In an oversaturated gacha market, a new game seemingly gets revealed every other week, adding to the pile of many games that will fight for a player’s attention. Although an abundance of competition is great, games that can’t hold a player base or generate enough revenue soon after launch are doomed to fail. Duet Night Abyss enters this very same market, and although it looks similar to other major gacha games, there’s a lot her worth delving into. Thanks to Hero Games and PAN STUDIO, I was able to check out Duet Night Abyss during its second closed beta test on PC, and I’m impressed by what I played.
Disclaimer: screenshots and content from Duet Night Abyss is not a direct representation of the release build, as there are many elements that are a work-in-progress.
Duet Night Abyss offers a very interesting and unique “dual-story approach” that immediately captivated me, despite some similarities to Genshin Impact’s story opening. At the start of the game, the player’s main character watches as their sister, Berenica, is about to be taken away by a powerful sorceress named Sibylle, on the siblings’ homeland of Purgatorio Island. The game will immediately flashback to moments before this encounter for the tutorial, and you’ll learn that something about the whole world of Duet Night Abyss is just off. The protagonist and Berenica are missing some of their memories, they wield mysterious weapons that resonate with Purgatorio Island’s architecture, and they’re being pursued. Not only that, but there’s strange monsters all over the place called Filthoids, whose origins are actually quite dark.
The Story of Duet Night Abyss Packs a Punch
As the flash-forward scene at the beginning of the game showed, the protagonist and Berenica definitely aren’t going to make it off the island together. Duet Night Abyss manages to convey a lot without explaining much in greater detail, making the game’s premise so intriguing from the get-go. In these early hours, we learn that Sibylle is actually in charge of the 13th Legion of the Hyperborean Empire, and they’re after Berenica for some sort of strange power that she innately possesses. In that faithful encounter, it’s revealed that her brother, or sister, can activate a power called Resonance, which allows Berenica to harness her sibling’s energy temporarily for an incredible strength and magic boost. Despite the valiant effort, Sibylle still gets what she wants at the end, and Berenica’s sibling is essentially discarded due to their powerlessness in that moment. This is all happening in the first 25 minutes of the game, by the way.
After encountering a strange entity and being rescued by strangers named Camilla and Snow, the protagonist, and the player by extension, begins to unravel the dark nature of the world that Duet Night Abyss calls its setting. The world—Atlasia—is inhabited by Charons, a humanoid species with innate magic potential, for better or worse. When they become adults, Charons can develop “demonic” powers that can awaken them as Daimons. These powers gave rise to severe discrimination across the land by humans, since Charons can also deteriorate and turn into monsters. Add in a warmongering power like the Hyperborean Empire and an influential force like the Elysian Church, and there’s a lot to be gleaned into and uncovered in Duet Night Abyss’ world. So many things are just plainly grime, but the game’s story will show you how beautiful connections and hope can be when there’s so much that can go wrong.
A game’s voice acting can be as vital as its story, and when it comes to delivery, I think Duet Night Abyss nailed it. Duet Night Abyss offers English, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese voice-acting, and for the sake of this preview, I played with English voice-overs the entire way through. I was really pleased with the voice direction the game went with, as there appears to be a lot of British voice actors that are taking the spotlight here. This game is fantastical and very serious at times, but when there’s comical relief, it’s certainly apparent and believable. There are those anime tropes, but Duet Night Abyss doesn’t play into them to an obvious extent, for lack of a better phrase.
Gameplay Systems I Wasn’t Expecting
At first glance, you’d believe Duet Night Abyss would strictly follow the gameplay systems that competing titles like Genshin Impact or Wuthering Waves employ. Although there is merit to having this first impression, it’s only true to an extent, as Duet Night Abyss was granted room to experiment with gameplay I just haven’t acknowledged or seen after covering so many gacha games over the years. Funnily enough, Duet Night Abyss appears to draw some inspiration from Warframe of all games, and I couldn’t be more happy to see this for a gacha title from overseas.
At its core, Duet Night Abyss is an anime-style open-world action RPG that carries over the gacha and enhancement elements you expect by this point. This includes equivalent systems for artifacts, leveling up weapons and gear, ascending equipment and characters to improve their abilities, and so much more. There is an inherent grind to be had here while exploring the world and doing quests, and at that same core, there’s not much that sets it apart from other games, until you acknowledge what’s built on top of that.
While having the same character-driven action with leveling systems, increasingly powerful enemies, and all the world-level tied elements, Duet Night Abyss is also a very fun and fluid third-person shooter that scratches this Warframe gameplay itch I still had that the industry hasn’t satiated. This time, I’m getting it with the elements I enjoy from anime and other gacha games, and it has immersed me in ways I didn’t expect. There’s even a Helix Leap, which clearly takes some cues from the fast and fluid directional jumping that Warframe is known for.
There are a variety of weapons, from rapid fire assault rifles to shotguns that shoot out explosive heat-seeking rounds, Borderlands-style. This is on top of a solid combat system that allows you to hack and slash through opponents and unleash abilities at whim. There’s a Sanity meter that constantly builds up as you attack and kill enemies, and since there’s enemies that will basically swarm you if you let them, you will be able to unleash you abilities and Ultimate quite easily and frequently. I really can’t think of another gacha game that pulls off the fun and tireless gameplay that Duet Night Abyss does right now, so this is a big upside.
A Generous Gacha For Now
During the closed beta test phase, Duet Night Abyss showed me that they’re really not reinvented the wheel when it comes to monetization, nor are they amplifying their practices in a way that would negatively impact free-to-play gamers. There are gacha banners to pull from with an increasingly likelihood of pulling a four- or five-star character, and there are shops to trade in Proxene, the game’s equivalent to Primogems or a free obtainable currency, for currency that can be used to pull from said banners. If you played Honkai: Star Rail, or any other title from HoYoverse, the gacha system is nearly 1:1 here, and I think that’s fine as long as the available content offers a satisfactory grind and process to earn those free pulls.
As I played the story and checked out the plethora of side quests, I definitely noticed that there’s a ton to redeem in the form of completable guide tasks, achievements, and challenges that will net you an abundance of free rewards, Proxene and upgrade materials included. This is on top of the endless amount of treasure chests and challenges you can find in the world. If this sticks around in the Duet Night Abyss version 1.0 release, then I really won’t have complaints here, since there’s also a respectable amount of Commissions, which are repeatable level-tiered missions. The Warframe comparisons don’t end here, as there are survival missions where you have defeat enemies to stay alive, and even excavation missions.
In Duet Night Abyss, there’s also a tier system, which acts similarly to Adventure Rank or Trailblaze Level. As you complete quests and content, your tier will naturally go up, giving you access to more Commissions, side quests, story quests, and more to explore in the world. From the early game hours in Icelake—a major hub city—I noticed that leveling up tiers can be a grind at some points, especially when some side quests don’t give you enough points to advance a tier as fast as you may like sometimes. Despite that, there’s just so much content offered here that the thought of having to consider pulling for a character rarely crossed my mind. After all, the game gives you a four-star that can be quite powerful for a while.
Duet Night Abyss is an Incredibly Promising Jolt to the Gacha Genre
I tried my absolute best to not go into a full-blown review of what I played in the closed beta test, but this should be an indicator that Duet Night Abyss is shaping up to be great. The second closed beta test have lasted for nearly a month, but I honestly can’t wait to play more and see what the version 1.0 release offers. I want to delve deeper into these systems and see how Duet Night Abyss could fair over the long term, and from what I played for this preview, I think Hero Games and PAN STUDIO struck gold where other gacha games haven’t.
Lastly, Duet Night Abyss is coming soon to Android, iOS, and PC via Windows, and global pre-registration is available now.
