Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness is a survival RPG adventure game based on the anime and manga Made in Abyss. For this review, I’ll assume you’re familiar with the source material, as I’ve watched the show before playing the game. Also I want you to be aware that I didn’t beat this game or even get close to it. I played the tutorial campaign and a few hours into the main game. Take my opinions on the game as a whole with that in mind. Maybe it changes significantly later, but I simply couldn’t get that far. Let me explain why I stopped playing.

First off, let’s talk about the game in general. There are two modes. Hello Abyss mode follows the events of the show letting you play as Riko and Reg. This initially serves as a tutorial of how the game works while getting to play through the events of the story we already know. The basics are going down for dives in order to complete a few objectives and collect relics to bring back up for money. Along the way you can gather resources, fight creatures, and craft items. You’ll need food to eat, weapons to fight, and materials for crafting or cooking. There are meters for health, hunger, and stamina. Most objectives are simple like finding a certain amount of materials, defeating a certain number of enemies, finding certain types of relics, or simply reaching certain areas. Once you complete your objective, it’s time to head back up. This is where they implement the Curse of the Abyss as a game mechanic. Ascending too quickly causes your vision to blur. Pushing yourself further will make you ill, hurt you, and eventually can kill you. Back up in the town of Orth you can claim your rewards and buy/sell supplies at the shop. Eventually you’ll play through the final dive running away from the town in order to get to the bottom of the Abyss to find answers. This mode ends after the events at the Seeker Camp.

Deep in Abyss mode is the proper campaign, which has since been patched to be playable from the start without needing to be unlocked from finishing the tutorial. Here you create your own character, meet a few new characters to be part of your group, and interact with the remaining main characters in Orth. It’s an original new story taking place in the time after Riko and Reg leave. Here you’ll be able to do a bit more, such as log new creatures in your journal and level up your abilities when you get enough experience. You’ll also be able to take advantage of the gameplay loop of diving for relics, exploring the world, and trying to survive long enough to come back to enjoy the rewards of your hard work. This is essentially the gameplay loop, with even saves being a precious craftable resource to manage. Your goals will make you explore deeper, put yourself in more danger, and try to live to tell the tale. Do you have what it takes to become a legendary Cave Raider?

Don’t get me wrong either. There’s a lot about this game to like. Exploring the world of Made in Abyss is incredibly enticing. It may look a bit low poly like an early PS2 game but there’s definitely a charm to it that inspires wonder. What kind of new creatures will I find? What new places will I see? And having an original story made me really want to see where this would go. The harsh conditions and survival elements make perfect sense for the setting, and it’s really interesting how they turned the Curse of the Abyss into a gameplay mechanics. It’s all great on paper. The problem is that it’s just not that fun to play.

The controls are clunky, even when you remap them. You can very quickly become encumbered with a full inventory that slows you down. You have to wait around to use healing items or eat food. Running out of stamina limits your ability to run or climb consistently. The Curse of the Abyss makes you stop and wait constantly. Items wear down over time and make you craft more, but raw materials tend to weigh more than crafted items so you can’t just stockpile them to wait for better crafting options either. Hello Abyss mode is meant to be a tutorial section but it fails to teach you about leveling up or logging info on creatures, even though it tells you that you can do so. It also quickly abandons collecting relics for the main gameplay loop because the source material’s plot doesn’t call for it. While I don’t really mind the repeated voice lines cropping up constantly… again, like an early PS2 game… it can get a bit grating. It also does a poor job of getting anyone all that excited to check out the source material if they started with the game instead.

This game had so much potential. An original story exploring this world and easily falling into game genres like survival and RPG to get it done… what could go wrong? The execution. It’s just too clunky, too tedious, and too difficult to be very enjoyable. Hardcore fans may have the resolve to push through this slog and find something meaningfully worth that struggle. Again, thematically it makes perfect sense that it would be so tough. Cave raiding has never been portrayed as easy or particularly fun. But when you’re playing a game… there’s some expectation of it being fun. I wouldn’t mind watching a let’s play of this game. I’d love to see it get reworked or have a sequel or sorts that focuses more on the RPG and looting aspects rather than the tedium of trying to survive. Maybe I’m just not cut out to wear a whistle, but in the end… that’s why I stopped playing Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness.