Loop 8: Summer of Gods Review — Break The Cycle

At first glance, it’s hard not to compare Loop8: Summer of Gods to Atlus’ hugely popular Persona franchise. After all, they share much in common, at least on the surface level. You play the role of Nini, a newcomer to the sleepy Japanese town of Ashihara Nakatsu, a near-spitting image of Persona 4‘s rural hamlet of Inaba. By day, you’ll go to school and build relationships with your classmates before setting off to the shadowy underworld to vanquish angry gods hellbent on destroying the world.

But that’s not to say it’s a mere carbon copy of Atlus’ flagship JRPG series. While the similarities are certainly unavoidable, Loop8: Summer of Gods differentiates itself from Persona with a unique time-looping mechanic that encourages—and sometimes necessitates—repeated playthroughs if you hope to see everything the game offers. Unfortunately, despite its novel premise, a severe lack of variety, coupled with the game’s repetitive nature, keeps Loop8: Summer of Gods from ever reaching its full potential.

The Man Who Fell To Earth

It can be tough to find the time to make friends and save the world. But you’ll need to do both if you want to see Loop8’s story through to its conclusion.

Loop8: Summer of Gods’ story takes place in an alternate version of August 1983, where much of the world’s population has been obliterated by the wrathful underworld spirits known as Kegai. You play as Nini, the sole survivor of a space station attacked by these beings, who begins his new life in the Japanese town of Ashihara Nakatsu with his cousin, Konoha. Nini isn’t quite like the other kids, however. He’s been blessed with a mysterious power called Demon Sight, which allows him to see what others cannot. It’s a power that will become invaluable in his battle to save the world from the Kegai’s wrath.

The core gameplay loop goes like this: At the start of every week, a Kegai will break through the barrier protecting Ashihara and possess one of the town’s residents. Once that happens, you’ll have five days to determine which character has been overcome by the Kegai’s influence and confront them in the Underworld, a mirror image of the town inhabited by shadowy creatures. If you fail to discover who the afflicted character is and defeat the boss before the end of the fifth day, the world as we know it is destroyed, and you’ll find yourself plopped back at the train station to relive Nini’s journey back at the start of day one.

Further adding to the urgency, you’ll need to reach a certain relationship level with the possessed character before confronting them. Otherwise, you’ll have to kill one of your poor classmates or teachers, which obviously feels pretty crummy and will keep you from netting Looop8’s best ending. It’s a unique twist, to be sure, which adds a bit of Danganronpa flavor to the proceedings as you attempt to suss out the culprit, knowing your decisions could ultimately wipe a character off the playing field for good.

Strength In Numbers

While the bosses will likely crush you on your first few runs, as you build your relationships and experience successive loops, you’ll gain the strength to overcome your enemies.

While Loop8 does feature traditional turn-based combat when exploring the Underworld, it’s hardly the star of the show. Instead, you’ll spend the lion’s share of your time chatting your way to victory. That’s because, unlike most role-playing games, you don’t gain levels in Loop8. Instead, your strength comes from the relationships you build with the people of Ashihara and the blessings bestowed upon you by the squirrel-like deity Musasa who rewards you for visiting shrines, completing fights, or reaching relationship milestones with each character.

As you’d expect, it takes time to forge those bonds and grow stronger – and time is a luxury you don’t have in Loop8: Summer of Gods. The game is designed so you can only interact with each character so many times per calendar day before your advances become ineffective. This fact, combined with Loop8’s unforgiving permadeath system and a clock that’s constantly ticking down to doomsday, come together to ensure that you’ll start from scratch a few times before you can make any real progress in the story.

That’s where the game’s titular Loop system comes into play. If Nini dies—or if you ask a specific NPC to reset the clock—you’ll begin a new loop at the beginning of the story. While your stats will reset to their starting values, you’ll retain any blessings—in the form of permanent stat buffs—you previously received from Musasa. Additionally, while the relationship levels for each of the town’s characters revert to zero, you can get them back to their previous level twice as quickly as before.

It took me four loops to complete Loop8: Summer of Gods’ story – or just under 30 hours. But your mileage will likely vary, given the game’s cyclical structure. Veterans or those playing New Game Plus could probably wrap up the campaign in half the time, while completionists could likely eke out 60+ hours as they attempt to max out the stats for every relationship. Though I find it hard to imagine many players will feel compelled to do so. Unlike many roguelikes, which can be wrapped up in an hour or so, a complete loop in Loop8: Summer of Gods can take a dozen or more hours. And, as you can imagine, reliving the same conversations and days over and over again, like an anime version of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, starts to become painfully repetitive.

 The Gift of Gab

Your relationship with Loop8’s cast of characters is mainly determined through simple dialogue choices.

The marketing materials for Loop8: Summer of Gods waste no time touting the game’s emotion-driven AI system, which supposedly responds to every decision you make and interaction you have with the various characters you’ll meet. It’s a pretty bold claim which, if it worked as described, would be a genuinely compelling feature – especially given how extensive the game’s cast of characters is. But, sadly, in practice, it doesn’t work particularly well.

When interacting with a character, the game presents you with a list of interactions you can have and their probability of success. In the beginning, they’re pretty limited. You’ll only have the option to do things like compliment, tease, or get to know the character better. Depending on the outcome of these interactions, you’ll influence the characters’ friendliness, affinity, and hatred levels. Once your relationship grows strong enough, you’ll unlock new dialogue choices, such as going on dates (which increases your appeal), working out together (which boosts your strength and agility), or even asking them to join you to battle in the Underworld.

On paper, it sounds like a great feature. However, it’s just a shame these interactions feel most superficial. One minute a character can be happy as a clam. Then, talk to them again, and moments later, they’re absolutely apoplectic, seemingly with little rhyme or reason. This is incredibly annoying when you ask a character to join you for a walk so you can visit the underworld, only to have them bail on you in a huff just before you set foot in its entrance, costing you valuable time.

These Are Not Loving Gods

Saru gives the tree spirit Kukumochi a wallop they won’t soon forget.

Apart from chatting it up with the locals, you’ll spend at least one day each week in the Underworld. Don’t go expecting some grand dungeon to delve into, however. It’s literally a 1;1 recreation of the normal version of Ashihara Nakatsu with a spooky filter applied. Here, the main goal is to acquire enough Magatama to open the gate where the boss awaits. Magatama is found in “trials,” which are just floating orbs that you can interact with, which, in turn, perform a stat check on your character. So long as you have enough appeal, strength, or whatever they require, they’ll reward you with a Megatama. The stat checks seem to be pretty forgiving, as throughout my extensive time with Loop8 for this review, I never once failed one.

As for enemy encounters, they’re mostly optional. There are no random encounters or anything like that. Instead, talking to Underworld inhabitants will usually trigger a fight. And, once your foe is vanquished, you’ll receive a new blessing for your or one of your party members as a reward. So while these fights aren’t mandatory, they’ll help you boost your stats substantially if you’re struggling to toughen up one of your companions.

Honestly, the combat works well enough in Loop8, though it’s somewhat limited. It’s perfectly acceptable turn-based fare, which I don’t think we get enough of nowadays. Nini can use his Demon Sight ability to look into the future and anticipate his opponent’s next moves, which adds a welcome bit of strategy to the otherwise straightforward proceedings. My only real complaint is that you don’t have control over your teammates’ actions. This resulted in frustration numerous times as they continually did things like cast buffs on each other when all I wanted them to do was attack the monstrous creature looming before us. Considering bosses’ attack levels increase the longer the fight drags on, you can probably imagine how annoying this could be after a while.

While I’m talking about the combat system, it’s worth noting that, outside of the bosses, Loop8 essentially has one enemy type with different color palettes depending on which character has been possessed. They’re literally just ill-tempered spirit tadpoles. I wish I were joking. Seriously, even though combat isn’t the main focus on Loop8, I can’t stress enough how badly I wish there were greater enemy variety to spice up my time in the mirror world.

One Scenic Summer

Ashihara Nakatsu and its inhabitants are full of charm.

When it comes to its presentation, Loop8: Summer of Gods is a treat. From its appealing character designs, lushly-drawn backdrops, and carefully-crafted attack animations, it’s a game that’s undoubtedly easy on the eyes. The special attacks you’ll unlock for each character are easily the stars of the show, offering a breathtaking spectacle that makes each encounter pop.

The music is also fantastic. This should come as no surprise, though, as Loop8’s score was composed by Noriyuki Iwadare. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, you’ll find his work in such classics as Grandia, Langrisser, Zero Wing (yes, that Zero Wing), and Game Arts’ beloved Lunar series. Several of the arrangements sound as if they could have been lifted straight from the latter. And, as a big Lunar fan—I credit the original Silver Star on the Sega CD with kickstarting my love for the JRPG genre—that pleases me greatly.

Conclusion

With its interesting premise that blends time-looping mechanics and extensive relationship-building into Persona’s familiar formula, I went into Loop8: Summer of Gods expecting a summer to remember. It’s just a shame that none of these elements come together as cohesively as they could have, making for an uneven experience. With repetitive dialogue choices that feel mostly weightless, a quirky combat system, dungeon-crawling that comes across as tacked-on, and a severe lack of variety, don’t go canceling your summer plans for this one.

Final Verdict: 2.5/5

Available on: PS4 (reviewed), Xbox One, Switch, PC; Publisher: XSEED Games; Developer: SIEG Games; Players: 1; Released: June6, 2023; ESRB: T for Teen; MSRP: $49.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Loop8: Summer of Gods provided by the publisher.