In the near future of Tokyo hazard cases are on the rise and only an elite team of teenagers with attitude can put a stop to it. But since the Power Rangers are busy in Angel Grove, we'll instead join up with Alice Mifune, teenage commander of the Xth (pronounced "zith") Squad - an elite paramilitary force of magitek-enabled high school kids - to save the day!
I'll start with the game's good side. One thing you may know about me is that I love character customization. Give me character customization - or even better, character creation - and I can overlook almost any number of flaws in your game. It's what attracted me to City of Heroes, Soul Calibur, Monster Hunter... hell, it's what convinced me to stick with Etrian Odyssey until I learned to love that series on its own merits, and Etrian Odyssey's character creation isn't even that good.
This is where Operation Abyss puts its best foot forward and is probably the game's one saving grace. There are two options to choose from. The first is Basic mode which gives you a selection of a dozen or so fairly cool character portraits to choose from. Basic mode sucks. The second, much better mode is Classic, which is just a straight up paper doll where you can pick all your own features, and equipment actually changes your appearance in game. Unfortunately this does mean you can end up looking like a colorblind clown if you pick all your equipment based only on its stats, but Abyss also gives you an easy way around that, with the ability to reskin any piece of equipment by converting it into source code.
All of that said, if you don't happen to share the same obsession with character creation that I do, then this game really won't have a whole lot for you.
Operation Abyss is actually a remake of Experience Inc's first two games ever - Generation Xth: Code Hazard, and Generation Xth: Code Breaker - and it definitely shows. The game is easily their least polished work.
The writing is passable. It's as goofy as you probably expect from a Dungeon RPG with some bizarre typos, but it's generally competent with likeable characters and plot twists you'll only see coming from most of one mile away.
Gameplay is also passable, in that it more or less works. Combat is boring with very few interesting strategic avenues to explore. The equipment developing system is interesting but also poorly explained. There's no real point to changing classes (or rather, Blood Codes) since no skills or spells carry over... in fact, you're kind of punished for changing class since you have to restart at level 1 whenever you do and you don't get to re-allocate your stats, meaning that if you specced for a Wizard then decided you wanted to be a Conjurer... well, yeah, you're gonna suck.
The game is also pretty short. This is alleviated somewhat by it being the first two games put together. If I had played the original Generation Xth and it was over as fast as the first half of this game, I'd have been pissed.
The environments are where they really dropped the ball. Even by DRPG standards these envrionments are lame with the vast majority of them all being basically the same design with the colors changed. Suffice to say, if "ruined skyscraper", "dank sewer", "haunted hospital", and "refugee shanty town" sound like very aesthetically diverse locales to you... then you clearly did not do the graphic design for this game. (Also there might be something wrong with you.)
As much fun as I did have with this game, I just can not honestly reccomend it. If you want to check out this developer, one of their later games will be a much better Experience. (Pun definitely intended.) I personally suggest trying Stranger of Sword City instead.
KR Rating: [2] BAD
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