Dragon Ruins II

Dragon Ruins 1 was a short but sweet game with just enough progression to keep my brain lighting up. I was hoping Dragon Ruins 2 would be an improvement, and in a few ways it is. But in one really important way, I just don't care for it. Better graphics are nice. I don't mind the loss of the text box as much as other reviewers. They have actual damage types and equipment and skills to keep track of. Quests even have little story beats to go with them as opposed to the original's 'go to dungeon, slay dragon'. This is more or less everything I could have wanted from a sequel. But what really killed the game for me is the scaling. See, the strength of enemies is directly dependent on the strength of your party. So levelling up and getting new equipment just means the stuff you're fighting gets stronger as well, and in comparison to the enemy you have made zero progress. One of the most satisfying feelings in an RPG is running into an enemy that gave you trouble five levels ago and deleting it with your vastly improved stats and gear. This game actively prevents you from achieving that - and if any powerup just powers up the enemies equally, what's the point in levelling up at all? I tried to game this system by farming quests without levelling up to get a ton of gold and buy better equipment. When that didn't lead to any noticeable improvement in my combat ability, I decided I wasn't willing to stumble around in the dungeons over and over again. Disappointing.

「疲れた人用のダンジョンクローラー。」 ストアページにこう書いてあるが、まさにその通りで、死の緊張感に怯えながらダンジョンを攻略するゲームではなく、疲れた気持ちを回復させるためのDRPG風チルゲームとして購入するとミスマッチが起きにくい。[u][b]このゲームの本質はDRPGというよりチルゲームです。[/b][/u] 実際、プレイヤーが行うことはマップを移動してオートバトルを眺めつつ撤退するかしないかの判断をするだけで戦略性はなく、難しい判断を一切求められないので、仕事があった日の夜でもぼーっとしながら楽しむことができる。 前作と違い、今作にはスキルや装備品の概念があるが、実用度とフレーバーテキスト的な要素のバランスがちょうどよく、ここでも余計な判断疲れが発生しない。 （身も蓋もない言い方をすると、スキルや装備周りを適当にやっていてもクリアできる。） そのため、スキルビルドや装備OP厳選などを楽しみたいプレイヤーには全く向いていないと言える。 ただ、ハクスラ要素がないわけではなく、装備品にはかなりドロップ率が低いものがあるため、収集の楽しみがある。装備図鑑のようなものが無く、珍しそうな装備が突然ドロップするため、まだ見知らぬ装備があるのではという期待がいつまでも持ち続けられる。 ミニマルなUI、古くて地味（ほめ言葉）なグラフィック、静かなBGMに淡々とした戦闘SEの中で、ダンジョンにくり返し潜っていると、作業感ではなく心地いい安心感が生まれてくる。 派手さは全くないけど、静かにセロトニンが出るDRPG風チルゲーム、おすすめです。

I love the vibes and presentation, and looking at the rest of the reviews, there's obviously a demand for casual dungeon crawlers. Personally though, the fully automatic combat makes it all a bit, well... boring to me. The gameplay is nearly exclusively tuned around gauging how far into the dungeon you can make it without being wiped out while your party auto-resolves combat without any input from you, and it's just a bit too simplistic for my tastes. Lovely dungeon synth soundtrack and artstyle, though, and I don't regret paying the admission on that front!

First off, just wanted to say the top negative review is complete BS: enemies [b]do not[/b] scale with your party. Early game enemies will appear in later dungeons in large groups and they always do 1 point of damage and your weaker party members kill off 4-5 of them in a single attack. I almost wish they did scale because the game becomes overly braindead in the second half of the game and your dudes simply steamroll everything, no need to even shuffle injured members to the backrow and give them a ranged weapon like in the first half of the game. With that out of the way, might as well write an actual review. Dragon Ruins II is pretty fun, very casual and stripped down, certainly doesn't carry over the sadistic difficulty of classic Wizardry and its Japanese successors and that's probably for the best. The dungeons are the increasingly bigger mazes that you'd expect from a classic dungeon crawler with a few basic features like trap/damage tiles and teleporters. Treasure chests with underwhelming loot occasionally spawn in dead-end rooms and unlike Wizardry are trapped 0% of the time instead of 99% of the time. The game really leans on its look and feel, with a slightly blurry CRT monitor filter and dithered monochrome dungeon graphics, and character and monster graphics tastefully lifted from the public domain Javardry graphics set. The real standout effort is the music, which according to the credits was made entirely by the dev and is absolutely killer with flavors of retro RPG OSTs, 80s synthesizer-driven horror soundtracks a la John Carpenter, dungeon synth, atmospheric black metal, dark ambient, etc. Ridiculously good stuff, worth the price of admission on its own. Even though being stripped down is definitely the design intention, I couldn't help but feel that a bit more meat on the bones in terms of loot variety and meaningful equipment choices would have made things more satisfying. For example, choosing any armor type besides light armor or robes is shooting yourself in the foot because heavier armor tanks your agility while providing the same total defense value but shifted toward physical defense, while enemies that deal magic damage are frequent and usually hit harder anyway. There's an overall lack of refinement in the numbers that feel slapped together and not really balanced, so you kind of just pick the obvious best option and go with it. There are a couple of fun bits though, like choosing to upgrade a broken sword with useless attack power instead of throwing it away will eventually yield an overpowered enchanted sword after making some heavy gold investments. It might not blow you away in terms of deep engaging gameplay, but if the game's vibes even vaguely appeal to you I'd say go for it. It's an ideal Steam Deck game for killing 15-30 minutes.

I loved the 1st game, but this one takes what its predecessor did and amps EVERYTHING up exponentially. Well over a dozen maps and each one provides you with multiple quests and opportunities to build your party up before you reach the awesome, epic endgame. So much fun, man. This is, hands down, one of my all-time favorite Wizardry-like games.

Ate the game in a week. Just the right amount of simple and complex. It lives up perfectly as a "dungeon crawler for tired people". The devs actually get it.

Game of the year. Best game direction. Best narrative. Best art direction. Best score and music. Best audio design. Best independent game. Best action game. Best action / adventure. Best RPG.

It's way too simple, from a difficulty and mechanical viewpoint. Combat happens without any player input, quest chains on the same map with the objective in the exact same room. They didn't even bother to change the room... It looks pretty but there is absolutely no depth to this game. I don't understand what the point is and why people seemingly like it so much. There's not even a story here. You do quests, earn gold and XP, you buy stuff or level up and that's it. I expected more to be honest.

....am I missing something here? This is borderline unplayable. 'Gameplay' involves almost zero player input - you just wander through a bunch of totally uninteresting environments (nondescript black and white halls with nothing at all to draw the eye) engaging in shallow, automatic combat lacking in feedback or the most basic mechanical substance. This game feels genuinely unfinished and I sincerely don't understand why people seem to like it so much. Can't remember the last time I bounced off a game so viscerally and so quickly. Refund please

[h2]A triste vitória do cansaço.[/h2] Jogos do gênero [i]dungeon crawler[/i] geralmente carregam grandes diferenças entre si, dada o quão aberta é a aplicabilidade da fórmula aos mais diferentes contextos. Já em gerações antigas, grandes franquias como [i]King's Field[/i] e [i]Wizardry[/i] já mostravam o quão diferente uns podem ser dos outros. Muito mais recentemente, surge [i]Dragon Ruins[/i], tentando renovar o gênero com simplicidade e um certo grau de minimalismo que, embora conceitualmente sólido, ainda deixa bastante a desejar nos sistemas de jogabilidade. Eis, então, que chegamos à continuação, [i]Dragon Ruins II[/i], e a situação se repete. Dando o devido crédito, [i]Dragon Ruins II[/i] ainda expande o primeiro jogo da franquia com mais mapas, gráficos aprimorados e novos sistemas para conduzir os [i]loops[/i] de jogabilidade. Todavia, estas melhorias perdem sua eficácia com poucas horas de jogatina, quando o título passa a se apoiar em uma forte repetitividade que vai minando a experiência constantemente. Os mapas, agora com maior variedade do que o primeiro jogo, começam com uma boa escala de tamanho, tornando-se tortuosos labirintos já no meio do jogo, e insuportavelmente extensas na parte final. Os gráficos, melhorados com mais detalhes, mas ainda dentro de uma estética retrô, acabam-se desperdiçados com a repetitividade de ter de jogar cada mapa várias vezes para completar as missões, além de se tornarem irrelevantes também por culpa do tamanho dos mapas, uma vez que o minimapa logo torna-se o principal recurso para conseguir navegar os enormes calabouços das missões lendárias. Além disso, [i]Dragon Ruins II[/i] falha terrivelmente para com sua proposta de ser um jogo [i]dungeon crawler[/i] simplificado e minimalista ao deixar de explicar detalhes cruciais de sua jogabilidade, exigindo pesquisas externas para que você possa compreender o que são todos os elementos vistos em tela, e como eles funcionam entre si. A progressão de personagem, por exemplo, é brevemente referenciada em um tutorial no início do jogo que não pode ser acessado novamente de forma alguma, enquanto os efeitos de combate não apenas não são abordados em nenhum momento, como o jogo também nunca menciona a importantíssima informação de que [b]apenas um deles pode ser aplicado por vez[/b]) - informação esta que aprendi em uma pesquisa externa, já me aproximando do "final" do jogo. As aspas na palavra "final" não são à toa, mas sim para fazer referência ao que acredito ser o maior defeito de [i]Dragon Ruins II[/i] como um todo: [spoiler]a pura e simples ausência de um final. Uma vez que o mapa final do jogo - as tais "Ruínas do Dragão" - seja alcançado, o jogo escala em dificuldade de uma forma simplesmente inédita, exigindo mais tempo de jogo para adequar os personagens ao nível de dificuldade atual toda vez que um dragão for derrotado. Uma vez que o último dragão, então, é derrotado... [b]nada acontece.[/b] Nenhuma tela de fim, créditos ou coisa parecida. O jogo volta para a mesma tela de sempre, dessa vez com o mapa secreto habilitado (que também não oferece final quando concluído), aparentemente na expectativa que você simplesmente continue jogando sem mais motivo ou razão.[/spoiler] Descrito na própria página como "um [i]dungeon crawler[/i] para pessoas cansadas", [i]Dragon Ruins II[/i] mais parece ser, si próprio, fruto do cansaço, com uma experiência que começa muito bem, mas se perde na medida que seus devs não souberam como aproveitar a fundação que construíram. Se você busca uma boa inovação no mundo de [i]dungeon crawlers[/i], este provavelmente não é o título que você procura. Se você, contudo, busca um jogo descompromissado para apenas passar o tempo... você provavelmente consegue encontrar coisa melhor.