REVIEW: Made in Abyss: The Binary Star Falling Into Darkness


Title	Made in Abyss: The Binary Star Falling Into Darkness
Developer	Chime Corporation
Publisher	Spike Chunsoft Co.
Release Date	September 2nd, 2022
Genre	Action
Platform	PC, PlayStation 4, Switch
Age Rating	Mature
Official Website

I am a big fan of the Made in Abyss anime, so I was pretty excited when a video game based on the series was announced. Made in Abyss: The Binary Star Falling Into Darkness has an interesting setup were you will play as Riko and Reg for an anime recap, then take the role of your very own Cave Raider, but there are some issues here. This is one of the few times I didn’t play something all the way to the end, but stick around ’til the end and I will explain why. Let’s start our deep dive in The Abyss and see what hell awaits us!

As I said in the intro, the game is divided into two major sections. The first section, Hello Abyss, is basically a four hour tutorial that recaps about the first eight episodes of the anime. It follows a young girl named Riko who is obsessed with becoming a Cave Raider. Her mother was a legendary White Whistle, the highest rank you can achieve, and Riko believes she is waiting for her at the bottom of The Abyss. She soon finds a strange, somewhat robotic friend named Reg, and the two set out on their journey to the bottom the Abyss. The other section, Deep in Abyss, follows the story of a nameless Cave Raider you create as they begin their journey to become a White Whistle. This journey will be one of danger and as you traverse The Abyss, you will uncover its secrets and maybe even run into some friends that are well known to fans of the series.

The anime recap is pretty basic, but it covers all the major parts of the story up to where it stops. I did enjoy the story of the Cave Raider you create. They get to interact with some of the characters from the manga and anime we didn’t get to see much of, as well as some original characters as well. It kept me engaged as I slogged through each layer of The Abyss just to see what would happen next.

Graphically, Made in Abyss: The Binary Star Falling Into Darkness won’t blow you away with next gen graphics, but I feel like the style here suits the anime it was based off pretty well. The enemy and character models look good, and the environments have lots of detail. As you would expect, there are a lot of different environments you will travel through as you get deeper into The Abyss. The team did a great job making sure each one was represented well. The boss monsters here got a lot of love as well and you will get to see your character die in some pretty graphic ways, many times before your play-through is done. I had no issues running this on my desktop with a Ryzen 2600 and 2060KO or my dated laptop if I wanted to drop down to 720P.

The music in the game is pretty basic but it gets the job done. Fans of the anime will probably pick up on some of these tunes right off the bat. The game is dubbed in both English and Japanese, so this gives fans a choice of which voice actors they would like. I stuck with the Japanese since that’s how I’ve watched the anime, but I think the English crew does a pretty good job here as well. The sound effects do add another layer to this one though. Those crunchy death scenes are made far worse by them for sure.

The gameplay is a mix of things you’ve seen in other 3rd person action games. I’ve seen some compare this game to Monster Hunter or Dark Souls, and while it does have traits of both of those games, I don’t think it is nearly as polished as either one. The combat itself is that typical hack and slash style we all know and love. There isn’t really anything special about it. You can lock onto enemies and dodge around them as you beat them down with the weapons at your disposal. Weapons have durability, so you will have to keep spares on hand or you will get caught in a nasty situation. This is a pretty easy thing to do since the game does offer you some in-game shops to purchase weapons, or you can craft them on the fly. There are both melee and projectile based weapons to choose from, and projectile weapons have a variety of ammo to choose from as well.

Crafting weapons is pretty easy since you can find the materials you need pretty much everywhere, as you explore each layer of The Abyss. In addition to weapons, you can craft armor, healing items and will have to hunt creatures or fish to prepare food. Eating will restore your stamina gauge and in most cases give you back some HP as well. While this gauge doesn’t deplete quickly as you journey, the Curse of the Abyss will take its toll on your Cave Raider, and in some cases they will hurl, causing their stomachs to empty. This will deplete most of your stamina and can get you into some really bad situations.

As you begin your journey into The Abyss you will be given some missions. As you would expect, some of these are main story missions and others are side quests. As you complete these quests and turn in artifacts, you will earn experience and gain levels. This will earn you skill points to spend to level up your Cave Raider. These skill points will give you access to more items to craft, improve your climbing skills, combat abilities and more. Some skills are locked behind their Whistle level, so you you will need to progress the story in order gain access to some of them.

Each layer of The Abyss is divided up into sections. You will need to explore each one to find the best paths through. You will need to have things like ropes handy, to reach certain areas along you way. You will be backtracking through these areas a lot since there are very limited fast travel options here. This was one of my biggest issues with the game overall. I don’t mind having to back track a little, but when you are a few layers into this and can only fast travel to the beginning of the previous one, it’s just a bit much. This is a big reason why I gave up on this one early. I just didn’t feel like this game was respecting my time.

In the end I put about 19 hours into Made in Abyss: The Binary Star Falling Into Darkness and while I don’t feel it is a terrible game, it has some issues. The backtracking issues I mentioned before, combined with some clunky combat and enemies that just continuously respawn, really drag the experience down here. I did like that the game autosaves as you enter a section of each layer. This means if you die, which you will often, you don’t lose a lot of progress doing so. I think fans of the series will still find some things to love here, but I have a hard time recommending this one at the full $59.99 price tag. If it goes on sale down the line and you are a big fan of Made in Abyss, this one will likely be worth your coin, but I would certainly wait on a sale for it.