A setting that is rarely explored in the world of video games is the country of Taiwan. While there are countless games that take place in the United States or Japan, China’s island friend rarely gets a chance to shine. The Taiwan based developer JFI Games is looking to change that with their newest game, “Dusk Diver.”
“Dusk Diver” follows Yang Yumo, a high schooler who simply wants to enjoy her youth in peace. When Yumo is almost killed by phantoms, a chance encounter with the local gods saves her life. This not only saves Yumo but also gives her the ability to use spiritual powers to fight the phantoms. Now indebted to the gods that saved her, she must use her new powers to defend the Ximending neighborhood from all manner of evil.
“Dusk Diver” falls into the trap of being a little too “anime” for my taste. The game’s story is nonsensical and all over the place. While it is clearly trying to do something similar to games like “Persona,” “Dusk Diver” lacks the storytelling chops that it needs to get me invested in the story.
Another reason that I struggled to stay invested was the game’s lack of polish. While most of the text in the game seemed correctly translated, I consistently ran into little mistakes such as misspelled words or missing punctuation. While this might have been acceptable 20 years ago, today it sticks out like a sore thumb and really took me out of the game.
The game’s graphics also aren’t particularly good. While it isn’t terrible, per say, it feels as if it was plucked out of last generation. In dialogue, the anime-esque character designs look good, but this doesn’t translate nearly as well to the character models during gameplay.
The one aspect that “Dusk Diver” excels in is gameplay. The game is a blast to play, perfectly fitting into the niche of button-mashing brawlers that I love. Watching my combo rise from zero to 300 was always incredibly satisfying, if not a little mindless.
As players progress through the game, combat admittedly gets slightly more in-depth as new assist characters and abilities are unlocked. However, more often than not, I still found myself doing the tried and true combos that I learned in the beginning of the game to take enemies down.
While simple, combat was always an amazing time. However, I found that the game takes just a little too long to get to combat. Missions usually wrap up in under ten minutes, sending players back into long, drawn-out story sections. This wouldn’t be an issue if I enjoyed the story, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get into it.
While I can see the game’s appeal for some, it simply didn’t click for me. The core gameplay was incredibly enjoyable, but literally everything in between felt generic, unpolished and drawn out. “Dusk Diver” could have been a good time-waster if it was a little cheaper. However, at its launch price of $40, I can’t recommend it.
Review code provided by PQube. Game Reviewed on a Nintendo Switch.
5/10
