Loop8: Summer of Gods Review (PS4) – I was very much looking forward to Loop8: Summer of Gods. What looked like a unique JRPG with an engaging art style falls short of being great by trying to mesh too many genres and too many borrowed ideas to make it stand out.
What should have been a simple and accessible title falls behind by trying to simultaneously be a roguelike, visual novel, and turn-based RPG. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do any of those mentioned above particularly well.
Loop8: Summer of Gods Review (PS4) – A Blunder Of Ideas That Fails To Stand Out On Its Own
A Story That Goes Nowhere For Hours
You take control of NINI, a young high school boy who has returned to Earth from space for reasons not well explained. What we do know is that the Kagai is constantly destroying the Earth. Every time it’s destroyed, Nini can go back in time for five days and try to stop the planet’s destruction.
This is the basic concept of the story. The problem begins when you go through the same dialogue and situations repeatedly. You’re strong enough to defeat your enemies. Most of your time with the game will be spent attending school and increasing your stats from various activities like studying and working out, much like you do in the Persona franchise.
The entire game is timed, and everything you do counts the clock down. And you have five game days to defeat the Kagai. Other than attending school activities, your primary goal is to build relationships with your friends and classmates to make them strong enough to join you in your battles. There are a dozen characters for you to befriend.
Building Relationships Is Tedious And Boring
This is where the game falters the most. Every time you speak to a character, you are given multiple conversation options that are the same for every character. You can get to know them better, flatter them, or ask them to follow you, which serves no purpose.
You get the same conversation options for every character taking away any real connections you can build with them as it all feels like you’re going through the motions.
The game will provide tips over every option on how well your chances are at improving your relationship with a character or if a specific option will hurt your relationship with them. This is another questionable decision because the character’s reaction seems completely random.
You can start a conversation and have a positive outcome. Then talk to the same character immediately after, and suddenly, they are upset with you, and every option is negative.
There is no reason for it, and if there is, the game doesn’t explain it very well. The entire day is filled with you building relationships, but that can sometimes be a hurdle. On the map, you can see what characters occupy a location on the map. You can fast-travel to that location, but by the time you arrive, those characters may not be there anymore, wasting precious time chasing them around.
Unrewarding And Slow Combat
Combat is another element that confuses more than it should. Without any real provocation, a portal you can travel through will sometimes show up, sending you to the underworld, a darker and more gloomy version of your town. But don’t just jump into the portal.
Make sure you invite two people to come hang out with you. They will join you in the underworld if your relationship is strong with them. If it’s not, they will leave the party, and you have to find someone else.
This is yet another aspect of the game that isn’t explained. What level must I have in my relationship for them to join me in the underworld? It wasn’t enjoyable because I could only take the same two characters with me for the two loops I had to go through. In all the time I played Loop8,
I’m still not sure if every one of the characters you befriend can join you in combat or if it’s just a specific few. In this underworld, you’ll see the Kagai, who looks like the squid item you can acquire in Mario Kart.
Understanding Enemy And Ally Emotions Shouldn’t Be How Combat Is Decided
They won’t attack you themselves, but by talking to them, they may provide information or attack you. Combat is based on your relationship with your other party members. Another confusing decision as commands is replaced with comments instead. Attacks are divided into three different relationship comments—friendship, Affection, and Hate.
From my understanding, which was very little, the proper attack to gain the most damage and be the most effective in determining what your enemy is feeling by what they say during combat and using what’s called demon sight to see the emotion of your opponents and your allies.
Battles themselves also take a long time to get through. The most straightforward encounters can take a good three minutes to get through. The best thing to do is avoid combat because there isn’t any EXP to gain or shops to spend currency on. Your reward for battles is an increase in your relationship bonds, and often, that doesn’t even increase or is so minuscule it’s not even with the time and effort.
The roguelike elements come into play if you die during combat which you’ll do a lot during boss battles, or if your five days expire. The worst is that you don’t carry anything over when you loop. The only thing that changes is areas gain new cutscenes.
You don’t carry over your relationship status you’ve spent building up, or any of the stat increases you received from your studies.
A Great Art Style Is Wasted On A Title Like This
Instead, to make things easier for you, the points you get for tasks and building relationships increase every time you loop. I should also mention that whenever you gain points in your relationships, a magical flying squirrel can appear and increase your stats for you or the character you’re interacting with.
This squirrel is probably the most annoying character I’ve ever experienced in a video game. Its voice is incredibly high, and it repeats lines over and over. Though the squirrel’s voice is terrible, the rest of the voice cast is good. The English dub is a highlight, and many voices are easily recognizable from other anime and gaming projects.
Loop8’s visuals are another highlight. Though the town is lifeless outside of your friends who wander around, the game’s art style and animations remind you of older adventure games like Fear Effect. In combat, though, it looks like its drops in frames every time an attack is about to happen. Still, it’s just the type of animation it is.
Loop8 is not that fun to play. A lot of its mechanics felt thrown together without much thought behind them. Most of the mechanics aren’t even explained that well to begin with.
You spend most of your time repeatedly listening to the same conversations, hoping the game provides you with different success rates with your answers. It’s not a recipe for success, and Loop8: Summer of Gods feels like the first biggest disappointment of the year.
Loop8: Summer of Gods releases on June 6th, 2023, on PlayStation 4 and backward compatibility on PlayStation 5
Review code kindly provided by PR