Developer: Experience Inc.
Publisher: Acttil
Reviewed on PlayStation Vita
The Vita has had no shortage of dungeon crawler RPGs in the past few years. Following the recent release of Stranger of Sword City, yet another ‘DRPG’ from Experience, and Severed, a dungeon crawler from Drinkbox, comes Ray Gigant. It is a bit different from other DRPGs that I’ve seen. Rather than using the common class and party systems typical to the genre, this title decides to mix in several visual novel elements alongside the usual first-person dungeon exploration.
The game takes place in a fictional, future version of Tokyo that has been left in ruins due to the invasion of space aliens called Gigants. With Earth largely laid to waste, on the break of complete destruction, the game’s primary character, Ichiya Amakaze, was finally able to defeat a Gigant with a mysterious power called Yorigami. However, at the same time, the uncontrollable nature of the power also accidentally destroyed an entire city, leaving the characters of the game to figure out how to handle this ability. The game is split into three separate chapters, each focusing on a separate protagonist, Ichiya Amakaze, Kyle Griffin, and Nil Phineas. Each protagonist teams up with two other side characters during their side of the story. Ichiya teams up with two characters named Mana Isano and Kazuomi Miwa.
As I played Ray Gigant, I couldn’t help but feel like I was reading a manga with visual novel like conversations and because of the game’s art style. A majority of the gameplay takes place fighting in dungeon and killing monsters. Within a decent sized dungeon, there were times I’d spend about 20 minutes or more exploring. There are no limits on how attempts you can take to complete the dungeons; I found some of them lacking in excitement and it was dull exploring throughout the areas because after a while the layouts felt copy and pasted from earlier parts.
While exploring dungeons, like in any RPG, you’ll run into enemies. You will encounter two type of enemy markers as there no random encounter battles. One marker is blue, indicating that the fights will be easier to battle through. Then there is the red marker that indicates that the battle will be hard. During combat you will have three party members to execute commands like attacking, healing, guarding, or casting spells. Each action eats up your AP gauge. Determining which color enemies you choose to engage makes a difference as the blue maker enemies eat up less AP while the red marker enemies eat up double AP. This can make your battles more difficult if you don’t manage your skills right as each skill requires an exact amount AP to execute.
Combat in Ray Gigant slowly eases you into learning the mechanics of the game. It takes too long to learn since you slowly gain all your combat functions gradually until you reach the first major boss battle. One of the key components to combat is Slash Mode. Once you fill another separate gauge call SP, you’re able to activate Slash Mode. This mode add some excitement to combat: upon activation a mini rhythm game begins. A short anime clip is shown and new music will begin playing in the background. As the music plays, your goal is to hit the scrolling red cross notes once they reach top, side, and bottom of the screen. The more you’re in tune to beat of the music, the more powerful your character becomes. Once it’s over you transform into a overpowered beast and dominate enemies with no problems.
The Ray Gigant soundtrack is great. I enjoy listening to the catchy upbeat tunes as I read through the banter between characters. The Slash beat themes are jazzy with a lot of saxophone and brass-like instrumentation. Kyle’s music is more techno styled while Nil’s music is softer, utilizing piano and strings. I found myself dancing or tapping along the music. Experience definitely nailed it when it comes to the soundtrack.
Ray Gigant is a mix of dungeon exploration and a sub par manga like visual novel. If you’re a first timer playing a DRPG this a good place to start as its not too challenging as other DRPG, mainly due to Slash Mode. The dungeons are fairly easily to navigate through, although they can be repetitive from time to time. The game failed to hold my interest throughout my play through. It could’ve used a lot more content and a better storyline to hold my full attention.
