Duet Night Abyss could be a Genshin Impact killer, with a few changes

Duet Night Abyss is the upcoming, potential Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves killer by Hero Games. You may know the studio by its successful release in Black Myth Wukong. Now, Hero is delving into the open-world gacha market. I got to jump into the second closed beta test to see what Duet Night Abyss is all about.

Right off the bat, it looks like some of the best gacha games had a baby. The world’s design is reminiscent of Wuthering Waves’ sprawling landscapes, whereas a lot of characters look vaguely like Genshin Impact’s. Exploration is your classic run-around-and-find-out while opening chests and talking to people on the streets of the steampunk-inspired, wintery town of Belobog Icelake.

There are definitely things that give DNA its own identity in the busy gacha game space. Firstly, it’s the stat checks you have to do to be able to complete certain actions like talking to people. You earn points towards traits like wisdom, chaos, and morality, and have to use them to pass checks. You roll two dice, and if the number is high enough, you can complete the action. If not, well, go earn some points and come back.

What really sets Duet Night Abyss apart from the big gachas already out there is the combat and how your characters work. Whichever main character you choose to deploy is who you run around as – you can’t be the protagonist. You can equip them with a melee weapon and a ranged option, which you can change the color scheme of, and freely use at any time. Also, characters aren’t locked to any specific weapon types. Fancy a polearm? Go right ahead. Five minutes later, you might want a whip-sword – well, you can do that. Each character has animations for each weapon type, which work seamlessly.

This leads to the team comp ability. You have your main on-field, and then you can deploy two other characters as on-field teammates that you don’t control, and only use one weapon. I quite like this aspect, but they don’t perform that well in reality, so don’t expect your summons to take down bosses for you.

Your summons rely on the characters you pull. As you start the game, you get one character for free using your first pull – the jovial four-star Margie, who uses the pyro element, has long brown hair, and wears a red jacket. ‘Sounds familiar,’ you say? I’m sure Genshin Impact’s Amber and I don’t know what you mean.

Something to note is that when you get Margie, you get to run around as her, doing quests and the like. However, you also talk to her during a quest as she’s there with you, so I had a moment like that meme of Spiderman pointing at himself with two Margie’s on the screen. Other people could probably switch to a different character, but I only had her.

For the first few hours, this is the only free character you get. You get Outsider, the vaguely emo guy with long pointy ears and an edgy outfit (again, sound familiar? I’m looking at you, Genshin Impact’s Ororon) after finishing a later quest. This was only my second character, as the gacha has taken me for an absolute ride and given me no new four-star characters. This isn’t necessarily the game’s fault – though usually beta’s bestow plenty of luck and pulls on you – but I found myself not getting any four stars on the banners at all, and went to the full 40 pity before getting a five-star on the welcome banner… which has a maximum pity of 40.

I did get another five-star, Rebecca, on the standard banner after a few ten-pulls, and her kit is fun. She can deploy jellyfish onto the field and deal hydro damage. Yes, yes, it sounds familiar again, but every game has a jellyfish-themed character at this point, like Genshin Impact’s Kokomi, Wuthering Waves’ Cantarella, and even Mythus in Honkai Star Rail. Rebecca is one of three characters that get a skin, which you can try out like you do the banner characters. The skins don’t change much except for looks, but it’s a nice option to have. I do very much like the designs of most characters in the game, even if some are reminiscent of other faces I’ve met in the gachaverse.

The limited and standard banners have a maximum pity of 90, and you can get one of twelve five-star items (six characters and six weapons) on the standard banner. Pulls cost 160 gems or one hourglass each, with different hourglasses for the standard and limited banners. There are two event banners which currently both feature the character Psyche – one of which offers a 50/50 loss, whereas one guarantees you will get her. I’m not sure if this is just for the beta, but I wonder who’s going for the option with the potential loss.

Let’s look at the elemental options for the characters. There’s lumino, umbro, electro, pyro, hydro, and anemo. Look, I know that ‘anemo’ is a real word and not made up by Hoyoverse, but pairing it with hydro, pyro, and electro is a little on the nose. Lumino appears to be similar to imaginary in HSR or spectro in Wuthering Waves, while umbro is like fusion in the latter.

With all that said and done, there are some problems with DNA. I do think this game has a solid base and could become something really great. Emphasis on could. I don’t want to detract from the intriguing setting and pleasantly designed world, but there are some glaring issues.

My biggest concern is that there’s no sprint option. This was a point that plenty of players raised after the first beta test in March of this year, but Hero Games hasn’t added the feature yet. You can dash – jump – dash to get somewhere a bit quicker, but this is really fiddly and looks ridiculous. Please, let us have the option to sprint even if it comes with a meter. Remember, this is an open-world game. Similarly, you can’t just climb – you have to mash a button to jump and flip your way up walls and other surfaces, which again, works, but looks silly.

This is only a beta test, but it’s the second beta, and there are still quite a lot of issues with untranslated text. I played the game using the English language, but had to skip a few quests and conversations entirely due to options or full conversations completely missing the English version, even when they’re part of quests you have to do.

A lot of button prompts – especially when using a controller – come up as ‘UI_CTL_Fish_Throw’, or similar, fairly frequently. Again, considering this is the second beta, it feels like more work should have been done already. There are some graphical issues too, with NPCs disappearing into thin air, chests being stuck in the scenery, but this is less of an issue, as long as it gets fixed.

I will admit, I haven’t played as much as I wanted to, due to the lack of sprinting and translation errors, as they’re really off-putting. My own lack of characters is also something I’m not a huge fan of, but that’s probably down to my own bad luck. I can see myself getting into this game as it improves, but right now, it has a long way to go to compete with the longstanding success of Kuro Games and Hoyoverse titles.

Either way, you can keep an eye on our Duet Night Abyss codes and Duet Night Abyss tier list guides here to stay in the loop before launch.