Dungeon crawler recomendations

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Rastan is absolutely not a dungeon crawler

Yeah, as much as I appreciate a good action platformer (and we do!), Rastan definitely ain't a first person dungeon crawling rpg. Maybe an accidental post in the wrong thread?

[1000Eyes]

Anyone ever tried out the roguelike Iter Vehemens ad Necem, aka IVAN? It's a Nethack-like with a cult reputation of being rather brutal, but other than that it is rarely discussed. Well, I tried it for 2 hours, so here are some initial impressions:

- Intriguing body-part system, where both you and enemies can have their arms and legs severed, and instant death if vital parts are sufficiently damaged — so if you are still at a decent HP level, you might still die if they kick your nuts too much Too bad that you can't really target enemy body parts (it seems random), so in the early game where I'm at this mostly affects me. It does make the bump combat more tense than usual, as I have to pay attention to a little body display to make sure I won't lose an arm or a leg and disadvantage myself, or if the enemy is scoring too many vital hits. Btw, there are no numbers for individual parts, you have to guess it based on the graphic. I heard that later you can collect body parts to create Frankenstein-style slaves, or even graft stuff on your body. Looking forward.

- No item identify game! Quite a departure for a hack-like. Not sure what I feel about it yet, as I quite like that game, but I need to play till a bit more to find out if it really affects anything. It does feel great to equip whatever I want though.

- God as items. In Hack-likes, gods are like shmup bombs, limited use panic buttons. Here they work a bit more like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup gods, where there's pantheon and they lend you specific skills you can borrow at the cost of not being able to invoke them for some turns without punishment. So you are kinda encouraged to pray a lot as opposed to the last resort common in Hack-likes.

- Full ADOM-style world and quests. There are apparently multiple endings and tons of cool world-building, flavoring. It's quite wry and amusing in tone, terse and satirical.

- Otherwise, seems like a middle ground between ADOM and Nethack in terms of simulation complexity. Definitely scratches that itch more than more pure roguelikes like Stone Soup or even Rogue itself.

Anyway, gotta play a bit more to see where the hard reputation comes from.

[Vanguard]

I've only played a few minutes of IVAN, but I hear it has a Garegga-like dynamic difficulty system where you have to make sure you never convince the game you're doing too well or it will crank the difficulty up to impossible and kill you.

[1000Eyes]

I've only played a few minutes of IVAN, but I hear it has a Garegga-like dynamic difficulty system where you have to make sure you never convince the game you're doing too well or it will crank the difficulty up to impossible and kill you.

Hah, this made me do some research a bit, because that sounds bonkers.

Fortunately (unfortunately?), from this guide and stray posts here and there, it seems to work intuitively: more difficult monster spawns depending on how good your equipment and stats are, especially tied to HP. The only way this might throw you off balanced is if you find a really good HP boosting armor early, or you somehow got very powerful artificial limbs, then it starts spawning kamikaze dwarves. Straight up Yagawa-hack would've given me a heart attack

[Lethe]

Hmm, I hadn't ever played IVAN much either, and I hadn't realized it had such a Hack-like structure. I thought it was just a funny YASD joke game. Maybe it's worth trying it out again, been a very long time.

You've incidentally reminded me that there are (quasi-)humans who actually like DCSS out there. Dear lord, I can't imagine another game that does absolutely everything quite as wrong. Bizarre that it still has any influence at all, but, well... a complete lack of standards is frankly pretty common among RPGers of any stripe.

[1000Eyes]

Heh, interesting opinion, Lethe. Would love to hear some elaboration.

Personally, DCSS isn't my favorite roguelike, but I do admire how pure it is in its all combat philosophy. I think it's combat and progression is one of the more interesting turn based systems out there. Despite having little to do with the original Rogue, that single-mindedness shares more with Rogue than the more kitchen-sink approach that Hack-likes tend to go (and echoed further in games like Spelunky, DF, CDDA). It just feels a little wrong for me in specific a genre that aimed to capture the dungeon life experience to focus so much on the head-to-head tactics aspect and use the auto explore key so much, a crit I'd share with TOME, although that one has its own set of virtues and flaws. All of this is, of course, very subjective.

[Sima Tuna]

I love Caves of Qud because it's like a combination of traditional roguelike dungeon crawler with a sprawling crpg.

[Lethe]

Heh, interesting opinion, Lethe. Would love to hear some elaboration.

Personally, DCSS isn't my favorite roguelike, but I do admire how pure it is in its all combat philosophy. I think it's combat and progression is one of the more interesting turn based systems out there. Despite having little to do with the original Rogue, that single-mindedness shares more with Rogue than the more kitchen-sink approach that Hack-likes tend to go (and echoed further in games like Spelunky, DF, CDDA). It just feels a little wrong for me in specific a genre that aimed to capture the dungeon life experience to focus so much on the head-to-head tactics aspect and use the auto explore key so much, a crit I'd share with TOME, although that one has its own set of virtues and flaws. All of this is, of course, very subjective.

It's a cascading series of effects primarily stemming from the game having zero depth. It's a game where there's nothing but linear combat and a chicken-and-egg relationship with that combat being dogshit. You're forced to take trivial fights seriously because without doing that the game has nothing to offer, but taking a fight seriously is at most a mere resource tax because there's no depth, because the game has nothing but combat, which by extension is making the combat worse... paradoxical tedium spawned from inelegant simplicity. This is baked into the statistical design of the game like how it handles damage numbers, and then that has a two-way relationship with aggro and level generation and player power. The entire design is doomed top to bottom, just scrap the whole thing and start over.

It also has definitively the worst progression of any large roguelike. Dreadful utilitarian-obsessed itemization, skills are just arbitrary numerical breakpoints, raise one barely meaningful stat every few levels, freeform classes converge on doing the same things and playing the same way because there's ultimately like 2 things to do in the whole game.

Nethack is definitely not a kitchen sink game because a huge amount of attention to detail has gone into how all the parts interact with each other (it's what the game's most famous for). ToME4 definitely is a kitchen sink game because it's a collection of whatever the developer felt like doing thoughtlessly tossed together. Having said that, ToME4 does have some great character archetypes, good progression, and better combat than at least DCSS. And I don't even like ToME4 - I think the sum of its parts is a severe failure, but it still destroys DCSS on literally every single front. I personally have plenty of experience with Angband (probably 1000+ hours across all its variants) and I don't think it would be crazy to say that even Angband has better combat than DCSS given their relative positions in each game's strategical hierarchy.

[Vanguard]

You've incidentally reminded me that there are (quasi-)humans who actually like DCSS out there. Dear lord, I can't imagine another game that does absolutely everything quite as wrong. Bizarre that it still has any influence at all, but, well... a complete lack of standards is frankly pretty common among RPGers of any stripe.

It's SO tedious and somehow it's one of the most popular roguelikes. I really do not get it.

I can't really enjoy TOME4 either because of its MMO cooldown based combat, but it does offer a lot of interesting character types to play as. I'm a fan of the dev's old Angband variant, TOME2. Angband is kind of tedious too but I'll take it over Crawl any day. TOME2 has a lot of fun and crazy character building choices like you'd expect from DarkGod.

[1000Eyes]

It's a cascading series of effects primarily stemming from the game having zero depth. It's a game where there's nothing but linear combat and a chicken-and-egg relationship with that combat being dogshit. You're forced to take trivial fights seriously because without doing that the game has nothing to offer, but taking a fight seriously is at most a mere resource tax because there's no depth, because the game has nothing but combat, which by extension is making the combat worse... paradoxical tedium spawned from inelegant simplicity. This is baked into the statistical design of the game like how it handles damage numbers, and then that has a two-way relationship with aggro and level generation and player power. The entire design is doomed top to bottom, just scrap the whole thing and start over.

It also has definitively the worst progression of any large roguelike. Dreadful utilitarian-obsessed itemization, skills are just arbitrary numerical breakpoints, raise one barely meaningful stat every few levels, freeform classes converge on doing the same things and playing the same way because there's ultimately like 2 things to do in the whole game.

Nethack is definitely not a kitchen sink game because a huge amount of attention to detail has gone into how all the parts interact with each other (it's what the game's most famous for). ToME4 definitely is a kitchen sink game because it's a collection of whatever the developer felt like doing thoughtlessly tossed together. Having said that, ToME4 does have some great character archetypes, good progression, and better combat than at least DCSS. And I don't even like ToME4 - I think the sum of its parts is a severe failure, but it still destroys DCSS on literally every single front. I personally have plenty of experience with Angband (probably 1000+ hours across all its variants) and I don't think it would be crazy to say that even Angband has better combat than DCSS given their relative positions in each game's strategical hierarchy.

Very passionate critique, but you'll have to forgive me for finding it vague and based on an unexplained ideal roguelike. You gesture at some very interesting ideas - "linear combat", "two-way relationship with aggro and level generation and player power", "Dreadful utilitarian-obsessed itemization..." - but I don't seem to get the assumptions behind them. Now I'm not a hardcore DCSS fan and it's been forever since I've played it, so I can't come up with an equally intense defense on the spot, but there must be a reason why it is popular, even if we don't agree? I will be able to understand specific claims as I did manage a 4-rune victory, so recalling or looking up stuff is quick for me. Although you may have just wanted to express an opinion, which is fair enough. I'm willing to listen to detailed write-ups tho.

Good catch on the kitchen sink term btw. I definitely didn't mean to sound patronizing there, as it sounded more affectionate in my head. I meant it in a more "this is a lateral, out of the box" type of game, so I should have used something more precise. I actually tend to prefer playing ADOM and Nethack.

[m.sniffles.esq]

This appeared in my RSS, and I thought I was hallucinating for a second but:

Caves of Qud coming to Switch

[Sima Tuna]

This appeared in my RSS, and I thought I was hallucinating for a second but:

Caves of Qud coming to Switch

Yeah, I had a rocket liftoff explosion.gif moment when I saw that.

I love caves of qud and playing on handheld sounds perfect. Not sure how they'll manage the controls but apparently it already controls well on Steam Deck.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Not sure how they'll manage the controls but apparently it already controls well on Steam Deck.

Okay, that was my biggest "how the fuck is that going to work???"

[Lethe]

Jupiter Hell Classic, the exciting new (old) (new) (old) entry in the extended Do*m universe was released on Steam a couple of days ago. DRM-free release with the "1.0 version" sometime next year, apparently. As always, I don't recommend spending money on early release games on principle, but in this specific case the game's in pretty good shape as it is now, with its only glaring omission being the total absence of mechanical enemies. After playing a few runs it's already exceeded my expectations, having learned all of the right lessons from both of its parents, and since the core DRL gameplay loop is intact the only route to crippling its potential is via monumental stupidity.

However, that's not the only angle to this. Due to the two games' interesting parallel development scheme, there's also a new release candidate for DoomRL which mirrors most of the improvements seen in JHC and includes a huge amount of its own changes, making for the biggest shakeup of the game in well over 10 years. The most important additions include some different enemy AI, proper Doom-like monster infighting, and the "enrage timer" which causes all monsters on the level to suddenly become VELY ANGERLY and also only award half XP if you dick around for too long. This mechanic singlehandedly curbs the ultra-degenerate anti-risk tactics people would previously abuse, such as hiding in a corner for 100000 turns while you wait for monsters to walk into a doorway so you can gradually squish all their corpses.

tl;dr click on the link and play DoomRL

[Sweatlord_STG]

One game I'd like to mention because of its stunning artworks is Unchained Blades. In like 2012 or so I played through the game on PSP after buying a digital copy from the US PSN, which is the only version in English I think. There is no physical version of this version I think. On the 3DS it is also only in Japanese.

Edit: I just checked again and apparently it was also released for the 3DS in English at some point, but also only digitally (US eshop), from what I understand. I'm pretty sure there is no US physical version.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unchained_Blades

[it290]

Picked up Monomyth and have been playing the heck out of it. This game is really rad, it's an immersive sim dungeon crawler similar to Arx Fatalis but also hearkening back to things like Ultima Underworld and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Massive environments and lots of emergent gameplay possibilities. If I had one criticism it would be that the map kind of sucks, but that's also part of the charm. Highly recommended.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Cladun x3 is... You know what it is
That said, with Nippon Ichi being themselves. there's even more ridiculous customization/shit to tinker with/etc

But at the end of the day, I'm just glad a Cladun game is on Switch. They were designed as portable titles and playing them chained to a desk always felt a little odd. And X3 continues the proud tradition of "screw around with builds while waiting for bus/train, do a 5-10 minute dungeon while riding said bus/train, see how effective/not effective screwing around was, repeat next time you ride bus/train"

[Blinge]

I've recently beaten Baroque on the Saturn
Mann what a game, dripping with atmosphere, cool characters. mostly impenetrable story.

Maybe i'll play the ps1 version too just for that extra dungeon element. God i'm a sucker for stuff like that (looking at you let it die)

Also as I become older and crustier I decided it was finally time to respect the OG and play Wizardry 1, namely the gorgeous steam remake.
got about half the old-school options on. Getting my ass handed to me.
I uploaded some stream highlights on my second channel if anyone's interested:

https://youtu.be/4y8qhw_aeS0 proving grounds of the mad lad

keep on crawlin'

[Blinge]

I saw a fantastic video the other day -
https://youtu.be/pcoESX0KAC4

The history of Real Time Blobbers.

Some dude went through like eeeeevery clone of Dungeon Master, ending with Legend of Grimrock.
Also heaviest Swedish accent I've ever heard

[Sima Tuna]

I know a dude who would cream his pants for that video, but honestly he probably already watched it.

[Mero]

Back to the Discordance fight in Galleria again for the 3rd time in three years. I've got the Bocklin's Quest items that I got last year, and I've now got 3 cannon users that my brigade desperately needed. I've got a bit more tinkering/grinding to do before I face the boss again. The other day my squad managed to easily kill a QII reaper before it killed anyone so that bodes well.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Back to the Discordance fight in Galleria again for the 3rd time in three years

My memory is a bit hazy, but I think I finally got this by finding/using a trap pact and basically stun-locking him that kept him from one-shotting everyone

[Mero]

Back to the Discordance fight in Galleria again for the 3rd time in three years

My memory is a bit hazy, but I think I finally got this by finding/using a trap pact and basically stun-locking him that kept him from one-shotting everyone

I just took my brigade for a test drive against Discordance and managed to get it at the first attempt. I didn't really manage to stunlock him at all (Deactivate Limiter didn't seem to actually do much) but I managed to kill Disccordance 1 before he really did anything, by the time they all became active half of them were already dead. You can really batter them once you've weakened them. They managed to kill some of my puppets near the end but they didn't have much health left at that point so things didn't get too hairy. About half of my 15 attackers were still alive at the end.

I'll take a look at chapter 3 and the 3000 floor dungeon in a day or 2.

[Blinge]

I've been playing Wizardry 1: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord - Steam remake

Man this is a buggy piece of shit.
Random freezes during battles, as in.. the enemies are in their idle animations, but nothing happens, no inputs work.
I go to the tavern and simply cannot remove anyone from my party. The menus stop working.

Don't buy unless they fix this thing

[guigui]

I've been playing Wizardry 1: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord - Steam remake

Man this is a buggy piece of shit.
Random freezes during battles, as in.. the enemies are in their idle animations, but nothing happens, no inputs work.
I go to the tavern and simply cannot remove anyone from my party. The menus stop working.

Don't buy unless they fix this thing

That's a shame. I wanted to try this game on the NSW when price drops a little. Any idea if Switch version is bugged too ?

[-Fish-]

Some of you may enjoy Angeline Era on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2393 ... eline_Era/

It's very reminiscent of 64-bit Zelda but with more hectic/frantic combat. The player can only shoot upward and melee combat consists of bumping into enemies. It's very unique w/ lots of exploration and secrets. Very difficult if you jack up thr difficulty.

For those looking for something like King's Field (like in the OP) these are both newer and well made:

Verho Curse of Faces

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3017 ... _of_Faces/


Labyrinth of the Demon King

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1804 ... emon_King/

[Vanguard]

Labyrinth of Touhou Tri is scheduled to be released Jan 28. The demo was promising, mechanically I expect this to be the best in the series. You can see enemy element and status resistances at any time, so the usual annoying guesswork surrounding those things is totally gone. For boss fights you can even see the enemy's AI patterns in-game, should allow for much more involved boss fights, and more convenient boss fight preparation. I'm told that can also be turned off. There were interesting changes to common enemies too, they were always the weak point of the series, I'm hoping they can improve on that.
On the negative side, there was far, far too much time spent on a serious and uninteresting story. I don't even want that much dialogue in a JRPG, let alone a DRPG. Highly recommend skimming if not outright skipping it.

I'm going to end up playing this before Monochrome Echoes white, because those scammer bastards won't release the english translation.

[Lethe]

On the negative side, there was far, far too much time spent on a serious and uninteresting story. I don't even want that much dialogue in a JRPG, let alone a DRPG. Highly recommend skimming if not outright skipping it.

I didn't play the demo. Surely, he thinks, after LoT2's enjoyably acerbic tone, surely it can't be that bad?

Cue full paragraphs of characters dryly self-expositing, more paragraphs of irrelevant Shit No One Cares About, both notional and literal repetition, and what must be - without exaggeration - at least half a dozen scenes dedicated to the useless lesbians angsting. You could skip every single bit of text in the first stratum and miss out on nothing. Why think this was a good idea? What happened?

Thankfully it seems to be getting better upon reaching the second part of the game, whereon the game also starts pulling its subvert-expectations cards. There's no problem with doing that, it's fine, good, even. But it feels like there was a dilemma between executing it and finding space for a bunch of apparently crucially important character exposition, resulting in the first ~five hours being crammed with words that add up to nothing.

The way difficulty settings are implemented is odd - higher settings make the game less grindy and also make it easier to get special consumables like stat boosts. Combined with the amount of information you get about bosses, and the new system for duplicating subequips, you can establish an idea of what to do right away and very quickly pivot into an effective lineup. Can I honestly say the old approach was better? No, I can't... it still just seems weird having solutions put right in front of you like this. On Lunatic, the game is already a couple of notches above LoT2 in the strict sense of difficulty, so maybe when I get further in the complexity will go up enough that these advantages even out.

[Vanguard]

Unfortunately the story gets very bad and quite wordy again in later strata. Doesn't seem to ever get quite as verbose as the first dungeon, but it never goes back to the brisk, lighthearted fun of 1 and 2 either. I started on lunatic difficulty but switched to hard later. Lunatic makes the random encounters even easier, which isn't good, and makes some of the bosses really dumb. You can still rematch the lunatic versions of bosses later, and the game even says that hard is what it was balanced around. Despite how it may appear, you can do and unlock everything the game has to offer on all difficulty settings.

The gameplay is good. The party building and boss fights are still solid like one would expect from this series. The dungeons seem more complex than in the last two games. It took a while to solve all the puzzles in the sokoban dungeon. So far I think 2 was better overall though. 2 has a higher boss frequency, and the playable character abilties in 3 are often needlessly complex. I liked starting with every character's full moveset and picking up support abilities over time in 2 better than building up a moveset over time in 3, and I really don't care for the abilities that only work on certain turns, or the abilities you can't use until you build up character specific resources.

[m.sniffles.esq]

If you're in the US, and you have president's day off, you can spend it playing Caves of Qud on Switch