maybe this thread is a bit too specific so if nobody posts maybe i'll change it to a general rpg thread but for now let's just talk about dungeon crawlers and how great they are!!
TORNEKO THE LAST HOPE
torneko the last hope was my first roguelike experience. for anyone not familiar with roguelikes, they're turn-based rpgs where you spend most of the game traversing dungeons that are segregated into invisible tiles. each movement or attack takes one 'turn', and for each turn you take, every enemy on your current floor takes a turn as well. roguelikes have plenty of additional rules, some of which vary from game to game, but here are the more salient ones in torneko:
1. the dungeons are randomly generated
2. the enemies' levels increase with each floor you descend
2. you return to level 1 upon exist of a dungeon (with no ways of permanent stat boosting)
3. a limited number of items/equipment can be taken in to each dungeon (in some of the more challenging cases, this number is 0)
4. dying causes you to lose everything
5. a 'belly' mechanic, wherein each turn taken causes your belly to decrease by 1, and when it decreases to 0 you die. you must find bread as you spelunk to keep yourself alive.
6. should you be a smart alec and find some way to manage your hunger efficiently (grinding an enemy for bread), your smile will invert as you see the wind start to blow. spend too much time on a floor and the wind will blow you out, which means you die. this is not a game where you can grind your way to freedom.
anyone who's played pokemon mystery dungeon should find most of these points familiar; this is because torneko is a part of the mystery dungeon franchise as well!
if torneko too looks vaguely familiar, then you've probably played dragon quest iv. i haven't. but i've played enough dq to enjoy killing slimes and their ilk. anyway, all that said, this game is brutally fucking hard. bar none the hardest rpg i have ever played. i think this is the only rpg where i've ever given up on the post-game dungeons because they are so unbelievably challenging. a lot of it is 'artificial difficulty', as much as i hate that term, but the game is still immensely enjoyable for rpg enthusiasts with patience. my qualm with the way the post-game dungeons are set-up is that much of it is trial and error, which isn't intrinsically bad, but when you die on floor 50 of a 60 floor dungeon, even if through death you learn how to cope with that specific situation, there are still hundreds of other situations that could have killed you AND it will take you another 3-4 hours to get back to floor 50. the game is really merciless. give it a shot if you've got balls and really enjoy being punished for playing a game wrong.
DUNGEON EXPLORER - WARRIORS OF ANCIENT ARTS
here is a game that left me surprised with how much fun i was having. this is an action rpg wherein you, uh, explore dungeons. a lot of them. i found the plot for this one mildly engaging. it was fairly well-written, had some ok political intrigue, and also had a generally moving story/message. the ending kind of pissed me off with its seeming vagueness but apparently the DS version is a direct sequel that starts right where this one left off.
the combat system is pretty engaging, and the difficulty curve is really jarring at times. my only two gripes with it were lack of a skill tree and the lack of variation on enchanted items. grinding for drops isn't quite as much fun when you've only got basic stats to work with. it has a bunch of classes, most of which you have to unlock through mastering basic classes (this takes a surprisingly long time), and a bunch of weapon types that net you new skills as you level them up. most weapon skills aren't that useful, especially since once you pump your dexterity high enough your swing speed eclipses most skills, and this is even further reinforced by a 'glitch' in the combo system. you press x 3 times to do a 3-hit combo, but if you time it properly, after the 1st hit you can reset your swing to do another 1st hit and repeat that infinitely, which does way more damage than a combo would due to how quickly it can be executed. what's enjoyable and interactive about this, though, is that it takes timing, as if you do it too fast you do a generic 3-hit combo. timing it can be difficult sometimes, too, since you're usually managing so much other shit (using items on your teammates, having them use items on you, using their hotkeyed abilities, etc). restorative items are really important in this game and it can be tricky to manage them properly without compromising your dps.
it's a fairly difficult game, but mostly it's just fucking long. really, really long. the post-game content is sizable if incredibly repetitive (all dungeon crawlers are repetitive, obviously, but this is one of the only games where it bothered me). final post-game dungeon takes hours and hours to unlock and has 99 floors, the first of which takes about 10 minutes and each subsequent one takes longer and longer with increasingly difficult/infuriating enemies. no, you can't save inside. have fun.
SHINING SOUL 2
hint: do not play shining soul 1. it is not a good game. the plots of the two games are completely unrelated and the mechanics in the first game are so inchoate and undeveloped that the game just drags and drags and you don't really feel like you're even accomplishing anything. in a genre all about incremental improvements, this is not a good thing.
but anyway, shining soul 2 is awesome. i've never played diablo 2 (i know, i know) but i've heard this is the closest thing to it on GBA. 8 classes to choose from (each with multiple builds that completely change the way they're played), skill points, stat points, a new game+ with a much higher difficulty level, tons of incredible gear to farm, set bonuses, rare spawns, oh man this game is great.
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one thing that i really enjoyed about this game was running through it with unconventional builds. i think my favourite playthrough was with the priest, who has an ability that sets up an AOE around her that also has a knockback/interrupt, so i spent literally the entire game running into enemies until they died, like a 1990s ys game. man, shining soul 2 is great.
TALES OF THE WORLD - RADIANT MYTHOLOGY
NO that's not sephiroth ok. tales of the world is a fantastic game. its joy-factor is boosted tenfold if you're a fan of the tales series; you get to enjoy all the skits and character interactions. plus if you're a fucking nerd you can ship them or whatever, i don't care.
battle system is lifted from tales of the abyss, which means that free run is just as broken as you remember it being in that game. but man, this game has an unreal amount of content. hundreds of quests, ten or so classes for your main character, and 30 or so tales characters (about half of which are playable). it is a tremendously profession-heavy game. like, enjoy grinding that blacksmithing and jewelcrafting and cooking and tool-making because you are going to be doing a lot of it. thankfully the game cuts down on the bullshit, and while a lot of time is spent fetching, almost all of the time is spent actually playing the game. everything is really streamlined.
while the main game isn't that hard, the bonus content is pants-shittingly challenging on higher difficulties. grinding in this game is a lot of fun if you like playing tales games, which, if you have good taste, you do. the only problem is that grinding for unique drops, the equivalent of legendaries, is absolute bullshit. like, 10+ hours of straight farming per. this wouldn't be so bad, but the problem is that they have enchantments of varying potency on them, so you might not get a 'good one'. this, too, wouldn't be so bad, but these things are literally unique and you cannot get more of a certain one until you drop the one you're carrying, which makes life very hard for perfectionist retards like me. getting an axe with 407% extra attack power sounds good, but when you know deep down that the max is 447%, you have to discard it. you fucking have to. also, leveling in this game is weird. it's not that bad in the main game, or even in the post game really once you discover the right grinding spots, but level maxing is really, really hard. i think my longest playthrough was 400 hours and i got my main character to level 178 or so (granted most of that time was spent farming uniques, which isn't quite as good for exp farming), with a level cap of 250. and that was with one class. and there are 10 classes, all with their own experience. and like i said, there are like 15 tales characters to max out too (though they don't have class levels, thankfully). so yeah, the game has content. there are two sequels to it, each even more grinding-intensive, but sadly neither has been translated.
CLADUN: THIS IS AN RPG
the brilliant minds behind disgaea bring you the most aptly named handheld-grinder ever conceived. lighthearted and funny with faux-2d sprites and a really bizarre leveling system, this is definitely one of the more interesting action rpg's i've played.
what makes this game really stand out is its leveling/enhancement system, which is called the 'magic circle'. basically, you only ever control one character, and you use other characters as little more than stat-boosting accessories. as you level a class up (there are five), you unlock more magic circles, all of which have different potentials for stat boosts/character placements. here's an example:
you can buy/win those little accessories, called artifacts, which you can equip to your supporting characters which in turn boosts the stats of your main character. supporting characters act as meat shields, too; any damage you take is first taken by the supporting characters, and if they die you lose all the boosts (which means you're probably going to die, since they make up the bulk of your stats). each artifact has its own mana cost to hold, and characters have a limited amount of mana, which makes magic circle management a really engaging experience. the weird part, though, is that you're encouraged/basically forced to switch your characters around frequently. characters being used in the magic circle gain atk/def/magic boosts when they level up, which are stats your main character wants. characters leveled as a main gain mana and hp when leveled up, which are stats that your magic circle characters want. this can be pretty irritating, but thankfully ceases to be an issue in post-game where everything is done at level 99 anyway.
in typical nippon ichi fashion, enjoy leveling everybody up to 99, reincarnating, and doing it over and over again until you've got 'good' stats. there is a soft stat cap imposed by leveling in this game though, so even once you're 'maxed' the post-game content will still give you a run for your money. enjoy grinding the 99 floor dungeon over and over for drops until you're geared enough to grind the literal never-ending dungeon for even better drops. oh, also, prepare for the trolliest mechanic in video game history: each piece of weapon/armor has 20 or so possible enchantments. 'of heroes' gives you +5 atk and def, 'duct' gives you a life leech effect, etc. towards the end of the game you'll start acquiring 'd99' equipment, which does nothing by itself, but for every enchanted version of that item you have 99 of, it gets the effect of that. so of course, you have to get 99 of every enchanted version of the best weapons and armor so your new ultra-gear can reap the benefits of everything. and you'll still die in the final dungeon. a lot.
also one thing that i've never explored but apparently is pretty sweet is the ability to modify your character's heads. you can draw whatever you want and make it your character's face. this is expanded upon in the sequel, which i have yet to play (the first was overwhelming enough), where you can modify the look of your weapons, as well as your entire body. here are some shots from the sequel that might make you squeal with delight:
so yeah, you should probably play the sequel too.
UNCHAINED BLADES
unchained blades is the game i'm currently playing. it's also on 3ds if that's your thing. this game is a really engaging 1st person dungeon crawler with some really great elements that pokemon fans will enjoy. your team can have up to 4 characters, and each character can have up to 4 followers. this means 20 dudes on your team. you can make any monster in the game into your follower assuming you 'unchain it', which involves damaging it to a certain extent and trying to trigger an unchain event (the event itself involves timing your button presses based on a moving ring in similar vein to legend of dragoon), the mechanics of which i haven't got a perfect grasp on since i want to go through this game blind. this game has a crazy-ass skill tree, kind of similar to paths of exile in that it's more of a web than anything, though apparently you can get all skills eventually with enough grinding in post-game (the one bit of info i learned before going in blind).
it's a turn-based rpg, and what's interesting is that skills require 'anima' which are basically like elements. each follower has its own set of anima, so your anima are the sum of all your followers', which means you need a certain combination of followers if you want to be able to use a certain skill that you've unlocked. this adds a lot of depth, since choosing between weaker followers with useful anima vs stronger followers without can be tricky. it gets even trickier when each follower has its own weight, and you can only hold so much. your followers level up as well, but they only gain stats, not abilities. something about the turn based battles combined with the weight/follower system kind of reminded me of dragon quest monsters caravan heart, if anyone's played that.
one thing i'm really enjoying about this game is the leveling system. for one, each levelup is huge, since you almost always get an additional skill due to the way the skill web is set up. also, an interesting mechanic is that monsters below your level grant somewhere between zero and effectively zero experience, whereas monsters above your level will grant enough exp to level you up within a battle or two (or gain you multiple levels per battle, depending on the variance). this makes swapping between followers less time-consuming since you never really have to grind to level them up. if you have one whose anima suddenly become useful due to a skill you've just learned, it'll only take a few battles to bring him up to your level.
this game is also pretty fucking hard, with a difficulty spike on almost every floor of every dungeon. you'll bear witness to the exp mechanic i mentioned constantly, grinding in an area until the monsters stop giving decent exp, going to the next floor of the dungeon, surviving the first couple battles through expert resource management and strategy, leveling up to a point where you can grind on them, and the cycle continues. game has a ton of quests and synthesizing and all that fun stuff, and apparently a massive post-game which i'm absolutely jazzed about. wicked game, really.
also, to make the game even quirkier, there are events called 'judgment battles' where all of your followers face off against a horde of monsters, and you power them up by hitting directional buttons as they pass by the screen like beatmania. c-cool.
TORNEKO THE LAST HOPE
torneko the last hope was my first roguelike experience. for anyone not familiar with roguelikes, they're turn-based rpgs where you spend most of the game traversing dungeons that are segregated into invisible tiles. each movement or attack takes one 'turn', and for each turn you take, every enemy on your current floor takes a turn as well. roguelikes have plenty of additional rules, some of which vary from game to game, but here are the more salient ones in torneko:
1. the dungeons are randomly generated
2. the enemies' levels increase with each floor you descend
2. you return to level 1 upon exist of a dungeon (with no ways of permanent stat boosting)
3. a limited number of items/equipment can be taken in to each dungeon (in some of the more challenging cases, this number is 0)
4. dying causes you to lose everything
5. a 'belly' mechanic, wherein each turn taken causes your belly to decrease by 1, and when it decreases to 0 you die. you must find bread as you spelunk to keep yourself alive.
6. should you be a smart alec and find some way to manage your hunger efficiently (grinding an enemy for bread), your smile will invert as you see the wind start to blow. spend too much time on a floor and the wind will blow you out, which means you die. this is not a game where you can grind your way to freedom.
anyone who's played pokemon mystery dungeon should find most of these points familiar; this is because torneko is a part of the mystery dungeon franchise as well!
if torneko too looks vaguely familiar, then you've probably played dragon quest iv. i haven't. but i've played enough dq to enjoy killing slimes and their ilk. anyway, all that said, this game is brutally fucking hard. bar none the hardest rpg i have ever played. i think this is the only rpg where i've ever given up on the post-game dungeons because they are so unbelievably challenging. a lot of it is 'artificial difficulty', as much as i hate that term, but the game is still immensely enjoyable for rpg enthusiasts with patience. my qualm with the way the post-game dungeons are set-up is that much of it is trial and error, which isn't intrinsically bad, but when you die on floor 50 of a 60 floor dungeon, even if through death you learn how to cope with that specific situation, there are still hundreds of other situations that could have killed you AND it will take you another 3-4 hours to get back to floor 50. the game is really merciless. give it a shot if you've got balls and really enjoy being punished for playing a game wrong.
DUNGEON EXPLORER - WARRIORS OF ANCIENT ARTS
here is a game that left me surprised with how much fun i was having. this is an action rpg wherein you, uh, explore dungeons. a lot of them. i found the plot for this one mildly engaging. it was fairly well-written, had some ok political intrigue, and also had a generally moving story/message. the ending kind of pissed me off with its seeming vagueness but apparently the DS version is a direct sequel that starts right where this one left off.
the combat system is pretty engaging, and the difficulty curve is really jarring at times. my only two gripes with it were lack of a skill tree and the lack of variation on enchanted items. grinding for drops isn't quite as much fun when you've only got basic stats to work with. it has a bunch of classes, most of which you have to unlock through mastering basic classes (this takes a surprisingly long time), and a bunch of weapon types that net you new skills as you level them up. most weapon skills aren't that useful, especially since once you pump your dexterity high enough your swing speed eclipses most skills, and this is even further reinforced by a 'glitch' in the combo system. you press x 3 times to do a 3-hit combo, but if you time it properly, after the 1st hit you can reset your swing to do another 1st hit and repeat that infinitely, which does way more damage than a combo would due to how quickly it can be executed. what's enjoyable and interactive about this, though, is that it takes timing, as if you do it too fast you do a generic 3-hit combo. timing it can be difficult sometimes, too, since you're usually managing so much other shit (using items on your teammates, having them use items on you, using their hotkeyed abilities, etc). restorative items are really important in this game and it can be tricky to manage them properly without compromising your dps.
it's a fairly difficult game, but mostly it's just fucking long. really, really long. the post-game content is sizable if incredibly repetitive (all dungeon crawlers are repetitive, obviously, but this is one of the only games where it bothered me). final post-game dungeon takes hours and hours to unlock and has 99 floors, the first of which takes about 10 minutes and each subsequent one takes longer and longer with increasingly difficult/infuriating enemies. no, you can't save inside. have fun.
SHINING SOUL 2
hint: do not play shining soul 1. it is not a good game. the plots of the two games are completely unrelated and the mechanics in the first game are so inchoate and undeveloped that the game just drags and drags and you don't really feel like you're even accomplishing anything. in a genre all about incremental improvements, this is not a good thing.
but anyway, shining soul 2 is awesome. i've never played diablo 2 (i know, i know) but i've heard this is the closest thing to it on GBA. 8 classes to choose from (each with multiple builds that completely change the way they're played), skill points, stat points, a new game+ with a much higher difficulty level, tons of incredible gear to farm, set bonuses, rare spawns, oh man this game is great.
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one thing that i really enjoyed about this game was running through it with unconventional builds. i think my favourite playthrough was with the priest, who has an ability that sets up an AOE around her that also has a knockback/interrupt, so i spent literally the entire game running into enemies until they died, like a 1990s ys game. man, shining soul 2 is great.
TALES OF THE WORLD - RADIANT MYTHOLOGY
NO that's not sephiroth ok. tales of the world is a fantastic game. its joy-factor is boosted tenfold if you're a fan of the tales series; you get to enjoy all the skits and character interactions. plus if you're a fucking nerd you can ship them or whatever, i don't care.
battle system is lifted from tales of the abyss, which means that free run is just as broken as you remember it being in that game. but man, this game has an unreal amount of content. hundreds of quests, ten or so classes for your main character, and 30 or so tales characters (about half of which are playable). it is a tremendously profession-heavy game. like, enjoy grinding that blacksmithing and jewelcrafting and cooking and tool-making because you are going to be doing a lot of it. thankfully the game cuts down on the bullshit, and while a lot of time is spent fetching, almost all of the time is spent actually playing the game. everything is really streamlined.
while the main game isn't that hard, the bonus content is pants-shittingly challenging on higher difficulties. grinding in this game is a lot of fun if you like playing tales games, which, if you have good taste, you do. the only problem is that grinding for unique drops, the equivalent of legendaries, is absolute bullshit. like, 10+ hours of straight farming per. this wouldn't be so bad, but the problem is that they have enchantments of varying potency on them, so you might not get a 'good one'. this, too, wouldn't be so bad, but these things are literally unique and you cannot get more of a certain one until you drop the one you're carrying, which makes life very hard for perfectionist retards like me. getting an axe with 407% extra attack power sounds good, but when you know deep down that the max is 447%, you have to discard it. you fucking have to. also, leveling in this game is weird. it's not that bad in the main game, or even in the post game really once you discover the right grinding spots, but level maxing is really, really hard. i think my longest playthrough was 400 hours and i got my main character to level 178 or so (granted most of that time was spent farming uniques, which isn't quite as good for exp farming), with a level cap of 250. and that was with one class. and there are 10 classes, all with their own experience. and like i said, there are like 15 tales characters to max out too (though they don't have class levels, thankfully). so yeah, the game has content. there are two sequels to it, each even more grinding-intensive, but sadly neither has been translated.
CLADUN: THIS IS AN RPG
the brilliant minds behind disgaea bring you the most aptly named handheld-grinder ever conceived. lighthearted and funny with faux-2d sprites and a really bizarre leveling system, this is definitely one of the more interesting action rpg's i've played.
what makes this game really stand out is its leveling/enhancement system, which is called the 'magic circle'. basically, you only ever control one character, and you use other characters as little more than stat-boosting accessories. as you level a class up (there are five), you unlock more magic circles, all of which have different potentials for stat boosts/character placements. here's an example:
you can buy/win those little accessories, called artifacts, which you can equip to your supporting characters which in turn boosts the stats of your main character. supporting characters act as meat shields, too; any damage you take is first taken by the supporting characters, and if they die you lose all the boosts (which means you're probably going to die, since they make up the bulk of your stats). each artifact has its own mana cost to hold, and characters have a limited amount of mana, which makes magic circle management a really engaging experience. the weird part, though, is that you're encouraged/basically forced to switch your characters around frequently. characters being used in the magic circle gain atk/def/magic boosts when they level up, which are stats your main character wants. characters leveled as a main gain mana and hp when leveled up, which are stats that your magic circle characters want. this can be pretty irritating, but thankfully ceases to be an issue in post-game where everything is done at level 99 anyway.
in typical nippon ichi fashion, enjoy leveling everybody up to 99, reincarnating, and doing it over and over again until you've got 'good' stats. there is a soft stat cap imposed by leveling in this game though, so even once you're 'maxed' the post-game content will still give you a run for your money. enjoy grinding the 99 floor dungeon over and over for drops until you're geared enough to grind the literal never-ending dungeon for even better drops. oh, also, prepare for the trolliest mechanic in video game history: each piece of weapon/armor has 20 or so possible enchantments. 'of heroes' gives you +5 atk and def, 'duct' gives you a life leech effect, etc. towards the end of the game you'll start acquiring 'd99' equipment, which does nothing by itself, but for every enchanted version of that item you have 99 of, it gets the effect of that. so of course, you have to get 99 of every enchanted version of the best weapons and armor so your new ultra-gear can reap the benefits of everything. and you'll still die in the final dungeon. a lot.
also one thing that i've never explored but apparently is pretty sweet is the ability to modify your character's heads. you can draw whatever you want and make it your character's face. this is expanded upon in the sequel, which i have yet to play (the first was overwhelming enough), where you can modify the look of your weapons, as well as your entire body. here are some shots from the sequel that might make you squeal with delight:
so yeah, you should probably play the sequel too.
UNCHAINED BLADES
unchained blades is the game i'm currently playing. it's also on 3ds if that's your thing. this game is a really engaging 1st person dungeon crawler with some really great elements that pokemon fans will enjoy. your team can have up to 4 characters, and each character can have up to 4 followers. this means 20 dudes on your team. you can make any monster in the game into your follower assuming you 'unchain it', which involves damaging it to a certain extent and trying to trigger an unchain event (the event itself involves timing your button presses based on a moving ring in similar vein to legend of dragoon), the mechanics of which i haven't got a perfect grasp on since i want to go through this game blind. this game has a crazy-ass skill tree, kind of similar to paths of exile in that it's more of a web than anything, though apparently you can get all skills eventually with enough grinding in post-game (the one bit of info i learned before going in blind).
it's a turn-based rpg, and what's interesting is that skills require 'anima' which are basically like elements. each follower has its own set of anima, so your anima are the sum of all your followers', which means you need a certain combination of followers if you want to be able to use a certain skill that you've unlocked. this adds a lot of depth, since choosing between weaker followers with useful anima vs stronger followers without can be tricky. it gets even trickier when each follower has its own weight, and you can only hold so much. your followers level up as well, but they only gain stats, not abilities. something about the turn based battles combined with the weight/follower system kind of reminded me of dragon quest monsters caravan heart, if anyone's played that.
one thing i'm really enjoying about this game is the leveling system. for one, each levelup is huge, since you almost always get an additional skill due to the way the skill web is set up. also, an interesting mechanic is that monsters below your level grant somewhere between zero and effectively zero experience, whereas monsters above your level will grant enough exp to level you up within a battle or two (or gain you multiple levels per battle, depending on the variance). this makes swapping between followers less time-consuming since you never really have to grind to level them up. if you have one whose anima suddenly become useful due to a skill you've just learned, it'll only take a few battles to bring him up to your level.
this game is also pretty fucking hard, with a difficulty spike on almost every floor of every dungeon. you'll bear witness to the exp mechanic i mentioned constantly, grinding in an area until the monsters stop giving decent exp, going to the next floor of the dungeon, surviving the first couple battles through expert resource management and strategy, leveling up to a point where you can grind on them, and the cycle continues. game has a ton of quests and synthesizing and all that fun stuff, and apparently a massive post-game which i'm absolutely jazzed about. wicked game, really.
also, to make the game even quirkier, there are events called 'judgment battles' where all of your followers face off against a horde of monsters, and you power them up by hitting directional buttons as they pass by the screen like beatmania. c-cool.
