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Introduction...

Experience Inc. returns to the PlayStation Vita to deliver yet another beautiful dungeon crawler game (DRPG). Going by the look of this game, you could say that it looks a lot like Demon Gaze and it shows through it's art style and dungeon design. The character designs are wonderful as well, Just like with Demon Gaze, I really love how each of the characters in this game all look different from one another and are all presented so uniquely and full of life. I don't usually play many dungeon crawlers. In fact, just last year I've only paid for and played two dungeon crawlers, Demon Gaze and Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth. In comparison to those two games, this one is a bit similar.

In the near future of Tokyo....

Our story beings in the near future city of Tokyo. The game quickly throws you into the story right away and explains that the city is under attack from these genetically engineered monsters; Variants. Not just that but the emergence of portals leading to a mysterious dimension called the Abyss. It's because of this, the government has established the Code Physics Agency to investigate these mysterious phenomena, so it's up to this unique group known as the Xth Squad to investigate the mystery behind the Abyss and defeat whoever is behind it all.

The game starts off right away with having your character wake up at the sight of severed and bloodied bodies. Upon realizing this, a hooded man encounters your character and tells you that "You've been kidnapped" when all of a sudden, Variants attack! Trusting the hooded man, you set off to escape the evil!

Gameplay wise...

Similar to its predecessor, Demon Gaze, you'll be spending a lot of time in dungeons taking on missions. Now dungeons are a bit on the "boring" side, they don't really have much going for them besides the character notifications. The game also doesn't indicate hidden areas or points of interest very well. This is a 40+ hour game so after seeing the same dungeon again and again, it grows a bit tedious. 

What the game does well is customization. There is a lot of depth put into the game that makes customizing each of your team-mates very interesting. Each of the individual characters that players can create have their own unique stats and thanks to the customization, players can create godlike characters and absolutely destroy enemies left and right in dungeons. Seriously. I do wish each character played a role in the story similar to other JRPGs, every created character in this game isn't really engaging. I know this is due to the generated nature of the game but it still makes each individual character boring in some way.

Unlike Demon Gaze, however, this game is a bit on the easy side. Now players can go back to their base whenever they want giving them the chance to level up and sort through their inventory to come back and power through that dungeon yet again. Another feature missing is the rent that players of Demon Gaze constantly had to worry about. These could be improvements for a lot of other people, but as for me, I actually liked those features because it presented some sort of challenge to Demon Gaze. Thanks to this, the game doesn't penalize you at every turn but thus loses its edge at the same time.

Conclusion...

Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy is a fine dungeon crawler for the Vita. It quickly throws you into the story and explains its mechanics very well. However, compared to Demon Gaze, it's a bit on the easy side and because of that I think Demon Gaze is probably the better game of the two. Of course, that's just my opinion! Give the game a whirl yourself and see what it's all about.