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Hack and slash rogue-lite with unique camera view | PC+Mobile (Cloud) - Devil Slayer: Raksasi

709 View2023-12-22

Devil Slayer - Raksasi

8.3

GoreDifficultAction RoguelikeActionProcedural GenerationRoguelikeSouls-likeTop-Down

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✨Overview

Devil Slayer - Raksasi presents a unique take on the top-down action hack and slash genre, featuring procedurally generated levels, roguelite elements, and a methodical combat system. It originally released in Early Access in 2019, with an official release in 2021. The game has received numerous updates since then, as well as new DLC content early this year.

🟩Pros

+Unique tactical combat style
+Diverse characters, weapons, and fighting styles
+Procedurally generated levels
+Engaging rogue-lite progression and itemization

🟥Cons

-Performance feels sluggish despite showing high frame rates
-Random difficulty spikes
-Adjusting to the strict top-down camera angle can be challenging

⭐️Score: 6/10

Pocket Playfest: An Indie Celebration 2023 Winter Edition

In a recent hands-on exclusive experience this past weekend, I had the privilege of testing a handful of titles on TapTap's experimental cloud gaming service, setting the stage for this 16-day event where indie game developers show-off their creations exclusively on the TapTap mobile platform — fully playable PC games without the need for an actual PC, Android/iOS version, or the need to download the games and install them. Granted, you’d need to have a reliable internet service to be able to stream these games, and preferably are located in US and Canada for consistent play and latency, at least for now.

🔗Join the Playfest >>
https://www.taptap.io/events/playfest2023winter

📅 Schedule

Dates: December 23, 12 AM PT - January 7, 11:59 PM PT.
Playfest Winners & Player Rewards Announcement: January 8, 12 AM PT.

For my personal cloud gaming experience in this specific, please see further below in the review.

When we think of a top-down view, we often think of games with an isometric top view instead, such as Diablo or Pokemon. However, Devil Slayer - Raksasi is different; it features a REAL, literal top-down view for its camera angle. It's a bit disorienting at first, it feels like the camera is stuck, and there's an innate need to adjust it. However, you can't adjust it since it's by design. After a few minutes of adjustment, the game actually provides a refreshing new camera perspective to game on, if you can adapt to it. This style is not new by the way; and it kinda feels nostalgic in a sense, having played the original GTA games.

📖Premise

Devil Slayer - Raksasi is set in a world plagued by wars, disasters, and demonic threats. The world is depressed, everyone is depressed, but hot. Devil Slayer - Raksasi introduces a group of attractive female individuals determined to dispel the darkness. The narrative incorporates roguelike mechanics, offering a series of trials for chosen heroes to find the key to saving the world. You can piece together bits of lore are scattered around the procedurally generated levels, and the narrative is well integrated into the multiple rogue-lite runs the players will take. The game recognizes your do-overs as it is part of the narrative.

🎨Graphics and Art Style

The art style of Devil Slayer - Raksasi is kinda artistically bleak, matching with the tone of the premise. The dark and detailed visuals, coupled with muted color palettes, evoke a sense of gloom and despair. There is a certain stiffness in the animations, as Anime looking characters seem like amateurish puppet-loking Adobe Flash animations. Despite this, the overall visual presentation is solid, the HD-2D-esque visuals are simply gorgeous and charming, although your appreciation may be limited by the strict top-down camera angle.

🎮Gameplay

The game distinguishes itself by offering a challenging hack and slash experience that focuses on methodical — almost Samurai-like — battles. The character is bound by a stamina mechanic and moves rather slower than players might be used to. As a Devil Slayer, you must progress through a series of levels, with procedurally generated rooms, and clear them one by one. At the end of chapter lies a boss fight, with diverse types of bosses to combat, and they are also part of the randomization. Defeat the boss and you can proceed to the next chapter, and choose your branch path.

There are seven buxom waifu characters that are progressively unlocked as you punch through the levels and defeat more bosses. These characters come with each of their own starting weapon style. For example, the first character was the swordswoman Byleth, but I immediately unlocked the spear wielding Ajiela, the warrior Kharoum, and the dual wielding Xilvaron in my first hour of play. There are diverse fighting styles, rogue-lite style itemizations, and passive bonuses that contributes to the overall depth of the gameplay.

⚔️Combat

The combat in Devil Slayer - Raksasi is tactical, methodical, and slower-paced compared to typical action or rogue-lite games. The diversity of weapons and fighting styles among the seven heroines adds a layer of strategy to encounters. But these fighting styles aren’t really special, as enemies can also be seen using these exact same animations, depending on the weapon their holding.

Dodging, timing, and rhythm skills take precedence over grinding and lightning fast reflexes, providing a more tactical skill-based approach to progression. The control scheme is responsive, on either controllers or using mouse and keyboard. However, the aforementioned amateurish animations might take away some of the responsiveness a bit and add an additional challenge, a potentially frustrating one. Despite being slower in nature, the game isn’t automatically easy, as it can still be a difficult game to master, perhaps even more so with its random difficulty spikes that might hit you during runs. Some enemies can be significantly more difficult than others. Again, it adds to the frustration, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

⏫Rogue-lite Progression

Devil Slayer - Raksasi is a simple and fun roguelite experience with its rewarding gameplay and the depth provided by diverse heroines and weapons. The progression system includes roguelike elements with randomly generated levels and countless relic combinations for a fresh experience in each run.

The game currently offers six chapters, and each chapter will have multiple paths that you can take that will depend on the rewards and challenges that you prefer. It’s not a massive game, but there are 167 types of enemies, and 212 relics as of writing.

Dying doesn’t automatically sentence you to a restart of the run, because there’s a necklace provided for you that allows up to five revives to the previous room. Pretty neat, and somewhat makes the game a Rogue–lite-lite, but as a casual-centric player that has left the days of intense sweaty gaming far behind, I will always appreciate a more forgiving mechanic.

There are other gameplay modes aside from the main rogue-lite campaign. Players can participate in training trials, which are basically challenges to complete with predetermined objectives. Players can also try the Boss Run campaigns once they've encountered all the required bosses for each campaign.

📊Technical Performance

The game runs at over 100 FPS on my gaming PC, stable overall and I haven’t encountered any game-breaking bugs. However, while having 100 FPS, it actually feels and looks sluggish to me. It's probably due to the animations and slower gameplay. I didn’t find this to be an issue, though, and I proceeded to have fun regardless.

⚖️Conclusion

Ultimately, Devil Slayer - Raksasi may appeal to those who enjoy challenging roguelike experiences and who are looking to try something else for a change, particularly — a more methodical combat and a different camera view. However, potential players should be aware of the game's divisive aspects, particularly in terms it’s camera angle, clunky animations, and random difficulty spikes.

☁️General Cloud Gaming Experience

This past weekend, I had the chance to be chosen as one of the testers for an experimental cloud gaming service by TapTap, and I must say, it holds a lot of promise. The quality is seriously impressive - we're talking sharp HD resolution, not like your typical streamed game. Looks and feels native and doesn’t feel like its streamed. The performance is also smooth (60FPS), with good frame timing (by visual observation only, as there was no tool to monitor this). There’s currently no way to play at a native 16:9 with black bars, as the screen is stretched out to the phone’s screen.

📶Cloud Latency

In my experience, my latency during the test phase was around 200ms --- only because the servers are currently located in United States for now and I'm connecting from asia. Even then, It’s still a bit playable, especially for games that are not latency sensitive like point and click games or those with simple controls. Having said that, it’s just a matter of server location and having lots of servers. It’s understandable since this is just a testing phase with limited servers. If a datacenter is nearby, I am positive that I’ll have a smooth and fluid experience, same with those living in the US or Canada. It works like a charm on 5GHz wifi, but the experience took a hit on 2.4GHz, so won’t recommend that.

🕹Cloud Touch Controls

Now, onto the user interface. I'm a fan of how each game has its own custom on-screen buttons, tailored to the specific control scheme. It works like a charm for simpler games, but things get a bit tricky with more complex ones.

🔃Cloud Accessibility

Accessing the service is a breeze - the Instant Play integration is right there on the game page, next to Download/Steam/Play buttons. Loading times are impressively fast, and I love that I can minimize the TapTap app and return to the game still streaming. Progress is not yet saved between streaming sessions, so it’s clearly just for testing purposes. Overall, it's been an interesting experience, and while there are some kinks, the potential here is exciting. Definitely surpassed my expectations.

🌩Specific Cloud Game Experience

Depite most games I’ve tested being mostly playable in this very early state of TapTap cloud gaming, I’ve found Devil Slayer - Raksasi mostly unplayable due to challenging aiming and complex controls that do not align well with the on-screen touch layout. The game is highly latency-dependent, particularly in real-time evasion against enemies, and unfortunately, my 200ms ping due to being located far from the US servers makes it unplayable for me, it’s unforgiving rogue-lite nature further compounds the unplayability.