What’s the glue that holds an RPG collectively? Most would need epic sagas, characters you might hug along with your soul, worlds so thick you might get misplaced in them like a hoagie within the fats folds of a feminist. Different avid gamers would say the battles that will make a berserker puke blood. Dungeon Encounters rejects all of this and embraces stark minimalism.
Dungeon Encounters‘ introduction is a savage slap to the senses. There isn’t any musical flourish or rousing theme, no dazzling prologue animation, only a naked begin display emblazoned with a single paragraph of backstory. Beginning the sport results in you staring down the barrel of the social gathering choice display, the place character backstories verge on nonexistent. Just a few measly sentences, hidden like soiled secrets and techniques, as if the builders had been embarrassed by them.
Dungeon Encounter is ready in a dimension of grids, the place the hero fills in squares like a manic accountant. The world itself is left as much as your creativeness and also you solely have one objective: keep alive and get the social gathering to search out the rattling exit, or scream your existential angst into the void, whichever comes first.
Dungeon Encounters
Developer: Cattle Name, Sq. Enix
Writer: Sq. Enix
Platforms: Home windows PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Change (reviewed)
Launch Date: November 14, 2021
Value: $29.99 USD
Dungeon Encounters hurls the participant right into a world greatest described as a mysterious crossword etched onto historical parchment. That is the meat of the expertise guiding a 3D avatar throughout these bare-bones grid maps, filling in each sq., and scrambling for the exit.
When Dungeon Encounters barely has any graphics, how are you going to inform an exit sq. from a daily sq.? The sport retains its secrets and techniques, although each flooring’s occasions are marked with mysterious black and white numbers. White digits often trace at one thing useful, like a store, a resurrection shrine, or a therapeutic fountain. Black digits are encounters.
You’ll must take Dungeon Encounters‘ phrase for it as a result of there’s not a single graphic to depict something. The one visible cues are the character fashions roaming the dungeon maps and the few illustrated portraits that pop up throughout battles. The dearth of visible illustration will make you are feeling starved for stimuli.
Dungeon Encounters strips the fats off fight, abandoning a stripped-down system soundtracked by Nobuo Uematsu’s wailing guitar taking part in classical music. No flashy spell results, no CGI explosions, simply the uncooked crunch of numbers crunching as you commerce blows.
It’s nearly just like the builders are holding up a mirror to what fashionable JRPGs are identified for, asking, “Is that this spectacle actually what makes fight enjoyable? Or is it the underlying math with technique and ways?” As a substitute of bombastic visuals, Dungeon Encounters throws you into the thick of it with the traditional Energetic Time Battle (ATB) system acquainted to anybody who’s performed an old-school Remaining Fantasy.
Each character, enemy and hero alike, has three HP meters. Functionally, they act as shields defending the core HP. These shields signify bodily and magical protection, and you may solely injury a personality’s true HP in the event you first deplete the matching defensive protect with a bodily or magical assault.
This back-to-basics system forces you to suppose strategically. It’s a purist’s strategy to fight, all about understanding your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, after which exploiting them with the precise decisions, taking away visible extra. It’s a lot to count on for many Sq. Enix followers to simply accept, however followers of Wizardry or The Darkish Spire will in all probability really feel proper at residence
Anybody who can deal with the austere presentation of Dungeon Encounters will uncover a weirdly addictive expertise. It’s a grind, nevertheless it’s a grind in its purest kind, stripped naked and losing no time. It’s a sport that’s sincere with what it’s.
Shifting by means of flooring and step by step filling each sq. faucets right into a primitive satisfaction, just like the gratifying tidiness of a freshly cleaned room. Dungeon Encounters doesn’t even really feel like an RPG; it’s nearer to a cerebral puzzle sport, however one draped within the stats and programs of a Wizardry sport.
Similar to these crusty and outdated RPGs, it is a diabolical sport that’s totally detached to the participant’s time. Some crushing penalties can occur from a misstep or being barely careless that may end up in all the social gathering getting separated, forcing gamers to start out from the highest flooring with a brand new social gathering at degree one.
This sort of catastrophe can occur very simply and it isn’t even the worst factor that may occur. Gamers will seemingly find yourself shedding all the pieces when social gathering members die and there aren’t sufficient sources to revive them. It’s possible that avid gamers can clock in dozens of hours, solely to be trapped in a spiraling descent the place all characters die.
There isn’t any getting back from a state of affairs like this. Persevering with isn’t an choice and the one factor left to do is to restart all the sport as a contemporary run. This might imply shedding dozens of hours and Dungeon Encounters doesn’t care.
This unwavering dedication to simplicity and minimalism leaves little room for Dungeon Encounters to mess up. The sparse Queen-like soundtrack, with just a few tracks, boasts shocking brilliance. Every bit is an electrical guitar solo and whereas it may use much more items, those we get are totally electrical.
With just about no graphics to criticize and a intentionally absent story, the sport nearly transcends itself by means of its sheer focus, attaining a near-perfect class like Tetris. The less-is-more strategy does make the core parts come to the forefront and may make the straightforward gameplay really feel extra partaking than it will appear.
Essentially the most insane facet of Dungeon Encounters is the asking value of thirty American {dollars}. For its value, you aren’t going to get quite a lot of bang in your buck. This sport could be fairly lengthy, however there’s an inherent lack of worth when it has nearly no manufacturing values to talk of. There’s barely an hour’s value of music, no emotional core to latch onto, and the gameplay is as spartan as could be.
Dungeon Encounters is a sport that’s remarkably tough to fault for its premise. It units out with very particular intentions, and it achieves them, even when it frustrates gamers within the course of. This isn’t your typical Sq. Enix fare; it’s tailored for hardcore RPG lovers who savor the likes of pen-and-paper RPGs.
Be ready to flex your creativeness, as the sport affords minimal textual content and visuals to depict the journey and battles. Whereas it’s a tough promote for many audiences, Dungeon Encounters may be a compelling experiment for essentially the most demented RPG maniacs who crave one thing distinctive.
Dungeon Encounters was reviewed on Nintendo Change utilizing a duplicate bought by Nichegamer. You could find further details about Area of interest Gamer’s evaluate/ethics coverage right here. Dungeon Encounters is now obtainable for Home windows PC (through Steam), PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Change.