the game is making this difficult. A much better way to approach Made In Abyss would have been to ditch the established story and do something along the lines of Etrian Odyssey, a Mistery Dungeon game, or go for absolute broke and do an open world Xenoblade-like. This is especially painful after having gone through a 100 hours of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and starting a new character in Elden Ring.
I say this because what makes the original work good are the story and characters, the weird stuff is a complement to that, and the game doesn't have an ounce of that, and rather goes for an awkward adaptation of the concept without any bit of charm in it.
A game based on the manga/anime series Made In Abyss, and one game I desperately wanted to be good. Instead, it's quite poor, and something that no fan of Made In Abyss should touch.
The game features tow modes: Hello Abyss and Deep In Abyss; the former follows series protagonists Reg and Rico as they descend into the abyss in search of Rico's mother, while the other allows you to tackle the exploration with your own character. Deep In Abyss is also not available until you have completed Hello Abyss, which in truth is a glorified tutorial I'm struggling to complete.
Pretty much every movement option is slow, from the standard walking cycle, to climbing, and descending ledges via Reg's extensible arms. A stamina meter dictates what action you can perfomr and for how long (with the exception of walking), resulting in being able to run short stretches and climb walls that seem tailored exactly to how much you can climb with a full stamina bar.
The original work tells (and shows) in great detail the dangers of climbing back up the abyss, calling it a curse: nausea, headaches, loss of the sense of direction, and even worse. The encroaching curse in the game is represented by a purple frame slowly growing all around the screen, and that is triggered even when jumping. Standing still slowly reduces curse buildup, and I've had the curse taking its effect only once, when I triggered it on purpose out of curiosity.
What happens when climbing a wall? You stand still, stamina is only consumed when moving alongside the wall. This is kinda stupid and removes all of the tension of this action, and characters in Made In Abyss are very fragile, and most drops will kill you outright.
In fact, pretty much everything will, and the game doesn't skimp on gruesome deaths...in Japan the game is rated CERO Z and M17+ in America.
Aside of the painfully slow movement options, you can only carry a limited amount of weight, or be encumbered and become even slower. You need to keep track of HP, hunger, and "exploration stamina", which can be recovered by cooking food using ingredient scavenged all over the place.
About half of the items present in the game are useless in Hello Abyss mode, as you don't go back to the base camp to sell them, and story checkpoints give you enough materials to carry you through Rico and Reg's story.
The game is full of either puzzling or bad design choices.
For example, just before setting for the abyss with Rico (a non-return point in both game and original work), I wanted to create a manual save. Only that developers placed two NPCs in front of the only manual save point in the game, so I'm relying autosaves instead. There are no checkpoints other than reaching the new story beat, and more often than not you'll be forced to go through stages multiple times because a stupid error or because you're losing patience due to how slow actions are.
I've found myself exploring during the night, and the game never tells you that clicking on the right stick turns on the light Rico has on her helmet.
Reg has a lifebar, and once incapacitated you'll have to wait a while for him to come back. He's much better at combat than Rico, but he oftens get stuck in the most basic terrain in an infinte loop of jumps, seems to be unable to climb walls, doesn't teleport to your location when too far away, but he always appears when you have to rappel down ledges. He also never shuts the **** up, constantly going "Rico, I sense danger nearby", and Rico replying "what to do...?". It's absolutely irritating.
Also, cutscenes with QTEs. Please stop.
And don't make me fight things after tutorialising on how it's much better to run from danger.
And tutorials on things you cannot do in Hello Abyss mode (like creating a tie-down point to descend ledges, because you have Reg).
Item description is lacklustre: I was poisoned, and was chomping down on food to keep me going (I didn't want to restart a stage again), with no item telling me "cures poison". I had some gauzes, which according to the description fully heals and can used to treat leg and arm injuries. I used one, and magically the poison goes away.
I'm told Hello Abyss mode lasts for about two hours, and I'll keep on playing to see it through, but damn the game is making this difficult. A much better way to approach Made In Abyss would have been to ditch the established story and do something along the lines of Etrian Odyssey, a Mistery Dungeon game, or go for absolute broke and do an open world Xenoblade-like. This is especially painful after having gone through a 100 hours of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and starting a new character in Elden Ring.
I say this because what makes the original work good are the story and characters, the weird stuff is a complement to that, and the game doesn't have an ounce of that, and rather goes for an awkward adaptation of the concept without any bit of charm in it.
so after many attempts getting speared over and over again, i restarted to an earlier check point to reset the enemies in to manageable positions as i took the games intended 'direction' in avoiding enemies, using diversions but it trapped with no cover after burning the cover ahead to kill 1 enemy in cool cutscene but it left me trapped around 5 enemies... after the reload i just hide behind a rock and cheesed the sling head shots... probably not the way the game suppose to be played.
Comment