As someone who loves horror games and the rogue-like genre, ED-0: Zombie Uprising has been on my radar for awhile. I love the replay value that the latter is known for, and injecting zombies (one of the go-to villains of horror games) into it meant this was something I had really high expectations for. My recent history of getting excited about games has let me down, and if you’re here, you’re probably wondering if this one checked the right boxes. Long story short, it kind of did. At least at first.

The game follows a crew of warriors who are rumored to be immune to zombie bites, only known as Zom-beings, as an infection is brought to 1800s Japan by a ship believed to originate from The West. The story is communicated in a series of stills and some long-winded text narrated in Japanese. It’s not the most original of narratives, but it works with my only complaint being that I cannot skip through the text unless I wish to skip the entire scene, which is narrated at a shambling zombie’s pace and left me wanting it to get to the point more often than not.

You can play one of three classes – a samurai, a ninja, or a sumo; however, you are locked into the samurai until later in the game, which I apparently have not yet reached. After searching through multiple message boards courtesy of Google, I have yet to actually figure out how to change the character despite being well beyond the point mentioned and having received notifications they were unlocked. I am not sure where this mystical selection lies, but apparently I have missed it and feel like it should’ve been a little more clear in this aspect.

The journey begins in a small village that houses some vendors who will offer upgrades that we’ll circle back to later, and also allows you to select which mission you wish to attempt. These are unlocked naturally as you progress and feature a few different difficulty options. On the default level, I found the game itself to be fairly easy for the first few missions, especially by rogue-like standards, and even more so when comparing it to other Souls-like games, since the combat leans heavily on this as well. The only time I died during the first two missions came from not knowing what a pick-up was going to do, or because of hunger. Hunger is really going to be the biggest challenge you face, at least until you are deep into the campaign depending on how hard the randomization hits you.

Since this is a rogue-like, every area outside of the hub is randomized, from the upgrades and specials you find to the enemy placement and exit from each “room”. You essentially need to kill a certain percentage of the zombies, find the exit, and avoid starving to death. The hunger bar doesn’t necessarily equate to a stamina bar, since you can attack as often as you’d like with little to no change in it, but running will drain it like you need the caloric intake of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson just to do a short jog – once it’s empty, you take damage over time until you’re either laying on the ground or find something to eat. This is easily one of the most frustrating aspects of the game since there were many runs where I’d just barely sneak through to the end with a sliver of green left and no food was available in the last few floors.

The item drops will not only bend you over and shove an entire sword up you by not dropping what you need when you need it, but also by dropping items that either don’t fully explain what they do or by being something that only has downsides, such as setting you ablaze as you douse yourself in gasoline before lighting up a cigarette. When the RNG gods are nice to you, you’ll find super moves that work on the standard recharge bar that can devastate huge groups of the undead in one hit, and each can be upgraded by finding duplicates of the same one. There are also ranged items that you can throw at the enemies to varied results that add a risk vs. reward element since these are necessities with a lot of the boss encounters. With a limited amount of storage and no idea what the next area will offer, it makes them one of the most valuable assets in your arsenal. Sadly, there are no alternate melee options that I have found, at least with the base character.

The combat is downright clunky but serviceable, very much in line with the early Dark Souls games, but without the pesky stamina bar. By default, every run will have the standard and heavy melee attacks, a dodge roll, and a parry option. It scratched the itch I have for more Elden Ring without feeling overly difficult for the sake of being difficult. Early in, it was really easy to round up a group of slow-moving zombies, use a special, and then move on with ease; however, once bigger and faster enemies enter the fray, the bullshit starts to peek its head out like Mark Zuckerberg making sure I am following Facebook community standards. The enemies will start ignoring your attacks, coming in from off-screen at a rabid pace or hitting you multiple times when you’re stuck in the ouch phase of the attack. The hitboxes and lock-on features were also hit or miss at times, mainly during the tighter more linear areas. This is something I learned to work around for the most part, with these situations being less problematic. The frustration lingered though, especially in the longer runs that the later missions require.

You start by needing to clear 10 floors, culminating with a boss battle on the last area of the mission, and these grow in 10s with each mission. The longer runs will hinge on what randomness you encounter and if you die, you’re booted back to the hub area with only 10% of the gold you’ve acquired in the run. This ends up with a frustrating grind that while adding to that risk vs. reward element, makes buying any upgrades that carry over between runs almost unobtainable. I have either completed or failed about 30 runs now, and out of those, I have purchased a whopping three permanent upgrades that really didn’t seem to push the scales in my favor at all. When things were working like I wanted, I enjoyed most of my runs, even when they started to get a little mindless. What I don’t like is dying because I hadn’t eaten something within the last two minutes and it left me wishing the developers had left the need to eat on the cutting room floor.

The presentation isn’t terrible, but not what I was expecting from a current-gen title that required me to install it on the internal SSD of the Xbox Series X when it realistically looks like an early Playstation 3-era game. The backdrops reminded me of the lackluster Tenchu Z from almost 20 years ago, with repeated assets that were downright muddy and lacked any detail you’d expect from a modern game. The same applies to the enemies, and the player character had this weird habit of his ghi riding up, showing his tighty whities, or looking like an upside-down mushroom. His face also bothered me when he’d fall over dead and the camera would zoom into his mug, which was static and showed the same level of emotion I saw from my G.I. Joes as a child.

If you enjoy rogue-likes or the combat found within the Souls-like genre, I would recommend ED-0: Zombie Uprising, but definitely wait for a sale or patches to hopefully address some of the lingering concerns. The challenge mostly comes from systems that almost feel like they were added because late into development someone said “this is too easy,” but when it works, it works well enough. On a final note, I want to let everyone reading this know I am done looking forward to games, with the exception of Spider-Man 2, for all of our sakes.

6 out of 10

Pros

• A Unique Rogue-Like Experience
• Three Playable Characters (If You Can Find Them)
• Authentic Souls-Like Combat

Cons

• Dated Visuals
• The Hunger Mechanic
• Randomness is Regularly Uneven

ED-0: Zombie Uprising was developed by LANCARSE and was published by D3 Publisher. It is available on PC, PS5 and XSX. The game was provided to us for review on XSX. If you’d like to see more of ED-0 Zombie Uprising, check out the official site.

 

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