Originally posted June 20th 2015 on the Seafoam Gaming forums

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Thanks to NIS America for the review code.

Title: Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy

System: Playstation Vita/Playstation TV

Price: $39.99

Release date: 6/9/2015

The main game/story

In this dungeon-crawling RPG adventure, you take control of an organization investigating the rise of a mysterious group of enemies called “Variants,” which have been causing problems around Japan, having mysteriously appeared out of nowhere! Pretty standard first person dungeon crawling, but with lots of customization to mess around with.

Graphics

Most of the detail that you’ll see from this game comes from the 2D artwork that takes up the majority of the game’s visuals during important conversations and enemy battles, which look really nice thanks to an anime art style that fits quite well. Unfortunately the dungeons themselves look rather bland with basic 3D environments, though since the game is from a first person perspective, it isn’t nearly as bad it could have been, especially with the high quality of the 2D artwork.

Music and Sound:

A rather ominous soundtrack, thanks to the mysterious nature of the game’s main missions. It fits the mood rather well, and the other themes in the game sound really good, such as the theme inside headquarters. There’s even voice acting in this game, and it gets the job done fairly well! In the character creator, you can even choose between many voice options to fit them. Despite the lack of Japanese voices (Which I assume was because only one language track could fit on the cart and english was the more accessible option) it still sounds fairly good overall.

Gameplay

For the most part you’ll be taking on missions and getting closer to discovering the mysterious secrets of the Variants, in the form of first person dungeon crawling. Similar to Etrian Odyssey in some ways, you move around in a first person perspective, hoping to find and complete the objective at task while fighting monsters along the way. The battle system seems very simple, using your equipped team you choose from a list of commands and battle it out!

It’s not entirely simple, of course, due to the customization options that can determine which abilities your custom characters can gain, which will lead to some squads you set up having their own pros and cons depending on their blood code (This game’s version of a “class” in other RPGs). You can even combine certain items together to make better ones, depending on what you find in your sub-disk, which can really help you out in tough battle.

To be honest, sometimes the huge amount of customization overwhelmed me a bit. With so much possibilities and options to choose from, I decided to mix a few characters I made with a few default characters used in the story, which I found helps quite a lot, so if you aren’t into creating your own characters you can just use the ones the story gives you and be on your way!

Conclusion

In conclusion, Operation Abyss is a decent dungeon crawling experience. While there are a lot of options to mess around with in customization, trophies to discover and missions to go on, the fact that it’s a pretty basic and takes a while to get used to makes this hard to recommend for those hoping for a revolutionary experience. Still, if you are looking for a decent RPG to play through on the go, (Or on the big screen with the Playstation TV) Operation Abyss should do just fine.

I give Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy a 7 out of 10.

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