Ray Gigant Review

Ray Gigant was originally released for the Ps vita. It was kind of overshadowed by other releases at the time so Ray Gigant got missed really. Also add to the fact that the PS Vita is struggling too. Sony seems to have all but abandoned making any new and unique games for it. So a rerelease or port if you will, on the PC made perfect sense it’s a chance for Ray Gigant to try again. Unfortunately the game’s biggest problem is itself, not the console it was originally released on.

The first problem is the start of the game, 40 minutes just to get to your first battle. I thought at first I was playing a visual novel and not a good one either. The characters are just plain, boring  and nothing really jumps out at you and everything seems bland and dull. The voices are all in Japanese too so you have to read everything in order to understand what’s going on and when you have little to no interest in what’s going on that proves quite difficult.

If the game had had a skip option for the endless lines of pointless dialogue then yeah this would be fine, but it doesn’t. What makes this even worse is that the battles aren’t all that exciting either. Compared to other dungeon crawlers I found this one just way too repetitive. It uses a first person view to traverse dungeons which is fine. However it’s executed poorly the design of the dungeons is very fitting to the game dull and boring nothing really changes this either, the game just seems uninspired. There are no random encounters and enemies do not move from their position on the map meaning you can actually avoid some battles completely and only have to fight them if they are in your path.

One thing I do like is the character sprites in battle they each have unique animations and look pretty cool. I was looking forward to seeing some awesome fighting animations but guess what? It goes first person for all attacks, seriously.  I go through all that talking and nonsense just to have a battle be over in a matter of seconds. The story is Ray Gigant main focus if you’re hoping for a game that has depth and hidden goodies you’re going to be disappointed once a dungeon is done you cannot go back to it ever it’s lost for good. Which makes it impossible to go back for loot you may have missed or to grind up some levels although the need for this is non-existent?

 The game is broken up into chapters at the start of each chapter you get what’s called an intermission, more talking of course. The battle system has you consume “action points” for ever action you take. You can execute 5 actions per turn. You will find just attacking most of the time will work however if you’re in a heavy encounter or a boss fight you might find the SBM action helpful. The main character has the ability to draw power and transform into a gigant killing machine.

An anime cut scene plays out every time you do this and then you have to play what can only be described as a mini game. Remember the dancing games for the PlayStation one? Where you have to time your button presses its very much the same, although depending on how well you do will affect how many times you attack the enemy and this is a sure fire way to deplete a bosses Hp.,

The game does pick up after the slow start but it really never sparks. The battles are tedious the story is ok and the dungeons are bland and just basically uneventful.  The music is just there nothing really sounds out of place. Enemies in battle look nicely detailed as does the characters. It’s a shame that lacklustre dungeon design and the failure to appeal to anyone who’s not interested in reading a visual novel will put of 90% of people that want to play Ray Gigant.

Its saving grace is the fact that attack phases can be fast forwarded and that the anime cut scenes look pretty nice. Unfortunately it isn’t enough to make this worth playing. Its unique twist on not levelling characters up but using crystal’s to unlock new character actions doesn’t really work either. The only thrill you’ll get is when you fight the Deadly encounters with massive enemies. Your characters fight the enemy in different locations and the game does a really good job of scaling how big the boss is by how far away one person is and how close another is. But that’s as good as it gets the rest of the battles are pretty basic and downright dull.

Ray Gigant is a massive let down. Its slow pace at the start doesn’t help its cause but its inability to ever really excite the player or give any enthusiasm what so ever about the games battles or its characters hurts it. I think it could have made a good Anime I really do. Its anime cut scenes are proof enough of that it just fails to deliver the dungeon crawler experience you would expect in a game made in 2016.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.