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Ed-0: Zombie Uprising has had quite the transformation from the time I reviewed it in Early Access to the full release. While it still retains the core “Mystery Dungeon” gameplay, there is now an additional playable character in the ninja (with some buffs and quality-of-life adjustments given to the samurai and sumo wrestler), three more difficulty settings, and five more levels totaling eight main levels. Ed-0 is light on the story, and it's straightforward. You play as special zombies known as "Zom-beings". Their whole thing is that they revive themselves after being fatally struck down. The samurai, sumo wrestler, and ninja are slowly introduced in the narrative while a bodyless voice narrates the journey (in Japanese). The cutscenes are displayed in a slideshow-like format as the trio finds zombies, slays them, and moves on to the next set piece. Mystery Dungeon-like games have a player go through random procedurally generated floors made up of randomized tiles. Some of them, like this one, have a hunger mechanic associated with it. A hunger meter slowly decreases while navigating through the labyrinths. The only way to increase it outside of special circumstances is to consume food found throughout the area. Ed-0, however, plays like a 3D action title. The entire map for each floor is obscured and by walking through it, you’ll uncover more of the map as you explore. Once you find the exit, you’ll move up to the next floor where you then have to uncover parts of the new map. You’ll repeat this until you reach the boss of the level. There are plenty of things to do, such as find consumables or charms to increase your stats, items to help out in battle, or scrolls that let you use powerful abilities. Gold and essence are two different types of currency earned by killing zombies. Gold can be lost when failing, but essence always sticks around. Essence is specifically used to upgrade the sacred tree. The tree is leveled up by essence so you can hold more abilities at a time (up to ten at max tree level). On the standard difficulty, there are no floor traps, and all items have their original names. The improved standard difficulty compared to the Early Access difficulty is for the better. I feel the adjustments better ease a player into the setting. One common complaint during Early Access was that Ed-0 was too punishing for new players as you would either step on a trap not knowing where it was or what it does. You may also end up equipping a cursed item with a negative effect and with no item available to purify it. Standard difficulty lacking any surprises means that players can better learn the mechanics without having to resort to tons of trial and error.

Other difficulties beyond Standard include Hard, Hell, and Edo. Hard enables most floor traps while making them invisible prior to triggering them. There are an increase in enemies. Many items now have obscured/generic names, only uncovering the name if you have an appraisal item or if you use the item yourself. The latter can be bad as you can accidentally end up with a negative stat such as poisoned or intoxication. Hell amplifies all of what was previously mentioned with more aggressive AI and a higher chance of special events occurring (they either trigger at the beginning of a floor or randomly when entering a room). And Edo is similar to Hell, but your character starts every stage on Edo as if it was a fresh save file, meaning you do not have access to any of the upgrades purchased through gold or essence. Outside of Edo difficulty, all the other ones are affected by the permanent stat increases you get from either spending the gold you earn from stages inside the dojo, or the stats you get from blessings of the sacred tree. For me, what makes the whole loop entertaining is that you're always micromanaging some aspect, despite the pace of Ed-0 being rather slow for an action title. Should I continue exploring the map for more beneficial items while running the risk of encountering a mob of zombies? Should I hold onto all of these "negative" charms in my inventory space on the off chance I can get a specific combination that can turn them into a positive? If I don't, will I still be able to use these charms against the boss fight? I got myself into a bad situation, should I rush to any door to proceed to the next floor to ensure my survivability? The player is always making decisions and the more you play, the better decisions you'll see yourself choose. The three playable characters range from a samurai, a sumo wrestler, and a ninja. The samurai is the more well-rounded character with a good reach and easy-to-understand abilities. The sumo is the slowest of the characters but has the most raw power. The ninja doesn’t hit nearly as hard as the sumo or even samurai but makes up for it with the highest amount of mobility. Each character has dozens of abilities that have each played very differently from one another. For example, there are certain charms that inflict a burn or drunken status. There’s also a charm that increases your hunger whenever you are inflicted with the burn status instead of hunger normally increasing. The sumo has a sleep ability that recovers health in exchange of the hunger meter going decreasing at a faster rate. Now these two systems feed into each other as you can recover health lost when burning while sleeping, and recover your hunger when you're on fire, creating a self-sustaining loop. There are plenty of different strategies that can be used, so even “negative charms” can have a positive effect if you know how to use them. Many quality-of-life adjustments have been made from Early Access to the full release such as more stats to buy from the dojo, a food shop to buy food from before the start of missions, the option to postpone your gameplay after every completed floor, better descriptions for items, and general bug fixes/controller refinements. There are way fewer glitches around, and the few that aren't an extremely low chance of happening are physics-related bugs such as clipping through geometry. Even if you get stuck, there is an option in the pause menu to reset your geometric position. I feel the increased stat selection from the dojo was the best QoL adjustment as many enemies were reliant on your abilities gotten through levels, but now that you have extra crit stats naturally, it makes fighting enemies less tedious.

The environments are visually unique even if the graphical fidelity is average at best. Ed-0 may play like a Mystery Dungeon game, but you’ll be seeing haunted forests, steam factories, the inside of a naval vessel, and Japanese villages in full 3D movement. I ended up liking the varied visuals as it helps each level stand out from the others. In the options, you only have a limited selection of settings. You can’t even choose 2K resolution, only between 1080p and 4K in terms of high-definition. There also doesn’t seem to be much of a graphical change between the “low” and “cinematic” graphics, so I’d just choose what gets you the best FPS. Besides the whole zombie thing, there are moral warnings and concerns to touch upon. Ed-0 is a very violent game with copious amounts of blood and gore. In the options, you can turn off most of the blood and gore. Some blood, like bloodstained zombies, do stay. When it isn't disabled, blood splashes on both the walls and the player character while their limbs can be hacked or ripped off. There are more supernatural elements in play as the gates are modeled after a torii. In the middle of them is a portal that either sends you to the next floor, or a void world where you either rest/restock, choose an item, or defeat a horde of enemies. There is also the intoxicated status that has either you or the enemies fall over after a few seconds while puking all over themselves and everywhere. Only one instance of mild language (d*mn) can be seen toward the ending cutscene. With the sumo wrestler, what he wears is considered a mawashi. They are a special type of loincloth that all sumo wear. The sport of sumo is considered sacred in Japan and while the sport isn’t considered “sexy”, the playable character may have some form of “sex appeal” (or a power fantasy) as he has much more muscle tone than the average sumo wrestler. You will be staring at his buttcheeks often due to his garb. The ninja character, while being the only playable female in the game, is fairly conservatively dressed. The only thing she has of note are cut pants that show the outer portion of her thighs. As long as you understand exactly what you’re getting into, I can recommend Ed-0. It has its share of jankiness due to the low budget and team size as well as being light on the story, but for the amount of money it is sold at (even after considering the $10 increase from Early Access to full release), it offers quite a lot of reasons to replay. I was able to get over 70 hours of playtime with all stages completed on all difficulties and maxed-out stats. The violent content is the most questionable aspect from a moral stance. As the blood and gore can almost be fully removed, it's not too bad compared to other mature-rated titles with its generic portrayal of the supernatural. The slower-paced gameplay and learning curve may alienate the average player, but Ed-0 managed to come out pretty well after the Early Access growing pains.