Review #806: Ray Gigant

 Does wonders for my gigantphobia.

 Part anime, part visual novel, part Evangelion and part first-person dungeon crawler, that's Ray Gigant in a nutshell. This is one of those games that not many people talk about, heck, there are no guides you can reference and discussion on both GameFaqs and Steam is pretty much dead.

 The game is made up of 19 chapter, in a world were giant enemies, Gigants, have appeared. The only people fit to fight them are teenagers, because Japan, and they come in two varieties: Originals and copies. The originals are the three chosen by the Yorigami, gods in artifact form, Ichiya, Kyle and Nil. Copies are other teens that exhibit the strength to wield weaker copies of the Yorigamis. The first six chapters you'll play as Ichiya, as he adapts to his school life as a Gigant exterminator. The next six you play as Kyle and his group of pricks, while Ichiya and his buddies take a supportive role as hostages. This was the part of the game I hated the most, because Kyle and his friends are incredibly unlikeable and I couldn't wait for this chapter to end, although his party becomes a bit more tolerable by the end. The next four chapters follow Nil and her island life with her sisters, and the reason her part is so short is probably because she is a mage and thus better suited in a support role. The next three chapters have Ichiya, Kyle and Nil, y'know, the guys on the game's cover, team up in order to fight Gigants. Overall, the story is not bad, but it's pretty forgettable. It has a few Evangelion tropes here and there but they do their own thing with them. All the story bits are very visual novel-like, lots of reading, decisions that amount to nothing and anime portraits galore. The game takes about 20 hours to complete, and upon completion you unlock God Mode, New Game+, Hard Mode and... you also unlock a new boss and ending for New Game+. I liked the story enough to want to see it, but not enough to want to play through the game again, sadly, since nobody knows this game there's no Youtube videos covering the extra bit. Lame!

 When characters stop talking you'll be able to enter a dungeon. For the most part, the game is divided into pairs of chapters: The first chapter you'll go through a multi-leveled dungeon and fight a smaller, Gigant Type-II enemy, and the next chapter you'll enter a short dimensional rift-dungeon and then fight a proper giant Gigant Type-I enemy. Dungeons start off simple enough, but by the end there will be one-way corridors, ladders that go up and down, teleporters and hidden walls. The latter are particularly annoying because some of them are needed to progress, and there are no hints besides leveling up a characters Technique skill enough. For the most part I was able to use my intuition and find them by myself, but still. The final dungeon is incredibly bad, because it mixes every single type of trap and annoyance, in addition to a few floors in which you can't track your position on the map. So... yeah, I'd say most of the game is quite fair, but the Final Dungeon was more annoying than anything

 Random encounters are not random encounters, because you can see them on the map and they remain static. They come in three colors: Blue, Yellow and Red, signifying their AP Cost, blue means its halved, yellow is normal and red is double the cost. AP is what governs your actions. Each party member can take up to five different actions per turn, however, they all share the same 100-max AP pool. AP can be regained depending on which actions the enemies did on their turn, as well as when your characters use the Wait command, which can only be done once per turn. Your HP is restored to full after each fight, but you can only revive characters by exiting the dungeon. Talking about HP, there's Parasite Mode to contend with. Whenever a battle goes on for more than one round you'll build your drive by 10%, once it's full your attacks will no longer cost AP but will start costing HP. This builds over different encounters too, and there are three ways to bring it down: Entering Parasite Mode, Using Slash Beat Mode or using a Skill Seed. Once all three main characters converge you'll be able to freely enter Parasite Mode at will with the L button. Slash Beat Mode is the final ability which can be used when your SP is at 50 or at 100. SP builds by 1 after each fight or by action taken during boss fights, you can the press the R button to enter a rhythm minigame mode in order to deal tons of damage.

 At first you can only have 3 different battle skills per character, but after the first chapter you'll be able to have 2 sets of three different skills. One skill has to deal damage, one has to be defensive and the other one can be anything you like. There's a decent variety of skills, different elements and enemy types(Undead, Aquatic, Flying) to contend with, although having a basic, non-elemental attack command is always useful... as long as your equipped weapon isn't weak against a certain type. It sounds very deep, but the game is very easy. On another note, you do not need to waste resources on your non-Yorigami party members, because they won't be selectable after Ichiya, Kyle and Nil join up. For Ichiya, I beat his chapters just fine, with Kyle I had to give a few level ups to his pal, Conner, in order to tank some hits and heal the party with scones during his final battle, and as for Nil... I didn't need to level up the others. That said, you could probably have an easier time if you leveled up the other party members, I just didn't feel like it was worth it.

 Leveling up and getting equipment is very weird. After each battle you'll get Materia, Breed and maybe Force. Materias are used to level up a characters item box, be it their weapon, armor or item(which works as a limitless battle skill) boxes, then you can use a Breed on that item box to get an equipment piece or item that matches the box's level. Force is a bit rarer and is used to unlock skills, both passive as well as battle skills. The last kind of item are the Seeds, which can be found exclusively on item boxes or from bosses, and these are used to level up a character in either: Power(Health, defense and strength), Magic(Magic defense and power) and Technique(Speed and... hidden wall hints). At first every character caps at level 15, but you'll unlock level 99 during the final chapters, not that is necessary. I had Kyle and Nil at a comfortable level 40 and 30, while I had Ichiya with 70 levels on Power, wrecking and decimating everything. I level up the other characters' boxes up to level 20, but kept Ichiya's beyond level 40 and that was enough to beat the game quite comfortably.

 While animation during battles is quite minimal, the sprites are quite gorgeous, so even though it's barely animated it still looks very good. The static character portraits look quite pleasant as well. That said, when you use Slash Beat Mode you'll get a very brief, but very good looking anime cutscene in which your Yorigami turns into their Kamibito form. On the other hand, the dungeons are very rudimentary and reuse a lot of assets, which makes them feel like an afterthought.

 I'd say Ray Gigant is a decent way to pass the time when you've nothing better to play. The story is decent enough to keep you interested and the gameplay is quite serviceable. That said, it's understandable why the game never managed to get a following, from its mostly digital release(Unless you got your LGR copy, like myself) to its more niche visual novely appeal.
 6.5 out of 10