DUNGEON ENCOUNTERS

WOW, what an interesting game. I wanted to make sure I completed the game in its entirety before reviewing it. I have a LOT to say about this game, but nobodies going to read my think piece on a game that I find to be criminally underrated. Dungeon Encounters has its fair share of issues, it's far from perfect, but most of the "flaws" I found with this game ended up becoming part of the charm by the end. This game will definitely not be for everyone, it is definitely made for fans of older RPGs in mind. Story is minimal, there's no overworld or towns to visit - it's just you and 99 floors of dungeon to crawl, and man do they get brutal in the lower floors. That said, you also find yourself with abilities to ease the journey down, and if you're getting everything the game offers, you can actually break this game wide open. I think this is the most fun, and interesting game Square Enix has released since the PS2 era, and I'm a little sad that they'll never even remember this game exists to give it another shot, but I'm glad we got this one at least. Dungeon Encounters is a special game, and while it may not be for you, it definitely was for me, and I love it.

I didn't think this would be for me like, at all. I was into JRPGs as a teen but grew bored of them, it's a real struggle to make myself engage with turn based battles anymore and had I just looked at the screenshots for this I would have shrugged and continued scrolling. And then I read that one negative review about a guy getting into thousands of in game currency's worth of debt and I was ♥♥♥♥♥♥ SOLD. This is like the pure distillation of a dungeon crawl, honestly it feels a little like they're taking the piss by having the graphics be this simple, this is like protype level game design, this is placeholder assets and some pretty monster drawings, but it WORKS, with a surprising amount of depth and genuine stakes. This is not for everyone, and you can lose everything if you're not careful, but if you're curious, into pure game design - and you see it half off in a sale - I absolutely encourage you to give it a go. Also - plays great on steam deck, tiny game, legit barely drains the battery, RIP me ever getting sleep again now that I have access to this. EDIT - Just to re-iterate like, 200 hours later, that this game is an isntant classic, absolutely masterful pacing and playful design, and If you ever meet me IRL I will talk your ear off about it hi future friends did you enjoy the game DID YOU

Dungeon Encounters isn’t a bad game at all. The game mechanics, such as they are, work in a focused and cohesive manner, the character and monster designs are great, the writing, as little of it as there is, is creative and interesting, and Nobuo Uematsu’s soundtrack is on-point as always, this time with Rock & Roll rearrangements of classical songs. I never ran into any bugs or technical issues, and it even supports a bunch of quality of life features, like ultrawide resolutions, multiple keyboard bindings for every command, speed multipliers for movement and battles, and much more, but none of those features change the fact that the game is just... boring. And that’s the worst sin a piece of entertainment can commit. You see, even a bad game can still be entertaining, in a schlocky, “so-bad-it’s-good” kind of way, but a boring, unremarkable game, well, it’s just a waste of time, and it’s sad to see a team that got so many details right just fail to “find the fun”, as it were. So there you have it. Dungeon Encounters is perfect if you want a game to play while studying or catching up with video series, otherwise, you’d do better by playing the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters instead, especially 4, 5, and 6, as they offer a similar gameplay experience, with an actual plot to go along with it. I recorded a video review, if you'd like a deeper look at the game: https://youtu.be/bGnkVzZ4TPM

Imagine you distill down the essence of a JRPG... and then use the dregs? Virtually no interesting story, character progression, tactical or strategic choices, or even exploration. Way too many design decisions that simply punish you with annoying wastes of time for exploring the game - fight the wrong new enemy for the first time? Characters get stoned with no possible way to prevent it, nor fix it, until you randomly find (or look online) the location of a shrine to fix it. Which is basically trivial, except requires you to remember the X/Y/Z location of the stone party member, and then journey back to pick them up when you're done - none of which has any risk if done right, it just wastes time. I generally like a grindy game, but this game is extremely grindy, even for me. Lots and lots of repeated combats with no interesting choices. I found that, by far, the most effective strategy for not wasting real-world time was just to equip everyone with the same boring "hit everyone with magic" spell and spam it as quickly as possible. In theory other strategies could finish combat in fewer [i]turns[/i], but not in less [i]time[/i] than just holding down the [b]A[/b] button and spamming the same thing for everyone. Exploration is done on a featureless abstract grid, and occasionally was engaging, and did have some Pac-Man like fun in covering the whole grid, but the later levels basically alternated between annoying (like bumping into every wall to check for a secret passageway?) to trivialized by upgrades you find. I did have [i]some[/i] fun with this game, and I did 100% it (in about 30 hours, probably), but only because I was playing it while mostly focused on listening to a pod-cast, and also had the game running at 3x-5x speed (via external program).

The little pop up when you fully map a floor makes my brain feel tingly Ok i'm updating this review after more playtime: this one is absolutely, strictly and sincerely for the freaks and sickos only. There is literally nothing between you and the dungeon. Legendary designer and inventor of the ATB system Hiroyuki Ito took a budget of what I assume was whatever change was down the back of the couch in the Square Enix canteen and stripped the blobber down to the bare screaming metal and called it good. You need to want the dungeon, man. This game doesn't care about you. Dude got petrified? Rough, buddy. You can't haul his petrified ass around so you need to take him out of the party and leave him where he is until you can find a shrine to cleanse it. Whole party got wiped out 18 levels deep on a bad beat from a tough mob pack? Sorry bro, gotta train up and entire new party to haul ass down there and drag their corpses back out again. Art and music are minimal (the soundtrack seems to entirely be one guy playing classical music pieces on an electric guitar), the story is non-existent, combat is simple but breezy and feels good. Classic ATB fare. It's just you and the dungeon. This makes Wizardry on the Apple II look feature rich. It's not for everyone and it's fine with that, and if you're fine with that, you should buy it. I just party wiped on level 19 after eight hours and now I have four level two characters and no gear, and I can't wait to get back down there. You already know I'd this is for you. If it is, you should buy it

A very fun dungeon explorer that nails the vibe of classic titles in the genre while curtailing a lot of the arbitrary unfairness that makes some of those games difficult to return to. It rewards thoughtful exploration and decision making in combat. Great art style. It is functionally storyless, which may be a turn off for players looking for a narrative.

I'm of the opinion that every good JRPG needs to have at least one Rodent that ruins your day. Dungeon Encounters has several, which should be evidence enough that it belongs among the greats of the genre.

i weep and gnash my teeth proclaiming that this game is art

SquareSoft decided to make an art game based on stripped down a classic dungeon crawler to as nearly an abstract experience as possible... and it's good! If you like dungeon crawlers. If you don't, you won't like it. And it doesn't care. If you like crawling dungeons, this is the neat-no-ice-no-chaser version.

I'm pretty new to pure dungeon-crawlers, but I enjoyed how tightly boiled-down Dungeon Encounters was. It's really a game about managing risk, with the skills and equipment you get allowing you to defend against various threats, gradually venturing further into the unknown. You can see what enemies might appear in an encounter, but not how many there will be, and based on that knowledge you can outfit yourself to best deal with them. The more you explore, the better you can defend yourself against dangerous status effects and such. Patience, observation, and appropriate equipment management will take you a long way, but if you slip up the game will not hesitate to punish you severely. It's not that deep in terms of combat, and clearing a few of the riddles will allow you to break the game pretty hard more or less by design. Still, I found the focus on exploration, on looking through the dungeon and finding new things and getting abilities that allow you to move freely across and between the floors, to control when and where you enter combat, to be an extremely satisfying and compulsive loop. I was surprised how often sessions would go hours longer than expected, as I went down just one more floor, to find just one more thing, over and over and over. Also, the math riddles are nuts and I love that about them.