Dungeon Antiqua

A short and sweet light Wizardry sort of game from a Final Fantasy 1-ish perspective. The postgame gets rude, but that's fine and appropriate for Wizardry. Gentle, even.

If you like dungeon crawlers, classic final fantasy, and D&D's old THAC0 system, this is the game for you. It can be a bit grindy at times, especially near the end, and the item rng can be somewhat annoying, but the satisfaction of overcoming the bosses makes it all worth it. A good mix of difficulty and reward. The music feels genuinely like unreleased NES Final Fantasy tracks, while still having its own flair. I actually caught myself humming the main motif earlier. Guess that's just gonna be stuck in my head now. Also, I really appreciate the simplistic story. At first I was afraid it might go into the meta, anti-player, or 'twist villain' tropes modern indie rpgs have been overusing, but I was quite pleased to just have a charming, almost joyous experience. The only thing I don't quite like is the small selection of equipment, especially in terms of headware. It feels unfinished in that regard, Moving right on to DA2 now, since that one has received far higher praise than its predecessor. We'll see how that holds up.

I went into this expecting this to be a mix of Wizardry with Final Fantasy on the NES. What I wasn't expecting is to have such a good time with it. It's very basic, you build a party of 5 characters to explore a dungeon to find 5 pieces of legendary gear. While the dungeons themselves aren't randomly generated, there is a random element of chest appearing everytime you go deeper, and the enemies get harder and the loot gets better. It's a simple premise and it doesn't deviate too far from that, but it's a game that knows what it's doing and keeps a very tight scale and scope. It has just enough systems in play to make the 3-4 hour playtime interesting without dragging on too long. The various classes have enough to keep party composition interesting but not so complex that it feels out of place for the era its trying to emulate. The story is enough to give you a basic motivation but doesn't get in the way of the gameplay. If there was any criticism, it's mainly due to the fact that despite going for an 8-bit aesthetic, it doesn't lean too heavily on being period accurate to the consoles of the era. There aren't any real sprite limitations beyond using a limited palette, the music is seemingly accurate but doesn't take advantage of any of the tricks that developers used back in the day, text, such as character dialogue or information about items or gear is limited but not in the way something like a RPG would be back in the day, it feels very 8-bit in spirit but ultimately not in practice. Which wouldn't be an issue other than I feel like if you weren't strictly limiting yourself to that era, then it makes the lack of robustness far more noticable. But that's a very minor nitpick that shouldn't effect your enjoyment of the game as a whole.

I played Dungeon Antiqua 2 first, as it's an FF5 style game and I'm an avid FF5 randomizer player. I'm also not as fond of Wizardry as the early FF series (even with having and played both on the NES). This was still solid, I can see a lot of things that became what I loved in DA2. Like DA2, you have a limited field of view and gradually make more of the map visible. There are light spells to help you see better, and various other support spells that can move you around a floor and view where one way or secret passages. Like DA2, status effects are brutal, and immunities are incredibly important. Jobs work differently than 2, you can't freely switch between them and keep your progress, instead you go back to level 1. This makes it very penalizing to switch, and you have to very carefully plan your switches to get the most benefit. For fighters, switch to Lord or Samurai once you get the appropriate stat requirements, there's no downside as either class can do everything a fighter can. For priest and mage, wait until you learn every spell from the class, then switch to the other version (15 for the first job, 18 for the second). That way you get a caster who can cast both types of spells effectively and has the option to go Lord or Samurai later on and have much better equipment options while still retaining your full spell casting (and Lord can equip some priest gear while Samurai can equip some mage gear). The other difference from DA2 is that there's alignment, as in Wizardry or the early versions of D&D it was based off of. Lord (or Paladin) can only be good, Priests must be good or evil (not neutral), Thieves can only be neutral or evil, Ninja can only be evil, and good and evil characters can't be in a party together once you return to town. You can change alignment by actions in dungeons, but be careful so you don't get split up once you get to town. There are also two unique items to bypass alignment restrictions and turn a fighter or samurai into a Lord; or a thief into a Ninja. This lets you have a neutral or even evil Lord, or a neutral Ninja teamed with a party of good characters. Looters will be happy, there are lots of chests, lots of loot, and a good amount of equipment options. Most of the items from DA2 are present here as well, and do basically the same thing. The rangomized dungeons (they're only randomized ONCE per game, not each entry) are a downside, but it's not as annoying as it sounds since you'll always have consistent paths in that save. It's only between saves that are different, and some chunks are always present (like the elevator gold key rooms, the tutorial cave, the secret path to the gold key on floor 5, and the part of floor 6 leading to one of the post-game bosses. I hesitated on getting this title because of it, and it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Like Wizardry and early D&D, it uses an armor class system where lower numbers are better, a fully equipped Lord could have upwards of -9 AC, while a good equipped mage could end up being 4 or 6. It is noticeable on normal, but less so on hard, I was still getting hit a fair bit. Another issue that may frustrate some players is that there is content exclusive to hard mode, you cannot beat the final superboss on normal. Another possibly frustration is that you will be required to run a solo character on a few segments, both at the end of the main game and again during a few parts of the post-game. [spoiler]Also make sure to have a full set of extra good equipment for that solo character at the end of the main game, you'll regret it otherwise.[/spoiler] Overall solid. If you only want to grab one, grab Dungeon Antiqua 2 as it has a far less punishing job system with a lot more options and variety, and has more varied dungeons. It goes on sale pretty often, so is well worth the play if you want to grab both. It also played perfectly on a Linux desktop so it would be an excellent Deck game.

WizardryをFFの見た目で遊べるコマンドPRGです。 2作目の方を先にプレイしてからの感想ですが、こちら側の方がよりWizardry感あって個人的に好きです。 難易度ノーマルとハードが選べますがハードの方が簡単まであると思います。 というのもハードの方が経験値取得量が多くレベルが上がりやすい。 このためプレイ時間という面でもハードの方が短縮できると思いますね。

Sweet mishmash of early JRPGs with early Wizardy. The aesthetics are resolutely retro while the mechanics blend in modern sensibilities with the simplicity of yesteryear. In particular Dungeon Antiqua respects the player's time and doesn't overstay its welcome. I'm somewhat of a slowpoke when it comes to gametime and I've taken 20 hours to go through all there is the offer with the exception of hunting for a couple of very rare items. Surprisingly the game manages to establish some lore with very few words that is simultaneously traditional enough to maintain the classic vibes while being strange enough to pique my curiosity.

This review is a little misleading. I actually did not like this game. I found the jobs to be severely unbalanced, the dungeons not fun to explore, combat not very fun, the soundtrack lacking (although the battle music is good). The reason I still give it a thumbs up is because the second game is very good and I would not want to dissuade anyone from trying 2.