Dungeon crawler recomendations

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

Post by guigui »

The Lost Child is currently on sale for €5 on EU Eshop, guess one can not go wrong at that price. Anyone tried the game here ?
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Ghegs »

guigui wrote:The Lost Child is currently on sale for €5 on EU Eshop, guess one can not go wrong at that price. Anyone tried the game here ?
I wrote my thoughts about it few pages prior here. One of my favorite DRPG's so far, and absolutely worth a fiver.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by guigui »

Yes I remember reading it now, and that is why I had it wishlisted, thanks for the writeup Ghegs.

Now fun fact : usually before starting an RPG, I search for general simple tips about it in order not to make major mistakes. When you Google "Lost Child beginner tips", you find such tips, and other that are quite frightening if you happen to have a child of your own.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Ghegs wrote:I got Dungeon Encounters in the mail a little while ago
I've played through that one. It's audaciously bare bones, but I kinda dig it. Feels like they wanted to come as close to making a classic Wizardry game as modern Square Enix would allow. Even the name is ridiculously basic. My favorite thing about it is how many of the upgrades you find make you more powerful outside of combat. Pretty early on you get an upgrade that lets you see which tiles have enemies on them and it's a real gamechanger. Not too long after you'll get a short range teleport, and using those two together, makes most fights optional.

Also if you wipe then you don't reload a save, but instead send a second party to locate and revive the first one, just like in Wizardry. Gives things a little more tension. Raising the underleveled but overequipped morons in your B team up to the task of rescuing your A team is fun, up until you become powerful enough that you can just instantly teleport to them.

It's not a must-play by any means, but I like it as a distillation of the pure essence of dungeon crawling with nothing else added, especially coming from Square of all companies. It feels like peering through a window to an alternate timeline where games had absolutely zero interest in being movies, books, or anything at all besides games.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Ghegs »

Demon Gaze Extra finally gets a physical western release on Switch and PS4, pre-orders just went up at Red Art Games with the release taking place in January.
Vanguard wrote:
Ghegs wrote:I got Dungeon Encounters in the mail a little while ago
I've played through that one. It's audaciously bare bones, but I kinda dig it. Feels like they wanted to come as close to making a classic Wizardry game as modern Square Enix would allow. Even the name is ridiculously basic. My favorite thing about it is how many of the upgrades you find make you more powerful outside of combat. Pretty early on you get an upgrade that lets you see which tiles have enemies on them and it's a real gamechanger. Not too long after you'll get a short range teleport, and using those two together, makes most fights optional.

Also if you wipe then you don't reload a save, but instead send a second party to locate and revive the first one, just like in Wizardry. Gives things a little more tension. Raising the underleveled but overequipped morons in your B team up to the task of rescuing your A team is fun, up until you become powerful enough that you can just instantly teleport to them.

It's not a must-play by any means, but I like it as a distillation of the pure essence of dungeon crawling with nothing else added, especially coming from Square of all companies. It feels like peering through a window to an alternate timeline where games had absolutely zero interest in being movies, books, or anything at all besides games.
Yeah, all of this stuff made the game sound very appealing to me, and the whole idea that Square Enix makes something like this nowadays feels like a fever dream. Though I also heard it has its share of weird shit, like enemy thieves can not only steal your money, they can steal your money into the negatives so that you have to grind just to get your money back up to 0. Which sounds more like a bug than anything else. I'm playing through something else at the moment, but maybe after that I'll start on Dungeon Encounters.

The party-centric vs. player-centric approach (I don't know if there's a better/existing term for it, I'm referring to how party wipe doesn't result in Game Over but instead the player just carries on) is an interesting dichotomy in the genre, I've yet to actually play a player-centric one. It's something that could've worked pretty well in Undernauts, come to think of it.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Necronopticous »

Just chiming in to say that Dungeon Encounters is an excellent game, and the less you know about it going in the better.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by guigui »

Necronopticous wrote:Just chiming in to say that Dungeon Encounters is an excellent game, and the less you know about it going in the better.
I'm also adding that it is currently 50% off at 15€/$ on the eshop.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Just finished Dungeon Encounters at 44 hours, for the "main quest" as it is. The post-game took me only 4 additional hours, so a 48 hour romp. Didn't defeat every single enemy encounter, though.

And I quite liked it! I said before that I've taken a liking to DRPG's because they focus more on the mechanics, exploration, and combat, and this game certainly takes it to the extreme. Three textboxes and the characters' bios encompass the whole story, lore, and worldbuilding the game offers. It was perfect for me.

I quite agree with Necronopticous that the less one knows about it before venturing into the labyrinth, the better, so I'll put some stories of my adventure into spoiler tags.
Spoiler
I had two moments where I realized that the game was something different indeed. The first happened when I was maybe four floors deep into the dungeon, and one of my party members got petrified. "No problem", I thought, "I'll just nip back to the main hub and get him healed" because that's how RPGs work, right?

"Petrified party members can't move and must be left behind", the game happily informs me after the battle. Alright. So I remove the guy from my party and return to the Academy to bring along another character. A few floors downward I find an altar that can cure petrification if the character's coordinates are entered. Luckily the location of all characters (once they're located for the first time, anyway) can be checked at any time, so I un-petrify the poor guy, go back to Academy, drop off one member of the party, and go to retrieve the previously petrified one. And then I return him to the Academy and make the "replacement" guy my permanent party member since they're now a bit more leveled up and better equipped.

The second moment happened at floor 35. I was making good progress, and though the battles took some planning to make sure the enemies were dispatched in optimal order, I didn't feel like I was in any danger. My characters were a good 10 or 11 levels higher than the enemies I was encountering, and I had found several Battle Abilities that made me impervious to things like petrification and other attacks that sound very instakill-y, and I made sure those Abilities are always active. And then in one battle, an enemy hit one of my characters with an attack that completely bypassed both their physical and magical defense, hitting their HP directly, and KO'ed them in one hit.

"Well", I hmmed to myself, "That's certainly an annoying attack. But I have three characters left and they're at full strength, I should be able to kill that one fast enough, and then use a turn somewhere to resurrect my KO'd character." At this point I had the characters all wielding weapons that hit all the enemies, because it seemed to be working out for me. But of course that means they do less damage against individual enemies than would weapons that only hit one enemy.

And that same enemy's next attack turn comes, and he does an improved version of the attack, which hits ALL my remaining three characters, bypassing their PD and MD, KO'ing each of them instantly. My party was defeated, and the game returns me to the Academy asking me to create another party.

I wasn't even mad, I was just stunned and flabbergasted. I probably just stared at the screen for a minute or two.

I did put together a party but it was plainly obvious they were a motley crew, of largely varying levels and barely any equipment. The highest level of them, a wanderer I had found during the exploration, was still about 20 levels lower than my party now KO'd at floor 35, and I couldn't equip any of them properly since they didn't have the PP to wield all the good stuff I had accumulated. There was little chance they'd survive even floor 20. I would have to raise them up like I had the previous party. And that party had managed to get knocked out in a particularly annoying part of the map, being six floors away from the nearest two-way teleporter I had access to, and quite far away from the entrance to the floor.

At this point I thought I just didn't want to spend the time to bring the new party up to where they'd need to be in order to rescue the previous party. I turned the game off and went to read a book.

But while I was reading, I was thinking about the game. The 30-floors have a different layout from the ones before. Rather than being more sprawling and open, often having alternative paths to reach your destination so it's easy to avoid enemies, these ones are point-to-point, like the classic game of Snake with the paths going right next to each other so you either go through the floor from start to finish, or you use the Shift ability to change into a different "lane" for a short cut. And in the floors 30-34, the entry and exit were often close to each other, so you can Shift from one to another with two or three uses of the ability. And I remembered I had left a one-time warp point into floor 33 where there's an outpost of sorts, with just resurrection, healing, and ability recharge stations available. When I first got there I figured I'd use it as a temporary base to which I could retreat if things started looking bad, but I never even got the chance.

Even though the party was defeated, the warp point was still there, and the layout of the floors 33, 34, and 35 was fresh enough in my memory. I started puzzling it out in my head. I could warp to 33, use Shift a few times to get safely to 34, in which there was a (previously hidden) path directly from entry to exit, and get to 35. From there I'd still need to get to my party, and they were a good distance away. I'd need to Shift to get into good "lane" and then avoid the enemies, either using Shift or using another Ability I had recently found, which re-randomizes the placement of enemies. It was still not a guaranteed success, as I wasn't sure if I had enough Shift uses the get me to the party. And then I'd need to get out of there as well, and there was no way I'd have enough Shift uses to retrace my steps.

Luckily I realized that after warping to floor 33 and spending the one-way warp, I could just create another one-way warp point there. And I realized that I shouldn't take a full rescue party of four people, because they'd be of no use against enemies anyway, and I'd have to leave 3 of them behind while one of them picks up the KO'd characters and resurrects them at 33's outpost.

So, my plan was this. Make a single-character party, equip them as well they can (in case a combat event is unavoidable, then this at least slightly increases their chances of using the Escape Battle -ability), and warp to 33. Create another one-way warp point, and get to floor 34, and then to 35. Shift as little as you can to preserve the ability uses and use the ability for shuffling enemy locations to get to the party, pick up three of them, warp back to 33 and resurrect and heal them. Remove the "savior" character from party, leaving them at the outpost, replenish your ability uses, and repeat the process to bring back the fourth KO'd character.

And it worked. It actually worked perfectly. My rescue party got to the location of the KO'd team with 0 Shift uses left, but it was enough as then I could warp back to the safety of floor 33's outpost. I could actually continue exploring the dungeon with the party I had already spent ~15 hours with. Of course I still had to bring the rescuer back to the Academy, but that was a hop and a skip compared to the actual rescue effort. I was elated. And after this I adopted a much more strict and careful approach to navigating the dungeon.
I'm not sure, but I think the game might have a reputation for being difficult due to its perceived archaicness, but I don't think it was that hard. It can be punishing, sure, but if you pay attention (the game provides you with a lot of information) and act with caution, you can easily avoid most of the traps the game throws at you.
Spoiler
I was a bit surprised that having Valtoro, the dragon who literally flies over the floor, even as your only party member, you're still susceptible to pitfalls. I thought that would've been a great attention to detail that he'd just fly over them, and since there is no way to nullify pitfalls like you can the tolls, only go around or over them with Shift, it would've been perfect.
I want to read the minutes to the meeting where Hiroyuki Ito talked the higher-ups at Square Enix into funding this thing. "Hey, you know how we're known for making RPGs with stunning visuals, epic vistas, intricate stories, tons of fully-fledged characters that come to life in carefully crafted cutscenes, all set to magnificient music? Yeah, how about we don't do any of that here?" Though to be fair, the budget for this thing could probably come out of whatever loose change they find in the office couches. But this is the guy mostly known for directing Final Fantasies VI, IX, and XII and designing Final Fantasy Tactics. AND he got freakin' Nobuo Uematsu into making unique battle themes for each biome, and they're rock versions of classical music. I'm honestly surprised they bothered to make 3D models of all the playable characters, might as well have been a simple sprite.

Minimalist though the game is, I like the art and music. I'd love to have an artbook of the game that shows all the characters and enemies in their entirety, since in-game you only see a small portion of them. And the "paintings" that appear whenever you enter a new biome. And have maps of each floor while at it.

I do wish the minimalism wasn't applied quite so heavy-handedly to the combat mechanics. It's not as deep as I'd have hoped.
Spoiler
You can't really put the characters into roles - it doesn't make sense to have one character focused on offensive magic, one on close combat, one on healing, one on ranged combat, etc...you want to dispatch the enemies as fast as possible, and having to wait until your healer's turn comes up just means you'll probably lose another character while waiting. You want to maximize fast damage output that can deal with any enemy configuration, and give enemies as few turns to act as possible, and to do that you need to equip all the characters with both physical and magical attacks, and you also need to be able to hit flying enemies physically. If healing is needed, then whoever's turn comes up next does it. I tried my best to make sure all my characters had the exact same equipment so I could better see the optimal order of actions to take in battle.

I beat The Infinite with all four characters equipped with Address Blades, made sure the boss spawned to the lower right of the map, and just went to town on them. Each hit did over 1 million points in damage.
I found this summary of an interview where the devs say they are open to the idea of a sequel. If it does happen, my wish list is:
  • Characters that differ from each other in meaningful, combat-altering ways. Stats, equipment, or abilities they can use, whatever. If the whole game was characters like K-2000 and Valtoro, that'd be interesting, force the player to make choices on what characters to use based on their playing style and what the situation is.
  • More depth into the combat.
  • Maybe tone down the math riddles. I admit I only managed to figure out the first few. After beating the game I went and found the explanations for them and some of them are just way out there.
But on the whole, a great DRPG.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Uematsu being underutilized is so modern Sqeenix. It's a core thing that baffles me so, along with how they effectively conceded the mobile platform to other companies rather than ever try to make an actual game for it. (They tried to shovel off some shovelware shite based on King's Knight once, ffs.)

Here, enjoy some music from something where the man got to be a music director guy. Not exactly the infinite Final Fantasy 6 so many wanted, but as close as it gets for now. I've heard the violins and bagpipes were his idea, possibly.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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This thread suddenly reminded me that I bought Coven of Dusk on Steam like 3 months ago and forgot to play it. I should probably do that. I've heard the post-game is kind of not great, though.

I should probably also restart my Mary Skelter Finale replay from like 6 months ago, too, but at this point I might as well start over again. Still can't believe it's been just a few days over 2 years since that game released with its incredibly stupid physical version-exclusive preorder bonus DLC that
Spoiler
secretly happens to be the game's fucking true ending. Seriously, who the fuck thought it was a good idea to make the true ending a physical version-exclusive preorder bonus and not tell anyone about it? Good thing I preordered the physical versions, but still...
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Ghegs »

Oh yeah...before Dungeon Encounters I gave Operencia: The Stolen Sun a shot but I just couldn't get into it. I did kind of like the engine where the environment looks like a "regular" 3D RPG like Oblivion or whatnot, but the movement is grid-based. The characters wanted to talk about pointless shit too often and the combat felt very off-putting, it was clunky and the characters felt super weak. It was also the first DRPG I've seen yet where enemies can be placed in front, middle, or back rows, but your own guys are all on the same row. And even if there was just a single enemy in the back row, either from the start or after killing the ones on the front rows, you couldn't close the distance, you were always forced to battle them at long range. Very weird.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Lords of Xulima.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

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Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Necronopticous »

Great writeup Ghegs! Even though I loved the game, I'm not sure a sequel would really work for me since the quality of my experience relied so heavily on discovery and surprise. I will play anything Hiroyuki Ito wants to make for me, of course. Imagine if Square had the sense to, like, put these talented individuals together and fund them! Yoshi P seems to be the only guy in there with any kind of sense and an actual modicum of sway. I'm sitting over here praying Tactics Ogre Reborn and Final Fantasy XVI are hits so that he can keep working miracles.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Thoughts on Shin Megami Tensei, through the lens of mindlessness

I hate mindlessness in games. The opposite of mindlessness is mindfulness, more commonly called challenge, i.e. when player's neurons are forced to fire in order to win.

Given a game, potential mindlessness is the most mindless approach a player can take and still win. Alternatively, this may also be viewed as minimum challenge - the minimum mental effort a player needs to exude to prevail.

Potential challenge is the how mindful a player must be, on average throughout the course of the game, to optimize some axis of game performance, which has no bearing on the outcome of the game.

Rewarded challenge is how mindful a player must be (again, on average) for game noted achievements beyond basic win conditions e.g. score, rank or clearing "post game content".

Why do I make a point of saying "on average"? To account for mindless chores e.g. re-rolling (in various forms) or navigating through tedious UIs.

Challenge when playing for game time efficiency is a universally applicable measure of potential challenge and a good substitute for rewarded challenge in its absence. Henceforth called "Universal substitute challenge".

What is game time efficiency? It is simply minimizing the amount of game time (in turn based games, turns, in real time games, real time) passes before victory is achieved.

(A/D/J/S)RPGs are interesting because they usually have almost 0 minimum challenge, i.e. they can be played entirely mindlessly, but they also may have decent substitute challenge (usually hampered by how infrequently they accept player inputs), and sometimes rewarded challenge.

Now that you know how I think about things, lets analyze Shin Megami Tensei through this lens.

The game's minimum challenge is close to 0, but probably not 0. The minimum here would be the stupidest combat strategy with the highest level character and demons obtainable at any point in time. Basically if the player just mindlessly grinded to beat every boss with auto battle with their human characters, or failing that, used elemental fusion to rank up their demons to the same end. At least it requires the player to take the time to understand elemental fusion, assuming the former does not suffice, which makes it above 0.

There are "side quests", but they provide no higher challenge ceiling or floor beyond the main game.

Universal substitute challenge (recall: playing for time efficiency) is (at the beginning) decent, consisting of knowing the bosses, and knowing what kind of party can be built efficiently and which plan of attack to deploy to defeat them. Planning a decent party takes mental effort, but building it requires the busy work of re-rolling random encounters and demon conversations to obtain the necessary ingredients, as well as navigating through some tedious UI. The other problem here is most of the bosses are the same, and the kind of party you can use to beat them is always the same, you just might to reshuffle to higher level demons with higher numbers every now and then. At least the reshuffling process takes some thought, as at different max level, you'll have different kinds and combinations of demons providing you the tactical options you need.

The other aspect is knowing or guessing the dungeon layouts, with the former obviously being a complete substitute for the latter, both requiring some mental effort, although it's very mechanical. Moving through the dungeons is mostly a snappy exercise, with the only unnecessary tedium being the slow screen flash indicating a trap tile.

The nice thing here is that engaging in random encounters is voluntary, after a certain point, so the player is either using their brain (mildly) to find their way through a dungeon, or rolling encounters in order to prepare a party and accumulate resources for a boss (busy work, but the planning behind it is not).

Another kind of substitute challenge is power gaming. Here there is a "theorycrafting" planning exercise, but without regard to efficiency aspects, it is pure tedium to actually build the power party. You can think of the power gaming as just one additional player made ultimate boss.

In conclusion, I would say Shin Megami Tensei has near 0 minimum challenge, some universal substitute challenge early on, diminishing significantly as the game progresses. It is a mindless game much of the time (rolling a party), very mechanical and near mindless most of the time (exploring dungeons), and an enjoyable planning and learning (trial and error) exercise some of the time. This may sound harsh, but it is well above the *RPG genre standard, mainly by omitting many sins, and offering almost the most the genre can in terms of the core "game" behind it.

I can recommend it to fans of the DRPG genre.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Steven »

The original Shin Megami Tensei is a really cool concept. Too bad it's painfully boring to actually play.
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Great. Often mindlessness in games is enjoyable for me. It certainly has its place.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

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Steven wrote:The original Shin Megami Tensei is a really cool concept. Too bad it's painfully boring to actually play.
It is indeed a very cool concept - I love the gnostic theme. I didn't find it overly boring to play personally, at least for the first 15 hours or so. Many people have noted similarities to Pokemon, and indeed it's true, with the biggest difference for me being that the combat in Shin Megami Tensei is snappier. Of course, I don't know how well Shin Megami Tensei would hold up competitively, where Pokemon is quite well regarded (altho a lot of its success is social not inherent - tournaments always have a laundry list of rules and tiers).
Blinge wrote:Great. Often mindlessness in games is enjoyable for me. It certainly has its place.
Very true, and I often find myself having cravings for mindlessness in games. But, it's kind of like eating KFC - the regret is inevitable. My biggest regrets from Diablo 2 and its clone Titan Quest. Certainly others might have higher tolerance.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by cj iwakura »

I really enjoy the original SMT, but it's best played in doses, like a dungeon then a break. It can get very tedious, and random battles are CONSTANT.

That said, the story and atmosphere are top shelf, and I wonder if it'd been a classic had it actually come out here(which would've been a miracle given the content).
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by BryanM »

The liminal can be experienced almost without limit. By definition it is low stress, and the mind is free to wander where it will.

You can't dump hours and hours of a day into something where failure is a matter of course, like ArKnights: your vocal cords would wear out eventually from all the obscenities you'd be screaming at the screen.
I don't know how well Shin Megami Tensei would hold up competitively
It's really not balanced for PvP. Those games are designed for you to ascend past the rock-paper-scissors that feeble mortals find themselves locked into. They'd have to be changed quite dramatically on a number of things.

The Dragon Quest Monsters series is the closest I can think of to the generic jRPG battle engine it uses, and some of those games had PvP. I remember it being.... pretty lame. Resistance and elemental types don't really matter in those games. Healing is extremely powerful and plentiful. Pokemon singles and doubles are way better.

One of the major problems with most jRPGs, are your units become these optimized battleships with every tool and weapon they could ever want. You have to put serious limits on that stuff.

ArKnights is probably the best example of limitations: each character can equip one skill, and often becomes a different unit altogether depending which is selected.

The idea of units being tools and puzzle pieces isn't one that's used often in RPG's... I think even latest editions of Dungeons n' Dragons have gone in that homogenized direction. Though even in 2nd edition, it was like, "Wizards can do everything except heal and raise the dead." It doesn't take much of an expansion of utility until everything important in your game is covered.
That said, the story and atmosphere are top shelf, and I wonder if it'd been a classic had it actually come out here(which would've been a miracle given the content).
It would have been beloved by many... The genre didn't really get kickstarted here until FF7, though. That was definitely our Dragon Quest. (What a weird flake of fate that my Dragon Quest was Dragon Warrior..)

It's nice that it has such a big following here, now.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Ghegs »

Just managed to squeeze it in before the holidays...done with Stranger of Sword City Revisited. Got the normal end at about 67 hours, and then I played the postgame for an additional 10 hours before dropping it.

Glad I recorded my thoughts on Saviors of Sapphire Wings earlier in this thread, as I could've sworn I played SoSW about the same amount, but apparently I only played it for about 36 hours. Still, ~110 hours spent with a single cartridge. Not bad.

SoSC is certainly the more DRPG of the two, with a lot more meat on its bones. And it's neat how there's some story connections between the two games. But overall, I think I liked it only about the amount as SoSW - enough to play through to the Normal End, but not enough for the True End. There are some mechanics in SoSC I just don't like, mainly the class changing. You can change characters' classes at any point, you just have to pay some money (the amount of which goes up per character per class change), and your current level gets halved while doing it. You can use unlocked skills from other classes.

What this leads to is homogenization of characters. There are many class-specific skills that you want most or ALL of your characters to have. Like a skill that makes melee weapons reach infinite, so melee fighters can reach even enemies' back row from your back row (this also makes ranged characters basically pointless, since they could just equip a melee weapon for better damage). Or a skill that makes a character immune to insta-kill attacks. Or a skill that allows you to repeat most actions, making it possible to absolutely murder even bosses when you combine it with other skills. Put it on a character that has unlocked a skill for dual wielding two-handed weapons and a skill for attacking seven times, so you get 28 (two high-DMG weapons attacking seven times, repeated) attacks in a single turn...for just that one character.

It felt like there's no point in making a party of varying skills that play off each other, synchronize in cool ways, and are adaptable to multiple different situations. Of course I didn't know all that starting the game, it was only when I was having trouble with one boss and I went to look for hints that I learned this. My party did end up being a more traditional DRPG party with two damage-dealers, one ranged guy, a tank, a wizard, and a healer. But even their roles started to mix up when I made my wizard learn all the cleric spells, and vice versa. In fact, ALL my characters are also high-level clerics, because that's the only way to get that crucial immunity to insta-kill attacks. Most of them were also dancers for another very useful skill, and three of them were ninjas for their final class.

I much preferred the way Undernauts handled class changing, where in late-game you got the opportunity to branch out to other classes, to learn some of their skills, and the classes were somehow related to the original class. You specialized, instead of making the characters the same.

My non-optimal party reached the Normal End without too much difficulty once I made a few class changes to get some of the more crucial skills, but I don't think playing strictly using the characters' original classes is viable. Or at least it'll require a lot more grinding.

Another thing I didn't like was the way the game handled character deaths. It seemed to be at odds with itself. Every character has lifepoints (1-3, depending on their age, which is selectable while creating them) which diminish whenever the character dies. If their lifepoints hit 0, they're actually gone for good, permanently. But you can recover lifepoints fairly easily by either paying (a lot) of money, or having the character be in sickbay recovering, while the other characters go do some random battles so they'll heal up. It's also encouraged to create backup characters that take can the place of the recovering ones.

But what's the point? It's so easy to recover lifepoints (though I understand it was more difficult in the Vita original), the permanent character death might not even exist, it feels more like busywork dealing with it. I guess it tries to be like Wizardry in that permadeath is a thing, but it's so easily avoidable, and because the game doesn't autosave, I can't image who wouldn't rather just load a save if a character does happen to die permanently - because especially in late-game those characters have gone through several class changes and probably a lot of items have been spent to max out their stats and other attributes, it would take a stupidly long time to bring a new character up to snuff.

After I got the Normal End I thought I'd play a bit more, so I did a few more dungeons and after several attempts I managed to beat a gauntlet of four bosses, the last of which looks like a proper god-level last boss with way too much arms. But when even that wasn't the last challenge the game had to offer, I just decided to end it there. Props to the game for having a meaty post-game I guess, but after nearly 80 hours of the game I'm feeling burned out. And then when I went to GameFAQs to look what more I had left to do, the guide basically said "I hope you've followed my instructions on creating this optimal party, otherwise you'll need to grind A LOT". So, I'm done.

I've developed a lot of backlog while playing SoSC, so another break from DRPGs is a good thing. But there's actually a lot of those coming out next year. Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society, Labyrinth of Zangetsu, and Undead Darlings: No Cure For Love...and they're all coming out in February, apparently. And all of those are completely new titles, so it'll be the first time I'll be playing a DRPG that doesn't already have a FAQ or a dedicated wiki available. Will be interesting. Really looking forward to Zangetsu.
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cj iwakura
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by cj iwakura »

Yeah, I bounced off of SoSC hard because of the stupid life point mechanics. The art is gorgeous, but literally nothing else held my attention, even the story was feeling super cookie cutter.
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Vanguard
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Vanguard »

Potato Flowers in Full Bloom is 20% off on steam right now and it has some of the best turn-based combat of any RPG.
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Immryr
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Immryr »

i've been playing potato flowers in full bloom over the last couple of weeks. it's a really nice game, but a little on the easy side. i wish there was something to make the exploration have slightly more of a sense of danger to it. either something to disincentivise returning to base, or some kind of punishment for death, or even some kind of dark souls-esque mechanic where you drop exp where you die and need to recover it. i dunno, just something. it would also be nice if the item creation/crafting stuff was a little more fleshed out - i basically ignored it all game. that's a very minor gripe though.*


the exploration in general is really nice, lots of shortcuts, lots of remembering bits where you couldn't pass before etc - although it gets a quite bitty in the late game. i might need to play through again and try out some different classes as i have only made three characters and stuck with them. seems like the wizard class is very strong.


* - edit i've just realised the you only need to get the salamander item for the smith once, after that it just costs iron. for some reason i had assumed you needed to grind for those items for smithing - oops!
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Vanguard
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Vanguard »

Potato Flowers's focus is more on making each individual fight a threat rather than gradually wearing down your resources and I think it does really well at it overall. The difficulty level is high enough that you have to take it seriously but low enough that you don't need to use optimal parties or grind. You can always add more difficulty through challenge runs. I bet two character challenges would be really interesting.

A death penalty would just encourage more conservative play without adding any real decision making. You'd just head back to base and save before challenging bosses instead of running straight into the fight. Everything else would play out exactly the same.

And yeah, wizards are extremely good. They're both the most versatile class and one of the best damage dealers.
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Vanguard
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Vanguard »

I tried doing a two character challenge playthrough in Potato Flowers. Went with rogue and wizard. It was a little bit tedious to start out but things picked up over time and it was smooth sailing once I got the painkillers for the goblin dude on floor 1. I think wizards are the overall best class, but rogues are arguably even more overpowered by the end of the game. If you go all in on evasion you can get it above 100% at which point very little can hit them even when they aren't expending spirit to dodge. I beat the final boss without using any ballista bolts and my rogue took no damage and expended a grand total of 4 spirit throughout the entire fight. Even soloing him wouldn't have been hard if I was willing to sit there attacking for ~400 turns.

It worked alright as a pseudo hard mode, but overall wasn't as fun as playing normally because losing a character puts a ton of limitations on what tactics you can use, and a lot of fights are only realistically winnable with luck and/or cheese tactics.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by Ghegs »

I went old-school for a while - I had bought a CIB copy of Swords and Serpents on NES back in December, started playing it a few weeks ago, and today I beat it. I wrote down the passwords and made my own maps 'n everything, the only modern thing I did was play it on Analogue NT Mini, but other than that, I wanted to play the game like it had been done back in the early 90's.

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I bought graph paper, a mechanical pencil, and an eraser pen just for this project. And overall I liked the experience, though the game definitely has its issues. This was the first time I had ever made my own maps like this, so it was a pretty interesting change of pace. It certainly slowed down the pace a bit, but the game is slow-paced as it is (menus have a horrible lag, push a button and it takes a good second before anything happens), so I kind of had to put myself into a certain mental state to take things slow when playing this.

The exploration was fun and there's a fair amount of secrets to be found, though ultimately most proved to be pointless. The combat was by far the simplest and weakest aspect of the game.

Characters have exactly two options to take in battle - do a physical attack or use magic. If the character's class is not a wizard, then the options are limited to just attacking. There's no guarding, no front line/back line, you can't choose which enemy to attack, or anything fancy like that. Well, you can run away at least. Battles are always against only one type of enemy, to a maximum of 8 opponents. And no enemies have any names or descriptions so they're just bats, red bats, green bats, wizards, yellow wizards, another type of wizard, some kind of gnome or something, etc.

The game doesn't even tell you the turn order and there doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes your character can do an action, sometimes they can't. Even what they do is a mystery, one of the enemies just "attacks" (which one? Who knows?) and one of your character's name switches to read either Hit or Miss. Some enemies can attack all of the characters at the same time, which is a real pain late in the game when there's 8 of them and you're sitting there, wondering when your turn might come up...

I pretty much ignored attack magic completely and just used it for healing, buffs, and other effects. One thing I did like is how instead of the mages getting new spells as they gain levels, they're found within the dungeon, encouraging the player to really go through every nook 'n cranny.

Defeated enemies drop money, occasionally loot and you get XP from killing them, and money can also be found within the dungeon, but it's mostly useless because it can only be used within 3 shops scattered around the dungeon, and everything they have to offer can also be gained from enemy drops and the best equipment can only be found either from drops or as hidden items. I only bought like two or three items in the early game and nothing else after that.

Speaking of items, there are no potions or scrolls or anything like that, only items are either weapons or armor. Only way to heal is via heal spells, and the only way to regain MP is from Temples (three in the whole game) or Fountains that can be found occasionally. This kind of puts a timelimit on your exploration, as it can only last as long as your mages have MP, especially since one of the spells allows you to pass through (some) walls, and it's mandatory to get through some floors. The game actually allows you to kill yourself if you find yourself in a place from where you can't get out.

The max. character level is 16, which I hit somewhere around Floor 10 (out of 16) without any grinding, after which XP is completely useless.

Most of my complaints are about the combat, which gets pretty tiresome from floor 11 or thereabouts onwards. The exploration and map-making was still enjoyable, and there were some puzzles in there as well. There are actually directions dropped throughout the game, at multiple floors, how to navigate the very last floor, that was pretty cool. Again encouraging/rewarding exploration and writing things down.

The moment you fulfill your quest and bring down the dragon, you get a single-screen "YOU HAVE DEFEATED THE DRAGON" -message and...that's it. You do get additional passwords of your characters which I guess technically can be used in a New Game+ fashion, but, haha, no.

The thing about the game is that because of the passwords, and what data they store, it kind of forces you to into long play sessions. It takes a few minutes to enter the passwords when starting the game, and few to write them down when you want to save your progress, so you want to do that as few times as possible. The passwords also don't store your amount of XP, only the characters levels (they are all always the same level), so you don't want to stop playing right before levelling up. Of course that becomes moot after hitting the level cap. So I ended up playing mostly on weekends when I knew I could put in several hours of gametime, and I even then I had to pause the game and leave the console on for longer periods.

I'm really bad at estimating how long I've spent on a game, but I guess somewhere around 20-30 hours. With my maps I could now do another run a lot faster. Maybe far off in the future?

If one were to play the game on an emulator so they can forget about the passwords and just use save states, and speed up the end-game battles, it would certainly smooth off the rougher edges.
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by BryanM »

Never did make any paper maps back in the day. Just memorized the jist of things as I went. Guess it helped Dungeon Master had little backtracking, just the occasional "hub room" that connected to some small self-contained wings. That was really good game design for the kind of games these were - if you wanted to draw a map sure, but you didn't have to. That's one big reason to keep the floors small like 16x16 - the number of tiles in a room start growing fast the bigger you make the square.

Labyrinth of Refrain's Three Towers dungeon was hellish enough with the autonap. I know Etrian Odyssey games are junior league: I shudder at the real horrors one can make, if one wanted to make a real labyrinth game. Definitely an idea for experimental kusoge.

These days, the brain ain't what it used to be. Reminds me of how rats have diminished maze memorization skills as they age. Supposedly plasma proteins can recover much of that, eh...
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Re: Dungeon crawler recomendations

Post by m.sniffles.esq »

Labyrinth of Refrain's Three Towers dungeon was hellish enough with the autonap.

I remember taking to someone about where I was in the game vs what level I was at

"Wow, you must be doing a lot of grinding"
"Not really, I'm just getting lost like constantly"
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