There are plenty of roguelike games on Nintendo Switch, but Loop8: Summer of Gods takes an interesting twist to the formula: a classic turn-based Japanese RPG that has roguelike elements. More specifically, the game is similar to something like Persona. However, Loop8 implements neither Persona’s excellent school-life pacing nor the fun “just one more run” feeling of games like Hades or Neon White. What results is a long-winded and repetitive adventure that makes you want to put the controller down and walk away.
Loop8 starts off with an incredibly enticing premise. The main character, Nini, crashes into 1983 Ashihara after his space station gets destroyed by demons called Kegai. He also has an ability called Demon Sight that allows him to reset the timeline every time he fails to stop the Kegai from destroying Ashihara. Nini continuously repeats the month of August until he can put an end to the Kegai once and for all.
It’s a really interesting story, right? It’s reminiscent of other sci-fi plots like 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and Gnosia. However, there’s not much story exposition past the first few cutscenes, and instead, bits and pieces of the background lore are told through character interactions. Some of the characters are interesting, such as Machina, who, as a robot, has a bit of existential dread, and Nanchi, an otaku who dreams about being reincarnated in another world in order to find a girlfriend.
As such, the main story itself lacks any driving force and doesn’t really keep you invested. The inorganic pacing at which Nini develops relationships with other characters doesn’t really help either. The gameplay loop is similar to Persona’s. Nini can go to school, increase his stats like strength and intelligence, and then hang out with his classmates afterwards. The game also has a time management element. However, instead of most events taking up a section of morning, afternoon, or night, the game runs on a clock with a real-time correlation—every second you play equals one minute, so every 24 hours on the in-game clock lasts for 24 minutes.
As you might expect given its visual novel elements, most of the time you’re going to have to click through mountains of text, picking the same exact dialogue for characters, and watching the relationship meter go up. It’s not nearly as satisfying a gameplay loop as found in its contemporaries like Persona and Marvel’s Midnight Suns. After getting the relationship meter for a character to a high enough level, then Nini can invite them out to do certain activities like work out or study. However, by that time, it's tough to care about whatever cutscene or character development occurs.
As for the aforementioned roguelike elements in Loop8, that term should be applied very loosely. The game is only a roguelike in the sense that when Nini and his party gets wiped out, the timeline automatically resets and he goes all the way back to the beginning of August. This isn’t the type of roguelike that you can knock out a run in about 30-60 minutes. Each loop takes about 8-10 hours simply because of all the conversations you have to repeat again with the characters because their stats reset after every loop.
While each loop makes the relationship stats increase faster, it still didn’t really feel like enough and we weren’t looking forward to having to do another cycle just to watch the same exact cutscenes and read the same dialogue over again. In many roguelikes (or roguelites), there's some sort of retained progress even when you die, no matter how small. Here, there’s really no sense of that—it feels stagnant. For the record, it took us three loops and 30 hours total to beat all the bosses without dying and reach the ending.
Nini can take two other companions to fight with him. When Kegai appears, he can go into the Underworld, which is basically a 1:1 mirror version of Ashihara. Those hoping for something like dungeon crawling will be disappointed. Purely turn-based Japanese RPGs feel like they're becoming a rarity nowadays with so many shifting to a real-time system, so Loop8’s battle system is appreciated.
However, the approach is also frustrating because it takes the Persona 3 FES approach and you can only directly control Nini whereas his teammates are AI controlled. There were so many instances where the boss had a tiny sliver of health left and we only needed one of my teammates to attack it in order to win, only for them to decide to buff Nini instead and then the boss wiped us out the very next turn. When that happened, we would groan and load up the previous save file instead of dreadfully going through another 8-10 hour loop.
At the very least, Loop8’s presentation is absolutely amazing. The backdrops in Ashihara’s environments are stunning and the character animations are very crisp. The battles and attack animations are incredibly cinematic as well. Camera angles are dynamic as each character activates their special attacks like when Nini’s Skyburst when he jumps into the air and cuts an enemy down with a blue scythe energy blade. The game runs surprisingly well on Switch, despite some slightly long loading times between going to different locations and some slowdown during boss battles.
Additionally, the soundtrack is excellent. The soft but upbeat piano that plays in the background while running around Ashihara is pleasant to listen to and the battle music is dramatic and epic. Both the English and Japanese voice acting is superb too, with lines being delivered with believable emotion.
Conclusion
While Loop8’s story has the potential to be incredibly interesting, it never really lands and fails to leave an emotional impact towards the end. It's all presented beautifully and has a unique mix of gameplay styles and ideas, but their repetitive and frustrating nature makes the whole experience a chore. It’s like toiling away at your summer job and going through the motions until it’s time to leave.
Comments (34)
Ouch. A brutal review for a game I was highly anticipating.
Seem like a somewhat fair review. Still getting it though as I personally love the whole idea behind it. And it is a VN/RPG.
It had potential to be interesting so that's a shame if it turned out to be pretty mediocre. I'll look at other opinions before deciding for sure but assuming I end up passing then ah well I guess as I've got a like billion games I need to find time to play as it is so that's just one less for the pile.
@Magician My thoughts exactly. I was really looking forward to this one.
A lot less interested now but will wait on a sale.
@rawzeku I really wanted to like the game I was so hyped for it given that the trailers were extremely my vibe.
On paper, the whole Persona x roguelike concept sounds interesting but the mechanics just didn't gel together, unfortunately.
Bummer! I was also looking forward to this game. Will probably skip it now, but I'll keep an eye on other reviews to see what the overall consensus is.
I really like the aesthetics of this game. Maybe I'll snag a copy when the price is down.
i was on the fence for this game i did not like the way it looked... glad for the review this is a no buy..
I have this pre-ordered but now I'm not so sure, the rougelike genre should stay out of games like this.
@Yinyangfooey
Am I right in understanding that if you save often you can avoid the loops and repeated dialogue, or are the loops forced for story reasons? Sorry If I'm being dumb.
Great well written review, thank's for the honest opinions and feedback without sugarcoating and straight to the point.
I guess we know why roguelikes don't touch JRPGs.
@Nanami_Ataraxia You can save anywhere you want and there are many save slots for multiple saves.
You have a 5 in-game days deadline between bosses to raise your stats and relationships with characters. It's like in Persona 5 where you have to steal the person's heart by a certain date or else it's automatically game over.
You enter a new loop whenever Nini dies, and there's also an NPC who will reset the loop for you early if you want.
a shame it didn't seem to be too interesting
Eh I’ll probably still give it a try.
So, it's persona without the heart?
@Yinyangfooey
Ahh thanks so much for clearing that up, I think I'll keep my pre-order for now but tether my expectations.
This is a rare case of "I'll check it myself as I know it deserves much better"
I'm still probably going to buy this one.... Just when it's under £20.
Just the fact that you can't control your party member, then it's a urn off. Also, a game who has a huge emphasis on dialogue choice, but don't have a dialogue log to reread them ? No thanks. 😅
Also isn’t the whole point of a time loop is that it’s supposed to be repetitive? Or is it like endless 8 where it worked a bit too well?
What a shame. This looked and sounded really interesting. I’m not putting it on the “never” pile, but I’ll need to get through a lot of backlog before I consider this now.
@Cashews I don't really understand your point, there are plenty of JRPG roguelikes. Just because one didn't pan out doesn't mean anything. Anyway, I will wait for a few more reviews, this game seems interesting, but certainly won't bite at full price.
Switchup saying the same kind of thing. Gutted as was looking forward to this game.
I don't play Zelda so this is essentially the equivalent for me because I'd day one this in a heartbeat. Still won't beat out the upcoming Anonymous;Code for Game of the Year but close enough.
Rats - the premise sounded good and I went ahead and preordered, but its wait now in backlog purgatory might be longer rather than shorter. Still, I’m confident I’ll get some fun out of it.
@Switch_Pro it's certainly not a mash-up that I myself am familiar with, can you maybe elucidate other examples of this genre?
It seems from the reviewer's perspective the visual novel elements were those in particular which carried the most tiresome effect.
Sounds like you guys saved me from a really bad/meh one there!
Will probably still get it, but definitely later and on sale.
Thanks for the honest review and comments!
@Magician @Arckadius Just because a reviewer doesn't like it, doesn't mean you won't. There's been plenty of games I love that were reviewed unfavorably, sometimes widely.
If you are really invested in the general idea behind it, you will be able to forgive its shortcomings more than those who have no particularly strong feelings towards the genre or story.
This is the 2nd-worst reviewed game of the year so far on MetaCritic, on all platforms, after that Gollum game.
Currently 48 on MetaCritic from 7 reviews. Pretty rough.
Cheers for the review.
I had this on my wishlist but now it will have to be removed. Disappointing.
gnosia mentioned!! im glad this game exists so that people can see what not to do with a roguelike/lite rpg. its definitely a genre that hasnt really been explored w roguelike mechanics afaik, and i feel like a fusion of the two genres could really work
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