GAF, should I get this or Oreshika? Can anyone who has played Oreshika and Demon Gaze/Operation Abyss elaborate on which is the better option?
My only experience with dungeon crawlers is Unchained Blades, which I thought was good, not great.
Well, they are very different types of games. Operation Abyss is a bit simpler to describe - it's a mostly straightforward first-person dungeon crawler, like Demon Gaze. While I'm not the most familiar person with this genre (although I have played a handful of games within it), Operation Abyss is seemingly more firmly rooted in a Wizardy / Thac0 style than Demon Gaze was. As for the actual dungeon-crawling aspect of this dungeon crawler, you move around a grid step-by-step with a first person viewpoint. In these dungeons you can find items lying around, switches to open paths and doors, and of course enemies to battle. There are both random encounters and enemy icons on the map that will initiate encounters as well.
Battles are also in first person, and your party can be arranged into a front and back row. Each class has different equipment types they are allowed to wield, as well as special abilities that can be used to deal damage or bolster your team. These aspects of the combat are fairly typical and don’t really need any more explanation than that. The basic set up is satisfactory and allows for a fair bit of customization in how you pick classes and roles to build your team.
Operation Abyss's hook is the modern/futuristic setting and artstyle. Mechanically speaking there is a loot system in which you can get weapons/armor, pieces of weapons/armor, and pieces to enhance weapons/armor. It's not very complex, but still satisfying in allowing yourself to upgrade equipment (I like it more than Demon Gaze's gem/portal system for equipment which was a bit too easy to exploit.) Maps are grids that fill out as you traverse them. It's fun to navigate these mazes to find secrets, stronger monsters to kill, etc.
Seems like quite a few people simply have a distaste for first person crawling, battles, so be aware that most of the game you'll be looking down hallways and fighting 2D demon sprites with your character-face icons.
Here's a screenshot after I beat a boss pretty handily:
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Oreshika on the other hand is very unique, it's difficult to compare to other games (or even subgenres) because it's unalike most things. In fact, many of the game's systems are not initially intuitive, even for RPG veterans - it takes some getting used to. (It's not really a 'dungeon crawler', or at least that's only a very partial label). The most surface-level description of Oreshika: Tainted Bloodlines is that it is a 'Turn-Based JRPG'. Well, that's true, but there are many other crucial elements to the game architecture that make it more unique and interesting than such a description implies. In fact, the direct battle system is probably least interesting part of the game. Combat is not overly ornate or complex but it's satisfactory and gets the job done. You have to balance your characters, their trades, and abilities, in order to overcome foes, but most of the actual 'gameplay' really lies outside of battle.
Dungeons are a good example of this - most JRPGs have dungeon progression done in sequence. You enter and complete the first one, and then you head to the second, and so on. Oreshika switches this up a bit. There are about eight or so main dungeons in the game, but the order in which they become available to you changes from player to player. Not only that, but each dungeon has 4 slightly different possible layouts, and these can change mid game depending on when you enter it. While they are not really ‘randomly generated’, this can make traversing them a little confusing as paths can change up on you from one visit to the next. You kinda do dungeons 'in-parallel' rather than the more typical 'in-series'. Dungeons cannot be fully explored upon the first visit. Many paths are closed off by colored padlocks, and require the corresponding colored key to open new paths and unlock shortcuts. Keys are not necessarily found in the same dungeon, rather, keys are ubiquitous and are probably hiding somewhere else. For example, you might find the Green Key hidden away at the end of the 5th dungeon you dive into, which will open up any Green Lock in any of the other dungeons, opening up new paths.
As an additional note, time passes are you explore dungeons, so finding shortcuts isn’t just a mere convenience, it has a more direct impact on how far into them you can traverse in any certain amount of time. In a practical sense, this means later in the game, it is easier to make your way to the rear portions of the labyrinths to find stronger oni and more equipment and EXP.
The game does not give you a map either. You have to keep things straight in your head, or do as I did, draw your own maps (as in, literally draw them with pen and paper).
No seriously I drew miy own maps
Right from the get-go Oreshika dumps a bunch of information at the player detailing the many elements found in the game. Everything is divided into months, and each month you can only perform certain actions that pass time into the next month, and age your party characters ever so closer to death. There are decisions to be made how the player spends each month and how they want to step closer to the ultimate goal. As you might expect, this is a little frustrating – at first anyway. Luckily you get some help in the form of a weasel-girl, Kochin. She's pretty helpful, and literally can make decisions for you if you have choice-paralysis.
Well, there are a few storyline bosses you have to defeat in sequence in order to unlock more dungeons and ultimately progress to the game’s finale. However, any individual character can only power up so much before they reach ‘old age’ and loss of life. This is where Unions come into play, and those characters can pass on their traits to the next generation. Additionally, as the player progresses, they are given access to stronger gods, which in turns results in stronger clan members. This trait passage system does result in a gameplay loop that is a little repetitive. You have to continually make sure your characters are up to snuff and that you have enough Devotion to mate them with the Gods before they perish, and then do that for each generation of your party.
There are many subsystems in place, and keeping track of all the possible things you can do is admittedly a little overwhelming. You can travel into dungeons to fight oni and onigami to strengthen your characters or to find new skills and equipment. You can invest in your town to improve its shops and shrines. You can take part in festivals and you can travel to other lands to challenge other clans. You can have your older clan members train the younger ones, and of course you can perform the Rite of Union to give birth to more clan members. Oreshika is a multifaceted, dense game and it’s not one to ease into. There are a couple of annoyances that arise from the time passing systems but I ended up really liking it - largely because of how fresh it felt.
Oh, the direct story isn't very good though, but the bigger picture narrative (a clan trying to restore their honor) permeates the tone throughout the game.