Dungeon crawler recomendations

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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cj iwakura
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by cj iwakura »

Ghegs wrote:
cj iwakura wrote:Speaking of Wizardry, I still can't believe no one's localized the sequel to Labyrinth of Lost Souls...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WcBF8pSJew

It wasn't a great game or anything, but I still enjoyed it enough to write an FAQ on it.
Dang, don't remember the last time I saw a 144p Youtube video.

I have wondered why there hasn't been any Wizardry games released on Switch, not even Labyrinth of Lost Souls which is already available on multiple systems.

---

I finished up The Lost Child this weekend, took about ~39 hours to finish the main quest. I found out my local gaming shop had one copy still around, so I went and picked it up.
I had a really cheap capture device back then, and I had to change the PS3 to A/V output, so... yeah. :P Maybe I should do a better resolution video one day, I did actually buy the sequel off the JPSN after all(Town of Forsaken Spirits).


Lost Child is very good, and yeah, it is a lot like an SMT game, particularly Soul Hackers, which was basically a cyberpunk SMT.


Also, speaking of forests(and games that aren't Etrian Odyssey), the original Elminage is a fun time, if very obtuse and non-linear.
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heli wrote:Why is milestone director in prison ?, are his game to difficult ?
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Ghegs »

cj iwakura wrote:Lost Child is very good, and yeah, it is a lot like an SMT game, particularly Soul Hackers, which was basically a cyberpunk SMT.

Also, speaking of forests(and games that aren't Etrian Odyssey), the original Elminage is a fun time, if very obtuse and non-linear.
Hopefully those would become available on (modern) systems I own, especially Elminage. Though I do have a PC, but I don't really like playing games on PC any more for some reason.

On a surprising note, Play-Asia got a re-stock of Demon Gaze EXTRA on Switch, the version where English is available after a patch. Good chance to pick up a physical copy without having to pay ridonkulous eBay prices for it.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by it290 »

So, I decided to give Potato Flowers a whirl based on the recommendations in this thread. I don't normally play crawlers or traditional RPGs in general because I usually find them kind of tedious, but this is a nice change of pace so far and I'm appreciative of some of the design decisions, like fixed enemy positions, that they've made here (although I think the UI needs a lot of work).

That said, for those who have played the game, did you end up leveling all/most classes? I ran into a situation early on where I had to fight a bunch of fire-resistant enemies, and the caster character I was using at that point had only flame spells as an offensive option, which made the section tougher than I felt like it should have been. Am I going to face a lot of situations where I'll want to swap out party members to be effective in certain scenarios? I was hoping to avoid a lot of grinding in this game..
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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it290 wrote:That said, for those who have played the game, did you end up leveling all/most classes? I ran into a situation early on where I had to fight a bunch of fire-resistant enemies, and the caster character I was using at that point had only flame spells as an offensive option, which made the section tougher than I felt like it should have been. Am I going to face a lot of situations where I'll want to swap out party members to be effective in certain scenarios? I was hoping to avoid a lot of grinding in this game..
I didn't swap members once during my playthrough, my Warrior/Knight/Wizard -party made it all the way through from the start. And considering I mismanaged the Knight quite a lot, I'd say the game is quite forgiving in that you don't need to have a heavily optimized party to finish it.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by it290 »

Cool. I'm doing Warrior / Rogue / Sorcerer (I think that's what the summoner caster class is called anyway). The funny thing to me is that at this point the rogue outpaces the warrior in damage significantly, but I'm presuming that will change eventually, and it seems like your lead character is really mostly there to tank hits anyway...
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Finished The Keep. A single-character DRPG with grid movement and real-time combat, with the gimmick being the magic system. In the world you find many different kinds of runes, and combining these runes creates magic effects, like a fireball, healing, etc. The rune combinations are given in spell scrolls also found in the world, or they can be found by experimenting (I was pretty happy to accidentally discover that two fire runes creates light, no need to lug torches around anymore). You put these runes into a grid from which the combinations are then activated, so it behooves the player to arrange to runes in such a fashion that they can quickly and easily activate many different kinds of spells.

It's a neat idea, but I don't think it's utilized nearly enough. I made it through all of the game with only five spells, and even though I had found impressively-sounding scrolls like Wall of Fire and things like that, I didn't bother even trying them out because the more basic spells worked well enough. One of the lightning spells can hit multiple enemies around you, even if you're not looking at them, so many times I just camped at a good spot and slowly whittled down enemies' health while they were on the other side of a locked door, or even close by but they just didn't react to get zapped every five seconds. The AI is brain dead. The last boss I just tanked with the most basic melee attack while quaffing a stamina potion every now and then.

The game is split into 10 levels rather than having a world to freely explore, that kind of brought my enjoyment down. The game overall is also clunky to control, at least on Switch. I imagine it's better on PC with mouse controls. For some unfathomable reason the game doesn't support the Pro Controller, so I was forced to dig out the Joy Cons. I thought with the magic system the game would have touch screen support, but nope, it's Joy Cons or nothing.

I got the game on sale for ~5€ or thereabouts, and it was at least worth that much.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Ghegs »

New Labyrinth of Zangetsu trailer, still no mention of a western release, or if the JPN version has English.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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it290 wrote:So, I decided to give Potato Flowers a whirl based on the recommendations in this thread. I don't normally play crawlers or traditional RPGs in general because I usually find them kind of tedious, but this is a nice change of pace so far and I'm appreciative of some of the design decisions, like fixed enemy positions, that they've made here (although I think the UI needs a lot of work).

That said, for those who have played the game, did you end up leveling all/most classes? I ran into a situation early on where I had to fight a bunch of fire-resistant enemies, and the caster character I was using at that point had only flame spells as an offensive option, which made the section tougher than I felt like it should have been. Am I going to face a lot of situations where I'll want to swap out party members to be effective in certain scenarios? I was hoping to avoid a lot of grinding in this game..
There are artifacts you can find in the dungeon that increase the amount of information the UI gives you. Might fix or at least help with your problem? I don't like sorcerers because even though their damage output is outstanding, they have a lot of trouble with fire resistant enemies. Sorcerers either instantly vaporize the enemy or they're pretty much dead weight. Wizards do almost as much damage, but can hit any weakness and are insanely good at stunlocking. Their problem is that they're too strong and reliable and remove a lot of challenge from the game.

Any party composition should be able to beat the game and even if you get stuck. You also should need to do very little grinding, even if you need to switch in a new character, the experience scaling is some of the most aggressive I've ever seen. 2 or 3 fights should see the newbie caught up to your main party.
it290 wrote:Cool. I'm doing Warrior / Rogue / Sorcerer (I think that's what the summoner caster class is called anyway). The funny thing to me is that at this point the rogue outpaces the warrior in damage significantly, but I'm presuming that will change eventually, and it seems like your lead character is really mostly there to tank hits anyway...
Rogues should be outdamaging warriors for nearly the entire game. The warrior sounds like a damage-focused alternative to the knight, but their attack skills are overpriced and underwhelming, while their tanking is a huge asset if not quite as good as what a knight can do. Knights are probably just better than warriors tbh.

By now you've probably already finished the game, huh?
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Ghegs »

Just finished Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk, at about 60 hours, with Normal End. Didn't care enough to go for the True Ending.

One of the reasons I've been liking DRPG's is that they tend to focus much more on the gameplay (combat, exploration, puzzles) rather than the story like traditional JRPG's, but Refrain sure has a lot of story. Out of those 60 hours I think something like 8-9 hours were just story parts. The longest one lasted around 45 minutes! To be fair, they can be skipped completely, but I didn't want to do that either. And the story was always presented in basic talking heads -format, there were many scenes I thought would've benefitted from having a nice piece of unique art to look at (like in Sapphire Wings/Undernauts), but nope, didn't get a single one. The story was very anime, with some nice twists.

Instead of the characters doing the dungeon exploring and battling themselves, they use proxies for it, in the shape of wooden puppets infused with souls. I just don't care for this approach and it's so heavily prevalent here, it makes the characters doing the gameplay parts utterly and completely separate from the characters in the story. And yes, I realize I'm contradicting myself here in regards to my caring about the story, but something about the disconnect between the two sets of characters just annoys the hell out of me. It kind of makes both feel pointless.

I'm gonna be honest, I didn't really get some elements of the game. Like the Coven system (characters are placed in Covens, and Covens are placed into the active party. Covens can have multiple slots for both active and support characters, the latter of which don't actually do anything in combat but can provide other effects), so many of them felt useless and restricting. A Coven might give its members nice spells, but all their defense is cut by half and they only get 50% exp. from battles, or something like that. It felt much too cumbersome, so I just used fairly basic Covens (and as a result, barely any magic at all) and it did get me through 99% of the game just fine, even half of the optional superbosses. And the game clearly expects to create dozens of puppets to fill all the Coven support slots for bonuses, which also means a lot more micromanagement if you want to keep them equipped with gear to take full advantage of their support role.

And I have no idea what's going on with the Resonance/Echo -thing. Ignored it completely.

This is tied to the fact that the info for new concepts/powers/gameplay elements are shown exactly once and the info can't be re-read anywhere. The game itself says "You can review this info in the online manual" but the only manual I could find only covers the controls. Compared to something like Undernauts that keeps an extensive help menu from which everything can be checked if needed, this felt really frustrating. After finishing the game I did find this Google Sheet some fan had made that covers a LOT of the game and its mechanics.

I also don't like how the game invents its own terms for standard concepts. Instead of magic, we have donum. Instead of elements like fire, water, earth, etc. we have Flame, Mud, and Fog. Not jobs or classes, but Facets. Not mages or wizards, but "Marginal Mazes". Not silence/quiet/mute when you make an enemy unable to cast spells (sorry, donum), but "Abyss". This is just making up your words for stuff in an effort to look cool and edgy.

The item management is, frankly, horrible. The game encourages to never get rid of anything, because even the most basic loot that normally would only exist for selling, might be used as an item needed in a sidequests, a reward for which can be something actually useful. And gear can be synthesized to make better versions of the gear, so you don't want to get rid of those either. You can increase your space for items to 3000 (loot stocks up to 99 while equipment is always stored individually), and there's no way to unload the items into a chest or something for storage. And finding the equipment you want can be a hassle, because there's not enough ways of sorting through them.

I don't think there was a single puzzle in the game, unless you're feeling really generous and consider "open this locked door by flicking a switch that's probably no less than ten steps away" a puzzle. Or maybe figuring out all the mechanics is supposed to be a puzzle.

All that said, there were some things I did like. The dungeon maps are good, and you soon unlock the ability to smash through walls (though the walls return after entering the dungeon again, it's not persistent like in Undernauts). There's no random battles, but enemies are shown on the screen as wandering black orbs instead, so you can try to navigate around them, or even do some maneuvering to approach them from the side or back, to surprise them and hopefully get a turn where the enemy doesn't do anything. And while there's a standard Vanguard/Rearguard positioning for characters, there are additional formations which give bonuses based on how many are in Vanguard or Rearguard position, or which positions are in Vanguard or Rearguard. That was something I hoped had even been expanded upon.

But overall, Refrain is probably my least favorite of the "big" DRPG's I've played so far. There are just so many elements to deal with (I assure you, I didn't mention all of them), I think it goes way overboard for its own good, and many of them feel superfluous. I guess if you really love the game and want to optimize everything over hundreds of hours, this can provide that. But I was glad to call it quits at 60 hours. In comparison, Undernauts took me 70 hours, and I felt compelled to play to the True End there.

I feel kind of reserved about Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society now, especially if it's a case of "if you liked Refrain, you'll love Galleria" like m.sniffles.esq suggested. From my experiences so far, my ideal DRPG would have the combat, character and item management of Undernauts, puzzles of The Lost Child, and map layouts of Refrain. I do have several other titles waiting on the shelf, from five different developers, from only one of which I've previously played a DRPG (that being Experience), so it'll be fun to see if the next hits closer to my target. After I take a little break from the genre again.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by guigui »

Thanks for the interesting Refrain write up Ghegs.
I could not get past the demo on this one, and already felt overwhelmed. Was also annoyed by the fact that you do not control your heroes while in dungeons, I need to somehow get attached to the sprites I control in order to see a point in making them get stronger.

Currently Mary Skleter 2 (including Mary Skelter 1) is discounted $10 on the Switch. This also looks like a "big" DRPG, anyone can give an opinion on it ?
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by bottino »

Worth mentioning that an english translation patch was recently released for the PSX version of Baroque, Sting's macabre dungeon crawler, and that there's also one in the works for the Saturn original (the best version and the one the Switch release is based upon).

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In any event, this site is the definitive source of info regarding this unique game (beware of spoilers though! and some other wicked stuff as well...).
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Steven »

Good Coven review. One of my friends has been telling me to play it for a few years now and I finally bought it on Steam not long ago but haven't started it yet.
guigui wrote:Currently Mary Skleter 2 (including Mary Skelter 1) is discounted $10 on the Switch. This also looks like a "big" DRPG, anyone can give an opinion on it ?
You don't get Mary Skelter 1 with 2. You get the shitty remake of 1 instead, which is a far worse game than the original. They are absolutely not the same game. The remake has massive balance problems, developer oversights, and was essentially cut in half to rush you through the story so you can get to the new post-game stuff faster. Still worth playing, though, at least the new post-final dungeon stuff.

Read the actual first game's prequel novel first, then play the real first game, read Hikari no Arika if you know Japanese, then read the prequel novel for 2, play 2, then use the remake's option to skip to the final dungeon, which you should use while playing the game on Easy, and then read the prequel novel for Finale and then play Finale.

Anyway, 2 is really good (and Finale is better/best)... but play the Japanese PS4 version because that's the best version because it's the only version that doesn't have problems with crashing. If you get stuck or have questions about anything, just ask because I've played every game in the series 6 or 7 times each aside from the original version of 1, which I've only played twice. Mary Skelter, as a collective whole, might look like trash, but it's the best thing Compile Heart has ever made by far and a legitimately good series.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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guigui wrote:Was also annoyed by the fact that you do not control your heroes while in dungeons, I need to somehow get attached to the sprites I control in order to see a point in making them get stronger.
Yeah, that's exactly it. I didn't care about my puppets in Refrain at all, yet in Potato Flowers/Undernauts/others I felt invested in the characters, despite them functionally being pretty much the same thing and having as much personality in-game (ie. none). It's a weird thing and I don't quite understand why it matters to me.
Steven wrote:Read the actual first game's prequel novel first, then play the real first game, read Hikari no Arika if you know Japanese, then read the prequel novel for 2, play 2, then use the remake's option to skip to the final dungeon, which you should use while playing the game on Easy, and then read the prequel novel for Finale and then play Finale.

Anyway, 2 is really good (and Finale is better/best)... but play the Japanese PS4 version because that's the best version because it's the only version that doesn't have problems with crashing. If you get stuck or have questions about anything, just ask because I've played every game in the series 6 or 7 times each aside from the original version of 1, which I've only played twice. Mary Skelter, as a collective whole, might look like trash, but it's the best thing Compile Heart has ever made by far and a legitimately good series.
I have Switch versions of both Mary Skelter 2 and Mary Skelter Finale waiting on my shelf, and it's not like I'm going to buy a PS4 and Vita AND the games again, so hopefully my experience will not be too hampered. I'm guessing the novels are those available here and here?
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Ghegs wrote:I have Switch versions of both Mary Skelter 2 and Mary Skelter Finale waiting on my shelf, and it's not like I'm going to buy a PS4 and Vita AND the games again, so hopefully my experience will not be too hampered. I'm guessing the novels are those available here and here?
Yes, that's them. You can also play the PC version of the first game if you want. I've never played the PC port since it doesn't have Japanese text, so I can't say how good that version is, but I've never heard anything bad about it... or any discussion of it at all, now that I think about it.

If you must skip the first game, read the 2 prequel novel first, then play 2, then read the prequel novel for 1, then play the remake, read Hikari no Arika if you can, then Finale prequel novel + Finale.

I heard they really ruined Finale's English script quite badly, though. Switch Finale also looks really bad, doesn't run that well, and has exclusive glitches that are not in the PS4 version, but nothing game-breaking, so it's still perfectly playable if you don't mind the frame rate going in the toilet frequently. That's too bad, as Finale is actually very good aside from the poor pacing at the beginning; it starts with about 3~5 hours of talking and very little dungeon exploring. Later you'll go for like 20 hours straight of nothing but dungeon exploring with no talking at all multiple times, though.

Actually the PS4 version of 2 runs about the same as Switch Finale, which is interesting. Switch 2 runs at like double to triple the frame rate of the PS4 version, but it crashes, which is weird considering how well optimized it is, especially compared to the ~25 FPS the PS4 version maintains for most of the game.

Just save often on the Switch versions of 2; basically, my experience looks like this:

4 or 5 playthroughs of the Japanese PS4 version of 2 = zero crashes
1 playthrough of US Switch version = 6 or 7 crashes
1 playthrough of Japanese Switch version = 1 crash (on literally the same exact line of dialogue as one of the crashes on the US version)

I've heard the PC port of 2 is basically unplayable due to crashing, as well, so I'd avoid that one. No Japanese text in that one either, so I haven't played it, but I've heard it's really bad.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Steven wrote:If you must skip the first game, read the 2 prequel novel first, then play 2, then read the prequel novel for 1, then play the remake, read Hikari no Arika if you can, then Finale prequel novel + Finale.
Thanks, this is the way I'll do it, since I don't play games much on PC nowadays. And I'll have to skip Hikari no Arika for the language barrier.

Frame drops on a DRPG aren't really an issue, I think. And good to know about needing to save often in 2.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Steven »

Ghegs wrote:
Steven wrote:If you must skip the first game, read the 2 prequel novel first, then play 2, then read the prequel novel for 1, then play the remake, read Hikari no Arika if you can, then Finale prequel novel + Finale.
Thanks, this is the way I'll do it, since I don't play games much on PC nowadays. And I'll have to skip Hikari no Arika for the language barrier.

Frame drops on a DRPG aren't really an issue, I think. And good to know about needing to save often in 2.
Alright. Switch version of Finale won't crash on you, at least. Just expect to be a bit lost during some of the dialog in 2, as the script will sometimes bring up minor topics that were covered in 1 and then never explain them. You also won't fully appreciate or fully understand a lot of the important plot points in 2 without the context of playing 1 first, but that's how it is and there isn't a lot to say without getting into spoilers, as this is a fairly story-heavy series, at least for a dungeon RPG.

One final important thing to note for now is to never play the remake before 2. One reason why is spoilers, but the other is because you literally can't finish the remake until you get the true ending of 2 because there's a door in the remake that will never open until after you get the true ending of 2. I don't know what happens if you start the remake first and then finish 2, so I wouldn't risk it.

I'll talk about the spoilers if/when people actually finish both 2 and then also the remake, but for now, I'll take questions about mechanics and stuff because the game throws a lot of mechanics at you very quickly, with some being completely useless or even detrimental if you use them, and it gets very confusing, especially since it never explains what stats do, leaving you to figure it out. ATK, DEF, and LUC are pretty obvious, but TEC is your magic attack, MEN is your magic defense, and AGI affects your speed, which affects turn order, and it also greatly affects your hit rate, so any equipment that decreases your AGI is very very bad and you should never use it. LUC seems to affect critical rate and the chances of some (but not all) passive skills or secondary attack effects activating. LUC builds are actually extremely powerful and reliable for some characters. There are also things that the game literally never tells you exist, like wait times for attacks and how they work, but I much know basically everything, so yeah. If I said everything here, that wouldn't be fun, so I'll leave it there.

Stats are very important in Mary Skelter, with even single-digit stat increases having noticeable impact on damage dealt/taken/etc., but as a general rule, equipment is significantly more important than your level. AGI is probably the most important stat overall, especially in the remake, as going before the enemies and killing them fast is basically the only way to stay alive in the remake.

There are also a lot of useless skills that you should never learn, but it's not possible to mess anything up, partially because you can undo pretty much anything by using an otherwise relatively wasteful option to reset your levels, and also because pretty much everything is viable, even if it's not optimal.

There are also 2 pretty cool but clearly unintentional sequence breaks in the remake, both in chapter 5, and both are done by choosing a specific option when given the choice, so there is that, as well.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Ghegs »

Labyrinth of Zangetsu coming west in Q1 2023.

Awesome. It's even getting a physical release.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by guigui »

Thank you Steven for all infos on Mary Skelter games.
I fear I dont have time/patience to go throuh the whole series and novel reading. Can I just hop in MS2 right away and enjoy some nice dungeon crawling, team building, maybe grinding, not too invasive story telling ?
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Steven »

Mary Skelter is very story-heavy (for a dungeon RPG), but yes, mostly. Its pacing is about the same as the first game's and much better than Finale's, although 2's pacing goes in the toilet if you watch all of the side-events, especially in the event hell of chapters 7, 8, and 9, where you will spend somewhere around 3~5 hours in a row per chapter talking to people, partially because at least some will happen sequentially if you meet the requirements. I think 8 has the most events, but it's been a while. There's one really good and somewhat important optional event around that time that I wouldn't skip, either, although I forget exactly when it is. Pretty sure it's in chapter 9.

You won't have to grind, though; game's pretty easy, even on the highest difficulty, so if you have some decent experience with dungeon RPGs, I'd probably try it on that difficulty to begin with. Don't play the remake on the highest difficulty, though...

Honestly, having played the first game first, I'm not sure how I'd feel if I played 2 first, and the thought of playing that game first makes me feel really weird and stuff, but yeah, go for it, I guess. At first I didn't like 2's protagonist Tsuu very much at all, but by the end of the game she somehow became one of my favourite characters out of the whole cast.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by guigui »

Ty again. I’d like to try first game first, but not on Switch. I’ll post some thoughts if I take the plunge.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Steven »

Well, you're in luck, as the actual first game isn't on Switch anyway lol. Too bad there is no Japanese PC version, but there are the Japanese and English Vita versions and the English PC version.

If you want to play English Switch 2, might as well get it now while it's cheap.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by m.sniffles.esq »


I feel kind of reserved about Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society now, especially if it's a case of "if you liked Refrain, you'll love Galleria" like m.sniffles.esq suggested.


Just to clarify, that's been the thing I've been reading over and over. Firsthand, I have no idea.

You're review of Refrain is fair. It seems I liked I lot more of the twists they brought to the table than you (granted, not all. Some sort of irritated me completely. But, I enjoyed more). I mean, in general I 'liked' it. Which is why I'm hoping the buzz is correct and I'll full-on 'love' the follow-up.
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BryanM
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by BryanM »

Steven wrote:You can also play the PC version of the first game if you want. I've never played the PC port since it doesn't have Japanese text, so I can't say how good that version is, but I've never heard anything bad about it... or any discussion of it at all, now that I think about it.
It's on my stack to play someday... but I think it'll be years until I get around to it. I'm in literally the second room of the entire game, 0.3% complete!

The only thing I have to say about the game part of the game is noticing a couple of the newb mobs have the same weakness, but one of them has very slightly more HP. So they're functionally the same unit. Something I consider a little slapdash/wasteful from a design perspective, but irrelevant I suppose for what are trash mobs. The strengths of the game I'm hoping lie in atmosphere and numbers going up, I'm not exactly expecting "ArKnights, but a dungeon crawler" here.

It hasn't wiped my harddrive or given me cancer (... yet), so it gets the official BryanM seal of quality.

... hah, it's a weird universe where I'd choose to SMT4 over lewd anime girls in hell, but I don't know what to tell you. That's the computer simulation we're currently in.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Steven »

BryanM wrote:
Steven wrote:You can also play the PC version of the first game if you want. I've never played the PC port since it doesn't have Japanese text, so I can't say how good that version is, but I've never heard anything bad about it... or any discussion of it at all, now that I think about it.
It's on my stack to play someday... but I think it'll be years until I get around to it. I'm in literally the second room of the entire game, 0.3% complete!

The only thing I have to say about the game part of the game is noticing a couple of the newb mobs have the same weakness, but one of them has very slightly more HP. So they're functionally the same unit. Something I consider a little slapdash/wasteful from a design perspective, but irrelevant I suppose for what are trash mobs. The strengths of the game I'm hoping lie in atmosphere and numbers going up, I'm not exactly expecting "ArKnights, but a dungeon crawler" here.

It hasn't wiped my harddrive or given me cancer (... yet), so it gets the official BryanM seal of quality.

... hah, it's a weird universe where I'd choose to SMT4 over lewd anime girls in hell, but I don't know what to tell you. That's the computer simulation we're currently in.
You'll see some more variety once you get out of the first dungeon. You only have Alice and Red in there, so it doesn't give you a lot to deal with. Red is actually a very interesting character mechanically (which I guess is a fancy way to say that the classes she has are kind of stupid), as she starts in Libero, which is a powerful physical class that has magic attacks but can use any weapon. She has a very powerful magic class, however, and some very powerful physical skills that you can get from her other classes.

Time to cover how weaknesses work, because the weakness tutorials are actually completely wrong.

This is what it shows on Vita/PC:
Spoiler
Image
Checking the enemy list actually gives me this:
Spoiler
weak fire resist lightning
weak earth resist fire
weak wind resist earth
weak water resist wind
weak lightning resist water
This is what you are shown in 2, remake, and Finale:
Spoiler
Image
this is how it actually works:
Spoiler
Image
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Vanguard »

guigui wrote:Currently Mary Skleter 2 (including Mary Skelter 1) is discounted $10 on the Switch. This also looks like a "big" DRPG, anyone can give an opinion on it ?
Can't recommend it. Bland to middling in nearly every way. The combat is better than Labyrinth of Refrain, but not by much. The only real point of interest in its otherwise-generic JRPG combat is that each of your characters has a super meter which can make her more powerful, but can also potentially drive her violently insane. Their super meters are filled up by either hitting enemy elemental weaknesses, or overkilling enemies by dealing damage well over their remaining HP. Normally a full meter will cause your character to go into massacre mode, which increases their stats and unlocks new abilities, but if she's in a bad emotional state due to stress, taking damage, seeing her teammates get killed, etc, filling up her super meter has a chance of putting her into blood skelter mode which is even stronger than massacre mode, but also makes your character go berserk and she'll probably kill your team if you don't deal with her quickly. A special character, Jack, is always forced into your party who can support the party with items and can, to a limited extent, remove your other characters' impurity to prevent them from going into blood skelter mode. Overusing Jack's ability can potentially cause him to pass out or go berserk. Anyway, trying to trigger massacre mode at the right moment and prevent blood skelter is kind of interesting, but beyond that it's bog standard JRPG combat.

There's also an enormous amount of talking for a DRPG, far more than I like to see in my video games. Much of it is generic anime slice of life shenanigans you can safely skip. The story scenes get more annoying as the game goes on, because every time something happens, every single character in your party has to comment on it, and that might not be so bad with ~3 people at the start, but it is very annoying to have every character chime in with white noise comments about every minor thing once you have a full party.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by FunktionJCB »

Wizardry: The Five Ordeals, a re-release of a Japanese only game from 2006, is now English friendly, since a recent big patch on Steam has added English translations for the 5 official scenarios included with the game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1308 ... e_Ordeals/


For those unaware of it, here's the trailer made for its original Steam launch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FElhVLrFHqk
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Vanguard
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Vanguard »

That sounds interesting! So it's 5 campaigns in the style of classic Wizardry games, plus an editor to make your own dungeons?
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by FunktionJCB »

Vanguard wrote:That sounds interesting! So it's 5 campaigns in the style of classic Wizardry games, plus an editor to make your own dungeons?
That's exactly it! :)

To explain a bit, from what I know: this particular title was released a couple of decades ago, in 2006, as part of the Wizardry "Japanese revival" titles. After Sir-Tech was gone, and due to an increasing popularity of the original Wizardry games in Japan, a Japanese company licensed the IP to make some new "sequels", this one being part of it.
The game consisted of 5 official campaigns, and editing tools for user created dungeons/content, but it was never translated to English.
It gained a very healthy Japanese community around it, with hundreds of user-made campaigns being made, and still active to this day.

Fast forward to last year, and Game*Spark (a well known Japanese news website) decided to re-release the game on Steam through its Publishing label, with the intention of updating the UI for modern screens, and to finally translate the official campaigns to English.

This new version, converted to the Unity engine, launched with updated UI (supporting widescreen resolutions), controller support, higher resolution graphics (there's a free DLC on Steam for High Definition Sprites), custom portraits, and pretty much the huge majority of menus and UI elements already fully in English, but the actual official scenarios were still in Japanese.
At launch, when I bought it, the only playable content available in English were 3 or 4 user-made scenarios (made for the original version of the game, but whose creators updated it during the beta to work on the new version, and supporting both English and Japanese languages).

Now, after the update adding the English translations, the menus and UI are fully in English, and the 5 official scenarios (whose length varies; I've seen people giving quotes that some of these last around 20 hours, while others last 40-50, so all in all, it's quite a good amount of content, 100+ hours) are fully available in English. It's also very customizable, in terms of UI. Plus, there's a small thing I find very "neat": when you select a scenario, be it one of the official ones, or a user-created one, the main menu changes to display the name of that scenario, as if you are playing a different game.

Due to the sales the title received so far, the developers are promising a healthy amount of future support, including the translation of 2 other official scenarios that were sold post-launch for the original game, along with other content/updates.

You can check more details here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 5178219669

Do note that, as of this moment, there's one thing still missing: English language editing tools (they are working on translating and updating the tools).
There's a healthy amount of user-made campaigns already available, because apparently it's relatively easy to convert campaigns from the original version to this new one, so there's already 100+ user-made campaigns available to download through the in-game list/interface (several of them in English), but hopefully the new tools will bring even more content to the game.

An updated trailer was released this week, to announce the full English language support, which you can find here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdeMpf9fRwc

Also, do check the Steam page, since it features the new trailer, a small gameplay video, and plenty of screenshots:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1308 ... e_Ordeals/
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Ghegs »

Just finished Moero Crystal H. Took about 24 hours to get the normal ending, and an additional 10 hours to finish the post-game.

After Labyrinth of Refrain I wanted another DRPG to "cleanse the palate" so to speak, and Mary Skelter's story-heaviness did not appeal to me at the moment since Refrain had a lot of story scenes as well.

This game not the correct choice. I knew beforehand what I should expect, but pretty much everything has a thick layer of the most anime ecchiness over it. The characters, the enemies, the story, even most of the mechanics. I was surprised the dungeon layouts weren't in the shape of boobs, with ahegao as wall textures. As it was, the dungeons were mostly just garish visually. And very forgettable, luckily the autopilot function is present and very functional, it can even navigate between floors. The first few dungeons are very basic and straightforward, it isn't until later that things like no-map zones, spinners, teleporters, and icy floors come around.

So the point of the game is to go through dungeons and "heal" monster girls by first beating them in battle, and then playing a minigame where you have to rub their body in certain places when they're wearing nothing but underwear. I'm pretty sure had anybody seen me playing the game, I would have been put on a watch list, with the amount of loli characters in there. And while you can do this when playing the game docked (on Switch), it's much more difficult since you have to control a cursor to try and find the correct places. There's a time limit too, you see. So what I had to do was pick up my Switch from the dock every time one of these events took place, tap the screen furiously for a moment, and then put it back.

This was not especially fun and if you want to unlock all the girls (needed to finish the post-game) you have to do it over 80 times. And every single time afterwards you get a short story scene which is a variation of "WAAAH you touched me, now I can't get married!" / "Sorry about that, we needed to heal you" / "Well I guess that's okay then" / "Hey, you want to join us?" / "Sure!". The monster girl is then unlocked as a potential party member.

All the monster girls are just generic anime tropes combined in various ways. Like there's the tsundere characters and the big-boobied mommy characters, and so on. Mechanics-wise there's some variation between them on stats and what skills they can use, but I'd guess it's also possible to just pick your favorite waifus instead of trying to create a balanced party. Most of my party were of characters unlocked very early on, so the remaining 75+ characters were just filler. Though if there's one mechanic of the game I did actually like, it's that there's a couple of ways unlocked monster girls can also give passive bonuses even they're not in the active party. Not entirely unlike in Refrain and its support characters, come to think of it. So they're not completely pointless to unlock, mechanics-wise.

Designs for the standard enemies are just...weird, some of them I don't even know how to describe. If it wasn't for the fact that even most of those have some ecchi thing going on, I'd assume a developer's kid wandered into the office one day, showed what they had been doodling on paper, and those were made into enemies.

The random battle encounter rate is really high. After a battle you can literally sometimes take a single step and be thrust into another fight. And this is before using any "increase encounter rate" -items. The game was only difficult at the start when you didn't have a full party and no skills, and then in post-game when the enemies get seriously levelled up in the post-game areas, and I even got my first and only party wipe against the second-to-last monster girl. Between those, for like 85% of the game, I just blasted through random battles with sped-up auto battle (I had a party of one healer in the back row, and four melee attackers in front). And then very near the end, when I had like two monster girl battles left, I found an equipment that restored 5% of character's magic points every time it was their turn in combat, which basically gave my healer infinite MP.

If somebody wants to unlock every single story event for every single monster girl, you could probably easily spend another 80 hours on this. But that's for superweebs only.

Overall, my least favorite DRPG so far, coming under Refrain solely because of its super fanserviceness.

Not sure what I should tackle next. I got Dungeon Encounters in the mail a little while ago, got the Mary Skelters, Kowloon High School Chronicle, Stranger of Sword City Revisited, and Demon Gaze Extra. The last two are by Experience who hasn't failed me yet, so maybe one of those.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by m.sniffles.esq »

"WAAAH you touched me, now I can't get married!" / "Sorry about that, we needed to heal you" / "Well I guess that's okay then" / "Hey, you want to join us?" / "Sure!". The monster girl is then unlocked as a potential party member.

Jesus Christ...

(actually, I now remember reading the game's synopsis, which made me mutter "jesus christ..." like six times. I can only imagine playing the game. The man himself would come down and say "Why do you keep muttering my name every minute and a half??")
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