Loop8 was provided by the publisher for review. Thank you!
Loop8: Summer of Gods is a slice-of-life JRPG with a mix of visual novel and roguelike mechanics. As Nini, you have come from space to live on Earth in the 1980s. You are staying in a rural Japanese town, but things get complicated as Kegai are invading and the end of the world is in sight. Now, thanks to your Demon Sight, you are thrown into battles where the relationships and decisions you make there affect the outcome of your power and the world itself. Strengthen your bonds, manage your time, and turn the tides in your favor, one loop at a time.
Loop8 is a unique game that tries to re-create the Persona lifestyle choices, but mix in some roguelike elements to it. While the game has an incredible art style, the visual novel focus holds my enjoyment back a little. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy visual novels, but the mechanics here make going through the loops feel like a slog. It also makes the loops take longer. In general, roguelike restarts usually take around 20 - 30 minutes to keep you going and not get stale from doing similar stuff over and over, but because of the visual novel elements, each loop can take hours.
I love the premise of the story, the sci-fi elements mixed with timeline loop is one that really interests me. But, while Loop8 has some interesting characters that can keep the story intriguing, I found the constant discussions with others and the slower pace to take away from the interest I had. You have specific action choices to grow your bond with them and, as they grow, you get more options, and it makes them stronger, but the monotony and slow-pacing of doing this turns me off of wanting to talk to them. Even the turn-based combat can sometimes feel a bit confusing as you use attacks imbued with elements like "Friendship" or "Hatred". There is a semblance of a good game here and I love what they were trying to do, but it doesn't feel it really nails its mechanics down. Regardless, this will be a game you can fully enjoy on the Steam Deck!
Luckily, if you want to enjoy and play this game on the Steam Deck, you will be able to with flying colors! Without any changes, Loop8 gives a solid 60 FPS with 6W - 8W battery drain, which equates to around 6 hours of play time. This is pretty on-par with visual novels, but the game continues this during combat segments, which have much more activity going on.
While the game doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, so you will see black bars, it does have cloud saves and full controller support! But there is one other aspect of the game I want to quickly discuss...
Loop8 doesn't have long loading times at all, most aspects generally load within 3-4 seconds, but there are a lot of them. In some conversations I had, there would be 2-3 loading screens as the party moved to new areas, including 1 that happened while in the same area during the same conversation. They didn't take long to load, but it definitely broke my immersion and desire to talk to the people there.
Loop8: Summer of Gods is a game trying to do so many different things, but not nailing them down just right. The story and artstyle are really great, but the slow-pacing and monotony of the visual novel elements really bog down what feels like an enjoyable game. I really wanted to like this game, and a part of me still does, but I couldn't bring myself to fully immerse like I wanted to. But if this does interest you further, there will be no problem at all playing this on the Steam Deck! It runs flawlessly without changes, making it a Best on Deck game, but the pacing is just way too slow.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Loop8: Summer of Gods is a game trying to do a bit too much, but not nailing it down completely. Thankfully, it does run flawlessly on the Steam Deck regardless!
