As much as I love playing Japanese dungeon crawlers, lately they seem to be starting to blend together. I understand that they core focus of these games are exploration, grinding xp, stats and finding loot, but I’d like some variety once in a while. Experience Inc.’s Operation Abyss New Tokyo Legacy seems to offer that bit of variety, but how much? Let’s take a look.
Operation is a go
Interesting story- Most dungeon crawlers really don’t have much in terms of story. The most that will be given is some set up about having to escape a place or being the chosen one and having to fight the big bad at the end of the game. There’s nothing wrong with that, since dungeon crawlers are all about stats, grinding, exploring and collecting loot. J-dungeon crawlers on the other hand take time to flesh out a story. In Operation Abyss New Tokyo Legacy case, the game take place in a futuristic Japan where creatures called Variants are terrorizing Tokyo. You unfortunately are abducted by one of these Variants to be its next meal. But before you are horrifically sliced in pieces, a member of the Code Physics Agency, Alice Mifune, rescues you and later recruits you into the Agency. Its up to you and your fellow new recruits to help fight back against the Variants and to figure out where they are coming from and how to stop them. All the while keeping up the appearance of being normal highschoolers.
Option between stock and customized party members- Operation Abyss gives players the option if they want to start the game with stock party members or be able to customize themselves. If they do decide to customize their party members, the game gives them pretty extensive options for a J-crawler. Players will be able to customize the party’s looks, Blood Codes (jobs), personality traits, blood type, abilities, and of course stats. Each, with the exception of looks, affect one another so its fun to see what kind of party combinations you can come up with. There is a bit of a drawback though: if you decide to change anything, it will cost gold and it gets more expensive with each change.
Auto walk- This is something new that has been popping up in more recent J-dungeon crawlers. In most games, players will be back tracking through previously explored dungeons, either to farm for experience, items, gold or to open up a previously closed off path. Auto walk allows players to travel on a set path through the dungeon automatically. This feature is pretty useful especially if you know where an unexplored area is but have to go through halls that you gotten lost in and been through. Now you won’t have to possibly double back or get lost. Most of the time I use this to make my way quickly to the entrance of the dungeon, to places that I’ve been to before to farm and to areas that I found locked doors and able to unlock them.
Ops terminated
By the numbers dungeon crawler- Like most J-dungeon crawlers developed by EXP, Inc., Operation Abyss is pretty much a by the numbers dungeon crawler. There isn’t much in terms of new features other than auto walk, so if you played one EXP, Inc. J-crawler you pretty much played them all.
Operation Abyss is a nice change of pace from the usual fantasy dungeon crawlers that I’ve played on the Vita. The story is different and interesting and auto walk makes back tracking in dungeons not as tedious. Other than that, Operation Abyss is pretty much a by the numbers dungeon crawler and doesn’t do anything really new or innovative. I am glad that the Vita is still getting support from developers, even more so that they are Japanese RPGs. With developers such as EXP, Inc. making J-dungeon crawlers like Operation Abyss, the Vita is sure to keep living on long than critics have expected.
