Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner - Mostly High Speed Robot Action
Version Played: PS3 ZOE HD Collection (JP)
Difficulty: Hard
Opening Thoughts
Wow, just wow. This game for me encapsulates the meaning of "game feel" within a game. You have so much control over your mech in ZOE2 and everything (most of the time) feels so fluid and any mistakes that you make are purely through your own lack of judgement. What a gorgeous looking game to boot as well! I only just finished the game 5 minutes after starting to write this review.
Story
This is very much a classic underdog story for me. A person who is extremely underpowered and weak is beaten down by a god-like figure and the weaker person eventually rises up to exceed and take down their suppressor.
The story is very much action-packed and your typical anime affair, filled with plenty of melodrama (that is not a negative by the way). The characters that Dingo meets long the way are all mostly important to the plot (aside from Earth Forces Commander Lady, who doesn't seem to do much in the game) and events come and go at a brisk pace.
The tension and stakes constantly ratchet up with the player eventually finding out that they have to destroy a space fortress capable of wrecking entire solar systems-scary stuff eh!
Including animations that seamlessly transitioned between the gameplay and the story was a great idea and really helped to flesh the characters out. The in-game animation dialogue where you could move the camera around to explore the inside of the cockpits was also a nice touch.
Overall, the story was great fun to play through and I felt encouraged to continue playing on.
Characters
Dingo is your typical wisecracking protagonist and along with Jehuty's upgrades, he himself also changes his personality throughout the story. He starts of as a happy-go-lucky kind of guy and becomes more and more serious as the plot continues towards its stunning conclusion. Seeing that the entire solar system is at stake, it's not a joking matter.
Jehuty - Jehuty's personality doesn't change much throughout the game. Like any computer she is calculating, but oddly warm at times and even pauses once or twice in her dialogue, as if thinking about the consequences of her decisions.
Ken - she is certainly Dingo's love interest in the story, but easily holds her own on the battlefield and even saves Dingo from near-death. She and Dingo grow more and more affectionate towards each other towards the game's end, which I personally absolutely love in any relationship story.
Nohman - now, this guy is what I think of as a villain: cold-hearted, ruthless and unstoppable. The way this guy guns down Dingo in the opening chapter without a second thought just put fear into me. It really encouraged me to have revenge on this guy for what he did to Dingo. His face is also clearly evil. Later on in the game, he slowly descends into madness from the power of the Metatron.
Viola - one of my favorite characters from the original game and the anime movie ZOE: Idolo. I'm glad she made an appearance in this game as an AI and I was very happy to fight her multiple times.
Leo - he comes back as a badass in this game and looking way cooler. Plus he flies the Vic Viper, so what's not to like!
Lloyd - certainly a creepy looking scientist, but he nicely upgrades your mech, so props to him.
Regarding voices of the characters, they were all appropriate I thought and none were too over the top or silly.
Mech Designs
I wanted a special section, where I talked just about the mech design. I'm quite literally blown away. I'm looking for some model statues of Jehuty and Anubis that I can place on my desk.
All of the mech designs in this game are so crisp and slick. They are clearly meant to be fast killing machines of death, not something slow and plodding like you'd find in a mechwarrior game. The contours of the mechs and how fluidly they glide around, swooping and diving into each other, is one of the things that got me sucked into this game so much.
Gameplay
Holy moly, now this is what I mentioned about "game feel" in my opening thoughts. The game gives you so much control over Jehuty and I found that the majority of the time, if I messed something up, I knew it was something that I did wrong.
The weapons at your disposal are: Jehuty's blade, homing lasers, sub-weapons, a grab, a plasma gun and a giant plasma ball. This doesn't sound like much, but it is the combination of using all of these together, which allow Jehuty to decimate her enemies with ease.
Slicing enemies was always satisfying and the feedback you receive from hitting enemies with your blade is just immense. I would always use this in combination with the grab attack. Grabbing an enemy with the "O" button and mashing the button to spin them around and destroy another enemy is so much fun.
I would 100% recommend playing this game on hard. Individual enemies weren't a problem, but once multiple enemy types swarm you, you have to use every single ability available to Jehuty to just make it out alive. The sub-weapons are absolutely essential in this regard and I was using mutiple sub-weapons. For instance, the "Wisp" sub-weapon allows you to grab an enemy from afar, spin them around you so you become temporarily invincible (also damaging nearby enemies when you spin them) and then you can again throw them at other enemies. Another sub-weapon which I also used constantly was "Gauntlet". This allowed you to break enemy shields and was essential for beating multiple bosses (Nephtis and the giant disco ball "Zakat" certainly come to mind). The "Homing Missiles" could also insta-kill two popcorn enemies at once.
My personal favourite weapon was the "Vector Cannon". During the storyline, you have to destroy these giant flying battleships (one of my most favourite moments playing the game) using the "Vector Cannon", whilst fending off smaller popcorn enemies and giant death lasers. This cannon is so cool when you charge it up and it feels amazing firing and releasing it.
Jehuty V2 was also a badass. It was a shame that there weren't more levels where you controlled her in that form!
One part of the game that I did not enjoy whatsoever was the stage where Ken is directing you around the invisible shields that damage you if you hit them. Sometimes I followed her directions precisely and I would still crash into the barriers and two hits and you're dead (on hard difficulty anyway). This is why I used "Mostly High Speed Robot Action" in the title of this review.
An additional frustration was the camera and targeting system. When I had to pick up Ken in her frame and drag her to safety, choosing between her and the rest of the enemies was very difficulty and the game simply didn't know which to prioritise sometimes. During the giant battle between the Earth and Mars forces, I also targeted the Earth LEVs multiple, which I didn't want or even need to do.
Bosses
Whilst one or two of the bosses were re-used, the amount of cool and creative bosses in this game is great. I had a blast fighting every single one (aside from Ardjet where her Frame is possessed by Viola and you have to tediously press the square button to block her blades and then grab her). I feel that Anubis does outstay his welcome sometimes, however I feel the reason that he appears so often is to remind the player how weak they are and that they are still no match for him and have a long way to go.
The final boss battle with Anubis inside Aumaan was quite tedious. I essentially kept dashing and slicing him constantly and sometimes took damage and sometimes didn't. It felt more like I was cheesing the game. His attack patterns were a little all over the place, until he reaches red health and starts throwing everything and the kitchen sink at you. When you previously fight him in the catapult tunnel (with the trippy glowing walls), the timing of his red laser homing attacks was very difficult to judge and I got hit more times than I would have liked.
I loved that the bosses could be taken down with what you had in your arsenal with no gimmicks and no QTE nonsense or anything like that.
Sound and Music
The sound and music in this game is simply beautiful. I genuinely felt like my chest was being compressed when Jehuty transforms into flight mode and launches away. The SFX are very fitting and each slice of the blade felt like my own body was being sliced up. The game's theme "Beyond the Bounds" by Maki Kirioka is very fitting for the game: haunting and upbeat at the same time.
Additional Options
There is a "Versus", "Extra Missions" and VR Training mode that you unlock after you beat the game. These are also great fun and it is so cool to be able to play against your friends with bosses that you fought in the game. The "Extra Missions" mode allows you to customise your own fights in a time attack mode affair. The VR Training mode wasn't anything special, it simply allows you to practice with the game's sub-weapons and other feature sets, but useful if you weren't too sure what certain weapons did.
Conclusions
I would like to summarise with this game, while flawed, is an absolute joy to play. If you have an even slight interest in anime robot designs, then this game is for you. If you're a fan of 3rd person hack n' slash titles, this game is also for you. It is night and day when comparing this game to its predecessor (literally everything is improved from the previous game) and I'm so glad I got to complete this love letter to the anime robot genre. If you loved the universe this game is set in, I can highly, highly recommend seeking out the Zone of the Enders: Delores, I and Zone of the Enders: Idolo animes, as these really expand the universe and go into the backstory of some of the characters from the games. Hopefully if ZOE: Mars on PS4 and PC does well, Konami might make ZOE3, fingers-crossed.
Thank you very much for reading my review!