Duet Night Abyss Is An Interesting Game Story-Wise, Though The Combat Won't Be For Everyone

It’s been a little over three days since Duet Night Abyss officially launched, and I’ve already completed the story. That’s not because the narrative was extremely short. Instead, it’s because I just kept going. I spent several hours the last three nights in the game – around six or so, effectively the same amount of time I’ll spend on an update drop in one of the other games I play. What that means is that the content was interesting enough to keep me going into the wee hours of the morning, and for me to do it three nights in a row.

As far as the free-to-play action RPG’s narrative goes, it will feel familiar to players of RPGs. Players take on the role of the game’s hero, in this case a human with special powers who is living on an island with their best friend when creatures attack. When your story begins, every other native of the island has fled, abandoning you and your friend to your fate. The two of you work together to get off the island, and run into trouble on your way out as soldiers from the game’s evil(?) empire show up looking for your companion. A fight ensues, you and your friend are bested and then separated. You wake up in territory belonging to the empire, take on the role of a Phoxhunter and your search begins.

Of course, as with any of these games, you begin making friends along the way who can also fight alongside you. In the case of Duet Night Abyss, the companions are AI characters that actually fight alongside you, rather than you needing to swap them out. Of course, that means you won’t be executing any cool abilities based on character changes during combat. But, considering you’re typically fighting waves of enemies, it does make taking them down somewhat easier. It should be noted that these allies aren’t with you at all times in combat. They will mostly be with you on commissions you can take on thanks to your role as a Phoxhunter.

So, what is a Phoxhunter, exactly? It turns out there’s a good bit of history explaining this. But for our purposes, they’re like adventurers in most games. Only, in this case, the role is taken on by those who make up the empire’s lower class. This mostly consists of an oppressed group of magic users with physical traits like horns, which you so happen to be – most of the time, anyway. As it turns out, a unique trait of Duet Night Abyss is that you will actually be playing as two different characters, experiencing the story from two different perspectives.

At the beginning, you’re allowed to choose between a male and female character, just as you would with any of these games. Based on the content so far, this is who you will play as most of the time. That said, you will occasionally play as a member of the empire. So far, I switched over to this character once to play through their half of the story line. When doing that for the first time, the game will prompt you to select the gender of that character and name them, just as you did with the first character. For the most part these two sets of characters will look alike, with small cosmetic differences.

This is where things get fun. As most of us know, characters in these games are rarely simply good or evil. Yes, a lot of them do bad things – even our own characters from time to time. But, often, the people we’re fighting against are individuals who just happen to be on the opposite side of a particular issue. If you need proof, you can always look at Genshin Impact, where despite the Traveler almost always talking badly about the Fatui, they’re on civil to friendly terms with several of the Harbingers. Of course, there will always be those characters that are nothing but evil and that should be shot into the sun on sight, but they’re the minority.

In Duet Night Abyss, you get to see this in a somewhat different way. Rather than the “hero” simply making friends out of enemies (Although, I’m sure that will happen too.), we get to see experience those bonds from the inside when we swap to the second character who is a dedicated member of the empire and who relies on and trusts those people the character we start as would not. Think of it as a Final Fantasy XIV “Meanwhile in Garlemald” only you’re playing a part in what’s happening instead of just watching it.

It should be noted that the two characters you play as are related in some way, although exactly what, other than looks and the fact that they can apparently meet each other in their dreams. So, obviously, at some point, these two will come together in some way.

As for the non-story gameplay, this is where having a team of characters comes in. As Phoxhunters, players will take on commissions. There are several different kinds of commissions and other repeatable content players are able to do in order to obtain materials, money, and other useful items. Players can also team up with each other to complete certain types of content, as is the case in a lot of open-world action RPGs.

The option to do this is made available after completing a certain amount of the game’s main story, at which point the city the player is using as their base of operations, Icelake, becomes a hub for all players to be able to meet up. That does mean you’ll be seeing a lot of the same character in town, but there is an option to hide everyone else if that bothers you.

If you’re wondering about the not-gacha situation. So far, it’s nice. I have six or seven characters already, which means I have enough to do the content that requires two parties. And while I haven’t gotten one of the full outfit skins in my gacha rolls yet, I’ve gotten a few cute accessories. I’ve also managed to buy others when using the currency you receive for duplicate rolls. I’ve not spent money yet, because I want to spend more time seeing how quickly I accumulate in-game currency now that I’ve completed all the current story content.

So, overall, I’m enjoying the game. It’s a fun story in an interesting world with fairly entertaining combat. Although, you might appreciate it less if your'e coming from Warframe. Most of the fights you’ll come across in the world are taking out smaller mobs, but the bigger bosses require a bit of maneuvering and thought, so there’s a challenge to the combat. As for the not-gacha, it takes some of the pressure off to try to keep up with those character drops. There’s no need to plan out for which character you’ll be trying to obtain, because you will get them all from just playing the game.