Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy Review

I have never had that much experience with dungeon crawler games but unlike the others I've tried, this game left a good experience for me in the end. Experience Inc. and NIS America bring us their PC port of Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy originally on the PlayStation Vita.  

The game starts rather suddenly with the main character waking up in a dark sewer. Looking around he sees dead bodies around him and a mysterious character saves you before you are attacked by monsters. You make your way towards the exit of the sewer where you are attacked by an alligator monster and the mysterious boy distracts it. A girl shows up named Alice Mifune who attacks and defeats the monsters. 

You learn that the monsters are called variants and are popping up all over Tokyo creating Hazard Cases. You also learn that you have special blood allowing you to use Blood Codes to create a variety of powers to defeat the monsters. So you are recruited by Xth Squad and along with five other teens become Abyss Co. Setting out to travel around keeping the people and the city safe.

Now I'm going to be 100% honest when I say I don’t play many dungeon crawler games. This game though did catch my interest with the fun character designs and amazing artwork. The monster designs are interesting but after a while, seeing the same monsters over and over became a little stale. The game does offer multiple locations to travel to and explore and I found myself spending quite a bit of time just exploring different dungeons. There were moments where I would be genuinely creeped out by the monsters and their dialogue.

 The music is super catchy and didn’t feel out of place. The different tracks that played in the explorable areas fit really well and made me feel happy to be in certain areas or even on edge when I traveled to dangerous locations. I kept going back to the main classroom just to listen to the song that plays while you are in that menu.

I enjoyed the fact that at any moment you can exit a dungeon, although you do have to travel back to the entrance to exit, and go back to your base and heal, gather items, and make changes to your party if need be. Being able to create a new party member at anytime is pretty awesome and done well. There are multiple students you can choose from each offering a male and female version, with each having different color pallets. From there character creation is deep allowing for different choices in items, abilities, voices, and more.

​One thing I heavily disliked from the game is that its tutorial doesn’t really offer an explanation of how to move or select different menus. I had to keep pausing the game and going into the configuration menu and the various manuals to learn and relearn what buttons were mapped to the keyboard and mouse. Again this is a port so that was only a little annoying. After a while though exploring dungeons did get a little repetitive and somewhat boring but powering through rewards you with interesting story scenarios that kept things fresh.

Overall this game is very fun in short bursts. Personally I felt that after playing a few hours I would burn myself out and have to take some breaks. The gameplay is solid and NIS and Experience Inc. found a good balance in storytelling and exploration. My only wish is that more cutscenes would have been animated and voice acting would be present during all dialogue. I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who is looking to enjoy a good dungeon crawler role playing game.

​-Nestor

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Graphics: Great
Sound: Amazing
Gameplay: Good
Value: Good
 
Overall: Good

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FULL DISCLOSURE: This game was provided to A-to-J Connections free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of review