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

[Thac0]

https://square-enix-games.com/games/dungeon-encounters

Spoiler

Game is advertised with the tagline THINK!

Producer: Hiroaki Kato
Director: Hiroyuki Ito
Character Design: Ryoma Ito
Music: Nobuo Uematsu

Absurdly stacked development team, might be good despite the strange presentation.

 

[Duraframe300]

Hiroyuki Ito

MOTHERFUCKER IS ALIVE.

 

[Adenocaulon]

Why not first person

And probably it will sell better than 3d-first person crawlers

 

[Abu Antar]

Hiroyuki Ito, the Man, the Myth, the Janitor.

 

[LESS T_T]

Steam page:

An otherworldly labyrinth has suddenly appeared on the outskirts of a quiet town. Make clever use of your abilities to chart the depths, overcome obstacles and defeat your foes in thrilling battles!

From some of the key development team behind the legendary FINAL FANTASY franchise, DUNGEON ENCOUNTERS is a dungeon exploration RPG where you must strategize to survive. The streamlined interface gives you the freedom to prepare and manage your party as you strive to reach the final floor.

During your expeditions, you'll discover rare and powerful items, meet lost adventurers who might just become new allies, and come face-to-face with deadly monsters.

Do you have what it takes to overcome the numerous trials that await you and discover the dungeon's secrets?

KEY FEATURES
Events
By uncovering and visiting spaces with white numbers, you may obtain items, unlock and change abilities, restore your party to health, find hidden merchants, and much more.

Battle encounters, marked with black numbers, are hidden throughout the map. However, they can be revealed with a special ability, allowing you to choose when and where to engage your enemies.

Previously discovered events will be recorded in the Event Log, a valuable resource that allows you to reference past experiences to tackle future challenges.

Battles
Test your strategies in thrilling battles, featuring the Active Time Battle (ATB) system made famous by the FINAL FANTASY series.

Under the direction of Ito Hiroyuki, creator of the ATB system, battles play out in real-time, utilizing a polished and refined iteration of this classic design, which promises exciting, challenging combat.

Map
The blank map awaits you, and by exploring and investigating every tile on each level, you will be awarded ability points. Navigate obstacles, including secret passages and hidden traps, and conquer the dungeon!

 

[Abu Antar]

Fuck it. Pre-ordered on Switch. It was $24, and I had $3 credit.

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Thac0]

Combat without mana or consumables?
Honestly everything about this sounds risky, top down dungeon exploration where you can see the entire dungeon at once and extremely simplified combat are worrying points.
It looks very fast and slick however.
I am on the fence, will probably buy if the first good reviews roll in.

 

[newtmonkey]

It looks simplified to the point of irrelevance. I'll keep an eye on it and maybe I'll be surprised, but nothing looks good about this one at this point.

 

[Thac0]

It looks simplified to the point of irrelevance. I'll keep an eye on it and maybe I'll be surprised, but nothing looks good about this one at this point.

Simplifying both combat and dungeon crawling is a bit bizarre for a blobber.

This game looks like going to your favourite steak house and seeing a new dish there, a steak with ketchup.
The cut is high grade meat, the place is good at preparing meat, you know the chef cook, but ketchup?
Is this some special fancy ketchup or are they just dumping Heinz on it?
Is this some special meat that goes well with ketchup?
What is Square doing?

 

[Empary]

30 FUCKIN DOLARS?

 

[Viata]

They put more work in the animations of your character moving in that "dungeon" than in battles.

 

[Shackleton]

Giving me Labyrinth of Touhou vibes from the video, and that's not a bad thing. Cautiously wishlisting and seeing if combat is any good, because that's what will make or break this one.

 

[Ysaye]

Anyone notice that the music basically consists of a a rock version of the Prelude from Bizet's Arlesienne Suite, a jazz version of Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata (Middle movement) for general overmap, and a heavy metal version of the Baba Yaga picture from Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition as the combat music?

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Did I see Totoro as one of the possible party members?

 

[lametta]

Tbh this looks as low effort as you can get.
If this was an indie dev ppl would already shit on it.
Doubt this will turn out good.

 

[Duraframe300]

Giving me Labyrinth of Touhou vibes from the video, and that's not a bad thing. Cautiously wishlisting and seeing if combat is any good, because that's what will make or break this one.

Gameplay Loop in general. Can actually see this turn out quite fun, though A LOT has to click here.

 

[Adenocaulon]

It looks simplified to the point of irrelevance.

Like the new logo of Bandai Namco

 

[Jermu]

Would be hyped if it was first person blobber

 

[Lord of Riva]

hahaha no.

 

[Reinhardt]

Giving me Labyrinth of Touhou vibes from the video, and that's not a bad thing.

Nah, more of Wizrogue vibes.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Are we in a new golden age of jap blobbers? This year alone 5 or 6 games of medium to good range of quality have come out. We have two alone this month, this game and the yomi western release.

 

[Thac0]

Are we in a new golden age of jap blobbers? This year alone 5 or 6 games of medium to good range of quality have come out. We have two alone this month, this game and the yomi western release.

Honestly? We are in the beginning of a new JRPG Golden Age in general.

Since 2016:
Persona 5 showed that the traditional turn based JRPG can still make tons of money.
Atlus advances from a niche developer to a genre staple.
Shin Megami Tensei returns on a home console and Persona 4 gets a PC port.

The Switch becomes a successfull platform where medium budget JRPG platforms can sell way above their budget again.
Octopath Traveller is the first game to capitalise on that, showing that not even turn based JRPGs are still in demand, but even ultra traditional SNES style JRPGs.
This kickstarts a niche genre rennaissance, with the blobber soaring to be as popular as it has ever been.

Square Enix gets their fucking shit together!
They return to a formula where they allow their talents to make low budget arthousy projects inbetween to not burn out, and game quality rises across the board.
Nier becomes fucking mainstream., Yoko Taro becomes a household name on the scale of Kojima.
Old Dragon Quests get sensible ports to English for the first time in who knows how long, ending the decade break the series has been on in the West since DQ IX.
They even revive SaGa from God knows where, a series that hasn't seen the light in who knows how many years.
We even got Kingdom Hearts III, although that could have been better.

Some Bonus Rounds:
Fire Emblem Awakening single handedly revives the Fire Emblem IP, Fates almost kills it, 3 Houses revives it AGAIN, this time greater than ever.
Xenoblade is becoming a god damn AAA JRPG IP, with Monolith Soft games selling better and better, and by their fans with no loss of quality.
Tales of Arise and Atelier Ryza suddenly boom in success, setting those two series up to make the next jump from niche to AA.
Falcom is god knows how still around, and is getting more successfull with every game through a loyal fanbase.
Level-5 gets revived at the eleventh hour by the Ni No Kuni IP becoming really popular in Korea.

The JRPG era since 2016, defined by the late PS4, Switch and the buddings of the Japanese trusting in the PC, has the potential to go down as one of the greatest of the genre, on par with SNES, PSX, PS2.
There is so much amazing shit in the genre happening lately that even this wall of text probably misses half the good stuff, like Rune Factory and Neo TWEWY.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Some Bonus Rounds:
Fire Emblem Awakening single handedly revives the Fire Emblem IP, Fates almost kills it, 3 Houses revives it AGAIN, this time greater than ever.

Just on that note I disagree with your position.
While awakening revived the game series and Fates failed to exploit it (even though Fates has a lot of great mechanics, it's narrative is just ass) *both* fates and Three Houses spell decline for the Series.

While the Reach on the Switch is a lot better and Three houses is not a bad game per se it does not seem to realize what Fire Emblem made a good Series. Just as with PoR and RD trying to appeal to mainstream on console and exploit it's customer base spells decline, not incline. Normal people do not play slow burning RPG TBS games and appealing to them is a folly, three houses was already dumped down in a lot of areas, also it played in a School, kinda ass.

I can not Imagine a game like Genealogy of the Holy war would be successful in the crowd who props up the Three houses sales, i just can't.

 

[Thac0]

Some Bonus Rounds:
Fire Emblem Awakening single handedly revives the Fire Emblem IP, Fates almost kills it, 3 Houses revives it AGAIN, this time greater than ever.

Just on that note I disagree with your position.
While awakening revived the game series and Fates failed to exploit it (even though Fates has a lot of great mechanics, it's narrative is just ass) *both* fates and Three Houses spell decline for the Series.

While the Reach on the Switch is a lot better and Three houses is not a bad game per se it does not seem to realize what Fire Emblem made a good Series. Just as with PoR and RD trying to appeal to mainstream on console and exploit it's customer base spells decline, not incline. Normal people do not play slow burning RPG TBS games and appealing to them is a folly, three houses was already dumped down in a lot of areas, also it played in a School, kinda ass.

I can not Imagine a game like Genealogy of the Holy war would be successful in the crowd who props up the Three houses sales, i just can't.

I personally know people who got into Fire Emblem through awakening, and are now playing the entire series on emulators. Always on the hardest difficulty available, even if that is genuine insanity like Lunatic Reverse or Lunatic+.
You would be surprised at what an entry game can do for a franchise. I personally don't enjoy new Fire Emblem as much, as it is very balanced around keeping everyone alive, which is not what the system excels at with the high lethality. Although 3 Houses went a step into the right direction for that gameplay with the weird clock mechanic.
The entire SRPG subgenre used to be fucking dead before Fire Emblem Awakening however. The only new games were Disgaea's and other second rate shovelware. How many SRPGs are upcoming now? Saying that Awakening had a negative impact is delusion.