The Dark Souls of anime boobs.
The game has a lot of similarities with God Eater, and maybe even some connections, and it starts with the character creator. I felt the character creator was pretty decent, and it lets you create the edgiest anime character this side of the sun. Just like with God Eater, while you play as the main character, and you do have special anime powers the other characters do not have, your character is a boring mute hero, and it's the supporting cast that carry the game. Back with God Eater I complained about the fanservice.... and they did it again. Most of the female characters look downright ridiculous, even Mia, who is cute as a button, has her share of fanservicey camera angles when she is introduced. And just like with God Eater, you have a mysterious white haired-girl wearing tattered clothes, although this one has massive boobs, like most of the girls in this game. And, once again, just like in God Eater, many of the monsters and enemies have giant breasts just because. It's definitely not an art direction that everyone will enjoy.
There's some plot about you and your team being Revenants, which are basically Vampires, but it doesn't matter much in the gist of things, and you are trying to find ways to deal with the Thirst(tm). The game's setting is quite bleak and tragic, which is something I really liked. That said... a large part of the story is told through flashbacks, which is OK, but most of these play out as forced walking sections, in which you walk through dimly lit static scenes and here voices. It feels very low budget, and it succeeded in making me lose my interest in the plot. Eventually I started skipping them because they became so boring. Just give me traditional cutscenes, heck, I'd rather have static cut-outs speaking that I can read at my own leisure and don't have to slowly walk through these scenes.
As for the rest of the game... You know the deal, stamina bar that governs your attack, defense, rolls, etc, defeat enemies to get Haze(Souls) which you can then use to level up or enhance your equipment, dying means losing your Haze unless you get to the spot where you died and retrieve it, dying again without getting to your Haze means losing it all, and the there are Mistle plants that behave just like Bonfires, healing you completely, restocking your healing supply, respawning every slain enemy and allowing you to teleport to any other Mistle. You can't pause the game, and there's a crunchy backstab move too. In other words, it's Dark Souls, but anime.
That said, there's one key difference that makes it more accessible, the very same difference that God Eater had in comparison with Monster Hunter: AI Allies. In this game you can take an AI ally with you. I like this feature, you can take one out of six different NPCs with you, and they are quite decent, heck, they can revive you if you die if they are fast enough. And, at least, they'll take some aggro away from you. From what I read, this game is easier than your average Souls clone if you play with an NPC ally, but harder if you don't, as the game is balanced around having an AI ally with you.
In the game you have two main pieces of equipment: A weapon and a Veil. Veils take care of your defense and your Drain Attack, an attack you can use by holding down X or by performing a backstab. They are called drain attack because they drain Ichor towards your reserves and increase the maximum amount of Ichor you can carry... until you rest at a Mistle plant or die. Ichor is used to perform your special abilities. You can have up to 8 abilities equipped, plus four passives, and these are performed by holding down R2 and pressing any face button or any direction on the Dpad. Besides your equipment, you can also equip a Blood Code, which is pretty much your class, as they change your base stats as well as your skillset.... that said, most abilities can be mastered, by defeating enemies while having them equipped, and once mastered you can equip them on any class, adding a lot of versatility to the game. That said, unlocking abilities costs Haze as well!
As I stated before, the game is rather easy as long as you do things right. About a third into the game I came to the Cathedral, and I was completely destroyed. I was doing minuscule damage, and I almost dropped the game. Frustrated, I searched 'Cathedral of the Lost difficulty spike' to feel better about myself and there was this comment saying how the game expected you to have a fully upgraded weapon. I had been neglecting those upgrades since I didn't want to invest Haze on weapons I would drop after I found something better... well, turns out there aren't many weapons, and that sword I was using I could've very well taken it to the end of the game. I also learned that I was using Veils wrong. I thought better defense numbers meant it was better, but Veils have stat scaling, so I was hampering my damage output. So I changed my veil, upgraded my sword and veil and voilah! The game became easy again.
Just like with God Eater, I think that this is the perfect entry-level game into the Souls genre. The addition of an NPC ally adds accessibility, and if you think that's too cheap, just go ahead by yourself and torture yourself, your call. The game is as anime as it can get, which can be a point of contention for some people, but I didn't mind it too much, and I think that fanservice aside, the art direction is pretty good. And very, VERY edgy. Overall, it was fun, I liked it a lot.
8.0
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