Edenfall: Legacy of the First Wardens had me hooked even before the raccoon appeared

If there's one thing you should know about me, it's that I love raccoons, perhaps to an unhealthy degree. I have traveled thousands of miles to see them in person, would 100% try to hug one if I saw it in the wild (rabies risk be damned), and have a raccoon plushie collection that threatens to tumble onto my bed on a daily basis. So, with that in mind, if I find a game that lets me play as a raccoon, you can guarantee I'm going to play it. 

Edenfall: Legacy of the First Wardens is one of those games, but let me be clear: I didn't even know I could play as a raccoon until I'd already been playing the demo for almost an hour, and it came as a very welcome surprise when the game told me to “sneak as a raccoon.” But even before that, I knew Edenfall was a game I would love, and not just because of its potential for raccoon-related nonsense. 

A magical and beautiful world

As soon as you dive into Edenfall, the world around you feels expansive and beautiful, full of areas to explore that will take you away from the main quest. From feeding deer to simply going off the beaten track, there's a lot to do and see. Everything you do feels like it has magic woven through it, and that's helped by your spirit fox companion, who is always by your side. 

However, this beautiful world is filled with corruption that's causing life to disappear, and you have the power to fight the corruption and remove it for good. From small patches that spawn enemies to huge void spheres that suck the life out of an entire area, the corruption seems to be winning, at least until you show up to save the day. 

Even amid the corruption and decay, things in Edenfall continue to get more magical, especially through the addition of animal forms such as the wolf, the raven, and of course, the raccoon (which actually comes before the raven, but deserves that “of course,” so it goes last in the list.) Each animal form has its own attacks and abilities, and it is impossible to progress without utilizing all of them, meaning you'll need to adapt to four entirely different play styles. 

The wolf can summon smaller, ethereal wolves to fight at your side. The raven can, predictably, fly. The raccoon is adept at sneaking, but also seems to be the only form capable of using the various catapult-esque travel points scattered throughout the world. Traversing the map requires switching between them for different tasks, and fighting completely changes depending on which form you choose to take when entering battle. 

Battle requires mitigation

I've never been one to blindly praise a game for the sake of it, and I think we've established that I enjoyed the Edenfall demo very much, but there was one thing I noticed that caused some frustration: animation lock during attacks. 

Now, this isn't a problem outside of actual battle, because you're obviously not trying to avoid incoming attacks at that point. However, during battle (especially hectic boss battles), getting stuck in animation lock for a second can feel like an eternity when there are projectiles coming your way that would otherwise be easily avoidable. 

You can mitigate the problem in battle, as long as you don't mind lowering your DPS and accepting that you need to sacrifice some uptime to avoid attacks. This was especially true with the final boss in the arena battle, who stops in place and throws a barrage of spheres that spread outward from his position. You could attack him, because he's not even trying to avoid you at that point, but that would mean willingly taking a lot of damage from the spheres because he fires them faster than you can dodge while you're locked into attack animations. 

Knowledge learned during my time doing MMO raids is finally proving useful! Hooray! Anyway… 

Is this experience frustrating? Yes. Is it the end of the world? No. As I said, you can mitigate it well enough by putting some distance between yourself and the boss and focusing on avoiding attacks rather than dealing damage. I would love to see the animation lock reduced in the full game, but even if it's still there, that won't stop me from diving in. 

Raccoon doing “uppies” made my week

Look, I've fully admitted that I love raccoons, so of course this is a section. You don’t have to read it if you don't want to; it's mostly me gushing about how cute the thing is. I won't be offended if you skip over this part!

I'll be honest, I started suspecting I'd be able to transform into a raccoon from the moment I was able to transform into a wolf. There's a raccoon in the concept art and on the loading screen, though I did try not to get my hopes up too much. So when the game casually told me to “sneak as a raccoon,” you can imagine how happy that made me. Sneaky trash pandas are the best kind, after all. 

But then a new mechanic was introduced: teleportation. This is something only the raccoon can do by focusing on specific red glowing runes. That's pretty cool, and a really fun addition to Edenfall's traversal mechanics, but what made me squeal (yes, literally) was what the raccoon does while you move the crosshair around to aim at the runes.

It does “uppies.” 

You know what I mean by that, right? Raccoons, when they want something, will stand on their hind legs with their arms in the air like a toddler asking to be carried, and that's what the raccoon form does while aiming at the runes. I'm the first to admit that I got a little distracted at that point, but it's my favorite little detail in an already glorious adventure game, and I will be making no apologies for that. 

Edenfall is being developed by Everflux Games and is slated for release in Q4 2026. If you want to go and experience the world for the first time, or just want to be a raccoon doing uppies for a little while, the demo is available now on Steam.