'This is an extremely artistic game, with beautiful, Art Nouveau-style characters and detailed enemies and backgrounds.' Roguelike games are pretty far out of my gameplay norm – particularly action roguelikes. I tend more toward turn-based strategy or hack & slash games. And yet, I always seem to find roguelikes hard to put down!
![]()
Whenever I start one, I wonder if I'm just getting lucky, and starting Abyss Odyssey: Extended Dream Edition was no exception to that rule. Now that I'm done with it, I think I got lucky yet again, because I'm writing the review and still thinking about going back for one more game.Abyss Odyssey: Extended Dream Edition is the 2015 PS4 port of 2014's Abyss Odyssey. In it, you play as one of three characters delving down into an underground dungeon to reach a sleeping warlock whose dreams have created the dungeon, the monsters that inhabit it, and even the player characters.
But whether your mission is to kill him or just wake him up is a question that's up for debate when you head down. There's not a lot to the story, but the warlock's history is fleshed out nicely by his journal pages, which enemies occasionally drop.The three playable characters are balanced well enough that they all have advantages over each other, but the last of them you unlock is likely the best overall, because her weapon has a long reach and does the most damage at the beginning of the game. As you play with each character, they level up and learn special attacks that they retain from game to game. You can find or purchase weapons and accessories that improve their damage output, add effects like freezing or poison, or help protect you from enemy attacks, but these accessories are lost when you die.Well.
Characters Calypso Calypso is an immortal goddess who holds Odysseus prisoner for seven years on the island where she lives and forces him to be her lover. Calypso loves Odysseus and wants to make him immortal so he can stay with her and be her husband forever, even though she understands that he doesn’t love her back and wants to return to.
I say 'you,' but Abyss Odyssey features an interesting mechanic related to player death. It turns out that you're not the only one exploring the dungeon! The government has also sent soldiers down to try their luck at reaching the warlock. They occasionally appear when you encounter enemies, and when you die as one of the main characters, a soldier steps in to rescue them.
From that point, you play as that soldier, who is weaker than the main characters, but not defenseless. If you die as the soldier, it's game over, but if you can reach one of the shrines scattered throughout the game before that happens, the shrine revives your original character and you can go back to kicking tail.
When I started out, I did not do especially well in combat, but that second chance kept me coming back for more.Unfortunately, I never got to the point where I was good enough at combat to not need that second chance. I'm willing to take some of the blame for that, but part of it is due to the controls, which feel consistently imprecise. The game thinks of itself as having controls like a fighting game, where you can cancel out of your normal attacks into a special attack by pressing the button at the right time, and pointing the analog stick in different directions while pressing the buttons causes you to execute different attacks. But I mostly found myself flailing about and mashing buttons, because I couldn't time things well enough to do anything more sophisticated than that. I never got the hang of dodging and blocking, either. That said, I have to give the game credit for the way it uses the Vita in remote play. The middle of the touch screen acts like the controller's touchpad, the top corners of the screen are L2 and R2, the bottom corners are L3 and R3, and the back touchpad goes completely unused.
I play a lot of Diablo 3 using my Vita, which uses the back touchpad for L/R 2 and 3, and I feel like Abyss Odyssey's system works much better than that does.The one area where Abyss Odyssey truly stands out is in its visuals. This is an extremely artistic game, with beautiful, Art Nouveau-style characters and detailed enemies and backgrounds. The exact layout of the dungeon changes each time you play, but the 'rooms' are made of a relatively limited set of types. More variety is always nice, but this is truly a case of quality over quantity, because although there aren't a huge number of room types, the ones that exist are gorgeous.This Extended Dream Edition port of Abyss Odyssey offers a new 'Nightmare' difficulty and competitive multiplayer, which makes a lot of sense based on the way it thinks of its controls, but unless you really get into that scene, you will likely be finished playing it in a very short period of time. For me, it only took a few days of casual play during my free time.
Still, it's only $14.99 as of this writing, so if you like roguelikes with quick combat or truly appreciate games with great art, those few hours may be worth the purchase price to you.© 2015 Atlus, ACE Team. All rights reserved. © 1998—2020 RPGFan Media, LLC.
![]()
. Summary: Its a never-ending dream. Fall into the dream world of Abyss Odyssey-this time on PlayStation4 system! With the addition of an online PvP mode, as well as upgraded graphics and an overall smoother play experience, PlayStation4 system owners will truly see the best version of this Its a never-ending dream. Fall into the dream world of Abyss Odyssey-this time on PlayStation4 system!
With the addition of an online PvP mode, as well as upgraded graphics and an overall smoother play experience, PlayStation4 system owners will truly see the best version of this visually stunning action adventure game! From indie Chilean developer ACE Team comes Abyss Odyssey, an Art Nouveau-styled, side-scrolling action adventure game featuring a complex fighting engine in procedurally generated levels that destine its three warriors to battle for an eternity. Chain your attack and release a flurry of blows in order to survive what lies beneath.
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 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 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 th.
![]() Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2023
Categories |