The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians - Enhanced Edition

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.

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

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.

Honestly, kind of a disappointing game. I flip flopped repeatedly while playing between enjoying it and loathing it - consistently noting that the average player drops it well before even the halfway mark, with 17% of players making it to level 5. Of 20. The game has some interesting concepts - it marries World of Warcraft with the dungeon exploration and stylings of Legend of Grimrock. The dungeons may remind you of Grimrock, but the gameplay diverges - there is no "dancing around enemies" here, combat is entirely a static affair of setting up your rotations using active pause or macros, with few exceptions for enemy AOE or special abilities that root them in place in order for you to move away or get pwned. Otherwise, enemies are absurdly fast - god help you if you need to maneuver them (and unfortunately, sometimes you *do* have to maneuver them). As for the World of Warcraft elements, it shamelessly rips abilities and classes right from WoW - "Protectors" (the games stand in for Warrior) use abilities literally called Thunder Clap, Rend, and Devastate. This would be fine - I used to main tank as a Protection Warrior in my youth, and so logically I should take to a game like this with no issues. Two major problems. Combat is absurdly slow - your characters all use abilities that rotate on a whopping 6 second global cooldown. Presumably this is because you are managing four characters, but the end result is that you set up the next 3 (or 6, if you've correctly gone into the settings and cranked the maximum ability queue to max) skills you want that character to use, and then you sit. Some adjustments can be made depending on the fights themselves, but overwhelmingly each trash pull results in the same rotation, and the same dull "wait for the enemy to die". The dev recommends if you're feeling bored to "raise the difficulty" but all this changes is the amount of health the enemy has (so combat takes even longer) and the amount of damage the enemies do (so you have to use potions mid battle). The second major problem the game has is the itemization. Characters start out weak and with ♥♥♥♥ gear, like any noble RPG. The problem is that loot is randomly generated and the stat spread is extremely thin. The first ring I picked up for my Protector at the absolute beginning of the game gave me +4 Strength. The final ring he wore as he slew the final boss gave him +7 Strength and +7 Stamina, and some Haste. This is the stat spread for [i]twenty hours and twenty floors of dungeon crawling[/i]. Similarly, the game absolutely floods you with loot. Of the good 500+ battles you will undertake over the course of the game, the majority of them are going to drop some sort of magical gear for you to pick up and then examine the statistics of in order to progressively upgrade your character. Unfortunately, because the stat spread is so thin, you are going to rapidly find examining gear tedious. Is this an ugprade? Is it a sidegrade? Is it useless? The dev states in other reviews that "if you think the gear is useless, you are underestimating the value of certain stats". The dev also recommends stacking Willpower despite the guide writing workhorses who number crunched and decided that Awareness is massively more important of a stat for mages. So, you know. Also, half my plate drops were Agility Plate. Christ. Then there's the random factor - you are not guaranteed to get specific drops. There are no item sets. Even Epic Loot and Legendary Loot is spawned randomly. This is partially beneficial since if you don't play with any Leather wearing classes, the game won't spawn Leather. This doesn't change the fact that the best piece of Rogue gear I got at the end of the game was a Legendary Agility Cloth Robe. Also my Warrior struggling to keep threat because I didn't find a single One Handed weapon with strength from Floors 12 to Floor 19. Absolutely tons of Mage gear at least! The progression is awful. Characters start doing virtually zero damage to enemies in order for combat to feel tactical, and they end the game doing slightly more than zero damage as enemy health continues to inflate. The final floors featured enemies with thousands of health and bosses with tens of thousands. My Mage was averaging 70 DPS and my Rogue was averaging 50. Are the dungeons good? Eh, 50/50. There are relatively few puzzles and a handful of secrets per level, in the shape of hidden buttons and fake walls. Each floor features a "Puzzle Room" and this ranges from dodging fireball traps to figuring out the correct order of pressure plates to hit in order to open a grate. All of these puzzle rooms are functionally optional as the only reward is more randomly generated Epic Loot, which typically outpaces anything else you'll find on the floor (but not always). Navigation is snappy, with the default unencumbered movespeed being extremely fast, bordering on Doomguy levels of speed. Unfortunately this means you'll often zoom past hard to see key items, switches, and key enemy drops (which also often hide underneath loot drops). More than once I had to return to where I fought an "Elite" enemy to find the gem it also dropped, hiding under the gear I tossed. Curiously, the game features a physics engine, which it utilizes for rock throwing puzzles. They aren't great. Lastly, the story is... there. It's not very good, and the finale against the final boss was a standout in terms of disappointing gameplay. In order to challenge the player, you go through a 4 phase fight where each phase drops your characters by 5 levels, weakening them to guarantee the finish. At each phase you can find hidden respec items, and these are mandatory if you've been respeccing at all through gameplay or didn't follow the 20 floor treasure hunt snagging you extra ones. This is because the game resets your talents to certain points in the game, rather than just dropping you back the last 5 talent points you spent. This was extremely fun for me to realize as my Mage who I had respecced about halfway through the game as an Arcanist for simplicity was now suddenly an Elementalist. Also yeah you have to now alter your rotations back to what it was 5 levels ago. Three times. And the ending is a downer. Like I said, a disappointment for me. I love World of Warcraft, I love dungeon crawlers, so naturally this should have been right up my alley. Alas, it just wasn't what it could have been. Do not recommend.

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.

Dungeon Crawler développé par un seul gars (ManuTOO) sur le moteur Unity et sorti en 2015. La particularité du titre est son système de combat basé sur le trio synergique Tank/DPS/Healer (bien que notre équipe soit constituée de 4 personnages) avec de multiples pouvoirs/capacités à cooldowns façon MMO, le tout en temps réel mais avec la possibilité de mettre l'action en pause à tout moment. On retrouve également un système de loot généré aléatoirement à la Diablo, WoW et compagnie. Le cocktail fonctionne superbement bien avec une dimension stratégique très satisfaisante (le jeu est brutal). Il m'a fallu environ 40 heures pour venir à bout des 20 étages/niveaux qui composent le donjon. Par défaut on ne trouve la carte du niveau en cours qu'une fois arrivé au boss de fin de celui-ci, donc la quasi totalité du jeu se fait à l'aveugle, de quoi mettre à rude épreuve votre sens de l'orientation. Vous pouvez cependant toujours choisir de faire l'aventure avec un accès permanent à la carte, si vous êtes du genre à ne pas supporter d'être perdu trop souvent/longtemps. J'adore les jeux bien claustro et labyrinthiques à l'ambiance oppressante, donc j'ai globalement beaucoup apprécié. Le gros bémol est l'histoire, qui n'a franchement pas grand sens et dotée de dialogues totalement insipides, mais qui heureusement se limite au strict minimum (absolument pas invasive) et ne se prend pas au sérieux. Le jeu est peut-être également légèrement trop long, 20 niveaux n'étaient pas nécessaires, 2-3 étages en moins auraient fait l'affaire aussi, mais ça reste une question d'appréciation personnelle. En somme THE FALL OF THE DUNGEON GUARDIANS est un Dungeon Crawler très solide, et d'autant plus impressionnant quand on sait qu'il est l’œuvre d'une seule personne. Dommage que l'histoire n'ait pas bénéficié d'un plus grand soin au lieu d'être reléguée à un simple prétexte bancal. À noter que le développeur est à ce jour au perma-taquet pour répondre aux questions des joueurs et leur fournir des indices ou des conseils sur le forum Steam, ce qui est très appréciable.

Was It Good? 2/5 Did I Like It? 1.5/5