What do you get if you mix Danganronpa, Balatro and the mind of a pubescent teenager? Why, All in Abyss: Judge the Fake of course, a visual novel where you play games of poker to progress the story whilst trying not to let your wife see the more suggestive cut-scenes and dialogue.
You play as Asuha Senahara as you explore ‘The City’, a kind of futuristic-stylised version of our world where superstar gamblers also have supernatural abilities. Your aim is to defeat the ‘Witches’ – players who are currently at the top of the pile. A pile they climbed to the top of by cheating.
The only solution is to choose different locations from a menu, talk to various characters and work out how each witch cheats, and then try and find some items that will turn the tables in your battle of Texas Hold ‘em.
Asuha has a lot of personality. Maybe even too much. A lot of visual novels have the protagonist be a bit of blank slate. Asuha isn’t like that at all. She’d opinionated, mean, vengeful and quite…lustful. I found her to be quite an unlikeable main character, which made progression through the story tough going. Early on she meets a young girl called Mina and basically exploits her friendship to steals money. It’s fine for media to feature characters who aren’t heroic. It’s just difficult when that character is the protagonist.
It doesn’t help that the game feels mean-spirited in other ways. When you win one of the big end-of-chapter games against the witches, they are ‘punished’. This punishment is a Danganronpa-style sadistic execution. Tonally, it kind of works in Danganronpa when the punishment is delivered by an evil robot creature you’re supposed to hate, whilst you’re trapped in a game that you cannot leave. Here, the punishment is delivered by the head of a poker tournament you willingly take part in. It’s your fault these witches are punished and that game revels in the weirdly sexual way that they are murdered.
How about the Texas Hold ‘em gameplay? All In Abyss tries to freshen things up here. You have normal Texas Hold ‘em, when to raise and call based on the cards you have, and the likelihood of someone having a better hand then you, but All In Abyss adds powers. You can increase your luck or stop your opponent from folding. All useful, but also small. It’s been a deliberate decision here to keep the poker gameplay reasonably pure, with the powers not overtaking the essence of the game. This is not Balatro.
All In Abyss also messes with the betting system. Instead of the game just being a straight count of who has the most chips, when a hand is played in full you earn an attack multiplier. This multiplier is linked to how many times you raised, so playing risky is encouraged.
I wish All In Abyss took more risks with the poker side of things, though. Firstly, it’s not always clear which games are scripted and how much they are scripted. If you replay some boss battles, you’ll find that the same hands come up again the second time around. Clearly the game is choosing which cards you and our opponent get and is expecting you to play the way it wants to. In the games you play in between the big set pieces though, this doesn’t appear to be the case. The haziness of how much is random and how much the game is scripting, though, is quite unhelpful.
It can also be quite tedious to have progression linked to playing games of poker. Inherently, it’s a game of luck, and even with some powers and abilities it’s difficult to become good at a game of chance. When you run out of money, there’s a few areas in the game where you can play tedious minigames to increase your cash pile. Then it’s back off to the tables. It’s a loop that requires time and patience. I didn’t have enough of either.
So, what we’re left with is a visual novel with characters that are hard to love tied to a poker game that’s beautifully presented, but feels a little half-hearted in adding powers and messing with the poker rules.
For someone, this game is going to land beautifully. If you love poker and sadism you’re going to have a great time. But for most people, it will fall flat. If you want a poker game to slowly chip away at, even though this is a lovely looking version of the game, its additional rules and powers will probably put you off. And if you’re looking for a visual novel to play where every character isn’t an insufferable a-hole, you’re going to have to look elsewhere.
It’s a shame, on the surface All In Abyss has everything it needs to be great, but sometimes that chips just don’t land the right way.
Alliance Arts’ All in Abyss: Judge the Fake is out now on Switch and PC.