Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness Review

Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness is based on a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akihito Tsukushi. The game has two modes: Hello Abyss, where you follow the story of the manga, or Deep in Abyss, which is unlocked after you complete the Hello Abyss mode. The manga's story follows Riko, a young orphaned girl whose mum is thought to have died while exploring the "Abyss." The Abyss is a chasm, discovered 1900 years ago, which leads deep into the Earth. While exploring the first layer of the chasm, Riko finds a humanoid robot, which she saves and brings back to her place at Belchero Orphanage. She names him Reg and passes him off as a human boy so he can be at the school with her.

The Abyss is home to artefacts and remains from past civilisations, making it a popular place for adventurers called Cave Raiders to explore. The children living at the orphanage are Red Whistle-ranked raiders. This rank is the first level to becoming a White Whistle, and they can only descend 400 metres down. White Whistles are known as the country's heroes as they are the best Cave Raiders and do not have a limit on how deep they can go down. If going down into a deep pit isn't scary enough for you, the Curse of the Abyss will be; this is why adventurers don't return home. When humans ascend the pit, they suffer horrifying injuries — known as strains. The deeper they go, the more severe these strains will be when they come back up.

The first layer up to the surface will only cause nausea and mild dizziness; that is how far down the students go. The second layer up to the first layer will cause headaches, intense nausea, and numbness of the extremities. We are only two levels down, and it's already not sounding good, well, I can promise you that it only gets worse from here! The third layer has all the effects from the other two levels, along with losing your sense of balance and experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations. The fourth level sounds horrible, with intense pain and bleeding from every orifice. There are still three levels deeper than this! In the fifth layer you lose all your senses resulting in self-harm and confusion. In the sixth layer, you lose your humanity or can die, and the seventh is certain death. After seeing everything that can happen to you when you ascend from the pit, no wonder people stay at the bottom. If they never come back you will never truly know if they are still alive or have passed. 

The kids at the orphanage are encouraged to explore and recover as many artefacts as possible from the first layer, to in turn earn as much money as possible for the school. The head of the school tells the children that they have to earn as much as they can so they don't shame their parents who nobly fell. Keeping the relics they find is forbidden as they provide valuable income for the orphanage. They warn that if anyone is found keeping these relics, the punishments will be more severe than when they were "strung up naked" before. Made in Abyss brings up this type of punishment a few times… 

As time passes, Reg fits in with the other students at the school and has decided he also wants to become a Cave Raider. He wants to learn about his past and why he was created. Hablog has discovered several items in the Abyss from Riko's mother Lyza, her White Whistle and a sealed envelope. He also tells her the story of when her mother had to go on a mission when she was pregnant. This was when Riko was born, down in the Abyss. How did she survive coming to the surface when she was so small? When Riko can view it, she finds notes about creatures that no one has written about before, along with a drawing of a boy who looks a lot like Reg. Once she sees the message, "At the netherworld's bottom, I'll be waiting." Riko knows that she has to get to the bottom of the pit. She is confident that Lyza has been there the last ten years waiting for her. Luckily for Riko, Reg also wants to go to the bottom as he is sure that's where he will learn about himself, so she has a travel companion. Since he's a robot, he doesn't have to contend with strains like humans. So he can help protect Riko. Her friends at the school are upset that she is going, as they know that once she goes down that far in the Abyss, there is no way she can come back to the surface. Before Riko and Reg depart, they say their forever goodbyes, shedding tears with their friends.

Made in Abyss is a nice-looking game. The characters look like they are right out of a manga, and I can't get over the feeling of height that the artists were able to capture. Personally, I am not a massive fan of heights; you definitely won't see me rock climbing in real life. When I would look down over the edges of the pit, I would get a knot in my stomach; it felt like I was so high up! The soundtrack accompanying the nice visuals is quite good, reminding me of classic titles like Chrono Trigger on the SNES but updated with a symphony. However when you hear that same song every time you go out exploring, it gets repetitive after a while. The creatures that live inside the Abyss look impressive, and some are quite scary when they are trying to chase you. I love the extra touches that they have added, like if Riko has too much stuff in her backpack, it becomes too heavy for her; she moves very slowly and is hunched over from the weight on her back. It is easy to remedy; you must discard some items in your inventory. In Hello Abyss you can easily discard anything that isn't food since you don't use the other items. Each of the items has a weight listed, some of the kinds of meat or rocks weigh the most, so it may be worth using some of the meat or just dropping it. It is easy to find when you hunt these creatures again and "disassemble" them. Though it won't take long before you overload your backpack and will have to get rid of items as it is too heavy to carry, be sure you don't get rid of things like salt that will be required when you want to cook!

Playing through the Hello Abyss mode took me around eight hours, a lot longer than it probably should have. Essentially, it is a very in depth tutorial and was incredibly repetitive after a while. It felt like all I was doing was getting lost, killing primeval enemies, dismantling them for raw meat, cooking, eating that food and starting over again. It was very heavy to carry around a lot of tail and soft meat so you either had to discard it or use it to recover some HP. After an hour I got so tired of the characters saying the exact same thing over and over again. I am so sick of hearing "Hey Riko are you ready to go?", "Of course I'm ready!" After a while I just muted the sound! The voice acting was all very well done, except the Leader at the school, Jirou, whose voice actor sounded very unimpressed. Even when one of the students died in the Deep In Abyss, he didn’t seem phased or shocked at all. Though I suppose the voice actor thought if you had to watch over this many students you would be used to this. As a warning, don't be shocked if you fall off a cliff, see nasty stuff when you ascend like blood or are taken down by a pack of primeval creatures, Made in Abyss doesn’t avoid showing the nasty stuff.

Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness has an interesting story and was pretty fun from the start. It got repetitive, and once I completed the Hello Abyss mode, the game got a lot more interesting. Deep in Abyss is a lot better than the first mode of the game. You begin by creating your character by entering a name, selecting a voice, their eye colour (both eyes can be different), hairstyle and colour, and an outfit. You are beginning as a bell-rank student so you have to hurry and become a Red Whistle to go out and make money for the school. Luckily the game time skips, so you get to the good part fast. Once you are a Red Whistle, you can select the quests you want to do to make money and move up through the ranks on your quest to become a White Whistle. This mode is more challenging and not as repetitive as Hello Abyss was!

If you are a fan of the Made in Abyss manga series, I'm sure there will be a lot here that you will love. The story is interesting, and if you can get through Hello Abyss mode to unlock the Deep in Abyss part, you will be rewarded with a fun and challenging game. You just have to put in the time to get through that "tutorial" before you get to the good part. Deep in Abyss will make you deal with issues like your weapons breaking after a few uses and usually at inconvenient times, so if you are able to, have a backup weapon. After a while, you will get used to your character vomiting and the other nastier strains like bleeding every time you go up the side of a cliff; The Curse of the Abyss is nasty!