Dragon Ruins II

[h1]The best early 3-hour dungeon crawler experience you can have in 2026:[/h1] Dragon Ruins 2 is described as a „Dungeon-Crawler for tired people” and while I agree, I much rather would describe it as „Dungeon-Crawler for impatient people“ or „Dungeon-Crawler for newcomers to the genre“. [h2]Conclusion:[/h2] Up to the 3 hour point the experience is amongst the best you can have with a dungeon crawler in 2026. I‘d recommend to anyone who can spare 10 bucks for 2-3 hours, to try an indie-game made with love and which shows some cool innovation! [h2]The Experience:[/h2] You sit down, you install the game, you create a party from 4 heroes from a roaster of ~20 choices which contains also some funny ones, like a monkey, all of them have a unique skill – so this feels meaningful and then you get to play. It takes you a couple of clicks/buttons to check the options in town and to choose a quest. Literally you get to the action in just 5 minutes. If you don‘t like your team you can exchange it any time in town, the only drawback is that new members will stay at level 1, but early on this invites you to experiment with different skills and setups. You explore, when you‘re weak you go to the town and rest, or invest money in level ups or gear upgrades. You loot some chests, or if you have a thief you unlock them with multiple tries. You explore your first dungeon in the first half hour. For the first 3 hours this is a super great experience. [h2]How you can play it:[/h2] The game works wonderfully well on a steam-deck, it works well on a laptop and there is zero friction. If Somebody doesn‘t know what a dungeon crawler is, or never tried one, this game is so smooth and frictionless and fast, that you can recommend it to literally anyone. And that‘s the single greatest strength of this game and I love it for this simple reason. [h2]What it does differently:[/h2] In a genre which is slow, sometimes arcane and mostly outdated Dragon Ruins II sticks out, because it‘s not front-loading overburdening choice like how to build a party, maybe even dice-roll it. You don‘t have to consider countless stats or arcane small differences between 2 very similar classes and the battles are neither slow nor cumbersome, you keep moving and doing things. Dragon Ruins II simply cuts a lot of that perceived friction and manages to be lean, quick and easy to pick up and that‘s a great innovation. [h2]Music & art:[/h2] The music and art direction also are on-spot, the atmosphere of Dark Fantasy clearly comes across. I didn’t find a single bug: That must have been the first game in a decade, which didn’t let me down in any way... [h2]The negatives:[/h2] This great advantage and novelty for the genre however comes at a simple and easily understood price: after about 3 hours the game clearly shot out all its content and very little new stuff is happening. At this point the great strengths of the start even start to turn into weaknesses for the game. After this initial great time, the only new things you will discover are new enemy artworks in the bestiary dungeons add little new content, tile-sets even repeat and the games economy breaks down and classes become more and more similar to each other and loot becomes mostly meaningless! [b]Problems with visual variety:[/b] -There are too few props in the dungeons (especially too many gravestones and beds) -A dungeon always uses only 1 tile-set throughout, so all doors and walls always look the same in a dungeon. -Gear of a type always has the same icon, no bigger illustration or any other variety is visible, also gear doesn’t seem to have any flavour-text, only stats. [b]There are some small Inconsistencies in the mini-map design:[/b] Some of the later dungeon lack an icon for entrance stairs, while some of the early dungeons have those. Pitfalls are marked on the map, but only if you actively went into them, spike-traps and pentagram traps are not marked on the mini-map [h2]Compared to the first game:[/h2] Compared to Dragon Ruins 1, outside of 1-2 minor not noteworthy stumbles, this sequel is absolutely & clearly the superior choice. It improves flawlessly 95% of all aspects! There is no need to even try game 1, as this is available now and people should start here.

"A drpg for tired people" and sure enough this is the best description of for the first dragon ruins and the sequel it's not exception, even with the plethora of added features and new mechanics it's still a really good and simple drpg for tired people. The story is still not existent, you're are a group of adventurer accepting quests of various difficulty and here is the main thing that's different from the first one, instead of having a single quest of slaying a dragon you have a lot more quest of various difficulty and scale: from simple clearing of goblins from a small dungeon to killing dragons and deity it's a nice progression and I like that every set of quest has it's own dungeon and with new visual and music that company you in every exploration, the graphics are really well done with this low poly aesthetic the enemies and characters portrait are returning in this game and the art of them are truly amazing, the music too is good it reminded me a lot of the old from software, unfortunately there is a problem with the quest system, sure the objective are different and varied enough, but the location of every set of quest is not, so if you done one of them you done all of them and it's pretty easy to know where the boss is because they spawn in the same location every time which makes those quest really boring, it would be nice if the objective we're in other area of the dungeon making me want to explore more or to delve deeply into the dungeon but with a system lite this makes every quest after the first one pretty boring and repetitive. The combat and the progression of the party are different from the last game especially the ladder, the combat it's a automatic turn based combat where by moving though the dungeon you encounter enemies and the combat starts immediately, the only thing you can do it's escaping by simply going out of the room or moving far enough to escape the combat or if you have the special attack bar, activate that to do an all out attack to the enemy, an another thing that they added it's status effect , buffs and debuffs that you can receive and inflict to enemy, they add some depth to the combat but the real depth is in the progression of the characters in your party. In the first game you simply level up and level up the equipment of the selected character, here it's a lot more expanded: you still level up by going to the guild and spending money but every five level you learn a new skill, unfortunately they are random and you can have something not that useful for your character (like an increase of damage for a weapon that you don't use for that character, like a staff increase damage buff for a archer, not that useful), you have now equipment with different slots for weapon, armour and accessories, the characters have different statistics, weapons now scales with set statistics equipment can be upgraded and improved with the blacksmith and the old equipment can be sold for gold and the trading post, I do like this changing of the system it makes it more deep and makes the classes more different that the first game can ever could. In the end dragon ruin 2 it's a really expanded sequel, with a lot more dungeon, quest and improved combat and leveling system, not everything is perfect but it's still a really good sequel, like the first one it's recommended to the tired people that still want to play a good drpg.

Interesting fun little dungeon crawler. Great with a controller.

Je me dis que c'est dommage qu'il n'y ait pas de choix intermédiaires dans les recommandations (i.e. on aime ou on aime pas), surtout avec ce genre de jeu. Dragons Ruins II est plaisant lors des premières parties, puis ça s'essouffle très vite. Cela fait qu'il y a une base intéressante, mais qu'au final le tout reste assez léger au niveau gameplay et donc très vite répétitif, puis lassant. Bref, je recommanderais qu'à moitié, en espérant une suite tout aussi rapide à prendre en main, mais nettement plus travaillée sur le fond.

Very atmospheric, retro feel dungeon crawler. Great music.

This is a first person grid-based movement DRPG/blobber with auto combat and a cool retro vibe. The goal is to map out the dungeons searching for the room with the dungeon boss, while keeping an eye on your health and retreating to rest up, level up, and gear up before heading into the dungeon again. I liked both this game and the original Dragon Ruins. This sequel is almost the same game, with much, much more content and upgraded visuals in terms of variety and detail for the dungeons. I did most of my playthrough on the steamdeck, and while there is repetition I'd say you can get 10 hours or more out of Dragon Ruins 2. While they are on the simple side, there was definitely enough to keep me engaged and I have found Dragon Ruins and Dragon Ruins 2 to be perfect plane ride games.

Short, simple dungeon crawler with a retro-aesthetic. Amazing art, music, and vibe. The gameplay is simple and a bit repetative, but it makes for a relaxing time. If I had one request, it'd be that the bosses on later quests in a chain not always be in the same location, but it's not a major gripe. I'll look forward to the upcoming expansion DLC.

What do you get when you take the idea of a classic Dungeon Crawler and whittle down or streamline everything not about the core loop of crawling, getting rewards, and leveling up? Everything else, from story, to graphics and sound design is intentionally minimal and practical. That doesn't mean that this game looks or sounds bad, but it's all to serve the purpose of getting you into the dungeon and fight some baddies. The soundtrack in particular is very fitting dungeon synth. Mechanically, Dungeon Ruins II feels very much like an idle game except that you need to manually move your party around, but without the additional expansion options that such an idle game would include. Combat is completely automated, with the only real mid-crawl decisions being 1. Do you think you can make it back to the entrance before you die? 2. Who should be in the front vs rear row? Classes are differentiated by their singular starting skill, and their general stat distribution. Periodically when your dudes level up, they'll unlock new abilities, but there is no real "skill tree" - only a handful of randomly selected options shared between all classes, including the starter skills. This means that you can get to the point where every adventurer has the same "healing cleric" skill, etc, and these will stack. Equipment selections come down to "status effects" (which are effective, but do not stack), the base stats used for damage calculation, and stat boots. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this little gem, though it seems that I've seen most of what there is to see. I managed to make it through several of the dungeons before deciding that while this was very relaxing, I'd rather be playing something a little more involved for now. I may come back and reinstall later. Whenever that may be, this is the sort of game that is incredibly easy to pick back up again. 4/5 Graphics 5/5 Sound 5/5 Convenience 4/5 Controls 4/5 Overall

Comecei agora, mas já recomendo, tem novos mapas (não sei quantos, e tiver 1 por quest já são alguns), vc pode trocar de personagem sem começar um novo jogo, tem como upar ou arma ou armadura ou personagem, agora tem atributos, mas não é trabalhoso, vc upa o personagem inteiro e ele upa os atributos (pelo que pude ver, cada personagem tem um lvl up diferente, como o gigante upar mais vida do que o bruxo). As armas são diferentes e tem tipos de dano e escala diferente, e agora tem mais transparencia sobre algumas coisas, embora outras não tenha a fórmula explicita. Agora tem bestiário. Gostei muito, é parecido com o 1, só que melhor! ainda sim é bem simples e vc pode jogar automaticamente usando setas, enter e esc, mas também pode se interessar por testar builds. Ah, para quem joga pelo steam deck pelo teclado, usem TAB para mapa e F para o X do controle; Enter e Esc são A e B do controle. Bom jogos à todos, super recomendo, bom demais para abaixar a dopamina. Obrigado aos desenvolvedores <3 <3 <3

Pretty much just the first game but a little bigger and with some nice QOL changes and a few more classes. However, I really miss the darker graphics from the first game. While the new first-person visuals are pretty to look at, it feels like playing in "light mode" compared to the first game. Please consider adding a way to invert the colors or something because its not very nice to look at when playing in a dark room. Also I really miss the combat log and the little label identifying enemies under their portrait image. The combat was always automatic but now it feels like its not even important without a scrolling action log and without even telling me the names of these creatures I'm being attacked by. overall its a pretty game and makes a few real improvements over the first one but I'd really like to see updated for these two issues I've mentioned. I even went and looked in the options menu because I thought for sure there would be settings for them, especially the "dark mode" thing since I thought this was supposed to be the "dungeon crawler for tired people" XD