Official Review PlayStation Vita Updated

Review cover Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy (PlayStation Vita)
Official GBAtemp Review

Product Information:

  • Release Date (NA): June 9, 2015
  • Release Date (EU): June 5, 2015
  • Release Date (JP): July 24, 2014
  • Publisher: NIS America
  • Developer: Experience Inc.
  • Genres: Role playing game, Dungeon crawler

Game Features:

Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative

Review Approach:

I admit it, I've never finished Demon Gaze. Yet. I'ma still work on it... someday... But anyway, seeing yet another dungeon crawler by Experience Inc. got me really excited. There's just something about their games that I find really rewarding.
From the studio that brought us Demon Gaze comes Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy - a dungeon crawler-role playing video game, developed in 2014 by Experience Inc. and published by NIS America in Europe and North America in 2015

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Introduction...

Experience Inc. returns to the PlayStation Vita to deliver yet another beautiful dungeon crawler game (DRPG). Going by the look of this game, you could say that it looks a lot like Demon Gaze and it shows through it's art style and dungeon design. The character designs are wonderful as well, Just like with Demon Gaze, I really love how each of the characters in this game all look different from one another and are all presented so uniquely and full of life. I don't usually play many dungeon crawlers. In fact, just last year I've only paid for and played two dungeon crawlers, Demon Gaze and Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth. In comparison to those two games, this one is a bit similar.

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In the near future of Tokyo....

Our story beings in the near future city of Tokyo. The game quickly throws you into the story right away and explains that the city is under attack from these genetically engineered monsters; Variants. Not just that but the emergence of portals leading to a mysterious dimension called the Abyss. It's because of this, the government has established the Code Physics Agency to investigate these mysterious phenomena, so it's up to this unique group known as the Xth Squad to investigate the mystery behind the Abyss and defeat whoever is behind it all.

The game starts off right away with having your character wake up at the sight of severed and bloodied bodies. Upon realizing this, a hooded man encounters your character and tells you that "You've been kidnapped" when all of a sudden, Variants attack! Trusting the hooded man, you set off to escape the evil!

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Gameplay wise...

Similar to its predecessor, Demon Gaze, you'll be spending a lot of time in dungeons taking on missions. Now dungeons are a bit on the "boring" side, they don't really have much going for them besides the character notifications. The game also doesn't indicate hidden areas or points of interest very well. This is a 40+ hour game so after seeing the same dungeon again and again, it grows a bit tedious. 

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What the game does well is customization. There is a lot of depth put into the game that makes customizing each of your team-mates very interesting. Each of the individual characters that players can create have their own unique stats and thanks to the customization, players can create godlike characters and absolutely destroy enemies left and right in dungeons. Seriously. I do wish each character played a role in the story similar to other JRPGs, every created character in this game isn't really engaging. I know this is due to the generated nature of the game but it still makes each individual character boring in some way.

Unlike Demon Gaze, however, this game is a bit on the easy side. Now players can go back to their base whenever they want giving them the chance to level up and sort through their inventory to come back and power through that dungeon yet again. Another feature missing is the rent that players of Demon Gaze constantly had to worry about. These could be improvements for a lot of other people, but as for me, I actually liked those features because it presented some sort of challenge to Demon Gaze. Thanks to this, the game doesn't penalize you at every turn but thus loses its edge at the same time.

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Conclusion...

Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy is a fine dungeon crawler for the Vita. It quickly throws you into the story and explains its mechanics very well. However, compared to Demon Gaze, it's a bit on the easy side and because of that I think Demon Gaze is probably the better game of the two. Of course, that's just my opinion! Give the game a whirl yourself and see what it's all about.

 

Verdict

What We Liked ...
  • Unique art style
  • Customization is really nice
  • Interesting story elements
What We Didn't Like ...
  • Boring dungeon design
  • A bit on the tedious and grindy side
8
Gameplay
The battle system is similar to a lot of dungeon crawlers out there and is thus straight forward. Walking through dungeons can be seen as a chore, however.
8
Presentation
This game has the 2D art style down and its characters and cities show that it's going for that futuristic look. It's 3D dungeon designs on the other hand could use some improvements.
8
Lasting Appeal
It's a 40+ hour game with loads of missions and dungeons to explore. It should keep anyone busy for a while.
8
out of 10

Overall

This game is a lot of fun from what I've played of it. Although I prefer Demon Gaze (this game made me go back and replay a bit more of Demon Gaze), I think it is an excellent dungeon crawler with a lot of depth to it.
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Reactions: T-hug
Pedeadstrian
For a Gameplay column, it's rather lacking in the Gameplay component. To me, the way it's written assumes the player has played Demon's Gaze. Considering there's tons of different types of dungeon crawlers out there, it'd help if you elaborated a bit. I can tell from the screenshots that it's rather similar to Demon Gaze, but not everyone reading this will know what that means.
 
T-hug
I have finished Demon Gaze and really enjoyed it, enough to put it in my Top 10 2014 List. I was really looking forward to this game but it's overly complicated with a billion abbreviated stats and screens that I have no idea what they mean (there is a full guide within the game though). It just doesn't flow very well compared to DG.
I intend to finish it, but when, I don't know now that I have Batman and still have a squillion Witcher 3 quests to finish.
 
N
Although I appreciate the comparison to another game, if said comparison is the second beefiest of only a three section breakdown on gameplay, it doesn't help all that much. I haven't played Demon Gaze, so comparing to features in a game I haven't played effectively did nothing to help me understand what the game was like.
 
T-hug
Nathan Drake said:
Although I appreciate the comparison to another game, if said comparison is the second beefiest of only a three section breakdown on gameplay, it doesn't help all that much. I haven't played Demon Gaze, so comparing to features in a game I haven't played effectively did nothing to help me understand what the game was like.
Click to expand...
I know it should maybe have been in the review but we have a very thorough Demon Gaze review here: http://gbatemp.net/review/demon-gaze.139/
 
Skelletonike
I love Demon Gaze and it's one of my favourite dungeon crawlers, due to that, I decided to buy this game once it came out. Sadly, I was hoping too much for the game to be like Demon Gaze, and instead of getting the same experience I expected from Demon Gaze, I got something similar to what I'd expect from a Class of Heroes game.

In Demon Gaze, no matter what characters you made, they all felt a little bit alive (heck, if you visited the rooms it would even give funny remarks about what they were doing), but above all, the main character was real. It had an impact, you had choices, and the game even had it's ecchi moments and some bits of romance between the main character and some others at times. Heck, even the demons had personalities in that game.
Maybe they tried to be safe with this game, leaving the beautiful artwork, but removing a real main character and any possible romance or whatever (even though some of the demons look like naked women, so meh... I really don't get it).
What bugs me the most about it though, is that the game gives you a false hope at the start, there's clearly only one character at first but soon enough, you end up with a bunch of random people.

The game is still pretty good, and I'm enjoying it as a dungeon crawler, but as a spiritual successor of sorts to Demon Gaze, I feel it was lacking (even the ost can't compare to the previous game), I some romance dammit. T_T

Not to mention that it's pretty annoying that unlike Demon Gaze, this one brings a forced dub and not dual audio. z.z
 
Review cover
Product Information:
  • Release Date (NA): June 9, 2015
  • Release Date (EU): June 5, 2015
  • Release Date (JP): July 24, 2014
  • Publisher: NIS America
  • Developer: Experience Inc.
  • Genres: Role playing game, Dungeon crawler
Game Features:
Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative

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