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An anime-style tactical RPG with great potential | Depersonalization - Early Access Review

2K View2022-12-22

Depersonalization is a new anime-style tactical RPG recently released in Early Access today, and at its heart is an interesting story intertwined with a promising gameplay, both of which are immediately noticeably to be in the early stages of the development.

🟩Pros

+interesting story elements

+a great mix of anime and pixel art

+deep role playing mechanics

+extremely high replayability

🟥Cons

-wonky software-translated text and voice-acting

At face value, Depersonalization’s aesthetics and general feeling unquestionably reminded me of the many anime visual novel games I’ve played before: the chilling soundtrack, the eerie anime art, the intriguing story elements, and the various choices you are presented in the game.

Anime-wise, the art style is a mix of gothic, medieval, and noir. With heavy use of lovecraftian elements. However, behind all that impressive eye-candy is a game that is indeed an example of a true Early Access game, If I’m judging by its heavily unfinished state.

Cryptic storytelling

The story is told in multiple scenarios across time and different characters, but at the start, you play as Anan, getting a glimpse of his childhood days being restricted inside the castle, exploring the vicinity and his unusual experiences involving creepy supernatural and lovecraftian elements. Despite the medieval vibes, it is clearly set in the modern world because cars, roads, and modern tools already exist.

The cryptic storytelling is intriguing at most and confusing at its worst. Jumping across multiple timelines and characters. With the unconventional mixing of many elements such as blending in modern life with medieval life, as well as using complex existential themes such as space-time jumping, bending reality, otherworldly spirits, and lucid dreaming. All of it will probably result in a polarizing reception: It will either hook you immediately or make you confused real quick.

Gameplay Analysis

The main bulk of the gameplay is via exploration and free roam, interacting with objects and characters in the world. In almost every action that you do, there is a skill-check, if you’re familiar with the Call of Cthulhu RPG series of books, then it's something similar. Depersonalization focuses on skill-checks that affect the outcome of the dice rolls; Talking to people, checking out objects for clues, even the simple turn-based combat is highly dependent on the dice-rolls. Fail them and you can miss a clue, suffer stat penalties, or even be forced into combat.

The combat is a pretty straightforward turn-based system. Perform a basic attack, use skills and spells, or throw items. It's not the main focus of Depersonalization, as many of the combat encounters are entirely avoidable if you are lucky enough to pass all the skill checks.

Jump across space and time

Eventually, you will unlock a space-time jumping element that is blended well with the replayability and save/load aspects of the game. Replayability is heavily emphasized in Depersonalization, combined with its core gameplay element being the skill checks and randomizer. Most times, you may need to replay a scenario again, better equipped with new items and higher skills to change outcomes and experience a different ending of that scenario. In which completing certain endings will reward you with persistent items you can use at your future playthroughs.

Along with the space-time jumping element, You will be able to create new characters called ‘investigators’, with their own stats, personality, and appearance. Allowing you to tailor an entirely specific character for a specific set of scenarios and play styles you want to do. All of the space-time actions such as reloading a save, or creating new characters, require points. Run out of points, and you end up deleting your current character and forcing you to bring in a new one.

With a focus on character development, choices, and dice rolls, Depersonalization is truly a dynamic game that will make the experience fresh and exciting at every playthrough of a scenario, and it's designed that way. Even the story is designed to go into multiple paths depending on your items, stats, and roll outcomes. As of now though, the story is currently splintered into different scenarios. In which more modules are planned in the future, as well as also letting players make their own and share it via the Steam Workshop.

The Language Barrier

There is an expansive dialogue already in-game, but its english localization is wonky with google translate levels of quality apparent in every line of dialogue. There’s voice-acting for the characters, but they’re all software generated and mainly robotic sounding. Still, it's commendable to include voice acting despite its current state, with every character getting their own distinct AI voice to differentiate them from each other.

Conclusion:

I’m sure there is a deep story underneath all that language barrier and AI voice-acted dialogue, but at its current state, I cannot recommend a proper enjoyment of the game. Along with the dice roll focused gameplay, Depersonalization is more like a proof of concept for now that honestly seems really cool.

While Depersonalization obviously needs more time in the oven, it's a game teeming with potential. When things are done right during the Early Access period, it will surely be a big hit once it finally releases. For now I highly recommend keeping it in your watchlists for now instead of outright playing.

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