When space colony Antillia is attacked by unknown invaders, a lone boy finds himself in control of the massive Orbital Frame, Jehuty. Now, he must pilot Jehuty toward its destination, all the while fighting the invading force who would use it to bring destruction to all the universe.

Zone of the Enders is a game about a young man named Shin- excuse me, Leo - and his trials and tribulations as he delivers the Evangelio- I mean Jehuty to a transport leaving his now war-torn home colony. It is played through a behind the back perspective, allowing the player to get a good view of the battle area. Controls are explained in the opening sequence, and are simple to learn and master. One thing that got to me though, was that selecting special weapons was assigned to the digital pad. This is a little bit of a problem when trying to move Jehuty around, since movement is handled with the left analogue stick, and this makes the use of special weapons a waste of time.

The graphics, while showing lots of the trademark PS2 jagged edges, are absolutely beautiful, with everything from the towering heights of the largest buildings to the small cars in the driveways of houses lovingly rendered. There was this little design quirk involving Jehuty’s, erm, cockpit, that does sorta stick out for all the wrong reasons. Also, non-boss enemies are totally generic. It’s like they couldn’t think of any original designs and just chose to use the same three or four designs over and over and over again. Aside from those little things, the graphics are sure pretty. Likewise, sound effects are loud, clear, and convincing. The throbbing techno music is also very fitting and enjoyable.

Not all is well, however. As I made note of in the beginning of the review, the story is horribly trite and reminiscent of mech anime, most notably Evangelion. Leo instantly reminded me of the whiney, annoying Shinji. Of course, the overly preachy manner of the story didn’t help either. We already know killing and violence are wrong, so we needn’t have that message banged into our heads with the subtlety of a neutron bomb. Also, aside from a VS mode, there isn’t anything in the way of unlockables, and that leaves little incentive to play a game that gets repetitive in the first thirty minutes.

In summary, what we have here is a game that is generally fun, but annoying at times and with little replay value. Rent first.

Player Status:
Difficulty: Moderate
Completion Time: 4 hours
Highest Level Achieved: Rank A
Ratings: Gameplay 7; Battle 6; Story 3; Visuals 8; Characters 2; Sounds 10; Replay Value 3

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 6th, 2002 at 11:47 am and is filed under Zone of the Enders, Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.