Or for anyone who likes easy games. If you liked the bland, straightforward, unchallenging dungeons in games like Conception I & II or Mind=Zero, Ray Gigant will be right up your alley. If you’re looking for the tougher, less-forgiving dungeon RPGs that Experience Inc. is known for – especially if you’re just coming off Stranger of Sword City – this really isn’t the same sort of game.

Spot the careless error, one of hundreds in the game.

I should clear up a little misconception though. I was a little reluctant to start Ray Gigant because I read in a few places that it had a lot of text and reading in it. They made it sound like some kind of Tokyo Majin-like game, i.e. 90% anime high school visual novel with some monsters and brief battles thrown in. It’s nowhere near that bad and not even as talkative as narrative-heavy RPGs like Xenosaga. Every chapter has a brief skit or two, then a dungeon, then another brief skit, then the monster of the day, and on and on till the end of the chapter. As at the 7-hour mark I’d say it’s 20% talking to 80% exploring, but that might change towards the end of the game. In any case if you’re worried you’ll be forced to read when you just want to go out and fight, worry no more.

Ray Gigant is good for beginners

With that out of the way, we can now discuss why I say this game is good for newbies/people looking for a lighter dungeon-crawling experience while having very little to offer veterans looking for the expansive dungeons and bone-crunching battles the genre is best known for. Ray Gigant is super user-friendly because:

• You can retreat from any dungeon at any time.
• You can 100% escape from all non-boss battles.
• Your HP is refilled after every battle.
• You level up using Seeds found from treasure chests/from bosses, not by defeating enemies. You still have to beat a few enemies to get materia/force stones to strengthen your equipment/abilities, but you get that naturally just by exploring. No need to grind.
• There are no classes or class changes and stat distribution is automatic.
• If you change your mind about leveling or learning skills, you can just use Alter/Reverse items to reset your progress.
• There are no random encounters. All enemy locations are marked out in advance so you can choose the course of least resistance.
• Dungeons are usually very small. And 3 floors is the most I’ve seen so far.
• A ‘Jam Stone’ found near the end of every dungeon will clarify the whole map, so there’s no need to explore every nook and cranny.
• Similarly all treasure chests are marked for you so there are no missables.
• The auto-move option will not only take you directly anywhere you’ve been before, it will also chart a course through the weakest enemies and avoid as many traps as possible. It’s not a bad strategy to head straight for the Jam Stone in any dungeon then use Auto-Move to pick up any treasures you haven’t already gotten.
• While enemy encounters are ranked “Light,” “Normal” and “Heavy” there’s no difference in their strength, just in the amount of AP it takes to fight them. It’s not one of those dungeon crawlers that have random enemies several levels higher than your party just loitering around waiting to wipe you out *cough* Etrian Odyssey *hack* Stranger of Sword City *wheeze*. There’s no penalty for avoiding the Heavy encounters either. If anything your party members will praise you for it.
• Allegedly super-powerful Type-I Gigant bosses are not that strong (yet). They can also be countered by a super-powered Slash Beat attack that will knock off 70% or more off their HP if you time it right.
• There is no money and no enemy drops, there are no stores. Equipment and the few items you have take up no space at all. There’s no inventory system to speak of.
• You can use free healing foods as long as you have HP. One character in each party will usually come with a group heal spell as well.
• Attacks use AP, but after 10 turns you switch to Parasitism mode which uses HP to attack instead. This actually makes things much easier because you can spam foods and attacks without limit. Attack with HP, refill HP with food, Attack with HP again, refill HP with food again. As long as you don’t run into a boss that hits very hard (and I haven’t yet after 8 chapters), parasitism is actually better than regular attacking.
• The game switches perspective between three parties. Each time it switches, their levels go way down and so do the levels of the enemies/dungeons. Which means you will not run into anything challenging at least for the first half of the game where no one’s level can go over 15. What’s more, the new party uses the same skills and attacks as the old one so you don’t even have to waste brain power on figuring out new strategies and synergies.

White-haired pretty boy with a cool scar and the same powers as the main character? He must be evil!

And some other stuff that isn’t coming to mind right now. In short if dungeon crawlers intimidate you because they’re hard and unpredictable with lots of confusing choices to make, or if you want to ease yourself into the genre, or if you just don’t have the time or energy to wander through large dungeons, I think you’ll enjoy Ray Gigant.

Personally I do have moments when I want to play something simple and less stressful, but at times like that I usually play an otome or simulation game. Even by normal turn-based jRPG standards Ray Gigant is absurdly simple. It’s hard to imagine most gamers being satisfied by this.

…Unless it gets harder as it goes along… Or the story and characters turn out to be really awesome. Which they haven’t at all so far. In fact both are rather bad so far. In fact not “rather,” more like “quite.” Especially the characters. Nobody plays a dungeon crawler for the story/characters, but when you take away all the stuff people do play this genre for then you have to fill the hole somehow. I have a feeling this is going to be like Conception/Mind=Zero all over again, but I’m only 7 hours in so I’ll refrain from commenting further. If Ray Gigant ends up blowing my mind you’ll be the first to know.

Related posts:

WiZman’s World – Underrated dungeon crawler (1) Finished Conception. Verdict: Good dating sim, bad dungeon crawler. Still playing Sakura Taisen 3 & Stranger of Sword City Mind Zero – Needs more variety