Genre: RPG
Developer: MAGES. Inc., 5pb., Experience Inc.
Publisher: NIS America, Inc.
Release Date: Mar 28, 2017
Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy is a dungeon crawl style RPG from the devs MAGES Inc., 5pb., and Experience Inc., and is published by NIS America, Inc. It takes place in Tokyo, like the name suggests, and has a heavy anime theme to it. In recent times, a phenomenon called the Abyss has taken place in Tokyo. From the Abyss came the Variants, monsters that feed on humans. In the beginning, the cases were far and few between but a dedicated force was needed. Enter the Xnth Squad and alongside them a special police force XPD, whose mission is to contain the areas of the Abyss from the public’s knowledge. The Xnth Squad members eliminate the Variant threat with the help of the Code technology. You are one of the latest Variant victims but are saved by the Xnth Squad and subsequently join them.
That is how the game begins; the overall story revolves around a mysterious group that is trying to use the Abyss for its own gains. The story is split into several semesters, each with its own missions. They range from going to locations in the city and talking to people in the area to delving into the Abyss labyrinths to hunt for a wanted Variant. You accept your missions in the secret headquarters located within the school. In addition to accepting missions, you have a variety of tools at your disposal. Here, you can also recruit new members and choose who to bring with you on missions from the characters you have. All new characters start at level one, regardless of how far into the game you are. In the headquarters, you can also view information on all the blood codes, items, variants, and more that you have encountered in the game.
There are two more important areas in the game that bring something to it, and they are the development and medical labs. The medical labs are the equivalent of your inn/church, where you can recover and revive your characters. You can also perform growth surgery, which allows you to spend GP (in-game currency) to add EXP to any of your current party members. This can be useful for leveling up new characters quickly if you have the GP for it. The development lab is where all the fun stuff happened for me. It is the place where you tinker with your gear. As you explore the Abyss and kill Variants, you will find weapons, armor, and such that you can bring back for identification. Some of what you bring back are junk gear and materials.
In the development lab, you can turn junk gear into usable gear by combining it with materials. If that is not enough, you can also strip them, returning them to the same materials you just used to make them or gear that you did not need. Also, you can turn gear into GP or buy gear with GP. I mentioned earlier that you can tinker with your gear, and I should probably explain what I meant. In addition to the feature already mentioned and being able to store your GP safely, you can upgrade your gear in various ways. First, you can boost your gear from normal to a +1 and more by using a piece of material and an enhancer. Next, you can affix your weapons, modifying them to deal certain types of damage or more damage to certain types of enemies. The third and final way is to craft a SO weapon from an existing one, thereby transferring all attachments and boosts from the old weapon to the new one. I did not find the item required to do so while I played the game for this review, so I have no idea what it does exactly.
Now comes the hardest part for me to talk about and that is the audio. I had a love and hate relationship with the voice work for the game. What there was of it was fucking amazing, especially Mao Gado from the XPD; I absolutely adored her voice. However, the Japanese voice overs did not seem to match in timing with the text at all for me. The English ones were not much of an improvement; however, the problem was that they got lazy with it and part way through some of the conversation, the voices just stopped. Everything else, sound effects wise and music wise, was absolutely spot on for me. The graphics were spot on as well, especially the Variant art and the VN style cut scenes. However, the character art would look absolutely amazing on one screen and the next, it would look slightly pixelated. I have no idea if this was a glitch in the game or my computer acting wonky. However, despite those shortcomings, I still would recommend this game to any fan of dungeon crawlers due to its solid gameplay.
Pros:
- Amazing voice work
- In-depth item and equipment system
- Waifu material in Mao
Cons:
- Voice work got lazy in parts
- Sometimes character artwork got pixelated slightly
BoxCatHero gives Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy a Drastik Measure 6.8 out of 10 (68).
To expand on the score a bit, I give it a lower score than what you would think, based on my review above, because of the voice work. While it’s absolutely amazing on the English side, the Japanese side bombed horribly for me. Also, the English side got real lazy. Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy is available for the price of $19.99 USD on Steam.
