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

[Abu Antar]

I 100% the floor out of ODC, but more importantly for more ability points. I can afford to have almost all abilities equipped, and floor level 20 (Undulating Sands). Bought a flail and two claymores, a third dropped from a foe. Things are starting to hit harder. Some enemy skills even disregard armor, and target your hp directly. Boy, was the two way teleporter that I just found handy. I had to do an upgrade of most equipment.

I still haven't leveled up a second party. No doubt, it this will bite me in the ass very soon.

 

[Lyre Mors]

So seeing some of these impressions of people getting past floor 20 seems to imply that the game layers on the complexity and challenge as you get further into it, which is great. Sounds like you can get totally ass fucked out of nowhere too if you're being reckless. That basically makes the game worth it for me at this point. Thanks for the great posts, guys!

 

[Lyre Mors]

Got a nice 3 hours in tonight. Yeah, this shit is good. Would urge any codexer playing on Steam to drop a positive review to combat the tide of decline-enablers that pollute the platform. I want to see more stuff like this from Squeenix in the future. In terms of gameplay, it puts a lot of their larger projects to shame (at least on the Square side).

 

[Thac0]

I have done some testing with the 4 different status effect weapons I found. Also thoughts on the fifth.

Spoiler

Poison Gun - Faily bad. 100% hitrate is nice, but poison alone takes several turns to kill an enemy. I found that leaving the weapon spot open is often superior to using it at all, as unarmed combat can kill undead in a single strike. Also grindy high hp targets are often immune to poison. Good for killing targets with 1 armor and large hp pools, but that is very niche.
Stone Mirror - Fun to use! 75% hitrate is good, and a stonebound enemy only gets one more attack off before being petrified, regardless of how full the ATB bar is. Nothing I have encountered yet is immune. With 11 weight I use this when leveling up fresh recruits, as it is significantly lighter than my top tier weapons. The only problem is that stonebound is lifted if you kill the unit which inflicted it, so use in conjunction with good armor.
Exquisite Timepiece - Useable, but not as good as it looks. Usually it resets 0-2 atb bars on use, but resetting a barely filled ATB bar is a whiff aswell. It only shined for me when used in conjunction with strong aoe weapons. I have two Partisans currently which deal 600 physical fixed aoe, having someone reset time while those two units equipped with +200 damage flourite rip enemies to shreds is playable.
Shuriken - 70% chance to shred all physical armor. Way too heavy right now. At 26 weight it is the heaviest weapon I have. Can be used to cheese those 70.000 armor enemies way before your level however.
Cutlery Set - Looks very strong, but only beasts can use it and I do not like the Panther. 50% consume is 50% instant kill. I will unlock a dog soon, will definitly equip it on him.

Verdict - Status weaponry is better than it looks, it is sucky as long as it is heavier or as heavy as normal weaponry, but weapon weight scales up while the stone mirror at 11 weight stays the same.

 

[Thac0]

Mhhmm the Banishment Weapon is sexy. Ancient Pot or something, got it from Math Riddle 3. The riddle was nasty aswell, I hate

Spoiler

Prime Numbers

50% chance of instant death, no questions asked. I run a full ailment based team now, a petrifier, a banisher, one with the timepiece to deny the enemy turns and one with a potent bow and a single target spell to pick off enemies without armor or kill pesky enemies immune to both petrify and banishment (not that I have met any yet).
Sadly I still can't use consume, even the bestial party members can't equip it. I assume it is for the fat Totoro cat or the Robot?
Still this is amazing. I can't remember the last JRPG where a full ailment/instant death team was viable, usually this is reserved to crpgs and rare even in them.
On level 25+ the enemies really start bulking up, 2000 armor and 2000 health is not fun to chew through with 1000-1500 damage weapons. My ailment team is high tension, but shreds enemies if all goes according to plan.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The game is unexpected incline.

 

[Abu Antar]

Hmm, what is this F9 encounter, I wonder?

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit × 555

A Black Hole appears with 1 million in all stats.

Choose withraw ability 4 times and fail to flee.



Fuck it, let it kill off a character or two, I can revive them.

Black Hole one shots entire party.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The game is wonderfully old fashioned.

• Enemies can one shot a character or your group - CHECK
• Enemies steal your gold without you being able to get it back - CHECK
• Enemies put you into debt slavery by stealing more gold from you than you have thus turning your gold negative - CHECK
• Enemies randomly destroy you expensive new equipment with no way to get it back - CHECK
• There's sorta teleport hub, but the closest teleporter is still 10 floors away - CHECK (I hope for a town portal ability)

Thanks Thac0 for the tip with unarmed - it comes in very handy against those PD 2000 MD 2000 HP 1 mobs in the 20s.

 

[Thac0]

• There's sorta teleport hub, but the closest teleporter is still 10 floors away - CHECK (I hope for a town portal ability)

There is one, you can see it in the event log. Looks like a very late unlock tho. A little protip for adventuring in the 20s:
Warp to floor 19. Go to the lower left of floor 19, instead of taking the stairs down. There are a bunch of spirals there, 3 large ones and a small one to the right of them. Try to vault down with lesser descension there. You can vault down all the way to floor 27 from there, as there is a very solid mesh of corridors stacked on top of each other. Way faster than going the normal way. If you hit walls too often move a bit to the right, but stay in the lower left quadrant of the map.
I love how the game rewards this unusual kind of exploration, I just wish there was a skill to see the outline of the lower and higher dungeon in faint lines. That would make the 6dof up and down exploration one of a kind and top tier.

 

[680x0]

(your party fell for eternity)

 

[mediocrepoet]

Hmm, what is this F9 encounter, I wonder?

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit × 555

A Black Hole appears with 1 million in all stats.

Choose withraw ability 4 times and fail to flee.



Fuck it, let it kill off a character or two, I can revive them.

Black Hole one shots entire party.

That is beautiful. Based on the prerelease trailer, I figured this was oddball shovelware. It seems I may have been mistaken.

 

[vonAchdorf]

TPK when I literally needed only one more attack to win - CHECK
No high level rescue group around - CHECK

 

[Lyre Mors]

Yeah, the moment I knew this game was truly good when I started it last night was when two of my party members got petrified and I had to leave them where they stood. Having nothing else to do, I continued pushing forward with my remaining two adventurers, barely surviving a few tough encounters as I trudged deeper. Two floors below that I found a Gorgon Shrine and had to input the coordinates of where my stoned companions got left behind for the ritual spell to properly home in on them. Climbed back up to rescue them, then continued on my way, party full once more..

Now that's what I'm talking about.

 

[Filthy Sauce]

Is there a town/vendors is this game? If not, how is gold used?

 

[Abu Antar]

Is there a town/vendors is this game? If not, how is gold used?

There are shops in the game. On the top floor, and on a few floors in the dungeon.

 

[Duraframe300]

The game is wonderfully old fashioned.

• Enemies can one shot a character or your group - CHECK
• Enemies steal your gold without you being able to get it back - CHECK
• Enemies put you into debt slavery by stealing more gold from you than you have thus turning your gold negative - CHECK
• Enemies randomly destroy you expensive new equipment with no way to get it back - CHECK
• There's sorta teleport hub, but the closest teleporter is still 10 floors away - CHECK (I hope for a town portal ability)

Thanks Thac0 for the tip with unarmed - it comes in very handy against those PD 2000 MD 2000 HP 1 mobs in the 20s.

I fear they may remove some of this stuff, because of complaints on steam. I think its hilarious and adds to the charm.

Hopefully they won't.

 

[Fluent]

Hey guys. Really enjoying it so far. Love that SquareEnix releases games in ALL CAPS. I feel that adds a HEFT to DUNGEON ENCOUNTERS, lol. :D Glad to see u guys enjoying it too! I'm only on floor 3 but I'm feeling the good vibes.

 

[680x0]

This is gonna be more like a 60~80+ hour experience I'm thinking. I'm at 25 hours and only 100% up to floor 60. Leaving a lot of puzzles for after I get the complete map.

 

[Magitex]

Seems to be way too much enthusiasm in here for a Square title, although the game looks to be getting thoroughly trashed on Steam reviews.. could be correlated!
To be honest, I think this looks really good - especially coming from Square Enix of all the places, cutting out most of the annoying fat that plagues modern games of late. The price is a bit AAA, but I'm quite tempted to pick this up after hearing the Codex talk about it. I've actually become a bit of a fan of minimalistic games that have distilled gameplay formulas instead of toting false complexity which doesn't affect anything.

 

[Thac0]

Man this game keeps being weird. Suddenly a shop offered me to buy Maliare 6, for 5400 fixed aoe damage, skipping Maliare 4-5. I killed a level 60 enemy pack with petrification and banishment however, so I think the stock in stores gets increased as a hidden loot drop from enemies, according to their strength. I killed an UFO and a Praying Mantis, and that unlocked the OP spell and a 25.000 damage axe. Now I am back to a conventional damage team, but I welcome the change. Cheesing with stone and banishment can get stale aswell.

Area 30+ is cool. The layout of every stratum has been very different so far, with the first and the third offering a lot of branching paths and dead ends, while 2 and 4 are more linear and thus easier to traverse.

The game keeps punching above its weight, punishing, weird and strategic all the way.

What is not cool is that I came across weapon breaking enemies before I came across the immunity to them. My first savescum was the prevention of the loss of my petrification mirror, as I don't even know if there is a second in the game.

 

[Casual Hero]

The Destroyers are menacing indeed. I lost nearly half of my equipment to them, before I realized I should just run from/avoid those encounters.

I recently got the Greater Descension ability, and testing it out took me from level 42 to level 56 in a single use. It seems like you could jump down to the very bottom of the dungeon if you were brave enough, but I don't want to spoil it for myself just yet. This may also be a way to get a quick boost in power, if you can figure out how to beat some of the encounters on a lower level. As Thac0 said, it seems that shops unlock new items based on the enemies you have defeated.

 

[vonAchdorf]

What is not cool is that I came across weapon breaking enemies before I came across the immunity to them. My first savescum was the prevention of the loss of my petrification mirror, as I don't even know if there is a second in the game.

The audacity of the designers to potentially destroy a unique item is pretty

.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Anyone else land themselves in -20,000 gold debt because of that encounter with that little fuck treasure hunter? Just wondering if there is a reasonable way to dig myself out of that hole.

 

[Abu Antar]

Anyone else land themselves in -20,000 gold debt because of that encounter with that little fuck treasure hunter? Just wondering if there is a reasonable way to dig myself out of that hole.

Not yet, I have been robbed of 500 here and there.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Fucking bullshit. First encounter with that guy and he robbed me of 20k I didn't even have in 30 seconds before I could even flee the battle. I like it in a way, but come on. That's a little absurd. I feel like I should almost just start over at this point, as I don't know if I'll ever dig myself out of that debt.