RE-REVIEW: Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy


Title	Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy
Developer	Experience Inc
Publisher	5pb., Nippon Ichi Software, Mages
Release Date	Jul 24, 2014
Genre	1st Person Dungeon Crawler
Platform	Vita, PC
Age Rating	M for Mature
Official Website

I want to preface this by first saying that dungeon crawling games are new to me. I didn’t really even start to get interested in them until I played Persona on the PSP, so I didn’t know what to think when I first started playing Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy. So what were my final thoughts after beating the product? Well let’s dive right in and find out.

Tokyo has recently been overrun by a powerful enemy known as the Variants that emerged from a labyrinth known as the Abyss. Tokyo’s only hope is a secret government association known as the X Team. Members of the X Team have special powers that are used specifically to deal with the menace. Your task is to enter the labyrinth and put an end to the horrible creatures. The story in this game is beautifully crafted, and it only gets more in depth the deeper you plunge into the Abyss. The characters are wonderfully written, and I never really found myself bored with any of them. The game is split up into various chapters with story bits wonderfully interwoven between the dungeon crawling.

Now we get into the meat of this game, the gameplay. You move through the dungeon one block at a time and fight enemies, simple. The twist comes in how you fight the enemies. Every enemy has its own class, types, or weakness. On the surface this doesn’t sound too bad, until you realize you can’t target specific enemies. That’s right, if you’re in a group fight then you can only attack the group. This quickens the pace, but also adds a slight bit of difficulty as not all enemies are weak to the same thing. It becomes necessary to change around your party so that you have as much type coverage as possible. You can carry six people into the dungeon at any given time, so be sure to use that to your advantage. There’s also an encounter gauge that you get a little bit later on that fills up the more you battle, which adds a risk versus rewards system as well. The game wasn’t too difficult, even on the higher settings, but these added a nice bit of challenge every now and again. The bosses in this game I found quite challenging, and I had loads of fun fighting them. They’re all unique and don’t really feel duplicated. They’re probably the most fun part of this game, apart from the story, that is.

Normally by now I’d have already been over the presentation of the game, but all I have to say is wow. The character and enemy portraits are beautiful, and I found myself rapidly grabbing screenshots just because of how gorgeous they were. The locations were very run of the mill, but I didn’t really mind all too much. The music, as well, was really fantastic, to the point where I actually went out of my way and purchased the soundtrack for an extra $4.99 on Steam. If I had to complain about anything, it’s that there just weren’t enough of anything. There was very little enemy or location variations throughout the game, and that’s a shame because I would have liked to see what else they could have done.

Overall Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy is a really fun game that I’ve enjoyed for the past 30 or so hours that I played it. The game is $19.99 on Steam right now, and that seems like the perfect price to me. If you’re a fan of this genre, or you’re just looking for something to sink your teeth into, then I definitely recommend picking this up. Despite the lack of variation on the Variants (the irony), I still had an absolute blast with this game, and I’m sure you will too.