The Edens Zero demo dropped yesterday courtesy of Konami, and I couldn’t resist jumping in to see what it had to offer. I carved out some time to dive into the demo and get a feel for the gameplay, visuals, and overall experience. Whether you’re a fan of the anime or just curious about how the game translates that world into an interactive space, this demo offers an exciting first look.
What’s Eden Zero All About
Shiki is a human who lives on a planet called Granbell, which, oddly enough, is home to only robots. One day, a girl named Rebecca shows up and becomes the talk of the town, and Shiki sees a human being for the first time. After the celebrations are over, the robots turn on Shiki and declare humans are beneath them and that they should kill them all.
Shiki and Rebecca escape from the planet and head to Blue Garden, a planet that houses adventurers. Rebecca wants Shiki to become an adventurer so he can become her bodyguard as she explores the universe, creating content as a B-tuber, someone who creates content on B-cubes.
Once they get the paperwork started for Shiki to become an adventurer, Happy, the cat (where have I seen him before?) who travels with Rebecca, gets kidnapped. Shiki and Rebecca chase down the kidnapper through a bunch of alleyways in Blue Garden before finally meeting up with a large man with a Gatling gun who is stopping them from rescuing Happy. After Happy escapes, the cat becomes two side blasters that Rebecca can shoot, and Shiki and she combine forces to take down this large man. That is where the demo ends.
The Gameplay
Most of the Edens Zero demo puts you in control of Shiki. The first level serves as a tutorial set further along in the story, where you are tracking down a character named Elsie aboard her ship. You’ll fight off waves of goons and navigate simple platforming sections as the game introduces its controls. You have a basic jump button that allows for a double jump with a second press, helping you clear obstacles along the way.
Combat blends beat-em-up mechanics with action RPG elements. You have a light attack that chains into a three-hit combo, along with two separate heavy attacks mapped to their own buttons. There’s also a skill tied to a cooldown timer. You can seamlessly mix light and heavy attacks to create combos, giving the combat a satisfying rhythm. Shiki’s initial skill is a gravitational ability that pulls nearby enemies into the center of a swirling vortex, allowing you to group them up for big damage.
After finishing the tutorial, the demo sends you back to the beginning of the story, with Shiki arriving at Granbell. You’ll explore the narrow streets of the kingdom, interacting with various robots. Word soon spreads about a rare visitor arriving in the city for the first time in a century. As the story progresses, the once-friendly robots turn hostile, forcing you to fight your way through the city to reach Castellan, who has Rebecca tied up. This encounter leads to your first boss fight.
Bosses in Edens Zero feature a guard gauge displayed around their profile portrait next to their health bar. Once the guard gauge is depleted, the boss becomes stunned, allowing your attacks to deal significantly more damage. After taking enough hits, the boss regains its guard and unleashes a powerful move in an attempt to regain control of the fight. The game also introduces a perfect dodge mechanic—if timed correctly, you’ll trigger a brief slow-motion counterattack that stuns the enemy for a moment, giving you an opening to press the advantage.
Presentation
The Edens Zero demo gives you a bit of what you can expect from the presentation of the game. As mentioned, the combat is in a beat-em-up style action RPG elements, but after chapter one is done, you get to go to Blue Garden and see the exploration aspect. You have a minimap on the top right that shows your immediate vicinity. You can also tap the touchpad on a DualSense controller to look at the map. This shows you everything you have explored and where you need to go with a flag indicator. As you are traversing the bigger open map of Blue Garden, there will be golden lights around the area that you can pick up. Once picked up, an indicator will light up your map on where it is located, since the lights can respawn.
You toggle running by pressing the left trigger, though if you grab anything, the character will stop running. This can be a bit of a nuisance when you see multiple things you want to pick up. You can also find random enemies with knives around the back alleys in Blue Garden. If you get close, it will start an encounter, and you can beat up a bunch of enemies that all show up in the encounter. You can run across the barrier of the battle to escape or defeat all the bad guys to finish the encounter and go back to exploration mode.
Once you get to the boss fight of Blue Garden, you will also get access to party members. Rebecca becomes a party member, but that just means you can change to play as her during combat. You don’t get to have party members all fight at once; it’s just more of who you can select to play as when they are available. Rebecca has access to her two main guns as her main attacks, but she can use her skill to change them into an assault rifle, which shoots faster. It only lets you use the rifle for a limited amount of time before it changes back to the dual pistols.
That Opening Though
For the most part, the Edens Zero demo was pretty tight and fun, even though the introduction to the tutorial threw me off. It shows off scenes to get you to the ship to fight Elsie, and then after you fight Elsie, you go back to experience the scenes of the series. I would have preferred the demo not to show those scenes if the intention was to go back in time anyway. I would prefer just getting thrown into the tutorial without any idea who anyone was, so I can then get intrigued naturally by these characters.
I had a blast playing as both Shiki and Rebecca, but I will say I favored Rebecca’s playstyle more. The blasters felt smoother to fight with than Shiki, since enemies can hurt him more easily, being so close to their face. The animations would go faster than I expected for the enemies, so I got hit a bunch. Also, Shiki can’t cancel out of his attack animations to dodge like Rebecca can. Rebecca is faster to use but doesn’t deal as much damage as Shiki’s attacks.
If you’re interested in checking out the demo, it’s only about an hour long, so it won’t take much of your time. The Edens Zero demo is available now on is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam. The full game launches on July 15th, 2025, and is available for pre-order. If what I experienced in this short preview is any indication, Edens Zero is shaping up to be a fun, fast-paced adventure that fans of the series and newcomers alike will want to keep an eye on.
