**This review has story spoilers for 1.6 and is written right after completion of said story**
TL;DR: Game good but have insane identity crisis and a lot of problems with getting out of it as of 13.09.2026. ITS ALSO SAFE TO PLAY, THERE ARE NO MALWARE BAKED INTO IT, STOP DOOMPOSTING. The story is immaculate, but hardly catch my autistic eye because the actual implementation is on the edge from being a slop. The gameplay is... non-existent until you feel like you want to play the game, then you find what to do, but 95% AFK driven for now (DEVS ACKNOWLEDGE IT AND IS WORKING TO FIX IT)... Theoretically a 9/10 game, but for now I can't give it more than 4/10 even after sinking 2.6k hours into it.
- Graphic: 7/10
- Optimization: 7/10
- Gameplay: 4/10
- Story: 10/10 (-3 for AI use, 13 otherwise)
- Malware: 0/10
- Hope that it will continue to grow: 1000/10
Non TL;DR:
Whether you like it or not, on last Q&A stream (which was also first of its kind) developers said that they have money and get enough funding from whales to keep the game alive for some time, meaning they have even more time to improve it instead of EOS-ing it in the near future. We don't know exact number of developers, if they are outsourcing stuff or try to keep everything internally, but what we know and can clearly see that the game was planned as a Gacha, and quickly remodeled into Warframe-clone, which is not bad if you ask me, but changing everything right before release was both a crucial mistake and a miracle that they pulled something like this in such a short time (kinda).
Pre-release came, game was raw af with a lot of new things to do, because everyone were a new player. Geniemons, quests, collectables, damage calculation, cosmetics... It was an actual game that had insane potential. Story was good, dark, a bit naive, but still enough to get a good taste of what to come. Then 1.1 came... Game tried to improve, but ultimately still stucked at the same place it was, while trying to grab more money and even create events that ask to bring more players with you for a few manuals that you need to use on unfinished dungeons with DISGUSTING gameplay that got repetetive really quickly, especially farming 200 wedges for every element (yes, I'm braindead, I know)
I continued playing because I was a day one account, and I kinda wanted to keep playing, hoping that in some distant future game would improve. 1.2 was a filler which kinda gave us what we wanted, but many people left the game here. Then 1.3 pushed 1.2 narrative even further, pushing even more people off with how attrocious gameplay was, story suddenly takes a weird turn into not so dark-based theme and fashion is non existent with how little customisation we have. Feels, and looks like, devs chased profits more than satisfaction from the game, trying to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, but actually hitting themselves into balls with it.
Controversy sparks up because game use AI assets (still does, and there is no disclaimer about it, but I think its fine as long as its not in the main story *foreshadowing*), then hacker pushed the game down even more, firstly hacking Lua server backbone, changing server name which upon login into shows you "Game is dead, play genshin instead". Devs fixed it quickly, but next day hacker came back and distributed malware, stealing discord tokens and chrome passwords (iirc, it affected windows only). It was fixed in a few hours too, but it was too long and too late for most people, killing everyone trust in the game and developers. We got no response either until next day late night, saying "We've secured our servers, its fine, here's compensation worth ~2$ for your info stolen, please continue playing!"... yea no, now you have like 5k active players at best and ruined your reputation.
...But then 1.4 came, massive improvements for farming, new players; new ACTUAL lore, more... free stuff, huh. Apparently after the hacking incident a lot of *internal* changes were made in Pan Studio, firing old director and changing their approach entierly. If before we got a pre-recorder 'livestreams' with 'feature showcase', now we get a proper in-game "Bulletin's", that show that they care, they increase the value for free rewards, they push faster fixes, they... actually communicate with us?
1.5 leaks are on the way, showing new wedges, new calamity weapons, new character and... A LOT of QoL features, huh... Most of them should be there from day 1, I won't argue, but they add QoL and... actually do stuff that community wants them to do. No more cash grab, because they even give us some coupons to make stuff cheaper; no more empty promises, because they even say upfront what they want to do for us in next updates (Bulletin X) and ask us if this is really what we want... I... Don't hate them anymore, but still sceptical.
1.5 out!!!... Its... alright, its still Duet Night Abyss after all, where you are a Wedge Dungeon Slave, but now you can AFK it!! Don't know if this is a good or a bad feature, but fine, it'll buy Pan Studio some time to fix their game even more, if they can, that is. I can still see AI generated artworks here and there, I can still feel how clunky movement is and how we technically have nothing to do but grind Theatre endlessly or stay AFK for resources that we have no use for, but its an improvement!
*story spoilers*
Now we in 1.6. This game is a lot... A LOT better than it was in 1.0, I'd even say it improved by 3 times AT LEAST. New story that show us Paradise, Eve's lore and how cruel war might be, that a half-ripped fallen soldier promises to bring town that he destroyed back to life, slouching through piles of dead bodies and finding 1 single girl that is barely alive. That we, as a second player (Mors, this is Dual Narrative after all) and Falsi need to get revenge on Fulvis and find Catalyst that has a power to duplicate everything in infinite quantities; How we got invited to a Feast, where we NEED to lie so innocent person will be killed to buy us some time, while also basically being an allegory for Adam and Eve's story... How dark this game might be in its writing and how they cherrish those concepts and ideas, yet how they flop completely with new clunky mechanics and AI art in the middle of tragic scene...
I love this game and its a really, really great story experience if you can close your eyes on every ♥♥♥♥ up they've done. I'll continue supporting and recommending it, but I also would advise to not play it at the same time. It's a "Schrödinger game" for now, because you get so hyped for basic QoL features and for insane story, but get depressed right after because you either find a graphical glitch or you need to relog into AFK dungeon every 30 minutes, because there is nothing else to do.
If you read it all through, you should probably download it and give it a try, its a shattered masterpiece that need its time. I believe in Pan Studio, and I really... REALLY hope they believe in themselves to finish it and convert it into a beautiful long-standing game, because they have every mechanic already in the game and every mean to do so, but it might be a LONG time before it might be the game everyone wants it to be. I personally miss a massive world (I don't really like how every area is a seperate map and a confined space) and endgame modes, otherwise I can dump another 2000 hours into it
