he Dungeon RPG has been around for a very long time. Games like Might and Magic on yesterday's Personal Computer might have cemented the sub-genre long before today's gaming environment but these days, the PlayStation Vita is where it's at from some dungeon-crawling goodness. Games such as Operation Abyss, Demon Gaze and many more have given players a lot of choice for their Dungeon-crawling needs, with mixed results. Acctil's Ray Gigant aims to take a heavy stab at the genre, but is it worth a second glance?
Well, that's very hard to say—Ray Gigant charges out of the gate with a huge number of anime and RPG tropes practically oozing all over the place. Giant catastrophe in Tokyo and abroad at the hands of giant monsters, check, central character that gets caught up but survives said catastrophe, check; how about some Living jewelry that prevented his certain demise? Check. Cast of by-the-book characters and archtypes, we’ll throw on another check. Or what about being saved by a post-apocalyptic organization looking to eradicate an enemy menace, that’s a big check right there.
And it happens to be a high school even, Double-check—it goes on and on and on.
I'm sure if layers haven’t experienced much in the line of Japanese RPGs or anime in the last, oh, 20 years, seeing all of these typical elements with fresh eyes and no previous experience might enthrall them. For the rest of us, reactions could range from single eyebrow lifting to optical nerve injuring eye rolls, and the story notwithstanding, what can we expect from the actual gameplay?
Well, game progression is what you'd expect of a modern dungeon RPG. There's a bunch of story to go through which takes place through portrait-driven exposition Visual Novel style, complete with the ability to choose how to answer some questions or approach some situations. Moving around from location to location is handled by way of menus. It's all pretty typical stuff, really; it doesn't help that none of the characters are particularly interesting, instead falling into the typical roles you'd expect of most anime-styled games whose primary function is exploring a bunch of hallways.
Actual dungeon exploration is just that too; a series of hallways and small rooms blocked off by doors at every turn. As players make their way through these corridors within areas called Megalosites, more of the map is filled in, allowing players to see where they have and haven't been. There are also several different markers that appear on the map; including the entrance, treasure spots, enemy positions, save points, and primary targets. Regular enemies come in three different flavors: blue for weak, yellow for average and red for strong. These enemies don't move, so players can move around them if they need to in an attempt to gather treasure and explore without worry of a surprise guest wrecking their day—additionally, enemies stay defeated until the dungeon is exited or finished, and will reappear when players return.
The exploration can be a complicated process even with a map, as finding the best way through the area players are in will require many return visits to the map screen. But, players can also opt for a waypoint to automatically take their characters to where they need to go without taking a wrong turn or getting lost. Super handy, especially if you're at a dead end and you want to get to an unexplored area on the other side of the map quickly.
Enemy encounters make up the rest of the dungeon crawl experience. Fighting various monsters is, if nothing else, interesting, relying on a turn-based, Action Point-centric system that allows multiple actions across all characters through a pool of shared energy.
These action points are recovered between turns, but not necessarily completely, so waiting to do additional actions might be required. Actions are mapped to the square, triangle and circle buttons with the cross button used for input confirmation.
Attacks, healing, special abilities, defense and wait commands are all able to be mapped on multiple three-button templates, known as the Three-Way Command system. It allows players to do a lot with only three buttons. Since each enemy type has a specific weakness as well, knowing which character's attack types do well against what monsters is obviously a good thing. Careful use of the party's energy is also something to take care in.
As players make their way through the Megalosite and defeat enemies, Ichiya and his companions will slowly build up towards a status called Parasite mode, in which attacks and abilities require HP to perform instead of AP.
Players can do a number on themselves if they're not careful while in Parasite, but it can be canceled out at the cost of 30 Slash Points, energy that would otherwise be used for another special super attack: Slash Beat Mode.
This is by far the coolest aspect of Ray Gigant. Entering Slash Beat Mode (or SBM, for short,) will cause Ichiya to change into a way more powerful form through what can only be described as a rhythm-action music sequence, much like the gameplay found in titles such as the Hatsune Miku: Project Diva series. It's definitely novel, if nothing else, and even has an extended cut for an even bigger enhanced attack. This is activated with the right shoulder button, and requires special Slash Energy, starting at 50 points and enhanced at 100, indicated by a gauge in the top righthand corner of the battle UI.
Slash points are awarded for defeating enemies or landing hits on Type II or I Gigants. A huge amount of damage can be unleashed in SBM, and a slash bonus is awarded for better performance and accuracy in the actual rhythm portion of the attack. Players can also use multiple inputs according to what attacks exist in a three-way set for a variety of attack types in SBM.
Defeating enemies will award players with materials in addition to the ones found at treasure markers to unlock and level up skills. Red Materia enhances stuff like attack, defense and cooking while Blue Force unlocks new abilities that can be applied to the Three-Way battle setup. Other materials allow players to reset all of the abilities and recover their forge materials as well, if they change their mind or require new abilities instead of what they have earned. Special items called Seed allow characters to be leveled up through various means. Choices must be made as to whether to apply Seed for additional HP, Power, Magic or physical defense and so forth. Additional weapons and equipment to be equipped to your party can also be obtained later down the line, complete with additional attributes for dealing with various creature types.
Then there are the huge Type I Gigants, which are skyscraper-sized behemoths that your trio of party members take on from different vantage points. These awe-inspiring battles are amazing high points to the game as a whole. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that these battles make the humdrum of the normal gameplay well worth it in the end, though they can be really drawn out and fairly cheap at times. All of the strategies that are used in regular battles apply here too, despite the difference in location of your party members.
At Ichiya's base of operations, players can also explore various locations around their facility, including classroom, the Sync room and the cafeteria. Doing so often leads to interactions with supporting cast members (and the chance to have Ichiya mack on a chick or two, as it turns out.) Speaking of the cafeteria, eating in Ray Gigant takes on an interesting function; depending on what is eaten, characters' weights will fluctuate. When leaner, they will be faster to attack, but will hit with less damage; heavier and more damage is dealt with a slower overall speed. Characters' weight can also be modified through cooking abilities in the middle of Megalosite exploration as well.
At first, all of Ray Gigant's gameplay elements don't come together especially well. It feels really mindless at first, but as other elements like Parasite, extra three-way command matrices and SBM come into play, there's a lot more to think of and strategize over. It gets mildly interesting over time, and I really love the awesome Type I fights, but everything else is just so boring and cliché. This is the same with the presentation of Ray Gigant as a whole as well; really drab for the most part, with flashes of brilliance every now and again.
Take the visuals, for example. I'll be the first to admit that the character design, on the whole, isn't my cup of tea. There's something really off-putting to most of it, but I can't really put my finger on why. The main player character looks kinda shifty and overly smug. The teacher has a ridiculous bustline that seems impossible, made worse only through her terrible fashion sense. If I really had to choose an element to the art direction, it'd be the faces, I guess—just generally off-putting.
Now, compare that to the enemy design and it's a total 180. The enemies look really cool and hyper detailed, as do the player character sprites. However, this also presents another big problem: Characters are traditionally animated in a very lavish manner, but still clash with the scaling and rotation-based enemy idle animations, which zip along at 60 frames per second. Obviously, the party sprites have nowhere near that many hand drawn frames, hence the inconsistency.
Worse still, for all of the animation put into them, none of the party's attacks are animated in the same manner; the camera goes to a first person view and super generic looking strikes are then superimposed on the enemy sprites—Weak.
But then, SBM goes into full-blown anime mode with a fully animated sequence which, once again, degenerates to a first person view and like, 60 hits on the enemy in question.
There are some pretty big inconsistencies with sound too. While there are definitely a good number of standout tunes within Ray Gigant, there are twice as many questionable ones that really don't fit the bill. Especially around the base, the BGM selection is totally Cheetos. You know, dangerously cheesy. A lot of the voice overs are delivered in a fairly good manner as well, but some, like when you're evolving a party member are downright irritating, just coming off as a rushed, nonsensical mumble.
Ray Gigant is a game that I really wish I liked more, I mean, there's a lot here to like, after all... it's just that it's executed in lazy, boring ways that will make it hard for a lot of people to actually see it to the end. If you can't live without another Dungeon RPG to play and you've already tackled everything else out there, Ray Gigant is still worth a glance at the very least. But it's definitely going to test a lot of the more casual RPG players' patience.
