Made In Abyss is a fantastic anime. Part Steamworld Dig, part slice of life, and a whole lot of shock value, it’s a top tier anime that’s well worth your time to watch. If you have Amazon Prime, the first season is available subtitled on Amazon Prime and the second season has just been released but hasn’t made it to streaming services yet aside from HIDIVE.
In fact, for those of you who’ve already seen the series, it’s hard not to agree that it’s perfectly tailored for conversion to a video game. All the hallmark design elements are there, the concept fits well, and even character designs incorporate solid potential gameplay elements. Maybe that’s why publisher Spike Chunsoft and developer Chime Corporation decided to tackle the task and convert the anime into Made In Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness (which is a real mouthful).
For fans of the series, the first portion of Made In Abyss (we’ll skip the full title) should be pretty familiar. The game literally copies the anime right down to incorporating a few sections of the show as cinematics. The entire plot and script are virtually indistinguishable from the show other than the lack of detail in some places. As the story is lifted wholesale for your edification, the basic mechanics of gameplay 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 obtain quests.
When you’re not in the town, you’ll be ‘cave raiding’, which entails going down into the Abyss itself, fighting weird creatures, and harvesting the strange items that lie within. You start with a pickaxe and some food and have to essentially explore areas while heading to predetermined waypoints. It’s more challenging than you might think too, because you get hungry and have to fight the denizens of the Abyss and consume them to survive. You can’t just walk back up if you’re running low on health either because the ‘Curse of the Abyss’ causes ascent sickness. Rising only about 6 meters is enough to incapacitate Riko, the main character from the anime and in Hello Abyss, the introductory section of the game. Reg, her partner, is unaffected by ascent sickness, but he only follows Riko’s lead.
Every time you get sick, you’ll have to pause and wait for the sickness to abate. Ascend too fast and you start vomiting, the screen pulses purple and you’ll lose all the food in your stomach, forcing you to eat in order to regain your stamina bar and be able to proceed. This means a slow crawl upward every time you have to return to the surface (assuming you still can. Those who dive too deep into the caves are unable to ever return after all.
When you’re walking around the Abyss, there are a variety of items to pick up including useful plants, broken equipment and treasures of the Abyss which 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 dodge maneuvers as well and you can target enemies in order to hunt them down more effectively. Oddly enough, the combat is remarkably clunky and Riko feels unresponsive. It’s easy to hit the wrong button and change from a weapon to a fishing pole or food item as well, and if enemies corner you, you take a lot of damage quickly.
You can also climb up and down cliffs and with Reg’s help, ascend or descend to different areas that you could not reach alone. Watch your endurance though, because if you run out mid climb, you simply fall to your death. On top of that, you can literally just fall off of cliffs and they’re everywhere, creating stressful movement where you creep instead of run so often that you feel literally constricted by your environment. Made In Abyss is remarkably unforgiving and Hello Abyss only gives you a taste. Auto save 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 have a limited inventory weight before you’re overburdened and you’ll only have so many balloons, even if you find and fix broken ones. A random enemy or trap can instantly kill you or knock you off into the Abyss and it’s game over and a lot of backtracking if you’re not paying attention.
What’s weird about Made In Abyss is that Hello Abyss is mandatory. It really, absolutely, unequivocally should not be, but there’s no way to play the main portion of the game, Deep In Abyss without completing Hello Abyss first. That’s an absolutely shame because while that introduction part is only about 3-4 hours long, it feels like about 15 because it’s so poorly paced. Reg is constantly blabbering in your ear and won’t shut up, you’re dying and backtracking, half the mechanics of the game aren’t introduced, and then the entirety of Hello Abyss is abruptly over, ending midway through the first season of the anime with absolutely no rhyme or reason. It’s honestly rather irritating because Hello Abyss is absolutely going to ruin the Made In Abyss experience for most players. It’s simply not fun at all. With glacial pacing, too many cinemas, and a plot that just cuts off like it’s been hamstrung, there’s no real purpose to making 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 part 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 that takes place after Reg and Riko have made their trek down. Now you’re able to visit all of the shops, buy better equipment, upgrade your character, level up, the whole nine yards. After Hello Abyss, it feels open and refreshing, albeit wildly challenging. This is not a forgiving game by any means and starting at level one means that moves you got used to from Riko are now gone and you have to earn them back. That was particularly painful and confusing with the climbing jump. However, you can allocate earned points as you wish and make a much more powerful character, assuming you survive.
Things are tougher in other ways here too, such as enemies constantly respawning while you’re trying to craft food in order to assuage your ever-present hunger or heal. Climbing ropes and ascending walls becomes more threatening too with vicious butterflies (yes, you read that right) attacking constantly. You even have to earn the right to be able to eat on a rope so the butterflies don’t kill you. And that’s just at the start. Deep In Abyss goes further down, past the upside-down forest, into the 3rd, 4th and eventually 5th layers if you have the fortitude and temerity to make it that far. Each layer is made up of a multitude of individual sections filled with vicious enemies, weird items, and even weirder landscapes. It’s odd to just end on the 5th layer though, much as it was odd to end Hello Abyss abruptly at the entrance to the 3rd. The anime refers to seven layers of the abyss and hints at more, but not taking the game there leaves it feeling unfinished.
That’s not entirely the case, as the crafting mechanics, upgrade system, and overall design of the game are quite good. Unfortunately between ascent 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 that it isn’t a good game, but instead simply that it could be much better and that generally, only fans of the anime are likely to have patience for its flaws. Even weapons are frustrating in Deep In Abyss, suffering from accelerated wear and deterioration akin to that of Breath of the Wild, one of the most frustrating mechanics that you can put into a game. When you’ve got a weak pickaxe to fight off constantly respawning enemies and it breaks every 15 hits or so, being forced to hunt items to craft another on the fly while getting bitten to death is pretty annoying. Item deterioration is one of the worst mechanics in modern games and a few hits on squirrels definitely shouldn’t break a pickaxe. Sure you can make stronger stuff eventually but the majority of players aren’t going to be willing to wait for that marginal payoff.
Ultimately Made In Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness is a weird mixed bag which fumbles the introduction so badly that many players won’t bother to get to the more playable portion of the game. For the few that that do, their experience will still be tempered by lackluster controls and frustrating mechanics that should have been soft-pedaled in favor of playability. A streamlined combat and ascent system would have done wonders for this game, but here we are. If you’re a fan of exploration games, crafting, and anime, this is still going to be a fun game, assuming you’re fine with the remarkably high difficulty level. The majority of players however are sadly likely to feel more like their time is being rapidly sucked into an Abyss. That’s unfortunate because all of the makings of a classic are here; they’re simply sadly unrealized.
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.