I'm constantly amazed at how much I enjoy Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness as its flaws are as numerous as its title is needlessly vexing. Early on in my playthrough I compiled a list of bizarre design decisions and that list only spiraled out of control the more I played. I constantly used the Switch's capturing feature to post clips of oddities, bugs, and things that made me go 'Hmm...' to Twitter. The game is not all that well put together, and at times it seems poorly thought out. That's all to say nothing of the forced 10 hour tutorial that the player is subjected to.
And yet, I can't say that I don't love the game. Made in Abyss is a great example of a survival game that has real tension, real discovery, and real challenge. The way those three interact on a minute-to-minute basis creates an extremely compelling experience that is much more than the sum of its parts.
At its base the game is about plunging further down into the titular Abyss and the game is not shy about making this a trying experience. Characters suffer a sickness when rising in altitude, not unlike divers resurfacing, and this stops your progress constantly. Walking up a slight incline? Better stop for 5 seconds to quell your character's growing sickness. There's a hunger and stamina system that constantly hamper your progress as well. Your greatest enemy might be a cliff face that you simply don't have enough stamina to scale at your level, or it might be your lack of preparedness as your empty stomach demands you return prematurely.
Now this all sounds like standard fare, but where the real challenge lies is extricating oneself from one's dives. Getting back out of the Abyss is much, much harder than going down there. To say nothing of the risk-reward tension of deciding how deep to dive insofar as what your supplies can accommodate, environments are confusing and clearly designed to be hostile to the rising climber. Some passages are one-way, and on more than one occasion the game pulls the nasty trick of unexpectedly blocking previously used routes forcing the discovery of a new way up. All of this takes place under the ticking clock of your depleting hunger bar. The lack of a meaningful fast travel in areas one hasn't absolutely surpassed means it is very likely that you will fail. The likelihood of a loss is exacerbated by the save system: One cannot save anytime; saving uses a consumable that can only be used in certain areas of the abyss; and entering a new area overwrites the autosave meaning one can be locked into an unfavorable situation.
So now that we established that failure comes often, what is the cost of such failure? Time, mostly. At any time the player can select to "Give up" from the menu. They are returned to the top with absolutely none of their progress. None of their experience; none of their collected items; none of their exploration remembered. It's all gone. Given that I've spent hours on one run into the Abyss, I want to stress how big of a cost this is and how miserable a failure feels. With that in mind, the aforementioned tension created by the game is palpable, as any failure is hours of progress gone.
Discovery is another feeling the game nails, though I'm reluctant to praise it too much on this axis. Each layer of the abyss is visually compelling, functionally unique, and filled with distinct areas unto itself alongside a variety of imaginative flora and fauna. However, being based off an anime (and in turn a manga), the visual design is derivative of another work. A good realization, but not an original idea. Still, seeing this environments brought to life to explore at one's leisure is the kind of experience fans wanted when experiencing the parent works. More importantly, it creates organic and intrinsic rewards to enduring the exploration and the overall feeling of stress the game provides; one wants to push deeper not to collect an item, but to see more of the Abyss.
Another element of the game I enjoyed is its status as an "Arceus-like". This is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek "genre" I've created to note games that involve a lot of mindless open world collection, monster killing, box checking, and inventory management in service of finishing not-at-all-rewarding sidequests doled out similar to a randomly generated MMO. The name, of course, coming from Pokemon Legends: Arceus, a game from earlier this year. Despite how boring and tedious that description sounded, I enjoyed those elements of that game, and Made in Abyss very much scratches the same itch. Every area has a "Collect 50 items" sidequest to complete, and it's fun to run around spamming the collect button. This is despite the need to drop half of those items because of your encumbrance limit and how the reward for the quest is basically nothing. Perhaps the term "Autism Simulator" is more evocative of the feeling I'm trying to convey here.
The final point I want to hit on is the 10 hour tutorial mentioned much earlier. At the onset of the game players are presented a choice between two games, one that follows the characters from the anime, and another that follows original characters. Despite being presented a choice, only the former is able to be chosen at first. This "Game A" is one that is stripped of many features: you only go downwards through the Abyss; many areas are blocked; you cannot craft any meaningful items; weapon types are locked out; weapon durability is disabled; there are no sidequests; there is no leveling. I could go on. Game A is a shallow facsimile of the true experience, and it's vexing to me that it's the one forced onto the players. While it does serve as a soft tutorial to ~60% of the game's systems, it just is not compelling in the slightest. I imagine many players will give up on the game before getting to Game B, whether they stop playing after the credits in Game A or just don't finish it at all. The abrupt ending of Game A is also a point worthy of criticism, but to be honest it just shouldn't exist in the first place.
At the very least, Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness rewards players who stick with it. They are rewarded with a much deeper Game B. They are rewarded with challenging gameplay that scales very well unlike other survival games that plateau once a certain rank of gear is unlocked. They are rewarded with increasingly fascinating layers of the Abyss as it descends into the earth. And of course they are rewarded with new, fancier whistles.
This game carries an absolute recommendation, but keep in mind what you're getting yourself into here.
"It gets good after 10 hours."
Indeed.
And yet, I can't say that I don't love the game. Made in Abyss is a great example of a survival game that has real tension, real discovery, and real challenge. The way those three interact on a minute-to-minute basis creates an extremely compelling experience that is much more than the sum of its parts.
At its base the game is about plunging further down into the titular Abyss and the game is not shy about making this a trying experience. Characters suffer a sickness when rising in altitude, not unlike divers resurfacing, and this stops your progress constantly. Walking up a slight incline? Better stop for 5 seconds to quell your character's growing sickness. There's a hunger and stamina system that constantly hamper your progress as well. Your greatest enemy might be a cliff face that you simply don't have enough stamina to scale at your level, or it might be your lack of preparedness as your empty stomach demands you return prematurely.
Now this all sounds like standard fare, but where the real challenge lies is extricating oneself from one's dives. Getting back out of the Abyss is much, much harder than going down there. To say nothing of the risk-reward tension of deciding how deep to dive insofar as what your supplies can accommodate, environments are confusing and clearly designed to be hostile to the rising climber. Some passages are one-way, and on more than one occasion the game pulls the nasty trick of unexpectedly blocking previously used routes forcing the discovery of a new way up. All of this takes place under the ticking clock of your depleting hunger bar. The lack of a meaningful fast travel in areas one hasn't absolutely surpassed means it is very likely that you will fail. The likelihood of a loss is exacerbated by the save system: One cannot save anytime; saving uses a consumable that can only be used in certain areas of the abyss; and entering a new area overwrites the autosave meaning one can be locked into an unfavorable situation.
So now that we established that failure comes often, what is the cost of such failure? Time, mostly. At any time the player can select to "Give up" from the menu. They are returned to the top with absolutely none of their progress. None of their experience; none of their collected items; none of their exploration remembered. It's all gone. Given that I've spent hours on one run into the Abyss, I want to stress how big of a cost this is and how miserable a failure feels. With that in mind, the aforementioned tension created by the game is palpable, as any failure is hours of progress gone.
Discovery is another feeling the game nails, though I'm reluctant to praise it too much on this axis. Each layer of the abyss is visually compelling, functionally unique, and filled with distinct areas unto itself alongside a variety of imaginative flora and fauna. However, being based off an anime (and in turn a manga), the visual design is derivative of another work. A good realization, but not an original idea. Still, seeing this environments brought to life to explore at one's leisure is the kind of experience fans wanted when experiencing the parent works. More importantly, it creates organic and intrinsic rewards to enduring the exploration and the overall feeling of stress the game provides; one wants to push deeper not to collect an item, but to see more of the Abyss.
Another element of the game I enjoyed is its status as an "Arceus-like". This is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek "genre" I've created to note games that involve a lot of mindless open world collection, monster killing, box checking, and inventory management in service of finishing not-at-all-rewarding sidequests doled out similar to a randomly generated MMO. The name, of course, coming from Pokemon Legends: Arceus, a game from earlier this year. Despite how boring and tedious that description sounded, I enjoyed those elements of that game, and Made in Abyss very much scratches the same itch. Every area has a "Collect 50 items" sidequest to complete, and it's fun to run around spamming the collect button. This is despite the need to drop half of those items because of your encumbrance limit and how the reward for the quest is basically nothing. Perhaps the term "Autism Simulator" is more evocative of the feeling I'm trying to convey here.
The final point I want to hit on is the 10 hour tutorial mentioned much earlier. At the onset of the game players are presented a choice between two games, one that follows the characters from the anime, and another that follows original characters. Despite being presented a choice, only the former is able to be chosen at first. This "Game A" is one that is stripped of many features: you only go downwards through the Abyss; many areas are blocked; you cannot craft any meaningful items; weapon types are locked out; weapon durability is disabled; there are no sidequests; there is no leveling. I could go on. Game A is a shallow facsimile of the true experience, and it's vexing to me that it's the one forced onto the players. While it does serve as a soft tutorial to ~60% of the game's systems, it just is not compelling in the slightest. I imagine many players will give up on the game before getting to Game B, whether they stop playing after the credits in Game A or just don't finish it at all. The abrupt ending of Game A is also a point worthy of criticism, but to be honest it just shouldn't exist in the first place.
At the very least, Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness rewards players who stick with it. They are rewarded with a much deeper Game B. They are rewarded with challenging gameplay that scales very well unlike other survival games that plateau once a certain rank of gear is unlocked. They are rewarded with increasingly fascinating layers of the Abyss as it descends into the earth. And of course they are rewarded with new, fancier whistles.
This game carries an absolute recommendation, but keep in mind what you're getting yourself into here.
"It gets good after 10 hours."
Indeed.