I have played a ton of video games over the years. RPGs, visual novels, rhythm games; you name it and I’ve probably dipped my feet in the genre. Never in my life have I seen a game like Ray Gigant, however, a rhythm, visual novel, dungeon crawler hybrid that blends visual novel storytelling with dungeon crawling and rhythm based battles.
In the year 20XX, you are put in the role of Ichiya Amakaze, a young man who must protect the world against a new threat. This new threat is a race of giant monsters called Gigants, and it is up to Ichiya and his allies to save the world and defeat them once and for all. Ichiya accidentally destroyed the city he protected, and now it is up to you to help him redeem himself.
It should be noted here that while the subtitles and in-game text appear in English, all voice acting for Ray Gigant is done in Japanese. I personally find this to be distracting while trying to read and understand what is going on, but fans of non-“dubbed” anime will probably like it.
The flow of gameplay in Ray Gigant is simple: experience the story in visual novel format before exploring dungeons with your party in order to battle, gain experience, and grow stronger. After defeating the boss for each dungeon, more story events will play and the storyline will unfold. The storyline attempts to draw you deeper into the world of Ray Gigant, with each event presenting more questions and answers than the previous one.
The visual novel sections of Ray Gigant give you options for your responses to dialogue. These can change how the progression of the dialogue goes, and can even provide choices for you to make that affect the story. Choices in the visual novel section of the game (from food habits to story choices) affect the weight of various characters. Higher weight offers stronger physical attacks and defense, while lower weight raises evasion and hit rate.
I personally find myself torn between finding that particular mechanic realistic, bizarre, or in bad taste, but Japanese standards of weight are different than those here so I can’t really judge based on intent. The story isn’t all that interesting either, mostly because I found the Japanese voice acting annoying which makes it difficult to become attached to any of the characters. I also found it hard to immerse myself in the story, as it didn’t make the most sense.
Characters in Ray Gigant are hosts to Yorigami, parasitic creatures that increase the capabilities of their host, at the expense of the host’s health and life-force. This causes a bit of risk/reward to using the Yorigami and their capabilities as it can prove lethal for the host after prolonged periods of time.
Exploring dungeons plays out like games such as Legend of Grimrock, or Etrian Odyssey, where each step you take is on a grid, and rooms are based in square grid layouts. Chests and enemies are placed throughout, and you will need to keep an eye on the map in order to reach your objective.
While exploring the dungeons, the visuals are in full 3D, yet once combat begins the view changes to an anime style animation that ALMOST makes you feel as though you are in an anime fight scene. Combat is shown from three perspectives with each character fighting from a different position to attack from different distances with different methods. Characters level from a skill tree, called the Evolve Tree, which branches into different categories that offer different features. In addition to these things, Slash Beat Mode is where the rhythm game elements come in, offering an element to combat that, in theory, is interesting but isn’t so great in practice.
Slash Beat Mode is an attack mode that requires you to do a rhythm mini-game, executing attacks in rhythm to the beat. Depending on how well you do, you can deal a large amount of damage to an enemy. As the game progresses, this mini-game gets more difficult, and requires you to use it effectively to defeat bosses later on without dying.
The problem with this is, if you aren’t good at rhythm games, then the turn-based section of the game isn’t evolved enough to enable you to still complete the game. There is too much emphasis put on the Slash Beat system, rather than using it as an optional layer of a fun challenge to go with the standard gameplay.
The biggest problem that I have with Ray Gigant is that it is absolutely boring. Ray Gigant‘s combat isn’t interesting either, and becomes punishingly hard very quickly. Last, but not least, Ray Gigant‘s characters and storyline are flat and downright annoying, to the point where the overall premise stops making sense and turns into a weird mix of tired anime tropes. The balance between exploration, combat, and visual novel elements are not at all equal, and you may find yourself in an hour or more of visual novel story that has no real bearing on the plot, before you get to sink your teeth into the game’s (boring) combat.
I wanted to love Ray Gigant, as I love games that blend genres together that aren’t normally blended. No matter how hard I tried, Ray Gigant not only failed to blend the genres well, but it actually made me wish the game was JUST an anime or visual novel. While I am not normally a visual novel fan, I think ditching the “gameplay” elements would be preferable to teasing players with them before making them sit through an hour of boring dialogue.
If you like visual novels, you MIGHT like Ray Gigant, but otherwise I wouldn’t waste your time; it has all the potential and the framework to be a great hybrid game, but it doesn’t execute anything it tries to do well at all.