Angel heart, so many hurt, KISS ME SUNLIGHTS
Fly to dark, set soul free, HOLD ME MOONSHINE
Until my rumbled hands lead to the end of night (end of night)
Find me in your eyes…
In 2001, Hideo Kojima set out to produce a franchise parallel to his flagship Metal Gear Solid Saga, one that involved some of his creative passions such as Mecha anime and science fiction stories about war. The product of this endeavor was an odd game called “Zone of the Enders”, which was packaged with the demo for the highly anticipated Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. This decision caused Zone of the Enders to be mostly overlooked in favor of its companion piece, but the few who played through liked it enough to raise it to cult status.
It is the year 2172 and thanks to the discovery of a powerful element known as the Metatron Ore humanity has been able to colonize Mars, Jupiter and other planets in the Solar System. This advancement has led to the development of next generation Military Weapons, such as the Orbital Frames, which are machines with extensive speed and fighting capabilities. Two experimental Orbital Frames were being developed in the Jupiter colony Antilia, which were rumored to be the most powerful ever known to man. Because of this, the terrorist military force known as BAHRAM sends an army of Orbital Frames to secure or destroy these Orbital Frames, no matter the damages done to the colony.
One of the colony’s citizens is Leo Stenbuck, a young child who witnesses his friends be murdered after the attack on the colony by BAHRAM. Leo runs away and finds the experimental Orbital Frame Jehuty, and takes shelter in it. This causes the Orbital Frame’s AI ADA to respond and help him take out the attacking Orbital Frames. Leo is then contacted by the United Nations Space Force, who notify him that the runner of the Orbital Frame he operates has died and that he must be the one to carry out his mission: To transport the Orbital Frame Jehuty to civilian transport vessel The Atlantis.
From the very start of the game, Zone of the Enders is able to set up a strong atmosphere for its world and the kind of story it tries to tell with a foreboding and unsettling song for its title screen menu. From there on, the atmosphere evolves into that of an off-key Science Fiction which is definitely grounded on some semblance of reality.
This is one of the most definite virtues of Zone of the Enders, its ability to set up an atmosphere which distinguishes it from most other games from the mecha genre or other Science Fiction works from other mediums.The atmosphere is created from a combination of its art direction and sound composition. On the visual side of things, Yoji Shinkawa’s excellent Orbital Frame designs make the game’s science fiction elements stand out, featuring a futuristic mechanical look that retains a sense of humanity and expressiveness to it. These elements are solidified by all the little details such as the pulsating lights that cover their entire bodies, giving a more organic look and feel. The world design is also really good, with a depiction of space colonies that looks stylish and sleek, but also dark and gritty while retaining a fictitious look.
Graphically, the game looks really good for an early PS2 title, having an appropriate amount of detail put into its world and giving each design its right modelling. Outside of gameplay, the story is told through cut scenes done in CG, which are acceptable for what they are though they do not stand the test of time particularly well. This may be in part because of the game’s weak character designs, which do not only have a hard time translating to 3D, but also look rather uncharacteristic and unmemorable, at least compared to the much better mech and world designs.
The game’s soundtrack also reinforces these motifs, by presenting sounds that sound foreign and alien to cement the Science Fiction feel, while also emanating feelings of isolation, distress and sadness. The sound effects also help reinforce the speed and impact of the player’s actions, making it all the more satisfying to play.
The visuals and the sound really complement the gameplay of Zone of the Enders to create an identity for itself, though its identity is still mostly defined by the way the game plays. Zone of the Enders is a very unique breed of hack and slash action games, featuring a blend of combat, shooting and flying to accomplish the player’s objectives. To approach each enemy, the player can engage in long distance C\combat by flying their mech and shooting with their energy weapon in steady bursts or with a powerful but slow burst attack. When this approach doesn’t work they can attack the enemy directly with slash attack combos or they can grab the enemy to throw them away somewhere else. Aside from this, they can dash out of enemy attacks or use a variety of sub-weapons to deal with their opponents.
The game’s controls and combat work incredibly smooth most of the time. Orbital Frames control exactly how you expect them to and going from flight to fight is an instant and smooth procedure. When the player is fighting enemies, the fast paced nature of the game never becomes too much to handle because of how competent and responsive both the camera and the controls are. This fluid approach to combat makes sure the players approaches combat in a variety of ways that are as versatile as the gameplay mechanics themselves, making the jump from close range, to long range, to simply flying away an effortless procedure. Though, they do have small problems, like the grab move being too slow to be effective or the camera being constantly centered behind the player each time they let go of the analog stick and the manual camera being far too slow, which makes exploration awkward at times.
Sadly, for all the promise and expectation that these elements of the game set forwards, the game doesn’t live up to most of them and falls for plenty of pitfalls in regards to the way the content, structure and the narrative is laid out.
The story of Zone of the Enders starts out very rough, and doesn’t pick up until the last quarter of the game. After the game starts, the game begins its rush to complete the story without giving care and attention as to how to clue the viewer into what’s actually going on, deliberately withholding information to the player and without giving them any explanation of what the concepts in this universe are or how they work, leaving the player confused as to what is happening.
Not like it matters though, because once the game kicks off the story takes the backseat to the gameplay, though it still shows major issues. Characters show little to no depth throughout most of the game, often taking actions that make the plot stop dead on its tracks or change the mood without actually having any reason to do so, until said reason is explained near the end of the game, leaving the player’s reaction to most of these events as a negative one. For most of the game, the characters try to replicate or impersonate tropes associated with the mecha genre, but without the depth, context or logical reasoning that should come from these up until the very end, making it feel shallow as a result. Aside from a couple exceptions, villains in the story show no depth either, acting out the roles of generic bad guy or punkish generic bad guy, making their encounters almost utterly forgettable if not for the creative Orbital Frame designs and enjoyable boss encounters.
Another problem the story faces is the terrible localization and voice acting, which are very hard to take seriously most of the time. The writing has a tendency to repeat itself and comes off as very dry and emotionless, while the voice acting is at times overacted or incredibly annoying to listen to, making what could be good writing or voice acting in Japanese a drag to get through in English.
The gameplay itself does start to wear off after the game kicks off as well, because of the easily apparent lack of content from the game. Zone of the Enders is the epitome of repetition. The gameplay makes the player go from area to area, which act a sort of battlefield for enemy encounters to occur, which are all connected by an overworld. Problem is though, that every area feels like the exact same area, even though they all have nearly distinct visual designs, which is in part due to the very small spaces that these areas cover. This nearly homogeneous design to the battlefield extends to the enemies of the game as well, which are bafflingly limited for such a short game. Zone of the Enders only has two types of enemies to fight, perhaps even three, and according to each type, they can all be defeated in the exact same way every single time. homogeneous area design and lack of variation when it comes to combat encounters makes the game’s severe lack of content pretty apparent, but it only gets worse from here.
The game’s structure is very flawed, for the game relies a lot on backtracking through previous areas every few missions just to collect a specific item or to fight a specific enemy in order to progress through the story. Another form of padding the game employs are optional S.O.S missions, which exist for those who care enough to complete them. They offer a nice challenge, which involves defeating all enemies in an area whilst trying not to cause any structural damage, but they still aren’t enough to save the game from its mindless repetition.
This repetition is a bit accentuated by some of the more action oriented tracks from the game’s soundtrack which play in each of the game’s areas. While they work well enough during combat and have a sense of energy to them, they mostly repeat a very similar beat and have little to no distinguishable melody, making them only good enough for listening throughout the game if not a bit too repetitive.
The pacing is also unrelentless, making the player go from mission to mission with very few breaks in between which causes the repetition to get to the point of exhaustion. This issue goes hand in hand with the game’s lack of boss fights for most of the mid-game, which should function as a good way to step aside fromthe more monotonous enemy encounters.
The bosses themselves are good enough, all featuring unique attack patters that must be figured out in order to beat them, though most of them must be defeated with the same kind of attacks, making little use of the game’s full fighting mechanics to get the advantage. Only at the late game do the boss encounters start to really shake up the player and demand more of their playstyle, but by this point it is too late.
It’s such a shame that the game really starts to get a little better by the end, which is when boss encounters become more common and they require more out of the player’s abilities to proceed and the story starts to develop more, showing the way the characters have evolved throughout the course of the story and revealing their backstories and reasons for doing the things they do, resulting in a conclusion that’s mildly satisfying, but still worthwhile nonetheless.
When looked as a whole, Zone of the Enders at least has interesting themes such as the juxtaposition of the cruelness of war against the innocence of a young child or the nature of artificial intelligence and I also appreciate the small scale of the story, which makes it feel more compact and personal. Even then, its execution still leaves a lot to be desired and could use a bit of restructuring to work and convey its themes better.
With all of its flaws, Zone of the Enders is a very short game anyways, clocking in at around 6 hours if you choose to do the optional content, or less if you choose not to and the issues aren’t enough of a big deal to make the experience completely ungratifying to play when experienced for such a short amount of time, though I still wished for more to come out of this game after the expectations were set fairly high.
After its release, Zone of the Enders was a very successful title, which prompted Hideo Kojima and Konami Computer Entertainment Japan to develop a full sequel which was released in February 13th, 2003 called Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner in America and ANUBIS: Zone of the Enders in Japan.
Reaching out to catch the sun
To hold it in our hands
Longing for something strong to hide our weakness
Soon the light may disappear
Nothing is meant to last
Yet we believe our world
Searching for happiness
The blue bird flies away
Two years after the Antilia Incident…
Dingo Egret, a miner working at a Metatron mining facility in Callisto receives a strange high intensity reading of Metatron on his radar. He goes to investigate it and discovers an Orbital Frame buried in the snow. Shortly after having discovered the Frame, Callisto is attacked by a BAHRAM battleship. Knowing that his coworkers are in danger, Dingo boards the Orbital Frame which is revealed to be Jehuty, and begins his counterattack on BAHRAM’s forces, leading him on a journey to fulfill his and Jehuty’s destiny.
If there has ever been an absolute, definite improvement from one game to another, then it is showcased in Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner. This game is exactly what the first should’ve been, as it fixes or addresses most if not all of the issues that made the original such an underwhelming start to the franchise.
The 2nd Runner starts by addressing the original game’s most pressing issue, content and structure, by providing a more clear focus and a much wider variety of content. Combat in the game is kept constantly varied thanks to the wider variety of enemies that the player can encounter, which all have unique movesets and require different strategies to be taken down efficiently. The game also expands the usage of Subweapons, making the player switch between them a lot more often by giving them clear advantages against each enemy, thus making the player switch between them to defeat them. In order to incentivize this, the game has switched Subweapon ammunition with Energy, which is universal for all subweapons and can be replenished by crossing blades with an enemy or targeting many enemies with the Burst Attack, which can now target multiple enemies at once. Managing energy depending on each encounter adds a whole new layer to the mechanics of the game.
Aside from this, small yet significant improvements have been made to the game’s combat and exploration, while still retaining the previous game’s controls and general mechanics. For once, the speed and moveset of the game has been increased significantly, making it so that fights are much faster than before and that the player can alternate between their moves to take down groups of enemies far more efficiently.
Another change is that the combat is now focused on fighting multiple enemies at once, instead of just one, which greatly increases the challenge of the game by keeping the player constantly on the move trying to take down each enemy. Finally, the grab move is far more responsive and was changed to allow for the player to grab enemies and use them as weapons or shields, as well as throwing them around while still allowing the player to mover normally, which makes the grab move essential unlike the first game.
The 2nd Runner also features more boss encounters than the first game, and they all pose a great challenge with specific tactics and patterns to memorize to fully get the advantage of each battle. Each boss is satisfying to take down and tests the player’s abilities as well as their knowledge of the game’s mechanics and abilities. Aside from this, each boss character has a personality to go along with them and a unique Orbital Frame design to go along with them, making for some great memorable encounters that are worth playing more than once. While there are a few exceptions, of course, the bosses in the game are still a highlight of the whole experience.
The structure of Zone of the Enders 2 has been changed drastically from the original by dropping the overworld and area design of the original game in order to minimize or completely fix the backtracking and padding problem of the first game, instead opting for a linear design to each area, featuring levels that feel different from one another in both layout and visuals. Though, its over reliance on closed or cramped spaces can really become a bother since they aren’t as fun to navigate than open areas because of the nature of flight controls.
Because of the wider variety of enemies, The 2nd Runner’s enemy encounters switch focus from fighting enemy squads one after the other to fighting all enemies at once, making the player handle multiple tasks and focus on different things at once to survive each encounter. This new focus works great for Zone of the Enders’ fast paced combat and with a new layer of complexity the challenge and satisfaction of the experience has been incremented, making the game far more fun than its predecessor.
This improvements come with their downsides though, for once, the enemy placement can be frustrating at times, when the game decides to include combinations of enemies in the worst of places, which will cause an incredible strain on the player who chooses to take them on, like including enemies with high aggression or range in cramped areas that the player can’t successfully maneuver around, making them waste subweapon energy too early and eventually losing the battle.
And while the game has fixed many of the original’s issues, it still hasn’t addressed the original’s unrelentless pacing, which has gotten worse because of the volume, scale and difficulty of the encounters the player faces on a highly constant basis with very little missions to even out the pacing, allowing the player to take their time without having to encounter a life threatening enemy combination every few rooms.
Another problem that has stuck to the second game is its awful localization, this time featuring more laughable voice acting, especially from the main character Dingo, and very stilted dialogue that doesn’t allow the plot to feel as good as it should’ve with its emotionless and literal translation of the original script.
With these problems and improvements aside, Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner still builds upon many aspects of the original that were already good, or could use some work. For once, the visual style of the game has received a significant change, opting for a more stylistic and clean cel-shaded look to its artstyle, with more prevalent use of particle effects. This approach works much better than the original game and lends to some really good looking parts of the game.
The new Orbital Frame designs are also far more consistent and memorable than the original’s, which also fit each character’s personality really well aside from maintaining the creativity and details of the first game. Character designs are still somewhat lacking, though they are able to look a lot better because of the game’s shift to 2D animated cutscenes, which allow the character designs to look a lot better than they did before because of the smoother transition from design to animation. Cutscenes are also much more well directed than on the previous game, with more varied and interesting camera angles as well as more emotive and expressive movements to both characters and mechs. The UI was also given a cleaner overhaul, which has a minimalistic look that’s not only effective, but also frees the screen from clutter as well as give the game a futuristic look.
The soundtrack on the other hand has been changed to feature a mix between traditional Orchestral Sounds with more ethnic instruments and Electronica. This approach works a lot better during gameplay, making each song sound and feel distinct to one another, emphasizing each event with its own unique track to accompany it, though it doesn’t emanate as much emotion or atmosphere as the original did nor does it make for a smooth listening experience on its own aside from the Opening Theme. Sound design is still top notch, with sound effects that emphasize the punch and intensity of combat as well as the first game.
And the story, while it does have its issues, is still a smoother experience than on the first game. For once, The 2nd Runner doesn’t keep the player in the dark about what’s actually going on for most of the game, giving the players a greater sense of world building which the original did not accomplish. The change in tone from a serious, realistic and philosophical plot to a more epic adventure also works in the game’s favor, since the latter requires a lot less nuance and subtlety that the original lacked, though probably because of a bad localization. While its not amazing and its definitely lacking in any kind of idea or core theme to give it purpose, though it doesn’t really need it since the game isn’t about the story anyways, its still enjoyable for what it is when not taken very seriously.
The biggest problem with the plot is a lack of personality or depth to most characters, which seem to have really shallow backstories and give off very little personality. The main character seems to suffer most from this, featuring very few meaningful interactions with the other characters, little to no development aside from specific relationships to other characters, although not as in depth as in the previous game, and comes off as a generally bland protagonist that is not exactly worth following through the entire game. The villain from the game also continues to be lacking in personality, opting once again for a generic bad guy though without any of the depth that the previous main villain had, while also having very unclear motives. Aside from this, the plot can be very predictable and tired, featuring little originality or unique ideas aside from the world its built up. These problems may be attributed to the game’s poor localization though, since the basis and general progression of the story seems to be fine, and these problems come from the writing specifically.
But its execution is still good enough, since most other characters have their proper build up and character arcs to fulfill, though they don’t exactly have a lot of depth nor develop the characters thoroughly. The game also sets up a pretty epic feel for its story, with a narrative that hints for a greater destiny for the main character to fulfill and the way he assumes to role for that destiny, even though its not exactly made clear what his destiny is in the first place. Its slightly satisfying to see the plot unravel and to see the world of Zone of the Enders being developed.
Either way, Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner shouldn’t be played for its story, since it already offers a very fun experience with top notch controls, combat and mechanics, making it a very replayable game which doesn’t stop being fun anytime soon and it makes up for its few flaws in those ways. Its a recommendation to anyone who likes unique experiences, action games, or the Mecha genre and shouldn’t be left to be lost to time.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This is a meh review if I'm being completely honest. I didn't really say much of note and I frankly feel like I was repeating myself a lot of the time. I do like the games though.
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