My wife and I got a PS4 on a total whim, and I have been looking for reasons to use it over my Wii U over the past few days. I'm happy to report that Abyss Odyssey is one of those reasons.
In Abyss Odyssey, ACE Team came up with a brilliant title that can keep you busy for hours upon hours. Unfortunately, it is weak in presentation. The game introduces almost all of its weak pointsMy wife and I got a PS4 on a total whim, and I have been looking for reasons to use it over my Wii U over the past few days. I'm happy to report that Abyss Odyssey is one of those reasons.
In Abyss Odyssey, ACE Team came up with a brilliant title that can keep you busy for hours upon hours. Unfortunately, it is weak in presentation. The game introduces almost all of its weak points within fifteen minutes of play, most of which are aesthetic. Sadly, if feels as if the developers came up with a brilliant concept, then neglected to dot their i's and cross their t's, or perhaps they ran out of money and had to publish the game despite some obvious areas where improvement could be made. Despite this, the game play and game's overall style are easily compelling enough overcome its issues.
The game is a side-scrolling action adventure game, similar in some ways to Castlevania or Metroid. But, if you go into Abyss Odyssey expecting a Metroidvania type experience, you will be surprised. It has more in common with a roguelike dungeon-crawler, or the original Diablo. While Metroidvania games frequently make exploration a main focus, the bulk of Abyss Odyssey's environments are procedurally generated, meaning that exploration necessarily plays second fiddle to combat. Exploring each floor of the Abyss is still rewarding, but unlike Metroidvania titles, there is no backtracking to explore previously unreachable areas. Players who want lasting appeal can find it through hidden collectible "journal entries" that appear randomly after combat.
Upon selecting a character and leaving the main menu, you are immediately dropped into a tutorial level. After learning how to block, dodge, and jump your way through a simple obstacle course, the tutorial feeds you one of the game's easier enemies. This enemy serves as a sharp wake-up call, without posing any real threat. It tells the player that, in order to do well at this game, he or she will really need to give it the old Harvard try. If not, they'll get beaten to a pulp. The tutorial ends with a larger combat involving several enemies, ending with a rock slide that appears to bury your main character. This sequence is followed by a small amount of plot, powerfully emphasizing one of the game's biggest strengths: its overall sense of style. The game employs a beautiful art nouveau aesthetic fitting its 1890s setting, and employs dark fairy tale themes with compelling effect.
Then it throws you headlong into the Abyss, where the real grind begins.
As mentioned earlier, the game is not without problems. These problems begin, forebodingly, with the character select screen. It makes a poor first impression, because the game doesn't do enough to communicate that the player has only one character option. As for the game itself, the voice acting is somewhat flat. The game's music is fitting, but the only particularly memorable thing about it is that if you manage to survive for long enough (about ten minutes), there is a one or two second period of complete silence before the track starts again. Even though the bulk of the game's environments are procedurally generated, the recycling of assets will make them feel repetitive. The control layout is not bad, but there are a couple things that might leave you scratching your head. For example, the frequent use of the R3 button when the function could have been mapped to R1, L1, R2 or L2 instead.
Additionally, the tutorial simply doesn't do enough to prepare players for aspects that are central to the game, including character growth, handling death, and special abilities. After the tutorial is over, players might still be confused about how to use the triangle button, which becomes rather important. It can be customized to do things depending on whether the player is pushing up, down, or forward, and the tutorial doesn't adequately explain this or give players the tools to figure it out. Additionally, players might feel like they're set up to fail, and get frustrated. Indeed, it would be crushingly difficult to beat the game without dying.
Dying is, in fact, tied directly into the story. The only punishment for dying is having to return to town, where the player will be able to use their gathered loot, special abilities, and experience points to take another shot at descending into the abyss -- which is exactly what they will want to do.
The game play is simple, plain, and right at the forefront of the whole experience. It rewards skill, but doesn't punish players for being unskilled. Rather, it encourages players to keep improving. Although it takes a little while to figure combat out, the simple fun of the combat system and the transparency of the end goal make the game highly addicting, regardless of the lack of spit and polish.
Overall, the game gets a solid 8 out of 10 from me. Not astounding, certainly not perfect, but it hits all the important things right on target. It's more fun than most AAA titles, by far.… Expand
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