holy fguck


i forget how 2 do these but that's fine
ASSAILT SPY is a stylish cuhrayzee action game made mostly by a single dude named wazen who was famous for small rpg maker titles
thisd has fuckall to do with those as it's essentialy devil macry x metal gears rising Revengeance


the main character is a corporate spy fucker named asaru who breaks into corporations and beats the shit out of everyone with his briefcase to steal all their shit. despite weird weapons like the briefcase, an umbrella and business cards, he basically plays like dante and vergil, down to having pretty much direct copies of moves like prop shredder, air trick and dimension cut. the last one is even called dimension cut i'm pretty sure

BUT having a dope moveset doesn't mean shit if you don't enjoy using it. luckily this game is super fucking well-designed and exciting. playing as asaru you're encouraged to perfect time your button presses for more damage, hold buttons down for extra powerful attacks and air dash all over the fucking place. during some of the harder boss battles i was literally holding down two buttons while dialling combos in with the other three, then timing the release to keep the juggle going. it's insane and you feel godlike if you get it right


as far as story goes they clearly weren't shooting for war and peace here lmao. mostly it's a comedy told in visual novel style, with a couple in-engine scenes to introduce bosses and shit. it is fully voice acted in japanese but i wouldn't call the plot gripping by any means. it was funny enough to get a few chuckles out of me though. asaru is stuck with a pink haired junior spy named kanoko and they're basically the classic animu comedy duo, bouncing off each other and setting up punchlines.

some of the scenes went on too fucking long and i started mashing A but i wouldn't call the story bad by any means, it's just window dressing. while we're on negatives, you can 100% tell this game had no budget. the translation in particular is kind of shitty. i think the UI was translated by the japanese dev while the dialogue was done by NIS America, and they couldn't keep the names of shit straight lmao. there's multiple L/R errors and a couple of straight up typos among other things. i had the game crash. i spent like an hour getting a controller working. fuck

but all of that dumb shit ceased to be a problem once i started teleporting around chopping fuckers up with my classy umbrella, then juggling them with a volley of business cards only to suplex their ass out of reality. it's genuinely shocking to me how such a small team managed to put together a classy as fuck product
honestly there are things about this game i like better than bigger budget action games. there's a JUST dodge system, called exactly that, where you're rewarded for timing dodges. but you have other ways around attacks and JUST dodging doesn't give you a huge reward compared to other shit. you can parry attacks with your own moves a la DMC and there's a few moves that basically surround asaru in a barrier of slashes. you can dash cancel just about every move, even in the air, so you get tons of freedom to just make up combos on the fly. bosses start out pretty much immovable, but once you beat the shit out of them enough you get a GUARD BREAK and from there you can style on them to your heart's content


despite some objectively shitty aspects i had an absolute blast as ultra instinct james bond dashing around at mach 2 and blowing up robo fuckers. the game is pretty short but i had nowhere near all the moves by the end. and i got like one S rank the entire playthrough. there's definitely reason to go back in for a second round, especially when you unlock AMELIA SMITH, CIA AGENT who has a unique campaign i will cover in PART 2 OF THE REVIEW OH SHIT

while we're on negatives, you can 100% tell this game had no budget. the translation in particular is kind of shitty. i think the UI was translated by the japanese dev while the dialogue was done by NIS America, and they couldn't keep the names of shit straight lmao. there's multiple L/R errors and a couple of straight up typos among other things. i had the game crash. i spent like an hour getting a controller working. fuck

leave it to nisa to release a suboptimal localization.

game looks pretty cool and the mechanics sound enticing, i like it when games aren't stingy with cancelling mechanics, especially of the dash variety. might look into it sometime