Dusk Diver 酉閃町
Dusk Diver is an anime style beat-em-up action game. You will be playing as Yumo, an ordinary high school girl, to fight with the Guardians against those Phantoms who dare to enter the realm of men.
■ Combat & Guardian Support SystemUse light and heavy attacks to chain up combo moves, summon Guardians and use your ultimate to eliminate all enemies.
Guardians have their specific traits and purposes, use them wisely to help you in the glorious battle.
■ Game sets at Taipei Ximending, famous tourist spot realistically brought aliveBacked with local merchants’ support and permissions, the streets of Ximending are depicted vividly. On top of it, you can as well travel freely to experience the storyline in the surface, “Ximending” or to slay the Phantoms in the hidden world, “Youshanding”.
■ Professional voiceovers, making the characters come aliveWith experienced voiceovers dubbing the right characters in both Japanese and Mandarin, you can choose your preferred language in game at anytime.
Japanese / Taiwanese CV dubbing lineups
Protagonist – Yang Yumo JP CV : Rina Sato / CH CV : Hsuan-Ming Mu
Guardian – Leo JP CV : Ryota Takeuchi / CH CV : Poko Ko
Guardian– Bahet JP CV : Masahiro Yamanaka / CH CV : Shao-Lun Lu(MR.XY)
Guardian– Le Viada JP CV : Atsumi Tanezaki / CH CV : Angel Lin
Schoolmate – Liu Yusha JP CV : Yuina Yamada / CH CV : Amber Guo
Boss – JP CV : Arisa Shida / CH CV : Jui-Chin Wang
Nemea JP CV : Kate Mizukiri / CH CV : Giiny Shen
Steam User 3
Really awesome time of a game if you're a fan of action games or beat 'em ups. This is virtually nothing like Yakuza nor Persona and I don't know why so many comments would suggest as much. This is very much in the vein of a standard action RPG or Beat 'em Up with more focus directed at combo systems and strings as opposed to just outside resources and tools like Double Dragon for example. The combat system gets very in-depth and can feel rewarding, but once you reach a certain point, you start to optimize a lot and cut down on the excess moves. It does reward mastery for flashy combos but since this game features the stagger system as opposed to allowing pseudo-infinite juggling, you start to note which strings are the safest and yield the most returns rather than the one that converts the coolest and makes use of all your tools.
The campaign is super short and concise and the story is fine for what it is. It really just plays second fiddle to the combat system and the core gameplay loop is very much akin to that of a KR MMORPG (so much so that it reminds me a lot of Closers, Dungeon and Fighter, and Elsword when it comes to the late game grinding for mats, rewards, and whatnot). There are some sidequests but they aren't very long and while the characters aren't very deep or anything, they're all pretty solid for what they are, NPC storylines included.
The worst part of the games mostly appear with respect to the grind to 100% completing it in the forms of the lottery RNG filling out and/or the insane spongey-ness of the enemy health pools so much that you'll find yourself repeating the most effective tactics you know rather than the ones you might've been learning along the way there.
There's a lot of variety when it comes to level design and you can honestly tell the devs had fun exploring some aspects of things. The color-coded barriers is a bit of a miss in terms of mechanics that enhance things but it's honestly whatever as it does actually pose trade-offs early game.
All-in-all a hidden gem. Easy recommend to anyone.
Steam User 2
A small-scale Taiwanese RPG where you punch little cyber teddy bears as a Chinese high school girl. What else do you need
It has both Japanese and Chinese voices for the main storyline. I recommend the Chinese. 穆宣名 (Mu Hsuan Ming) captures 語默 (Yumo) much better, both in the mellow narration accompanied by wind instruments between the chapters, and the high pitched overdramatic scenes in the Tumaz-Mart convenience store. The Japanese voice actress sounds monotone in comparison.
The music is nice. It has some memorable tracks.
The story is good but rather short. It's impressive they could fit so much story in so few dialogue lines.
There are no missable achievements.
A downside is that the levels aren't very interesting. Some, but not all, of the maps are variations of 酉閃町 (Youshanding) with different barriers and platforms. All of the buildings look the same.
However, it's satisfying to beat up the monsters, summoning 維妲 (Le Viada) after every AAAAB or LLLLR combo to boost the combo count for extra SP and TP drops, then transforming (LB+RB or L-Ctrl+E) for double attack bonus. It's a challenge every time to quickly kill enemies for the SP and TP refill in order to stay transformed as long as possible. Because of the summoning system, the combat can get complex as you fight in parallel to your summoned guardian(s) while trying to dodge any enemy attack. Luckily the game never becomes so hard that it's necessary to master these techniques.
Some might say the combat is tedious. I suggest that you upgrade the SP skill to 6 bars early on and spam the 必殺技 (RB or E). This uses 3 SP bars and kills a whole swath of enemies in one go. In this way, finishing a level only takes a couple of minutes and gets you an easy S rank, which you need for the dragon shards. btw, if you are still short on dragon shards, you can just buy food from any of the street vendors or restaurants 5 times, and you'll get a shard from them.
Dusk Diver 酉閃町 is great for what it is. Keeping in mind it's very expensive to create 3D games, I think the game studio did the best they could with the budget they had, and I'm looking forward to playing the sequel.
Steam User 1
It's just an anime warriors/musou game, so it's a pure mediocre 5/10.
Wouldn't recommend buying at full price. Its been in my wishlist for the longest because it never gets a sale, and only just got it in a fanatical bundle.
Steam User 1
The simple question you should ask yourself before playing: Do you like or have an interest in Taiwan?
If yes, like me, you will really enjoy this game. The Ximending district of Taipei is replicated and some quintessential Taiwanese foods, activities and quirks included, which makes it really fun.
If no, there is little to offer here for you what you can't get from a game from the Persona series.
+ The characters are really fun and quirky and I enjoyed listening to their antics
+ The art and design is really nice, mixing in some orignial elements to Taipei's famous pedestrian area
+ The game is easy to pick up and play and never gets frustrating
- The combat is very repetitive button mashing and the game just spams waves of enemies that take a while to kill
- Even for its release date, the grapics are poor and lack detail - I can forgive this as I view this as an indie game
- The dungeons and enemies lack variety
Overall, because I am familiar with Taiwan, I really enjoyed this and will check out the sequel, which is supposedly more polished.
Steam User 1
In a city where humans blink 20x slower, you'll alternate between questing in the real world and beating up monsters in the "otherworld", a dark version of the place.
Very similar to Tokio Xanadu, and... I Persona-ly don't know any other.
Cleared the story in 18 hours with some grinding (didn't fully listen to voiceovers), so definitely pretty short.
Pros
• Runs very well on low-specs. Also good optimisation like NPCs models being heavily simplified.
• Accessible 100% clear. The story is short enough so most will stay hungry for more fighting.
All "non-marked event locations" can be either revealed or rather easily found.
The worst (or best depending on players) will be to clear hard missions. The game is rather vague about the moveset, so requires some personal theorycrafting.
• Getting best rank on a stage only requires to clear it fast. This is very achievable compared to other games in the genre.
Devil May Cry 3 stage rank is based on time / money / "combos" / damage taken / items used.
Tokyo Xanadu rank is about time / damage taken / % enemies killed / treasures found / elemental kills / broken objects / max combo.
• Combat is a mix of monster swarms and armored enemies, but the game provides good tools to deal with these.
Special gauge easy to refill, encouraging abusing it and keep the brain active (Do I need combo count? Armor break? Crowd control? Long range?)
• Combat becomes interesting on hard mode, although the AoE / combo character might make it a bit too easy.
• Characters have intricate personnalities and mostly talk to say useful stuff. The story respects players' time.
Quests are series of tasks involving specific NPCs, making them actually memorable.
• Story missions require D-stones, obtained from both battling and questing. Forces the player to do various activities rather than rushing the story, I love it.
There are 153, but only ~50 are needed for the last mission. Finding more will still yield skill points.
• The hub city is beautiful, with fully-decorated buildings. Sadly, I'm used to keeping the camera 45° down, and rarely got to enjoy the heights.
Fails
• Keyboard controls are just bearable ; transposed emulation of a triple-joystick gamepad.
• Money is very easy to get. Gacha machines and food sources can be cleared for super cheap.
Buing 5 meals at the same place (~400$) yields a D-stone. Since I didn't know, I instead grinded the stones I missed in previous story stages and hard mode, which made me filthy rich in no time.
I then proceeded to buy the whole stock of everything I passed by, making it very anticlimactic.
• Gacha poetry is the rotten cherry on top :
- 62 poems to collect that stay in the pool after being obtained.
- Unskippable 13-seconds animation, neither gives the time to read.
- The temple is far from HQ, so better clear it all at once.
- Even sadder to see that people worked on all of these, plus the art, animations and translation. I'll never take the time to read all 62 in the gallery.
- Thankfully, a good reward : That's right, a freakin steam achievement. Nothing else.
At least, it's spammable. Just put on some music, podcast, asmr or whatever and put the game on mute. Steam notification will tell when you got them all.
Took me ~40 minutes (~= 185 pulls) total, and 18 minutes for the last 6.
• Food is barely better : There are many shops unlocked through character events, mostly completed by the time story is cleared, which is too easy to even require food.
I reached the penultimate story mission, realized I should try food shops, went through the whole city and maxed 'em all at once - 20, some have animations - (including gacha machines - 5 -).
There are 46 different foods with their translated description, pictures and effect, but pretty sure Yumo dmg+ is the only one I'll ever eat.
There're maybe 2 quests requiring to go shopping for X food, but it overall feels like even more wasted potential than poetry.
• Some dragon stones can require unintuitive processes to be reached.
Shootout to the mission 11 where you have to get to a place from a specific path before the first part starts. If you take the wrong path, a "wrong" event happens, locking the stone away. Watch playthroughs for this one.
• The fighting mechanics could've been cleaned up. Some can be tedious to learn/relearn, but this might as well be a pro since it keeps the player improving even after clearing the story.
Check end of review for a quick guide.
• Bosses are quite easy. Their attacks are very telegraphed and there's always the time to dash away.
• Short story. Might be a pro as well, since it ends before the player has the time to get bored, and leaves them hungry for grinding the 100%.
• Lacks endgame "play for fun" content after the 100% (I guess?). I'd sure spend 5-10$ for a DLC including Devil May Cry's Bloody Palace, basically a mode where you face increasingly difficult waves of monsters, and all bosses as well, just to have fun mastering the combat mechanics and styling around.
• No punching bag / training mode. At best, pick a hard stage, reach some big monster and compare damage.
"Basics" of fighting (very simple)
Don't be afraid, the following is a dense summary, the game teaches these gradually
• Each ally starts with 5 special attacks, depending on the amount of hits previously input in a combo string (0-1-2-3-4). These have no description, so players will need to test them by themselves and remember which one is good on which situation.
• Then come aerial specials, which are in fact one of the 5 basic ones, depending on the character. Leo's air spec. is his special 3, Bahet's is his 4 and Viada's is her 2. Would've been easier to remember if it was, like, spec. 3 for everyone.
• Next up are extra specials. These are new ones that can be cast after spec. 0, but also have an alt input. Thing is, you rarely want to spend meter for spec. 0, so you'll mostly use this alt input.
• Finally, "tag team" specials are basically extra specs, but stronger, no alt input, and chain from different basic specs.
Thing is, this also unlocks an alt input for that basic spec. Leo's is 3, Bahet's is 4 (just like airspec), but Viada's is 5, not 2.
By the time I unlocked "tag team" specs, I was already used to casting these basic specials from combos, and had to relearn that new way for them, which is more efficient.
• Was it all? I almost forgot that a few 1000s of skill points can unlock -> input, which, followed by a cast spec. 5.
Got that from a Fanatical bundle (8$ for 3 games). If you love that kind of thing, grab it right now.
Even though it respects players' time, original price might be too much for a ~15 hours story.