Deep Down Trailer Mirrors Dark Souls, Unleashes The Ogre Monster Box

Long ago, on a far away system known as the SNES, there was an RPG called Secret of Mana and its follow up, Seiken Densetsu. These age-old games introduced to the gaming world a rather surprising gameplay feature that included opening up a treasure chest only to find that instead of gold or some fancy weapon being stashed inside, it was a monster. It was known as the Ogre Monster Box and the Kaiser Mimic. These boxes would unleash a furious wrath on players who were only keen on trying to gather up some goodies before heading back into town. Well, Capcom learned from history; they've adopted features from the classics and are giving them the grand stage to shine in the upcoming PS4 exclusive, Deep Down.

DualShockers spotted the new Japanese trailer from Capcom, as the company released it as a congratulatory celebration for the PlayStation 4's launch in Japan. Speaking of the Japanese launch – things went down without a hitch, with the company basking in the glory of sales and celebratory praise from the Japanese gaming audience, as outlined by El33t Online with a smorgasbord of photos.

Getting back to the game that captured the headline for this article – Deep Down is a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler. The concept of the game revolves around taking down some of the most supercilious monsters this side of the gaming tracks, as the trailer depicts hard-fought battles and tough-as-nails opponents that would rosy the scales on the faces of the baddies from Dark Souls.

In a way, that's mostly what the game seems to mimic: Dark Souls. However, there's a larger focus on combat readiness and reactions, as evidenced with the Kaiser Mimic popping out and giving chase to an unsuspecting player. Bringing back challenge, difficulty and stage awareness is something that helped put FromSoftware's Souls series on the map, and it was a staple in the design schemes of older action-RPGs where the focus had to be on challenge and gameplay, since graphics could only take you so far on the 16-bit systems.

If Deep Down happens to be this generation's Secret of Mana, you won't find any complaints from me about the subject matter. The trailer definitely seems to hint at a new-generation take on the old-school concept, and that definitely balms my palms with the sort of sweat that drips with anticipation.

You can look for Deep Down to launch... well, I don't really know. What we do know is that the game has been pushed back to the summer. Whether that means we'll get more info by the summer or or an actual summer release definitely remains to be seen. But on the upside, at least PS4 owners know that they're in for a real treat, partaking in an interactive experience that hearkens back to the days of old (hopefully), where challenge was the key ingredient and success wasn't guaranteed for everyone.

How well the game will work out as a free-to-play title remains to be seen, but at least it's ambitious.