Loop8: Summer of Gods Review – Looks Like My Summer Vacation is Over

September 2022 came and showed us Loop8: Summer of Gods and the artwork and music that would accompany the game. If you have been following our Youtube channel, you will see how much I loved and adored the announcement trailer with every fiber of my being. I just had to grab this game to review once I saw that trailer and I am glad we got a review copy of Loop8. Does it hold up to the pedestal I put the game on? Let’s find out!

Game Name: Loop8: Summer of Gods
Platform(s): PS4 (Reviewed), Nintendo Switch, PC
Publisher(s): XSeed Games
Developer(s): Marvelous Games
Release Date: June 6th, 2023
Price: $49.99

Loop8: Summer of Gods is about a teenage boy named Nini who has lived most of his life on a space station. The space station realizes it has failed to become a safe haven from the Kegai, beings from the underworld that are invading Earth and attempting to put an end to all of humanity. The space station responds by putting the humans back on Earth in the cities that haven’t been destroyed. Nini is blessed with an ability from the gods called Demon Sight that allows him to view the Kegai as well as portals to the underworld. You are tasked with stopping the Kegai from taking over the world. Should you fail, then time will be reversed to the first day Nini arrives on Earth, and you will get another chance to do it correctly.

Learning the Demon Sight

Loop8: Summer of Gods is not exactly the game I was expecting it was originally. The gameplay loop is moving throughout the island and going to classes, doing an assortment of activities, and interacting with people on the island. You can skip out on going to classes, but it also means you miss out on getting a good chunk of stats for Nini. He can gain stats for a variety of activities. Studying, reading magazines, learning geography, running on the beach, cleaning up the shrine, etc., will get you a boost to Nini’s stats.

These stats affect the energy you have throughout the day and how many times you can interact with people on the energy, but also the energy you have for traveling and fighting the Kegai in the Underworld. You use up energy and stamina by interacting with your classmates and teachers. You also use up energy and stamina fighting and exploring the Underworld. It is important to gauge your energy and stamina to plan out the best use of them. Luckily if you use up a lot of stamina or energy before traveling to the Underworld, you can go to the restaurant or café in the town to fill the meters back up to max.

Interacting with the people close to you as well as the people you don’t know on this specific island, is very simple. I feel it is a bit too simple. Basically, when you try to engage in conversation with someone, you will get a few suggestions. These suggestions initially range from getting to know the person better, or it can be teasing them. Based on their energy level as well as your stats and appeal, they will open up or be too busy or tired to engage in a conversation with you. The more you try to talk to someone, the more energy gets used by both of you. There are three gauges to look at for every character in the game. Friendship, Affection, and Hate. Girls tend to lean more towards attraction, and guys tend to lean more towards friendship, and certain suggestions will help out some gauges more than others. The more that people like you, the more suggestions they will accept from you. You can have study time, work out time, or take out people on dates to increase not just your stats but the other person’s stats.

These stats don’t just help with conversations and building your relationships, as they also help with your ability to fight in the Underworld. Your strength and agility affect your stamina bar and your health bar. Your appeal affects your energy which affects how many moves you can use on enemies before you need to recharge. Giving suggestions to classmates who can join you in battle can also be beneficial to the Underworld exploration. When they gain stats, it affects their ability to battle. For example, if you need someone to have more energy, you would need to increase their appeal. Likewise, if you need them to have more health, increase their strength by working out with them when you are in the real world.

Building up your relationship with your party is a good idea, as this will increase the damage you deal from attacks to the Kegai. The downside is even with a buffed-up party, the AI of the party members is based on their emotions towards you and the enemy you are fighting. I do appreciate that we do get an interesting new AI method to use party members, but I also wish I had the option to control them. At least a way to unlock that method would be nice.

The Gameplay Loop

You’ll start with five days to figure out how to stop the Kegai from attacking and destroying the world. The first two days, everything is normal, and you can go throughout the day normally. Once the third-day strikes, a Kegai will infiltrate the island, and you have to find out where they are hiding. The Kegai will start by taking over a vessel and generally are hidden inside a friend of yours or someone who is on the island. Once you find out who it is and talk with them, you will get a cinematic that shows the Underworld barrier being opened. You can then go into the Underworld and find the Kegai who infiltrated the barrier to send them back down to the Underworld and away from your island home. As soon as you beat them, you repeat the cycle getting another five days till you have to stop another Kegai assault.

If you do not stop the Kegai attack and they destroy the world, you will get sent back in time to the first day Nini arrives on Earth. Luckily your stats and the stats of your friends will stay the same. However, your relationship with them will revert to how they were on the first day and you’ll have to work on that all over again.

Summer Beauty

Loop8: Summer of Gods has some of the absolute best visuals of video games I have ever witnessed. The models blend in with the watercolor-type rendered backgrounds, and the characters fit the mold very well. Each character has a unique appearance that also explores their character. There is a solid color contrast that makes the female characters pop out a lot. I will say all the male characters look rather bland, with all having the same outfit and similar color schemes. The animation of the walking and some of the movement can feel quite janky in its stylistic environment.

One thing that I wish was in the game was more outfits for the characters. The only character that gets a different outfit is Konoha, and she wears it on the weekends only. Otherwise, she is in her school uniform. The backgrounds of every area look stunning and feel like they should be on a canvas in a museum. The rural countryside town look is great, and it fits well with its small areas and homey village atmosphere.

I played Loop8: Summer of Gods on my PS5 through backward compatibility. It had some loading times between areas, but it was only a few seconds. I think the animations must be capped on characters to 30fps since they are very slow in comparison to the camera and movement of the controller. It feels really slow when traversing in areas, and not being able to have a run button makes it feel even slower to get to and from areas of the screen. Taking a long to get to locations reduces the amount of time you have quickly. This did annoy me as I started to get used to the loop of the game and going to locations to grab divine blessings.

The music of Loop8: Summer of Gods also gives a great atmosphere to the game. The tone of the music changes based on the mood of the characters in the location you are at. If you are alone in a forest, you are given music that is normal for the setting you are in. The normal mood will then display at the top of the screen. If you are at a location with someone who has max affection for you, the music will change to be more romantic in the setting you are in. It is a great shift to not getting used to the same music since it gets mixed in with different moods based on your companions.

Saving the World

Overall, Loop8: Summer of Gods is a fantastic game marred with some game design choices. There is a great love and passion for the characters and the design. There is a lot of love in the art and music. However, trying to make a game this stylistic and experimental without options will cause some issues with actually playing the game. 70% of this game will be using the dating simulator, which is very simple but does get more complex as the relationship grows with each person. Those who want the combat and want to have more turn-based action might be going away disappointed with this game as it doesn’t offer a lot in the Underworld to explore. Bosses are more dependent on your relationship with your party and with the person who is taken over by the Kegai than it is by the stat choices.

The stats still matter, but even maxed-out characters can be beaten if you are fighting alongside someone who you have no emotional attachment with. I recommend having a lot of saved files so you can adjust your strategy of who to focus on engaging with so that when the person does get taken over, you know you can handle them.

My first playthrough of the game was a lot of experimenting with it. The tutorial does good on combat and the dating simulation. The exploration of the world and the Underworld made me confused. Since the first loop is very much structured in a linear playstyle, it made me think I was soft-locked when certain events didn’t happen to me as I thought it was supposed to. I didn’t realize I had to find the Kegai and spent a bunch of time wandering around talking with people to build up their relationship with Nini. I kept losing loops because I couldn’t find the Kegai until my fourth loop allowed me to figure things out and made me feel both smart and idiotic.

Loop8 Summer of Gods will be available June 6th, 2023, on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Review Disclosure Statement: Loop8: Summer of Gods was provided to us by XSeed Games for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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