Zone of the Enders (2001)

Stylistically, it's one of the greatest Kojima games you could possibly play. Unfortunately, it's just not very good. Zone of the Enders is about one hour of movie, thirty minutes of boss fights, and several hours of unbearably repetitive sludge. You can tell Hideo Kojima really badly wanted to make a high budget OVA; although, because he's a video game producer, he couldn't help but make this thing a game. The gameplay and the writing both are just not quite good enough in spite of the beautiful visual, UI, UX, sound, and mech design.

It has a similar green and modern futuristic look to Metal Gear Solid 2, so if you loved that game and the Rays, you'll have a lot to appreciate here. Lots of driving acid trance and techno running through the soundtrack, only quieted in the most crucial story beats. The frames are beautifully designed, but they all have codpieces which flip up and down during different modes. It's deeply distracting and strange. Even trash mobs have such an interesting and unique shape to them. It's dampened by the fact you fight them over and over again, it makes it harder to appreciate.

The design that sticks out most to me is Viola's frame. She's the main antagonist of the game, but not the most important person exactly. She also makes for an amazing heel. She's pretty, doesn't take shit from anyone, even her own allies, has a deranged bloodlust and is more than ready to kill kids, just like you'd expect from a game inspired by Gundam. If you love Haman Karn, you will love her. She is such a deranged fucker who lives for battle and will interrupt heartwarming scenes to twist them into something horrific. She will cash in all of her status as an evil motherfucker to give a compelling and emotional speech, giving more soul and personality than anyone else in the game. She is a diva, and she is the star of this game as far as I'm concerned.

Our real main characters are Leo, Ada, and Celvice. A particularly brutal opening shows Leo to be a colonist kid trying to escape some kind of raid, watching other kids like him get completely crushed to death before his eyes, panicking, traumatized and running for his life. And just like classic Gundam tradition, he stumbles into the new frame they were looking for, with its own AI system set to complete a very important mission. Leo, just trying to escape, is dragged into the mission, somewhat understanding the gravity of the situation, but fighting back against the AI the entire time. He rescues Celvice from their town as its being destroyed, and all throughout the game, you're interrupted by side missions to save more people at the behest of Celvice, and to the annoyance of ADA. This is pretty much the bulk of the runtime of the game and easily the worst part to actually be playing through.

There is a very trite narrative going on throughout the game, the cold rationality which justifies the mission above saving other people, versus the passionate idealism of Leo who doesn't want to kill if he could help it. While you're fighting, ADA will alert you that the colony has suffered unnecessary damage because of your side missions. Dispassionately tallying up the amount of people who were saved and who died. They fight and have a back and forth, clearly ADA does have a sense of morality and increasingly becomes more self aware as it goes along, where Leo has to come to terms with the fact that maybe the war criminals killing you will also keep killing you if you don't kill them first. He's very unsympathetic to the liberation fighters of the game, and those fighters themselves who contact him over radio sort of do nothing but mock him, so it all ends up having the tone of one of those non Universal Century Gundam shows where nothing feels grounded in reality and nobody is really acting like a person.

Things do really come together in the last act of the game in spite of all of the problems in the middle portion. It has such an overwhelmingly strong start and completely loses all of its steam only to catch it all back in a final push. All of the emotion, all of the passion and gravitas. Hype moments and aura as the shounen bros like to say. Some unbelievable shenanigans from Viola, and a touching bittersweet goodbye between Leo and ADA.

If the game was entirely the same but skipped all of the cutscenes and moments explaining all of the new stuff you have to install to get from point A to point B to do the inconsequential task, to press square a million times on the trash mobs, and was all boss fights and all cutscenes and hype moments at around two hours, it would be a genius movie game. I don't know what really could've saved it. More story beats? More and longer boss fights? I think there were only four? The fact they needed this atrociously dull gameplay to pad it out might speak to the theory that they just didn't really have a good enough idea for a full game. But that's fine. I still love a lot of what it managed to be.

Reviewed on Jan 17, 2026

Writing in this game is horrible, it's just like another stupid anime full of cliches and naivety. However, I enjoyed the gameplay. Combat is simplistic and repetitive, but it's very fast-paced and simply fun. A few mission objectives were confusing and without a walkthrough guide would probably force you to go over the same areas again and again, but thank god for the internet. Zone of the Enders is also very short (~4 or so hours on normal), so I didn't get tired of it.

I haven't played the original PS2 version, so I can't make a comparison, but the PS3 HD-edition looked pretty good, plus loading times are super fast. After all, I have no regrets playing this short and uneven, but pretty fun game.

I played this originally on the PS2 and more recently re-played it as part of the "HD collection" on PS3. Perhaps I've matured as a gamer or it just hasn't aged well, because I liked it a good bit less than I did originally.

It has a very anime sensibility to the narrative; a kind of juvenile comic-book morality that makes one think that perhaps the writers have a target market of 12-year-old boys and very much underestimate the maturity that young people are capable of. Then again, it's a Kojima game that's been localized for American audiences so maybe something is lost in translation? Anyway, I'll admit that despite its narrative/dialogue shortcomings, I teared up during the villain's dying monologue, which I don't remember doing when I first played the game decades ago. Perhaps its my own aging cynicism which has colored my experience of the game.

Mechanically, it was a fairly strong 3D space brawler for its time, and I remember way back when having lots of fun playing through both the campaign and VS multiplayer with my friends, but has since been overshadowed by games that have developed better solutions for controlling a mech and player perspectives in 3D.