The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians - Enhanced Edition

This game feels feels so close to my (probably nostalgia influenced) memories of Eye of the Beholder. I haven't gotten very far into it because of my need to look for secret buttons, but what I've done so far has been really fun.

Really enjoyed it. The Tank/DPS/Healer mechanics were done beautifully. Played on Hell Mode first playthough and it was really rough, but doable if you used strategy. The level design was really rough though; Without having the map immediately really created a ton of confusion in almost every level that added a dozen hours at least of backtracking. Really loved the ambient music and atmosphere.

If you understand what this game is going for it's very fun. It's the core systems of MMOs scaled down and placed in a single player game. Now you are the only one that gets yelled at when the group wipes... I appreciate the customization options - for example allowing me to turn on auto map because I don't like manually mapping saved a lot of frustration and made the game fun. Everything is very challenging and tightly balanced. I love this kind of play style, but everyone may not. Small issues are: No item economy so you end up throwing a bunch of stuff on the floor. I wish there were more options for a tank (mage tank?), and other classes.

I can't tell yet if this is going to be a great game in the long run, but my first impressions after about an hour of play is that the developers have put a LOT of thought into this game. Moving around is super fluid, combat system has a lot of depth to it, there's a talent tree with many specialties and loads of game options to fit the gameplay to your liking. This really feels like an old-style dungeon crawler with very modern features.

Whether you enjoy Fall of the Dungeon Guardians is going to come down to how much you like the games combat system. The best thing you can do is watch a video of the combat in action because theres alot of it and this dungeons a beast at a whopping 20 levels, so if you don't like it, it will drag and badly. Lucky for you theres quite a few options to play with to get it into the sweet spot that suits you. But lets talk about the basics first before we get into tweaking these things. You'll be playing a very specific party setup, I went with the default party, character creation is basically non-existent, you'll answer a few questions and get assigned a filler party for whatever roles you didn't pick. Go with it, the game requires specific party roles and if you dont bring a healer or a tank or whatever you've failed before the game even starts; the fact that theres no character creation also means you can't see your skills or stats until after you've started, you get a free respec at the start (and every few levels) because you can't even choose your subclass to start. So stick to a basic party, you'll get quite a few repecs so it you will have a chance to experiment (I saved my game and reloaded after trying out a few builds so even then you;ll be safe from losing all your respec points). Now the combat itself is real time with pause, you'll cycle through your skills, managing agrro on your front row while casters and healers in the back do their thing, at first you wont have enough skills to cycle but you obviously get more as you level. But heres the problem alot of these skill dont feel impactful, now I don't mean that they don't do anything, you need to use them in the right place to win a fight, what I mean is theres not alot of strategy going into most fights, once you have your basic rotation up and running that'll do for all your basic combat encounters which are the majority of encounters. Thats a problem as for most encounters theres nothing to really differentiate an encounter with a goblin from a wyvern or a barbarian. I had an interrupt on my fighter but only boss fights take advantage of this mechanic, enemies have mana but their casters can't for example be mana drained or silenced, a warriors skill might hit one target or use one that hits two targets, you use the same cycle of buffs at the start of each combat the only time you really need to change things up is if a boss resists the only damage type your character does and then you just repec until you need to change damage again. For the majority of the game its just going through the same cycle of abilities each combat again and again. And theres alot of combat, the game has an option thats on by default that halves the amount of monsters in the game and I get why, because it drags hard. On the highest difficulty the combat requires you to constantly pause and the game gets tedious fast. Thankfully bosses mix things up abit and its a shame there isn't more combat on that level. Lucky for us the saving grace here is that you can change the difficulty at anytime and the custom difficulty sliders saved this for me. I did need time to experiment and hit that sweet spot and your mileage may vary, but I was able to lower the monster damage so I didn't need to pause the game and it took abit longer but I was able to get the monster HP down enough to stop fights from dragging out forever while still being high enough to need to use all my abilites in a fight and on top of that you can adjust Elite and boss monsters separately to keep those guys tougher so they still feel special. And thats important because because the combat is the main draw here, there are other things here to recommend this game, the dungeon itself (after the starting levels) looks good, it has multiple elevation levels and some complex layouts that make exploring fun. Less fun (or more depending on your tastes) is that puzzles are isolated to side areas on each floor, rather than breaking up combat like in other crawlers. It isn't helped that itemisation is randomised and restricted to just stat increases as quite often after taking time to solve a puzzle you get an item thats a downgrade, even if its not minor upgrades just aren't very satisfying to find and this hurts exploration (the first legendary rank item I found was a direct downgrade, the second a very minor buff replaced one level later by a random drop), and you'll have to scour each level looking for healing items and potions that you will need (unless you turn difficulty right down, but don't do that without combat theres just too much empty space) but at least the game makes you use them (I'm a hoarder and would usually end the game full up on potions, not here). There is an extended puzzle quest covering the whole game but it if you ever miss a clue you'll need to backtrack to find it, if you can be bothered. This thing is a mixed bag check out the combat first before playing but understand that you'll be engaging with that core system if it looks like it takes way to long, you can fix that, if you don't want to pause you can fix that, if you WANT a grind you can fix that, hell you can set it so everything is a one shot if you really want, and being flexible like that is a good reason to check this one out if you already like the genre.

ok not so bad for indie dev, bit repetetive but brings some basic legend of grimrock vibes

Pros: - Multiple difficulty sliders and settings - Can be challenging if you like that - Decent mechanical complexity with skills and cooldowns Cons: - If you're looking for dungeon-crawler style puzzles, they won't be here. This isn't a Legend of Grimlock. - Game is almost entirely combat focused. - Story is lackluster, almost non-existent

Very enjoyable. Responsive controls. Clean look. Don't really like the forced roles but I get the design choice. Appreciate you can ignore them too though. Tutorial is a bit long for my taste. I'd love to be able to skip it. Would really like the other party members to be more self sufficient. If you put someone in the heal role, they should know how to heal at least partly effective. I don't like being a backseat driver but I know that's the style. Doesn't take away from the fun anyway. P.S. The sparse loot mod is amazing. As are all the mods really.

An enjoyably game but it doesn't quite scratch the Dungeon Master itch. There's a simplicity in the maps and a lack of puzzles which makes other games like Grimrock stand out so much more. That said, there's a lot to enjoy about the game if you want to tromp around a dungeon.

At lvl 4 now, nice game!