Abyss Odyssey - Review
Originally published July 2016Abyss Odyssey is a short but entertaining dungeon crawler made by ACE team, the developers behind such weird cult favorites like Rock of Ages and Zeno Clash. With these particular developers, I've come to expect something bizarre, if not at the very least unique. Abyss Odyssey, surprisingly, does not quite fall into either category and ends up standing out a bit from the rest of ACE team's work in the realm of "normal," but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it.
Despite how both words in the name would indicate that Abyss Odyssey is extremely long, I managed to "beat" it the same day I started playing it. Then I beat it again, and again. It's an "endless" dungeon crawler without actually being endless. In my brief time with the game, I was able to sort out the various strengths and weaknesses and reasons as to why the game is worth a cheap purchase, but not something that will keep you involved.
Image: ACE Team
The Short of It
Pros
Stylish art immediately catches the eye
Quality voice work and writing
Surprisingly deep background story, despite there not being much material
Surprisingly deep mechanics in the same way Super Smash Bros works
Cons
Music only has one or two good tracks
Combat is a little too floaty and lacks precision
Platforming and combat can be unresponsive at times; you end up missing jumps or doing the wrong attack for no reason
Once you've figured out the mechanics and played through a full round, there's not much else to see
Repetitive
The Rest of It
Story
I decided to break up this Q&D review formula a bit to talk about the main aspects of it separately, which will probably eliminate the "Quick" part of it.
The story of Abyss Odyssey is actually quite interesting, from a conceptual perspective. A catastrophic earthquake has occurred somewhere in Europe during the early Industrial Revolution era. From the gaping chasm in the earth, monsters have come pouring out like the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia. As the local military forces struggle to combat the mystical creatures, your character suddenly appears to help ward them off and does a good job until a cave-in crushes her. The end.
Image: ACE Team
I kid. She is indeed crushed but is suddenly revived at a checkpoint statue, from which she reveals her identity and the source of the problem. A warlock of unspeakable power is conjuring creatures at the bottom of the abyss, however, he is doing so because he is eternally asleep and the monsters are creatures of his dreams. His subconscious is sending the creatures to the surface and, ironically enough, it is also sending the hero characters you can control to defeat them. The reasoning behind your character's abilities and their immortality is that they are just fabrications of the warlock's subconscious as well.
It's a neat concept that is further embellished as you discover various journal entries of the warlock that tell of his descent into madness and eternal slumber. The journal entries are genuinely interesting and well-written. It's just a shame there still isn't much story there to dig into. I would gladly read a novelization of Abyss Odyssey's lore if it had the same level of quality.
Image: ACE Team
And that's pretty much it. Once you play through a dungeon, beat the warlock in a surprisingly easy, but weird, fight, you get a small pat on the back, and the game starts over again. You can keep playing over and over, going through multiple paths to the same inevitable destination, but the story won't grow or change by much. Perhaps it's for the best, especially if all they had was just a good premise and no other story to tell. It's better to not try to tell a story that isn't there than to force a bad one upon us. Still, you expect a lot more from a game called Abyss Odyssey.
Gameplay
I had heard very little about Abyss Odyssey, prior to playing it, other than it being a difficult rogue-like, endless dungeon crawler. Neither of which is entirely true. I only completely failed one time, and when I did, I certainly had to return to the starting point with less of my equipment, much like a rogue-like game. However, after that first death, I never completely lost again and when I beat the final boss, I kept all my gear and upgrades for the next run.
Keeping your gear and leveling up pretty much eliminates the rouge-like qualities of the game. I'd also say that it's not much of an endless dungeon crawler when there's a distinct end to it; you're just expected to play through it multiple times. To make it "endless" the levels are procedurally-generated, meaning that each stage is created by the game, on the spot, every time you show up, so it's always different. That adds a small amount of randomness and unpredictability. However, all the areas end up using similar design patterns that make the procedural dungeon stuff not matter much.
Image: ACE Team
What's interesting about the gameplay is how Abyss Odyssey controls. I say "interesting" because I wouldn't say I actually enjoyed the way the game controls, but it certainly caught my attention. Have you ever played the single-player adventure mode of Super Smash Bros. and wanted more? Look no further because Abyss Odyssey has an identical control scheme!
If you're a Smash fan and could hook up a GameCube controller to play this, you'd probably feel right at home. It has the same button layout with two attack buttons of varying strengths that are dependent upon the directions in which you point the analog stick. You can block with a shield that slowly ticks down and can be shattered. You can roll or throw your opponent while blocking. The jumps are really floaty. It's as though the developers in ACE wanted to make a Smash Bros game but could only do the part that people aren't that interested in.
Image: ACE Team
They managed to inject a little creativity into the combat by adding a small combo system that allows you to cancel into attacks, like a fighting game, and juggle your opponents. You can also adjust your heavy attacks to have small perks attached to them like extra damage, or more priority. You can even swap out the heavy attacks for different ones to add a little flair to the combat or chain different attacks in a combo.
There's also a fair amount of loot to help you traverse the dungeon and eliminate the scores of enemies. You can even capture and control certain enemies that have their own sets of unique skills as well. If you play enough, you'll have a roster of characters with their own moves and you'll wonder why they just didn't make a full Smash Bros. game.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Abyss Odyssey is an interesting game that has some great story concepts, cool art, and serviceable combat. If you enjoy Super Smash Bros., you'll likely feel comfortable picking it up. However, since it's not actually a fighting game and you're only playing the part of Smash Bros. that's tacked on to add value, it doesn't give much reason to keep playing after the first couple of runs. The short amount of time I spent with it was satisfying enough, but there's not enough content here to make me keep coming back. Pick it up for pennies and enjoy it between your bigger, more involved games.
Image: ACE Team