THE ABYSS SWALLOWED THE FUN.

I have zero patience for this game. I have zero experience with the anime and when I asked for this game I honestly didn’t even know it was an anime. Coming away from this game I’m just going to say “watch the anime” because playing this game is an unfun mess with worse animation than the show unless mostly static 3d models talking to each other like it’s a visual novel when the story needs to proceed sounds interesting.

Where to begin? I suppose my experience is all I can write about… this game starts off promising. It comes off like a PS2 era action RPG with survival elements, a few experimental ideas and the slightest bit of jank which is my wheelhouse. I love experimental near misses more than I love polished hits because they are unique. What the first section does in this game is send the main character of the anime (whose name I don’t care to remember) on a quest to find small artifacts from the titular abyss. The abyss is a big hole in an island that explorers go into to get rare treasures. Cities were built on the ring of the abyss to profit off of the rarities found in its depths. The problem is explorers that come back up become inflicted with a curse which is essentially a non-water version of the bends. Neat concept. The first chapter implies I’m going to be doing small missions for my teacher and I will eventually move onto bigger missions.

PLATFORMS: SWITCH, PC, PS4
MSRP: $59.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $20

No. Once I finish this beginning section I realize that there’s almost no point in collecting anything I don’t immediately need. There’s no point fighting. All these mechanics are pointless because the game starts funneling me towards the plot of the anime which makes me scream the question of…

WHY WOULD I NOT JUST WATCH THE ANIME THEN?!

This was my problem with Disaster Report 4. Do not make mechanics that are pointless because the moment I realize there’s no point in engaging with those parts of the game I am going to avoid it. I do not get satisfaction for just doing arbitrary tasks that do not feed into anything else. This game also only rewards experience based on finishing missions, and the missions the game is giving me when they are funneling me to the next plot point from the anime (which I could be watching instead) are not offering experience. There’s no experience from fighting enemies (and the robot boy with me kills most everything anyways so why should I even bother attacking). There’s no experience from crafting items. I just started booking it for the exit in every area but a stamina meter means I can’t just run there. Hunger meter means I have to make sure I have something to eat. The curse I mentioned as part of the plot is a mechanic which means I can’t climb very fast. There’s no point of sticking around but there’s no way to really rush my way through… Jesus christ the mechanics that I am not engaging with are useless and the ones that actually work are hindering me immensely.

WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS FUN?!

So I finally get to meet some tall lady (again, who cares) and she starts teaching me mechanics and forcing me to fish and use the periscope and all these things that I should have been doing all along but the developers decided to stay true to the anime I assume so they chose not to have that in the beginning. The game has now gone from frustrating to a different type of frustrating. It’s gone from an unfun slog through linear areas to a slew of mechanics thrown upon me too late for me to care in a labyrinthine forest filled with enemies who quickly overwhelm me because I haven’t been able to level up because the game doesn’t reward gameplay but rather story beats… oh wait this mode doesn’t have leveling up. Cool.

While I travel this forest area I step in a trap in an area where it is impossible to see it and I die and I call it quits. This is not my job, I review for fun. If it was my job, I think I would be having a mental breakdown. I could be close to finishing the first half of this game (which apparently only covers up to episode eight of season one) or maybe I’m only halfway through the first half of this game, but I am not going to mentally flog myself anymore. I’m treating this as if I were a customer and if I bought this game I would write it off as a loss unless I bought it physically in which case I would trade it in for pennies.

By the way, the first half of this game is the anime portion. The second half is locked behind finishing the first half and is a new story made for the game where you create your own character and level up and is probably more like the game I thought I was getting. I have heard this second half is decent but I’m not going to slog through this mess to unlock it while listening to the two characters repeat the same lines over and over and over again. I could turn off the voices but that means I turn it off even for the story beats which defeats the point entirely.

An update that unlocks that second mode automatically would maybe get me to rethink my score but what this is now, I wouldn’t even tell fans of the show to play it.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.