After years of largely avoiding the PC scene, we’ve been seeing Japanese developers bringing their games over to Steam in droves. These days it’s not entirely out of the realm of the expected that we might see Final Fantasy XV on PC at some point, for instance. That’s a big shift from even five to ten years ago and it’s definitely something to be encouraged. Today we’ve got another port of a Japanese game in Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy, a dungeon-crawler that originally lived in mobile form on the PS Vita.
Tokyo’s not the place it used to be. Well…maybe it is, actually, depending on how much anime you watch and how many games you play. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the city has been under attack by mutant creatures known as Variants, and you likewise won’t be surprised to hear that you’re the lucky saps recruited to stop them. As leader of the Xth Squad of Variant-hunting badasses – you’ll be interested to hear it’s pronounced “zith” – you’ll work with six party members of your own creation to battle Variants and keep the city safe.
As with the Vita release, this is an anime-themed take on Wizardry, a series that’s beloved in Japan though I couldn’t really tell you why. You’ll explore dungeons from a first-person perspective, finding treasure and battling monsters whenever the opportunity arises. Your characters possess the power of Blood Codes, the legendary might of historical and mythological figures; if this sounds a little like Persona to you, I’d imagine that’s intentional, though at least it’s less blatant than something like Mind: Zero. It’s a difficult game, as you should expect from its pedigree, and you’d be wise to save often lest your next random battle be your last.
The Steam release of Operation Abyss isn’t significantly changed from the Vita version. So far as I can tell there isn’t a significant amount of new or different content. You’ve got a few PC-specific options to mess with now, primarily resolution options and so on; the game generally plays nice with whatever you choose, though the FMVs scattered here and there might have trouble with high resolutions or full-screen mode. Either way, the game runs well for what it is, and you shouldn’t have any trouble playing Operation Abyss on whatever you choose. It also plays nice with Xbox One controllers at least, so that’s a plus.
If you didn’t manage to catch Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy when it was on Vita, it’s not a bad choice on Steam. In particular, fans of the very similar Stranger of Sword City (another Vita-to-Steam port) are going to have a good time with Operation Abyss. Those of you who have already played the hell out of the Vita version of this game, however, probably don’t need to pick it up a second time.