Duet Night Abyss Review: A Look at the Closed Beta Test

There are a lot of cool mobile games coming out. But Duet Night Abyss is special. Like the game Snowbreak from a while ago, it's an anime action shooter game. These kinds of games are not as common as games where you take turns or adventure games like Honkai: Star Rail and Wuthering Waves.

But Duet Night Abyss is different from other games like it. It has cool parkour moves, combat that uses both swords and guns, and you collect loot as you play. These things make people compare it to the game Warframe, which is still very popular and I like too!

Before playing, I didn't know much about the game except for some things online from past tests. But now I do! (Dramatic sound!) I got to play the Duet Night Abyss beta test. And wow, it was really fun! But it's not perfect yet.

The Story is Serious!

I remember when stories in these kinds of games were like cartoons for kids. For example, the first game story I read was about kids who played soccer. They beat aliens and demons with soccer and friendship! It was fun then. But now, game stories are often either just everyday life or really sad and serious.

That's okay, but sometimes serious stories are not for everyone. That's why I like Duet Night Abyss's story. It's not afraid to be dark and sad.

Duet Night Abyss is about a girl who lives on an island with her best friend and some other people. She doesn't know much about the world outside. Then, soldiers attack, take her friend, and push her off a cliff! She has to learn about this new world and try to save her friend from a big empire.

It's a good way to start a story. You get to know the main character and her friend, and then they are suddenly separated by bad guys. It feels like the game Tales of Berseria. But this is just the beginning. The story gets even crazier later!

I don't want to spoil too much of the story. But the end of the first part made me feel sad, and maybe cry a little! The story really shows you that Duet Night Abyss is serious and doesn't hold back on sad things.

Small spoiler! If you don't want spoilers, skip this part. After the first part of the story, there's another big surprise. The story starts to follow two characters at the same time. They are not related, but they are connected to a group in the game. One character is against the group, and the other is for it. It makes you think about who is good and who is bad.

Shooting and Action Gameplay - Still Needs Work

There are many ways to describe how Duet Night Abyss plays. You could say it's a shooting game where you get loot and has some role-playing game stuff. Or, you can say it's like an adventure game where you explore and shoot. But maybe the easiest way to explain it is: "It's like Warframe, but with anime girls."

It fits many different game types, which is good. Duet Night Abyss is fun to play and feels welcoming to different kinds of players. But it's still in beta, so some things still need to be fixed.

The game's beta test can be looked at as three types of games in one: looter shooter, action, and RPG.

Because it's a looter shooter, you play to get new stuff. You collect weapons, items to make your weapons and characters better, and materials to build things.

The action part is from the fast fighting. You can use swords and guns. You can move around in cool acrobatic ways, both in fights and when exploring. And characters have special skills that do different things.

The RPG part is about making your character your own. You can change their skills, weapons, clothes, and even how other characters see them.

In many games, crafting is just for people who can't get good stuff in other ways. But in Duet Night Abyss, crafting is actually good! You can get special items to make your stuff stronger, and even really rare weapons.

To get crafting materials, you need to play levels called Nocturnal Echoes. You fight lots of enemies or big bosses. The bosses seem cool at first. But they are not very hard. Maybe the first or second time they are tough. But their attacks are easy to see coming and dodge. After a few times, you can beat them easily.

It's good that the game is easy to get into. But for later in the game, I hope they add harder challenges. Especially when you can play with friends!

Easy to Learn and Play

If you've played action games on your phone before, Duet Night Abyss will be easy to learn. It has things that are in other games, but maybe done a little differently (like pressing space to climb walls).

But one big difference in Duet Night Abyss is the gun. You control it with your mouse. This small thing changes how the game feels. Guns are very strong, but you need to get ammo from enemies. Also, guns work with swords in cool ways, like reloading when you hit hard with a sword.

You will probably use guns a lot more than you think. Even if you like using big swords, guns are just too good to ignore. And all the bosses I fought were weak to guns in some way.

To help you use guns, the game has cool moves. You can slide, jump on walls, dash in the air, and do special jumps to go high up. With all these moves, shooting in Duet Night Abyss is really fun!

But because guns are so good, using swords is not as good. Did you notice I didn't say you can run fast? That's because you can't! If you want to hit something with your sword, you have to walk slowly or jump awkwardly. Many sword attacks don't even move you closer to enemies. You can jump down on enemies, but it's hard to aim. They could fix this by showing where you will land.

One thing that needs to be fixed is how characters bump into things. It feels like you get stuck on corners and ledges too much. When you climb walls, you have to dash at the end to get over the top. This can make fighting close to enemies harder.

Lots of Ways to Customize Your Character!

Duet Night Abyss lets you change your character a lot! You can give them hats, clips, masks, and more. It's like a fashion show and a fight at the same time! You can look cool while fighting bad guys.

But the coolest part is how you can change your character's personality like in the game Dungeons & Dragons! You can change how they act and talk, not just how they look. There's even a dice roll system to see if you get lucky!

Let's talk about playing with friends... kind of. In other games like Snowbreak and Wuthering Waves, you can switch between characters quickly. But in Duet Night Abyss, you call in two friends to fight with you. This sounds good, but it's not always easy. Your friends are controlled by the computer, and they don't always do what you want. It's like trying to get cats to follow you! Sometimes it's fun and crazy, but sometimes it's annoying because you can't control them well.

Good News for Free Players!

Let's talk about getting new characters and weapons. Duet Night Abyss uses a gacha system. If the beta is like the final game, you will need to pull on banners to get characters and good weapons. There are three types of banners:

The Standard Banner: "Sojourns Entwined" is always there. It has both characters and weapons. The chance to get a really rare item (SSR) is a bit low, about 0.6%. But if you pull 90 times, you are guaranteed to get one. So, the chance is really more like 1.6%. But because you can get either a character or a weapon, the chance for each is lower, around 0.3% or 0.8%. But good news! This banner uses different tickets than the special event banners. So you can pull on it often.

Event Banners: There are also special event banners. One is for a special character (like Psyche right now), and another is for her weapon. These banners are a little different from other games, but in a good way!

Event Weapon Banner: Like the game Wuthering Waves, if you get a rare item (SSR) on the weapon banner, it will always be the special weapon they show! No more worrying about getting the wrong thing when you get lucky! Also, you only need to pull 80 times to be guaranteed a rare item, which is less than other banners. This is great for players who don't want to spend money and just want to get cool characters!

Event Character Banner: At first, the character banner looks like other game banners. But it's actually divided into two types: "Destined Chrono" and "Event Character Chrono". They are different depending on how you want to spend your game money.

Event Chrono: This one is normal. You pull, hope to get lucky, and if you get a rare character, you have a 50/50 chance to get the special character. It's like other games, and can be a little annoying if you don't get lucky.

Destined Chrono: But this banner is special! It's only here for a short time, but if you get a rare character (SSR) from it, you are guaranteed to get the special character they are showing! Yes, really! You are sure to get them!

Because of these two banners, you can get any special character you want if you pull enough times on the "Destined Chrono" banner (about 90 pulls). You only have to worry about the 50/50 chance if you want to get extra copies of the character to make them stronger. This is a very, very good gacha system for players who don't spend money! I hope they keep it like this in the final game!

Looks Good for the Future!

Overall, I think Duet Night Abyss is going in the right direction. The story really stood out to me. I can't remember the last time the first part of a game made me so emotional! It shows the story is deep and serious from the start.

But the game still needs some work, especially the sword fighting. Games like Warframe have really smooth movement and fighting. Duet Night Abyss feels a bit old compared to those games. It has potential, but it needs to get better to be as good as the best games out there. If they make it smoother, it could be great! Or maybe just having cool characters will be enough for some people.

But they shouldn't stop trying to improve! I hope the people making the game listen to what players are saying and make it even better!