Squeenix New Crawler "Dungeon Encounters" by Square Enix, budget lower than the rpgcodex server costs

[Fluent]

Hey guys. So I wanted to share a discovery I seemed to have made, that may have been mentioned already. If u don't rush, and u take your time, there seems to be an ENORMOUS amount of game here. I'm about 10 hours in and only explored up to level 18. I want to track down the Wanderers, I want to build a leveled up rescue party, I want to grind out the gear I want, and heck, I want to level up all the characters that I find, and create different builds and unique things with each. If u do these things, there will be a TON of game here for u. I'm talking over 100 hours, it feels like. So, if you are like me and u love big, huge dungeon crawlers, I think we are in for a treat here. Cheers fellas!

 

[Abu Antar]

I came back to this, today. The earlier party wipe demoralized me completely.

They are all rescued and back to full health. I'm at the last part of the 2X levels. This has been the toughest part yet. Enemies have over 1,5k defences or health. I can't do much upgrading in the shops, and monster drop rng is not on my side. On the other hand, I'm almost at the new two-way-teleporter. Maybe the stores will update then.

Fun is being had again. I'm avoiding any suspicious looking encounter numbers, though. While my party's wounds have healed, the scars left on my brain are still healing.

Can't see myself beating this before the release of Voice of Cards. I guess I will play a little bit of each.

 

[Jinn]

Can't see myself beating this before the release of Voice of Cards. I guess I will play a little bit of each.

Yep, I'm pumping the brakes on it as of today in anticipation of Voice of Cards. Don't want to get burnt out on strangely presented top-down grid-based DRPGs before that beauty comes out, even though I know they will be largely different in terms of gameplay. As soon as I finish up Voice of Cards, I'll be getting back to it though. I'm not even close to bored of it. I just know how my brain works when I put too much of a similar thing into it at a time.

Sorry Undernauts, you're going to have to wait until probably 2022.

 

[Abu Antar]

This game, bros. This game. :D

Get in a fight. Enemies break one helmet, one chest armor, one weapon, and one spell.
Win the fight, but feel grumpy.

Continue exploring the floor, find Armsmaster ability two minutes later? What does this ability do? It's a passive that prevents equipment from breaking.

I'm currentl on floor 36. I got the waypoint ability. That means I might put a waystone where I'm at, then use grater ascension, and go on a 100% mapping spree of previous floors. Most are complete, but there are about five floors that I haven't fully mapped.

Oh, I almost forgot: I'm running with my heavy hitter at 112hp. Thanks to one of the abilities which I forgot the name of, he does double damage while near death. It's a bit risky, as he's been killed a few times, by direct armor ignoring attacks. On the whole, I feel it is worth it, though. I might give him the gauntlet, too. It raises critical hit chance. Another thought is having him counter attack. We'll see.

I have five days to rach level 99. That won't happen, but hopefully I can get to the 6X area.

 

[Amurada]

This game, bros. This game. :D
I'm currentl on floor 36. I got the waypoint ability. That means I might put a waystone where I'm at, then use grater ascension, and go on a 100% mapping spree of previous floors. Most are complete, but there are about five floors that I haven't fully mapped.

Oh, I almost forgot: I'm running with my heavy hitter at 112hp. Thanks to one of the abilities which I forgot the name of, he does double damage while near death. It's a bit risky, as he's been killed a few times, by direct armor ignoring attacks. On the whole, I feel it is worth it, though. I might give him the gauntlet, too. It raises critical hit chance. Another thought is having him counter attack. We'll see.

I have five days to rach level 99. That won't happen, but hopefully I can get to the 6X area.

Trust me dood, the game is a quick sprint to the end after you obtain Greater Descension. I've been using it to chart unknown territories with death around every corner, and obtain all of the final allies, without even have gotten to floor 50 au naturel, lol. I got royally fucked for about an hour, and had to reobtain all of my main units. If you descent past floor 99; or simply fall into a pitfall that has you surpass floor 99; it's up to your reserve units to reobtain all of your lost units, who are now wanderers again -- meaning that there are no precise coordinates to their new location; you have to go on a spelunking adventure. Worse yet, they get stuck in the realm you were in prior to falling. In my case, I was on the 90 floor quadrant getting late game equips and allies, and needed to traipse around cautiously hoping that I wouldn't fall into a pitfall (I did a couple of more times), or accidently hit an enemy tile.

All in all, this game is fucking great, especially due to how brutal it is. Risk-reward and all that.

 

[Amurada]

Also, I gotta say, can't think of a single game wherein exploration abilities matter as much as they do in this game. Dungeon Encounters single handedly proves why the genre ought to get away from the first-person perspective. Wandering late game environments with enemies with 10,000 times the stats is amazing, and all of the exploration abilities you utilize in tandem all aid in exploration, which is especially necessary given the uniquely themed labyrinth layouts on each floor. I've only run away from fights (which is rare for me to ever do in D/J RPGs) for the past hour while looking for all of my lost allies, and I've had more fun than randomly strafing around tiles in some first person crawler.

 

[MpuMngwana]

I've just reached the 5X levels, and they've introduced pitfalls (which seem to appear in random locations) and tiles that steal around 12000 gold when you step on them (which are fixed). Between this and an increased presence of hidden tiles, it seems it's goodbye to fully mapping every floor until I get more filthy rich.

Also, found an 80,000 damage bow thanks to one of the math riddles (when my regular gear still does below 10,000), so that's gonna carry me for a while I guess. Hiding overpowered equipment behind useless math trivia is wonderfully archaic, I love it.

 

[vonAchdorf]

TFW you level up a rescue party which ends up better equipped and more powerful than the old party before you even reach the old party's location.

 

[680x0]

Cat OP, plz nerf.

 

[680x0]

I use the doggy too, I put him in a solo party to drag our corpses back...

 

[680x0]

Arigatou, Neko-sama

 

[680x0]

True final boss defeated, all puzzles solved :D

 

[mediocrepoet]

That hamster didn't even know what hit him.

 

[680x0]

That hamster didn't even know what hit him.

2 or more characters with timepiece (non-exquisite) is the key.

 

[Amurada]

True final boss defeated, all puzzles solved :D

Don't know if I'm looking forward to all the grinding needed to face whatevver post game enemies there are. I'm essentially on the last 6 floors, and my main party averages at about level 65. have no idea how long it'll take to grind considering that experience point distribution is fairly conservative. I've seen people get to lv.255 at this point, lol. I love this game - albeit, between floors 40-90 is a bit of a bore - but I dunno if I have the wherewithal to grind for however many hours one would need to even get to lv.90. I'll see if I can still handle any post game foes with my current party, and judge from there I guess.

 

[flyingjohn]

The giga chad dungeon crawler vs the wimpy other japan stuff:
-Yoko taro had to add denuvo to stop people from figuring out voice of the short is too easy
-Undernauts delayed so it doesn't have to compete with this masterpiece
-Super robot wars 30 actually released in a playable state to have a chance
-Fatal frame adding so many technical issues to make sure nobody talks about its gameplay

Just a average Ito day of cleaning the garbage:

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Is there a way to park your party somewhere, do something with another party and then continue with the first party? Or is it just a single active party, that always starts from the academy?

 

[Abu Antar]

Is there a way to park your party somewhere, do something with another party and then continue with the first party? Or is it just a single active party, that always starts from the academy?

You can dump most of your party at the academy, and then pick up new members.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

The graph-paper/grid thing is cute. Them zany japanese.

 

[680x0]

True final boss defeated, all puzzles solved :D

Don't know if I'm looking forward to all the grinding needed to face whatevver post game enemies there are. I'm essentially on the last 6 floors, and my main party averages at about level 65. have no idea how long it'll take to grind considering that experience point distribution is fairly conservative. I've seen people get to lv.255 at this point, lol. I love this game - albeit, between floors 40-90 is a bit of a bore - but I dunno if I have the wherewithal to grind for however many hours one would need to even get to lv.90. I'll see if I can still handle any post game foes with my current party, and judge from there I guess.

Put in 52 hours and the pacing was pretty good, actual grinding was only like 4 hours.

 

[MuscleSpark]

Alright, this thread (and Undernauts being delayed + Voice of Cards being piss easy and standard) persuaded me. I hope Ito is happy taking my money.

 

[Amurada]

Put in 52 hours and the pacing was pretty good, actual grinding was only like 4 hours.

Fair enough, but I'm curious. Would you agree that progression starting from about the floor 40 stratum to about floor 87 stratums is a little sluggish? -- That's assuming of course, that you decided to explore the labyrinth to its fullest prior to continuing the game proper. I started utilizing the greater a/de-scensions around floor 40, and I felt that the difficulty took a nosedive afterwards. It (somewhat) helped that I immediately found the

Spoiler

skip all encounters

ability, but I dunno.

Considering doing another playthrough with minimal use of skipping, and maybe I'll also bar myself from using R2-D2, Sir Totoro (ffs, I took down

Spoiler

super computer

out about 200 levels weaker than him when I encountered him on the floor 60 stratum), and Neverending Bad Dragon. Their character gimmicks are a bit OP for my taste. Prior to attaining them, I had the

Spoiler

Obsidion staff (chance of insta-death), exquisite timepiece, PD/MD shuriken types

, current handaxes and malafluxes on all my units. Adapting to one characters failure on the random dice roll with another was this game at its greatest.

It's also a bit disappointing to read that grinding is at least somewhat necessary. I enjoyed the dynamic of utilizing whatever equipment that currently available due to random loot drops that were either sent to shops; or that you were simply lucky enough to gain on the spot. I'll see how I feel once I enter post-game, but as it is, I would warn everyone to not break the game to the best of one's ability. The PP system does help in this regard somewhat, as equippping late game gear directly results in lopsided units with severe weaknesses, but the units mentioned above (especially R2D2 and Totoro) complete break any semblance of balance the game could have, and I wish I would've known that sooner, and kept to my less optimized party setup.

 

[680x0]

I got early camo and jumped around alot, because I could see the party list I purposely played with only characters I am going to use (and doggy.) Play time somewhat reflects staring holes into the puzzles in game.

 

[Reinhardt]

Bought it too after all. Mapping level 5 right now. Bought javelin and got another javelin and xbow from drop. Feels gud. Need to upgrade armor tho.

 

[Shackleton]

Absolute scenes when this gets voted Codex GOTY 2021.