Dungeon crawler recomendations

[BryanM]

I gave Etrian Mystery Dungeon a go and at first it seemed perfectly fine. But then it... did things I never thought anyone would ever want to do.

Take the standard roguelike control interface. You control 1 unit. You push 1 button, and 1 thing happens. It's a very primal and immediate system, you never find yourself mindlessly pushing 12 pawns across a map.

Many, many experiments on controlling a party (3+ units) have been tried over the years. The only one that actually works without getting exotic (like planting characters that then act as predictable turrets, like a pseudo tower defense rpg) is the NES Ninja Turtles/Genshin Impact style, were you control 1 guy but can swap them out for other team members. Having all of them on the field acting at the same time... if the player can control them all, what you have is a grid based combat game like DnD or Fire Emblem. If the player can't control them all...

If the AI is good, then the game plays itself and that kinda sucks. If the AI is bad, then the game really really sucks.

The computer-controlled characters walking around in a suicidal conga-line formation and then standing around to get slaughtered is a lot like trying to fight a raid boss in an MMO where your teammates think it's optimal to stand in the fire. My preference would have strongly been to go with DnD skirmish grid combat, instead.

At least enemy units having the same name and graphics but wildly different levels of power is a kusoge mainstay design choice, as well. I respect the hell out of that.

[m.sniffles.esq]

PSA:
Galleria is
d o p e

That is all

[Ghegs]

Still waiting for my Galleria to arrive...

But on a different note, I've been checking the Etrian Odyssey 1-3 HD Collection listing on Play-Asia every day since the announcement and this morning I was delighted to see that it has been confirmed to have English included: https://www.play-asia.com/etrian-odysse ... /13/70g00p

It's also cheaper than buying the three-game bundle digitally. Though in my case the added shipping + VAT push it back up to slightly higher...still, got my pre-order in.

[Klatrymadon]

PS2 Wiz game 'Prisoners of the Battles' is going to be available as DLC for the Steam version of 'Five Ordeals', which was the former's sequel:

https://twitter.com/gosokkyu/status/163 ... 75745?s=20

[BIL]

I will never not grin ear-to-ear at seeing that title, or the even more gloriously deadpan cod-existential followup posted shortly after ITT: RESIDENTS OF THE PRISON CITY

[Klatrymadon]

Haha, yeah, it's one of my favourite titles ever. I just hope this port carries over the delightfully insufferable walking SFX.

BTW, does anyone know if Undernauts runs well on PS4? I've got an unfounded suspicion it's gonna be like Yurukill and run like shit. (Actually, I'm sure someone said the input lag was so bad they got a refund on Steam...)

[Ghegs]

Labyrinth of Galleria: Moon Society.

67 hours in and I dropped it. I just didn't want to play it anymore, I wasn't having fun. There was that "if you liked Refrain, you'll love Galleria" -idea thrown around, and unfortunately in my case it means "If you didn't like Refrain, you really won't like Galleria either".

Many of the issues I had with Labyrinth of Refrain, as documented here, still apply, and in fact are compounded. There's still the disconnect between the story characters and adventuring characters, so I ended up not being invested in either. There are many parts in the game where you basically go into the dungeon, before being told to get back out for more story shortly afterwards, and a ratio of 2 minutes of dungeon for 15 minutes of story was not uncommon at all.

I did try playing the game more "properly", by having full Covens as soon as possible and having lots of characters, but this lead to me not really caring about any of them. There can, again, be up to 15 characters in your active party (+ more in support roles), and having to deal with everyone's equipment just isn't fun (though admittedly, you can optimize a character's equipment with the press of a button if you want it done automatically). You can find a lot of equipment in the dungeon, so you can spend a lot of time figuring just who should be the recipient of this new piece of equipment (there are no class or level restrictions, anybody can use anything. Though classes do have proficiencies towards specific weapon types).

I felt Refrain went overboard with its amount of mechanics, and Galleria throws in another dozen or so more into the mix. At least this time you can access their short tutorials at any time, rather than it being a one-time-treat like in Refrain, so that's a definite improvement.

Oddly, the dungeons are worse in Galleria. In Refrain there were several biomes, of sorts, while in Galleria there's...not. For the first 35 hours or so, it's just dungeon with differently colored walls. No tiny village, giant mushroom forest, or anything like that in Galleria. Really odd. The map layouts are also not as interesting, and there are no puzzles this time either.

The 35 hour mark actually was a turning point for me, as up to that point I was still enjoying myself, even if I didn't really care about the aforementioned things. This will be a spoiler, so...

Spoiler

At around that point the story takes a turn, you get an ending, the credits roll, and you're told to save the game and continue from there. This happened a few times in Refrain as well. But here, afterwards, the game actually takes away all your characters and items, and makes you create a completely new party from scratch. 35 hours I had spent tweaking those characters, bringing their levels up, trying to make them to be a cohesive unit, and the game just says "No, you can't play with those for now". Almost even worse, the dungeon this new party has to explore isn't the same one as before, but a completely new one, visually like a somewhat modern apartment complex - but it's mostly randomized. There are hundred levels to it, with static, fixed floors at every 10 floors or so, but the floors between are randomized every time you enter.

I almost dropped the game right here. Exploration is one of the key elements I like in the genre, so removing that and putting in a rogue-lite experience in its place felt like a slap in the face. Luckily, there is a way to warp from one fixed floor to another, so you don't actually have to go through all those randomized floors. So I powered through, and about 10 hours later, you get access to your old party again.

Then there was about 15 hours of "explore the dungeon for two minutes, get 15 minutes of story".

And then.

ANOTHER FUCKING DUNGEON OF RANDOMIZED FLOORS.

Again, there are fixed floors and you can go from one to another. I forced myself to power through. At least they didn't take my party away this time.

At this point I thought I must be nearing the end of the game, or at least the Normal End, since my playtime was approaching that of what I ended up with in Refrain. New biome, started exploring, I was having troubles with certain fights there and I kind of wanted the game just to be over, so I opened a FAQ to see how much further I had to go.

LOTS. If the FAQ is to be believed "...the game as a whole will likely take you around 140 hours for full completion", largely due to

Spoiler

YET ANOTHER FUCKING DUNGEON OF RANDOMIZED FLOORS, only this one has 3651 floors, and there are no reliable fixed floors to find.

So fuck that.

Normal End probably would've been maybe 20 hours out, but I just don't care. There are too many mechanics I don't like, I'm not invested in the adventuring characters, the exploration isn't interesting...I do kind of want to see how the story plays out, maybe I'll check that out on Youtube.

During the last stretches of my run with the game I started thinking how much more I had enjoyed exploring Swords & Serpents' dungeon and wanted to go back to it instead. I'm not sure whether that says more about me or the game.

[Steven]

I still need to play both of these, although what you've said about them makes me kind of wonder if I will actually enjoy them. I got Refrain in a Steam sale almost a year ago but have not played it yet, so at least I didn't pay too much for it. I've heard it's really fucking long, though, and I generally don't like games that are really fucking long because most of the time games that are like that just end up devolving into miserable slogs (that's you, Persona 5).

[Sima Tuna]

I generally don't like games that are really fucking long because most of the time games that are like that just end up devolving into miserable slogs (that's you, Persona 5).

Same.

There's a world of difference between "game I'll spend 1000 hours playing" vs "game that takes 140 hours to get a standard clear." I love the former, hate the latter. I want my time investment to be dictated by my interest, not some sense of obligation to finish.

I think it's a little silly how video game length is used in the mainstream as a marker of quality. "You'll get your money's worth with this game because it's so long." Bro what? I'm not contractually obligated to stop playing a game just because I saw a credit screen. Where does this attitude come from? If I like the game, I can keep playing it. But due to the realities of dev time and dev priorities, I feel like the longer a game's main playthrough is intended to be, the more likely it will be padded to fuck with boring nonsense. I mean, I want the devs to make the game as fun as possible, not as long as possible.

[Mero]

I'm on Galleria now, I'm going to have to a ton of grinding for the part 2 boss, I got completely destroyed on the first attempt. I'd been doing fine up until that point.

I agree about lack of variety in the dungeons, I think I can say even at this point that I don't like this as much as Refrain.

[Steven]

I generally don't like games that are really fucking long because most of the time games that are like that just end up devolving into miserable slogs (that's you, Persona 5).

Same.

There's a world of difference between "game I'll spend 1000 hours playing" vs "game that takes 140 hours to get a standard clear." I love the former, hate the latter. I want my time investment to be dictated by my interest, not some sense of obligation to finish.

I think it's a little silly how video game length is used in the mainstream as a marker of quality. "You'll get your money's worth with this game because it's so long." Bro what? I'm not contractually obligated to stop playing a game just because I saw a credit screen. Where does this attitude come from? If I like the game, I can keep playing it. But due to the realities of dev time and dev priorities, I feel like the longer a game's main playthrough is intended to be, the more likely it will be padded to fuck with boring nonsense. I mean, I want the devs to make the game as fun as possible, not as long as possible.

Yeah, that's why I have replayed and will continue to replay Sonic 1, 2, 3&K, StarCraft, and Super Metroid forever, putting probably thousands of hours into those games, but halfway through my only playthrough Persona 5 I wanted out. I did eventually finish that game after dropping it for about a year and a half, but I sure as hell never want to play it again.

The most interesting thing is now that we have trophies and achievements we can see what percentage of players actually finish games (as long as they sync their information to the achievement/trophy server thingy), and it's seemingly relatively rare that people finish these super long games.

[BIL]

It may sound platitudinous, but it really is a fundamental difference in one's view of gaming. Do you want an electronic game, focused on the development of the player, or an interactive fiction, similarly concerned with its avatar? Tetris The Grand Master takes ~15 minutes to "beat," or rather, survive. Getting good enough to do that will send you on an odyssey to hell and back, and that's just to secure basic competence; from there, you can start climbing the leaderboard.

(a good couple hundred or so arcade titles can go here as well, ofc, at minimum; and that's just stuff I'm familiar with)

I love examples of both, and there's plenty of crossover; stuff like Bloodborne, which is both a punishingly good contest, and a darkly absorbing world. Kind of thing where pondering boss strategies and item descriptions is equally investing. But modern games journalism (going back to at least the mid-90s) has a bad habit of completely ignoring the former ethos. At this point - through no disdain whatsoever, only genuine pragmatism - when the mainstream says "too hard" I think "substantial," and when they go "too short," I think "concise."

[cj iwakura]

Probably the most disappointed I've ever been in a DC was Stranger of Sword City. Gorgeous, god-tier art design, mediocre plot, and immensely frustrating mechanics(each time a character dies, points accrue, slowly leading to permadeath).

[Ghegs]

Probably the most disappointed I've ever been in a DC was Stranger of Sword City. Gorgeous, god-tier art design, mediocre plot, and immensely frustrating mechanics(each time a character dies, points accrue, slowly leading to permadeath).

It's very easy to recover the life points though, and never have to worry about permadeath. It does make the whole mechanic rather pointless, but I wouldn't call it frustrating.

It did lead to some wild moments where in a battle my tank would die, they lose a lifepoint, and be immediately resurrected by a skill/item/something. But the enemy who delivered the original killing blow, their attack is still continuing, so they kill the tank AGAIN, who resurrects again...over and over until all their lifepoints are gone and they're permanently killed, in a single turn. At which point I'd just load my save so I don't lose a character I've spent 60+ hours on and used numerous hard-to-find items on to maximize their efficiency.

I still think Dungeon Encounters handled character death the best. Characters can get killed/lost/petrified/eaten/etc. somewhat easily, but there's a 100% reliable way of recovering them, if you're just paying attention. AND there are 100% reliable counters to ALL one-hit-kill -attacks. Very little RNG in the game, which I greatly appreciated.

[BryanM]

It may sound platitudinous, but it really is a fundamental difference in one's view of gaming. Do you want an electronic game, focused on the development of the player, or an interactive fiction, similarly concerned with its avatar?

jRPGs have aspects of a mathematical puzzle, aka, what's the most efficient use of time. Best place to grind, optimal or most fun build orders, etc. Difficulty is kind of a necessity; if power doesn't unlock new options and new decisions, then it's just a walking simulator+visual novel.

They also have aspects of exploration and gambling. What's inside of the mystery box could never match the wonders of the mystery box itself. A very hunter-gatherer part of our brains that has been ground into dirt by modernity. The part of our brains that deals with environments. The liminal, as opposed to the active or social. Physics, exploration, social, puzzles. (Playing a modern Persona game while loathing the imaginary friend aspect of it kind of defeats the point of playing it in the first place, doesn't it... very much about vibes.)

Cookie Clicker is definitely the purest RPG. Has everything but the "walking around" part of walking around a museum while making the numbers go up.

But modern games journalism (going back to at least the mid-90s) has a bad habit of completely ignoring the former ethos.

I wonder how it could possibly be any other way. Exploring depth can be a process of months, and these mofos have to write seven articles a day or will have to start pulling tricks on the corner or get a real job. They don't have time to put into one game! Something that takes a long time on the calender... an MMO, an incremental game, an arcade game... no way! They get paid for typing, not gamering.

Weirdly for the first time I've found myself in a position where I actually did need to visit a website for more information. New upcoming game, scarce information. Persona Central. "That seems highly specialized there, won't they have trouble filling content?" And ye, lo and behold, most of it is padding. What is of any actual use is a news article parroting something the official website's blog says. And is only a little bit useful due to the original language not being english, and google translate kind of shitting the bed when it comes to the Japanese.

..... I do kind of love how it can't stick to one name for the game though.

"Goddess Music: Night Curtain Attraction"
"Goddess of Music: Night Curtain Charm"
"Goddess Music: Night Curtain Enchantment"
"Goddess Music: Night Curtain Charming"
"Goddess Music: Yomaku Mikage"
"Goddess Dancer: Attraction of the Night Curtain"

Pick one and stick with it, you stupid AI!

Ah... misfortune is like a rope tied up, indeed.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I'm on Galleria now, I'm going to have to a ton of grinding for the part 2 boss, I got completely destroyed on the first attempt. I'd been doing fine up until that point.

I agree about lack of variety in the dungeons, I think I can say even at this point that I don't like this as much as Refrain.


So, I played hooky yesterday as it was warm and sunny, sat on the roof, smoked, and got to endgame (found a top secret electrical outlet hidden under the tar-paper, thus eliminating any battery woes). As I would like to crack the shrink-wrap on void terrarium 2 before another inch of dust accumulates.

And...

Overall, dope game. Liked it better than Refrain, as the gameplay was tighter and they jettisoned some of the flabbier/more frustrating aspects. You're correct in that the dungeons could have used more variety, and I have 20 other nits to pick, but the majority get into spoiler terrain.

I mean, I've been playing during commute for like a month and a half, and during that time, my opinions sort of went all over the place. But as I was wrapping up last evening, I thought "you know what? This was a really good game..." So there you have it.

[Mero]

verall, dope game. Liked it better than Refrain, as the gameplay was tighter and they jettisoned some of the flabbier/more frustrating aspects. You're correct in that the dungeons could have used more variety, and I have 20 other nits to pick, but the majority get into spoiler terrain.

I mean, I've been playing during commute for like a month and a half, and during that time, my opinions sort of went all over the place. But as I was wrapping up last evening, I thought "you know what? This was a really good game..." So there you have it.

Yeah my final verdict could be different, we'll see. I intend to finish it., my playtime for Refrain was about 140 hours, I suspect my Galleria run is going to exceed that!

I cleared that boss I was stuck on anyway.

[Mero]

Pink robots and hoop women have sent me back to the grindstone in Galleria. At least I can level up much faster now I'm in Cantervita.

[Ghegs]

The Super Metroid -discussion has been split to here.

My physical copy of Zangetsu hasn't arrived yet. Sad.

[Air Master Burst]

Still curious about Grimoire, BTW. Anyone try it yet? It looks like a pretty intense undertaking.

[Ghegs]

Still curious about Grimoire, BTW. Anyone try it yet? It looks like a pretty intense undertaking.

Ah, sorry, your on-topic line got swept over to the Super Metroid thread. There's no real way to split a post into two, I'm afraid. Haven't played Grimoire myself and I don't think I will, based on the reviews.

On a different note, Wizardry just opened up an official Twitter account. Maybe there are some projects other than Variants Daphne in the works? A collection of the original three (or five) titles to modern platforms would be pretty sweet, it has been ~25 years since Llylgamyn Saga and New Age of Llylgamyn came out, and I think they're the most recent re-releases. The genre does seem to be in some kind of revival, so getting the granddaddy games to be more accessible would make some sense. But of course that's just me being hopeful.

Also, from that Twitter account I learned that there's a Wizardry light novel series called Blade & Bastard, also available in English, written by the guy who writes Goblin Slayer. Gobbo Slayer is pretty much Wizardry without the license, so getting the chance to work on the actual franchise must've been pretty cool for him.

[Klatrymadon]

Yeah, I'm excited to know who's behind the Twitter account. Are the Daphne publishers, Drecom, the only current license-holders, or could we be seeing more work from Acquire, ASCII or Starfish too? (Are the latter two still around?)

Wiz 1-3 are definitely due a port. I'm currently revisiting Llylgamyn Saga on the Saturn* and I really admire the care taken over these versions. They're by far the most atmospheric and genuinely 'immersive' Wiz games I've played, with their palpably dank, grimy 3D dungeons, and Haneda's soundtrack constantly changing gears for tension, levity or heroism without ever feeling tonally incoherent. I'd honestly love to see these versions ported forward as they are.

Zangetsu looks superb, but I may wait for a few thoughts on it here before I take a punt on it myself. It's gorgeous, though, and seems to be a very pared-down Wiz 1-3 clone, which is all I really need - that basic formula is enough to sustain thousands upon thousands of dungeons without much risk of boredom. (The current Five Ordeals publisher seems to be directly testing this theory - there's more downloadable content for that than I could ever play.)

*The Saturn one has an extra dungeon, although BKR was able to ascertain recently that it isn't a particularly interesting one - more a place to fill out your bestiary than a new scenario.

[cj iwakura]

Still curious about Grimoire, BTW. Anyone try it yet? It looks like a pretty intense undertaking.

Ah, sorry, your on-topic line got swept over to the Super Metroid thread. There's no real way to split a post into two, I'm afraid. Haven't played Grimoire myself and I don't think I will, based on the reviews.

On a different note, Wizardry just opened up an official Twitter account. Maybe there are some projects other than Variants Daphne in the works? A collection of the original three (or five) titles to modern platforms would be pretty sweet, it has been ~25 years since Llylgamyn Saga and New Age of Llylgamyn came out, and I think they're the most recent re-releases. The genre does seem to be in some kind of revival, so getting the granddaddy games to be more accessible would make some sense. But of course that's just me being hopeful.

Also, from that Twitter account I learned that there's a Wizardry light novel series called Blade & Bastard, also available in English, written by the guy who writes Goblin Slayer. Gobbo Slayer is pretty much Wizardry without the license, so getting the chance to work on the actual franchise must've been pretty cool for him.

I'd be happy if we just get a Steam release of Town of Forsaken Spirits, never really cared much for the classic Wizardrys.

[Ghegs]

Aksys Games did a short 2023 update video, and we're finally getting Mon-Yu: Defeat Monsters And Gain Strong Weapons And Armor. You May Be Defeated, But Don’t Give Up. Become Stronger. I Believe There Will Be A Day When The Heroes Defeat The Devil King this fall. Looks like a physical release, too.

I got my Labyrinth of Zangetsu a few days ago. Still early hours, but it looks to draw VERY heavily from OG Wizardry as far as mechanics go. There's Good/Neutral/Evil -alignment, you can re-roll bonus points during character creation (but don't need to create a completely new character in order to do so, nice), classes are similar, character stats can go down during level-up, magic users don't have MP but there's a limited amount of times they can cast magic from each level of spells...

[Ghegs]

Just beat Labyrinth of Zangetsu. According to the save file it took me ~25 hours but the truth is probably around 30 since I do admit to save-scumming.

Like mentioned before, it's very reminiscent of the OG Wizardies when looking at the gameplay mechanics. Not quite as punishing though, and there are some modern quality-of-life improvements that are welcome, like automapping. There is, apparently, still the possibility that a character killed in combat will be lost permanently. You have to bring them to the temple for resurrection, and if the resurrection fails (twice? Not sure, since mine always succeeded on the first or second attempt), they're gone forever. The resurrection attempt is also quite costly. Early on my mage got killed, I went to resurrect them but it failed, and the next attempt cost more than I had on hand, so I went to sell most of my spare equipment, and got just enough for a second resurrection attempt, which succeeded. Went back to adventuring, and in the very first encounter I got ambushed, the enemy threw a spell that hits everybody, and my mage got killed AGAIN.

At which point I just force-closed the game and re-loaded the save, bringing me back to where I had entered the map I was previously on. I'm sure I'll lose some Internet DRPG-player points for it, but after that I'd rather lose the 5-15 minutes of progress since the last save, over risk losing a character I've spent many hours on. Save-scumming doesn't work quite as well on the harder difficulty, which only saves when you get back to homebase, I believe, rather than every time entering a new map. Much later, after my cleric learned the resurrection spell herself, the whole issue became mostly moot anyway.

At first I wasn't sure about the art style. It looks very nice and distinctive, sure, but there's not a whole lot you can do to differentiate areas when your color palette is limited to black, white, and shades of gray. This cave? Gray. That cave? Also gray. This forest? Gray. And so on. But it did grow on me, and the enemy designs are very cool. Sadly the game doesn't have a bestiary, I would've liked to have a look at them outside combat.

I absolutely loved the penultimate area, which took me over 10 hours to get through, so far more than any of the other areas. A very minor spoiler about what is:

Spoiler

It's an 8-floor temple, plus the surrounding garden, so 9 maps in total. Lots of hidden passages, teleporters, shortcuts, bosses...

I ended up making my own map of it on graph paper, since the in-game automap didn't have quite everything I wanted. Also, you can't look at different floors when looking at the automap, which made it difficult to navigate. Hence, my own map. It was just a really fun area to explore and map out.

Overall my experience was very positive, but I did have a few issues:

• The game could do with a manual/in-game help just explaining the basic operations. I discovered by accident that pressing X (on Switch controller) during combat activates a speed-up mode, so that the animations and resolutions are handled much faster. Very convenient, and I never saw it mentioned anywhere in-game.
• Font sizes in menus are inconsistent. Maybe the menus was originally designed just for Japanese characters? Sometimes, based on how long a text string is, its size can vary quite a lot to fit into its place, it just looks very unprofessional.
• The item management is horrendous. There's no way to sort, filter, or search your items, they are only in the order of which you acquired them. This is especially bad if you move something to the homebase storage and you want to take it out later, you have to go through the entire list to find it.
• The shop is pretty pointless soon after the beginning. You'll be able to find items and better gear from enemy chests, so there's not much reason to ever use it.
• At least on Switch the game has performance issues and stutters, enemy animations would often slow down, and sometimes the game eats inputs when trying to go through the menus after just entering combat. But since it's all turn-based, it doesn't really matter.
• Not sure if it's a bug or by design, but I ended up wasting some time because I pulled a rope that was supposed to open a gate, returned to homebase to save, went back and the gate was still closed, so I thought I had to do something else as well to open it. Turns out this is possibly the only instance in the game where the status isn't saved after returning to homebase, you have to pull the rope and go through the gate in the same run. Everywhere else once a door is opened, it's open forever.
• Class changes require that your character has at least a certain amount of points in each stat, based on the class you want to change to. But the stat increases are given at apparently random on each level-up, if they happen at all, and the stats can lower as well. I was never able to change my Thief to Ninja because of this. You know who I could've changed to Ninja? My Warrior, or my Paladin, or my Samurai, or my Mage. But not my Thief, because he was always one or two STR-points away from the requirement. I wish you could allocate the points manually to desired stats, or maybe have some rare items that grant stat points.

I saw some reviews say the game is for fans of the genre, but for not newcomers. I don't agree with that, I'd say this is a good entry game to those who are interested in the genre but haven't tried any. It has a solid foundation, it's not overly difficult, the gameplay is time-tested, and it doesn't overload the player with a multitude of mechanics, stats, and customization options like Labyrinths of Refrain and Galleria do. It's a back-to-basics, pure DRPG with some modern conveniences, and I think it's all the more better and approachable because of it. It even has a short tutorial area when you first start the game.

And since the game is relatively short, it's something I could see myself playing again in the future. Try out different party configurations, and hopefully finally get a Ninja...

[BryanM]

Permanent death has always been one of those things. Asking someone to lose ten minutes, that's fine and good. Thirty minutes, tolerable that's the limit arcade games are built to last. But anything past forty minutes, that's asking too much.

It's another thing if deaths mean more than a game over screen and the lost resource isn't a precious special snowflake.

A lot of these early computer games steered extremely close to Dungeons and Dragons rules-as-written. In an actual campaign, when someone dies their player might be asked to step away from the game for 15 minutes, eat a sandwich, reflect on the universe and the fleeting nature of life, especially for PC's. Then they reroll a new character set to a comparable level as the rest of the squad, because it'd be a dick move asking them to sit on their hands and get carried as a level 1 worm while surrounded by level 7 demi-gods. It was rarely played as-written even in its original context!

So you're actually expected to reset the game when disaster happens, it's meant more of a soft game-over mechanic. Especially this day and age since if they wanted to auto-save every single second, they could have built the game like that.

-

The immersion of these games kind of make letting go impossible - you're not some dispassionate commander sending soldiers to their deaths in the dungeon, you're in the muck and mud, feeling every second pass with every step.

But if you were a dungeon expedition commander sending little people to their doom while you sit back in the base in the air conditioning while gobbling down ice cream and gawking at swimsuit calendars, permanent death would be a great mechanic to balance risk/greed/reward cycles.

Permanent death is great, when you're not the one doing the dying.

[Air Master Burst]

A lot of these early computer games steered extremely close to Dungeons and Dragons rules-as-written. In an actual campaign, when someone dies their player might be asked to step away from the game for 15 minutes, eat a sandwich, reflect on the universe and the fleeting nature of life, especially for PC's. Then they reroll a new character set to a comparable level as the rest of the squad, because it'd be a dick move asking them to sit on their hands and get carried as a level 1 worm while surrounded by level 7 demi-gods. It was rarely played as-written even in its original context!

THIS 100%! I still run early 80s style D&D to this day, and even if you do reroll a level 1 character to join a high-level party, the exponential experience gain gets them caught up pretty quick. The only thing that usually stops a game is a total party kill, and depending on the circumstances even that's hardly a dealbreaker. Forcing game-over permadeath is ok I guess if that's really the designer's vision; but trying to appeal to tradition by claiming that's how everyone did it in the good old days is just silly.

Permanent death is great, when you're not the one doing the dying.

I think it should always be optional, because ironman mode is a Big Deal for some people, but it should rarely be mandatory for those who hate it.

[Klatrymadon]

Thanks for those Zangetsu impressions, Ghegs. I'd initially been put off by what I saw as the game's lack of tactility - moving through the dungeons felt weightless and frictionless, attacks felt more like delicate brush strokes (perhaps in keeping with the visual theming) than desperate strikes, and so on. Coupled with the other presentational niggles you mentioned, this gave the game a vague readymade 'Made With Unity' feel that I can barely articulate, and certainly can't hold against it. It's good to know there are plenty of reasons to crack on with it.

[Ghegs]

you're not some dispassionate commander sending soldiers to their deaths in the dungeon, you're in the muck and mud, feeling every second pass with every step.

Well put. Character death and finding the perfect balance between difficulty and fairness is certainly a difficult thing to handle in-game. On one hand, I totally understand that losing a character is something that should loom over your head, keep you on your toes, and when it does happen, it should feel meaningful. On the other hand, losing a character solely due to bad RNG (get ambushed, the enemy happens to do this one specific attack, your character fails their resistance chance at it, and they're killed before you can even act) is just not fun or interesting, and it certainly doesn't feel fair to me. I'm sure there's a counter-argument that, for example, I should've taken pre-emptive measures by equipping them with a certain item that increases the chances of surviving that attack, and I should've known to equip it once these specific types of enemies started appearing. And that these types of games shouldn't be considered fair in the first place. And I do get that the challenge is what appeals to a lot of people about the genre, but personally I'm more into the exploration aspect, and I absolutely hate it when RNG is a large deciding factor in how well things will go.

In Zangetsu once a character's hitpoints are reduced to 0, they're not killed exactly - you can heal them up just fine, and they'll even revive automatically to 1 HP after a battle. But sometimes, they get truly killed, they get an icon denoting that it's the Serious Type Of Death this time, and they need to be revived either back in Temple or with the Revival spell. Not entirely sure what causes a character to get Serious Killed, and what to just knock them out. And even the revival can fail (at least once) without permadeath happening, so that's already a softer approach than just "hitpoints at 0, time to re-roll a new character".

Think I mentioned this before, but I do like how Dungeon Encounters handled it. There's many ways to lose a character, but there's a 100% sure way to recover them as well. If they're dead, bring them to the revival cell. If they got blasted into void, find them again using the ability to find characters. If they get petrified, note their coordinates, get over to a Gorgon statue to un-stone them, and go back to recover them. And so on.

I'm not sure if making character death feel meaningful, punishing enough, fair, to be an ever-present threat but preventable before-hand with proper actions, and maybe fixable afterwards, is possible to reach...lots of different factors that play into it.

[BryanM]

Intrinsically it's completely impossible to prepare for everything on a first playthrough. A vivid example of that was when I was in a bonus dungeon in Unlosing Ranger vs Darkdeath Evilman. I thought to myself "since this is a bonus dungeon, it'd be really funny if the boss at the end was like level 2,000 ha ha ha." And it turns out... the head designer and I have similar thoughts. It was exactly that. From level 100 trash to level 2000 boss in a step. My little ranger quickly became a blood stain.

There's this one recent webnovel that dealt with the same "how do you kill characters" problem. You can't have a slasher theme if characters don't die. But if characters die, you can't have any characters. The answer these days seems to be to stuff them in an undying purgatory like in Dead by Daylight. Which solves the problem decisively, but then the slasher theme is more about vibes and trappings than any real tension of stakes and loss.

Like, some kind of video game.

The most evil version of permanent death: monetized gacha games with permanent death. Spend $100 bucks to buy this character, only to see them run out of gas and sink to the bottom of the sea.

Now that's a horror movie.