Assault Spy – Review
Follow Genre: Hack and slash, Adventure
Developer: Wazen
Publisher: NIS America, Inc.
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC

Assault Spy – Review

Site Score
6.9
Good: Nice story, gameplay accessible for all ages.
Bad: Very linear, often repetitive
User Score
7.3
(4 votes)
Click to vote
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 7.3/10 (4 votes cast)

A corporate spy would normally be somebody who is undercover, stealing a company’s secrets, customers and traffic. Maybe even their deep dark secrets and whatever dirt they could possibly find. But what if somebody like that would have a suitcase to smash your head in as well? And an elaborate arsenal of spy gadgets to help him being the aggressor that he is? In the anime type of world that is Assault Spy, it’s all possible. 

Story

Corporate spy Asura is stealing secrets for a mysterious company. We quickly find him on what seems to be a regular mission. Unlucky Asura is teamed up with an apprentice spy named Kanoko, who might be a cute girl in appearance but truly makes Asura’s job way harder than needed with her (humoristic) clumsiness. No matter how much Asura begs to get rid of her though, according to the boss he’ll just have to make the best out of it.

The two of them quickly find themselves in a situation where they have to defeat evil robots that are eradicating office employees, forcing the characters to change from corporate spies to heroes to the rescue. They quickly move down the rabbit hole as a number of conversations in cutscenes and visual novel styled parts let every involved character work their classic anime magic.

Graphics

On one hand, the graphics of Assault Spy are looking pretty slick. There are parts of the game that look a bit futuristic, and the visual novel style is doing its job very well. On the other hand, some animations such as running or connecting combat activities aren’t done that great and actually have a strong feeling of either not taking itself too seriously, or slightly amateurishly looking indie development. No matter the case, besides the visual novel art it’s probably not the strongest case the game has.

Sound

The background music and the sound effects are fitting, but not too special. It’s what you are probably used to by now when it comes to an action game. In genre, it’s a bit on the electro/dance side most of the time. The best audio part, however, is probably the voice acting which is very coherent with the characters and the story, and fit everything when it comes to anime-rules and the corresponding voices that are supposed to express the different characters their characteristics. Asura for one is a pretty serious guy, while Kanoko is the wacky weirdo that’s acting as the wild card.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Assault Spy is presenting a rather simple hack ‘n slash. It has the rating system and style adaptations of the Devil May Cry series, yet it doesn’t play as fluent (a controller plays best by the way) or connecting as those games. Also, even though the game gradually gets harder, it disappoints in its diversity. Basically, you are running from arena to arena to survive a small invasion of robots every time and beat them up the best way possible. Where other, more advanced games such as Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden might use the different environments and enemies depending on those environments, Assault Spy simply locks down some borders to square off an area that was already pretty small to begin with. The square might be different each and every time, but it’s a square nonetheless.

The main variation, besides tougher or more enemies after a while, is that you can upgrade your skills as you choose to buy more combos, different attacks, or to upgrade existing items such as explosive business cards you can throw at enemies. It’s also a system much like the earlier named other hack ‘n slash games that add a little side of tactic and improve the game a little bit. Yet, it doesn’t change that you will probably stick around for the story when playing this and that even though the gameplay gets more interesting as it gets harder, it remains repetitive of nature after all. This is enhanced by the linear nature of running from arena to arena. At some point, there is an objective to find four different items, but you still run through safe zones and battle zones without having to look where to go. A little bit of freedom wouldn’t have hurt the game at all. That being said, it’s probably still amusing enough for some people, and at least it’s an easily accessible concept for pretty much all ages.

Conclusion

Assault Spy has some good and bad points. The main good is the story and the convincing anime atmosphere the game has, the main bad is the little variation in gameplay and the linear way the story is presented by the gameplay. It’s still pretty fun to play, yet there are many points the game could have taken from other games to improve itself quickly and to entrust the player with a bit more freedom.

 

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 7.3/10 (4 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
Assault Spy - Review, 7.3 out of 10 based on 4 ratings
Icecreamvamp


I'm a game designer, developer, and reviewer. I've been reviewing for 3rd-strike.com since 2017.

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