Zone of the Enders

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner has become one of the ball-knower’s character-action favorites, but it’s worth giving some love to its predecessor for laying the groundwork. Its release being less than six months before Devil May Cry gave it some room to stretch its legs outside of DMC’s reliance on combo depth and i-frames, while it also has a stronger hand-to-hand combat basis than its few notable mecha predecessors, such as Omega Boost or Love & Destroy. Zone of the Enders’s take on the latter is contextual but extremely polished, using a range-from-target distinction to change the capabilities of your mech, Jehuty.

At a distance, the camera stays directly behind Jehuty and lets you fire shots based on your modifier of choice: no modifier has you shooting energy pellets, dashing fires off a group of homing shots, and the burst button charges up an energy ball. When you come in range of an enemy, the camera locks in place, letting Jehuty maneuver around the opponent in the framed box of the screen while keeping them lightly tethered together. Mashing attack here lets loose a four-hit combo, dashing has Jehuty stab forward (and potentially cross-up his opponent while doing so), and the burst deploys a powerful spin attack. When you’re finished with the enemy or choose to disengage, the camera quickly snaps back to a behind-the-back position, opening the field for you to pursue a new target. This modal setup suppresses crowd control and centers target prioritization by locking the player into an enemy’s orbit through these proximity checks. Quickly eliminating enemies at the outskirts of the herd works better than attaching yourself to one in the fray (although enemies aren’t aggressive enough off-screen to really sneak up on you), which turns the long-range aspect into a neutral period for the player to suss out openings in the opposing fleet.

The game doesn’t feature many bosses until the last hour or so, and most of them boil down to long-range mashing due to their size and contact hitboxes. If you’re taking your time killing them, you’ll find that they often have a bevy of moves for you to avoid, although how interesting this is when you can dash around freely in 3D space is up to your discretion. [src]

This core is extremely impressive and enjoyable for 2001, but a playthrough of its sequel instantly reveals how much of a linear improvement it is on this original system, even beyond just cranking up enemy aggression. Subweapons in ZoE are situational at best,¹ justified only by the player’s ability to stockpile them for the final segments over the course of the game; ZoE 2nd jacks up the lethality of all of them while tying them to a meter. Your guard button gets tied to this as well, whereas it’s free in ZoE, although in both it’s broken by burst attacks and powers a nice little whiff-punish dynamic. Of course, speaking in abstract terms about the combat belies how rudimentary ZoE’s enemy roster really is, where ZoE 2nd again beats it soundly. Mummyhead is the standout enemy on the roster even in this earlier title, but it lacks both the healing effect and inner Raptor of its sequel iteration, making it only a menace once it gains its double-Halberd laser that mulches your health bar on contact.² With these in mind, it’s hard not to look at this combat system as more of a rough draft than a finished product, but from the 50-foot view it’s still compelling for its time, especially when they can find a good setpiece to build around it.

They only really do that once, however: an end-of-game bomb disposal mission with a few waves of enemies chasing you in a gorgeously detailed, constantly rotating space elevator. While it not only makes you hold the bombs in place to defuse them but also subjects you to timers for each, the others don’t try to stack much on top of the combat system. A general city destruction concept undergirds most of the areas you visit, and specific optional missions will grade you based on your collateral damage, but the game doesn’t have a strict way to enforce clean play in the main campaign even though the mechanic holds a lot of water in terms of space control and luring enemies into the air. Instead, many of the setpieces have an explicit narrative bent and focus on variety reminiscent of the Metal Gear Solid games that sandwiched the release of ZoE, all the way down to a brief sniper section.³ Very rarely does the game segue into a grand combat-laden encounter because the narrative itself almost never demands it; it’s oddly understated, almost as if it were a side story in its own universe. Antilia colonist Leo, the accidental pilot of Jehuty, is only a child, stranded in an attack on the Halo-esque ring structure that he lives on. Since the game’s arc solely features him getting Jehuty to United Nations forces safely, the narrative beats focus on pushing ahead through hostile territory and overcoming constant contigencies that plague Jehuty, from a virus that takes most of its combat functionality offline to invisible barriers that only remote-controlled Raptors can move through.

Unlike the Metal Gear Solid games, Zone of the Enders peppers in some pre-rendered 3D FMVs to convey the narrative when the main characters are on screen. Given the team’s pedigree at this point, however, it’s no surprise that the in-engine rendering looks better. [src]

The lack of grandiosity helps give ZoE a unique edge that most of its contemporaries lack; focusing in too much on combat would’ve been a misfire given the implementation here anyway. Instead, a lightly explorable Antilia comes to the forefront, divided into discrete regions that Jehuty can land in. At all times the scope of the landscape curling up and bisecting the sky on either side of you feels unreal for a game of this vintage, letting the small, boxed-in areas stretch off into the distance no matter where you look. By shadowing the middle range of each area while exposing the less-detailed expanse behind it, the effect is achieved without sacrificing the jaw-dropping fidelity or silky smooth framerate; quite the feat on PS2, especially in its first year. They don’t skimp on the small things either, from subtle light trails emitted from Jehuty’s pauldrons to a skating effect when Jehuty glides across the ground, even though you rarely have a reason to do this. Contributions from Bemani mainstays like Dr. Honda and L.E.D. add the finishing touch – taut techno and rave music as you fly through burning cities under a sunless sky – alongside Norihiko Hibino’s usual range and texture.