Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist – Game Review

Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist – Did you know, behind the seemingly modest “roguelike” style horror game in this article is a name that is not unfamiliar to those who have experienced the “golden age” of Resident Evil early 90s: Director Kenichi Iwao, who helped lay the foundation for Capcom’s famous horror action game series.

Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist continues to expand the Shinonome brand with more content than the previous version: more mononoke (monsters), more traps, more items, more dungeons, and most notably, the appearance of a “second personality” hidden inside the main female miko Yono.

So Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist Is it really able to bring some of Iwao’s classic horror “soul” into a new form, or is this just an experimental project that can easily get lost in the increasingly crowded “sea of ​​indie games”?

Readers, please join Vietgame.asia to find out through the following review!

YOU WILL LIKE

Ears: powerful weapons!

In Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcistthe player will play the role of Yono, the daughter of a famous exorcist family in the region. Her brother, a famous onmyouji, suddenly disappears, and now Yono must replace him as an onmyoji, starting with a “trial” exorcism right in the family’s apartment.

Players will be “dropped” into different houses, and will have to go room by room to find a way out of the house and eliminate the monsters crawling there, as well as use items found in each room.

Point makes Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist Completely different from the rest of the genre is this: the entire experience is built around… the reader’s ears.

There is no minimap, no health bar that shows the enemy location in the next room. Instead, players will listen to every footstep, every whisper, every scratching sound to guess what type of mononoke is lurking around, and come up with appropriate options: fight or… flee!

Play Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcistevery step must be careful

The writer advises readers: put on headphones – this is not advice to help readers “immerse” in the world of Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcistwhich is almost a “required condition” to actually “play” this game.

For example, if you walk into a room and suddenly there is a high-pitched scream, it could be a Gaki waiting to… skewer you! Or if the sound of “Amitabha Buddha” is heard, it’s not monks coming to your rescue, it’s usually Oni in the guise of monks ready to jump out and slash you.

Play Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcistevery step must be careful, and you must use Yono’s ears (and voice) to overcome the challenges ahead.

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The head: the ultimate weapon!

Needless to say, if you are expecting a game where you rush into a group of mononoke and hack and slash, then pick up items like some roguelike action game, this will not be the game for you.

Yono is almost… useless in direct combat, she has no close combat skills (cannot even run fast), and each life-or-death encounter forces the reader to think like a hunter: how many items do I have left? What is this mononoke afraid of? Is there enough time to run around the hallway and lure it into the trap in the corner of the room? The extremely cramped inventory system pushes the tension to the peak – each box is a headache-inducing decision, each discarded item is a gamble.

More specifically, when entering a house, the only weapon that Yono has is an old gun with 3 bullets, and an ammo pack with… 5 bullets, and 3 item slots (of which the gun and ammo pack already take up 2 slots). The gun is relatively useless, shooting is like “scratching an itch” against big monsters, and there is no automatic reloading. If you want to reload, you have to… turn to the bullet box, then… load each bullet in one by one.

Therefore, “fight” in Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist That means you have to remember the layout of the house, where the fires are, what direction the “trap” rooms are in, and when you hear monsters, what’s in your pocket and can you survive? You can set a trap right in front of the door and let Yono speak to lure the monsters out, or drag the monsters into the fires to burn them to ashes.

The writer clearly remembers a time when he had to choose between a candle – the only thing that helped Yono see something in a dark room – and a self-defense talisman that the writer kept from the beginning. In the end, the talisman was kept, and at the cost of finding its way in the dark, then going straight into the mouth of an Oni without the writer ever hearing it.

Sometimes, the best of Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist it’s that it makes you… regret decisions that, in any other game, you wouldn’t even consider “decisions”.

It forces you to “bet” on each item. Cancel? Or keep? – and honestly, it’s been a long time since the writer felt that in a game.

the best of Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist it makes you… regret your decisions

Actually Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist divided into three modes:

• Harai: where the houses have pre-arranged layouts, and to get through here you will need to learn the house layout through many times of playing, where the monsters are, where the items are, and come up with a plan to use the items effectively.
• Misogi: this is true “roguelike” gameplay, the rooms are “grown” randomly, and your task is to somehow get through the house using random items picked up on the way.
• Gyou: basically Misogi but with “hell” difficulty.

Therefore, Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist It can be said to be suitable for people who want to play “puzzle” games with a bit of thrilling action, as well as suitable for people who are “addicted” to roguelikes but don’t mind thinking a little, instead of just rushing into hacking and slashing.

YOU WILL HATE

Not everyone has enough patience!

To say it frankly: Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist not for everyone. Yono doesn’t know how to run, so the game’s pace is so slow that it can frustrate readers who are used to action games. Hades nice Dead Cells yes… yawn!

The difficulty curve is almost “steep”, and the “roguelike” feeling just because of a wrong decision in the third room – not to mention losing all the items collected through the first half of the house – can be quite frustrating. After turning around, it’s okay, but returning to that exact point is incredibly slow and long because Yono only knows how to… walk, and you will have to repeat the exact actions you did before slowly…

Many times the writer has come near the end of a house, suddenly two Oni horses and Oni crawled out and slashed Yono without having time to block it. So the writer had to sadly… start over from the beginning (the game has no save points or anything), and this will test the player’s patience a lot.

To say it frankly: Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist not for everyone

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This house… why does it look so familiar!

Another point that is more annoying is the fact that the “dungeons” after a while start to… look similar to each other. Although each map is randomly generated, the baseboards, hallway patterns, and room layouts are drawn from a fairly limited pool of resources.

With a game that relies almost entirely on atmosphere like Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist“seeing” a familiar hallway again sometimes “breaks” the tension that WODAN studio’s sound department has worked hard to build.

Not to mention, there needs to be a straight warning: if you play in a noisy space – a living room with a TV, a cafe, or on the morning train – it’s like you’ve personally taken away half of the game’s power.

Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist is a game that is literally “picky about the environment”, and that is a limitation that WODAN probably cannot overcome, but readers need to know clearly before spending money.

Shinonome Abyss: The Maiden Exorcist is a game that is literally “picky about the environment”, and that is a limitation that WODAN probably cannot overcome.