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

[The Decline]

I downloaded this on my Switch and played for a little bit last night, seems interesting.

 

[Fluent]

The PP System is so genius and brilliant in its simplicity imo, just wow. Everything depends on that, and each character levels differently which i LOVE (and it's sort of based on their backstory as well.) Do u balance for a strong attack but neglect defense? If u go for a balance will u have enough firepower to take down highly defended enemies? What if u can only boost one of your defensive attributes, and what about your Accessory slot? It's so simple yet so lovingly crafted, great stuff. If I wasn't also tied up with Bard's Tale IV endgame I'd be playing this heavily. As it is I'm rotating between DUNGEON ENCOUNTERS, Grimoire & Bard's Tale IV. Fun times. Hope u guys are having fun too!

 

[mediocrepoet]

The PP System is so genius and brilliant in its simplicity imo, just wow.

Try the Bravely Default series.

(and it's sort of based on their backstory as well.)

At the risk of having to go through more of your new age born again love splooge... Back story? There's story to this? When/where?

 

[Jinn]

At the risk of having to go through more of your new age born again love splooge... Back story? There's story to this? When/where?

It's just the individual character's backstories. Just nice little descriptions of what brought them to the labyrinth/their motivations. You can check them out in the composition screen. There should be a button prompt somewhere at the bottom of the screen to read the character descriptions.

 

[Fluent]

And just as an example, the character of Rodovich. They say he was a legendary warrior but is now over the hill. He gains very small amounts of HP and PP so far. No telling if later he gets a miraculous second wind, or if using him is the game's baked-in version of a Hard Mode. But I'm using him so far and his advancment has been tied and true to his backstory. While the very money-driven and motivated Maynasar is a little BEAST, heh. She gains huge amounts of both HP and PP early on, but could be a frontrunner. It's pretty interesting imo.

 

[mediocrepoet]

And just as an example, the character of Rodovich. They say he was a legendary warrior but is now over the hill. He gains very small amounts of HP and PP so far. No telling if later he gets a miraculous second wind, or if using him is the game's baked-in version of a Hard Mode. But I'm using him so far and his advancment has been tied and true to his backstory. While the very money-driven and motivated Maynasar is a little BEAST, heh. She gains huge amounts of both HP and PP early on, but could be a frontrunner. It's pretty interesting imo.

This is funny, I just grabbed some guys based on their initial stats and whether they were available at my location and started wandering through. Now I wonder who I took with me and who I left behind.

 

[Jinn]

This is funny, I just grabbed some guys based on their initial stats and whether they were available at my location and started wandering through. Now I wonder who I took with me and who I left behind.

If you go to the party composition menu, you can see the coordinates of the people at your disposal. There's a few characters that are not at the Academy and standing around the starting village. When you get to the correct coordinate, you go to the composition menu again and place them in your party. You'll find Rodovich a few floors down in the dungeon, for example. I like to bring any new members I find back to the Academy in case I have a party wipe and have to assemble a rescue crew.

 

[vonAchdorf]

This is funny, I just grabbed some guys based on their initial stats and whether they were available at my location and started wandering through. Now I wonder who I took with me and who I left behind.

You will play the others sooner or later after a TPK wiped out your first party and you need someone to get their corpses.

 

[vonAchdorf]

If you go to the party composition menu, you can see the coordinates of the people at your disposal. There's a few characters that are not at the Academy and standing around the starting village. When you get to the correct coordinate, you go to the composition menu again and place them in your party. You'll find Rodovich a few floors down in the dungeon, for example.

It makes sense to "store" some other adventurers at the Academy so you can survive more than one TPK.

 

[Fluent]

Great tips guys! Very helpful. I will make sure to plan ahead for a 2nd and 3rd expedition. Seems like a real must-have all things considered.

 

[680x0]

Reading the comments in the Steam forums is the purest form of schadenfreude I have ever experienced.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Checked steam reviews, apparently liking dungeon crawlers is "elitist and douchey". It's over boys, they got us. I can see the headlines "Does your son enjoy exploring complex mazes in video games? He might be already a member of the alt- right".

At least we might be able to draw dungeons in the dirt with some sticks at the concentration camps.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Great little game. They completely nailed the "painting the map" aspect, distilled the great fun of fighting and removed all the bs. Will play it on the Switch while taking a shit.

 

[Jinn]

Will play it on the Switch while taking a shit.

Going to have to be taking some massive, lengthy dumps to get anywhere in the game. Watch the hemorrhoid's.

 

[Reinhardt]

So how many waifus are there? Enough for main party(and rescue party)?

 

[j2alg]

I wish the women had bigger breasts

 

[Fluent]

I'm doing pretty well now that I have my guys and gals equipped with proper armor and weapons. I found my first Brittania Gun and gave that as an offhand weapon to Rodovich, who, to everyone's surpise,

Spoiler

*is* getting his second wind! He's got the most PP in my party at level 10 so far.

Got Bastard Swords, a Javelin, a Crossbow, and Malifiare 2 (250 Power) so I have a decently balanced attack. Also focusing on Speed for Lhaulagi (my magic caster, she has a Malio 2, too) so she can nuke everything in 2 turns pretty much. For melee we have the other weapons I mentioned. So far the only floor I haven't 100% cleared is floor 8. Somehow 5 or so tiles are missing, and one seems like an ascension/descension spot but, can't quite figure it out. I'll give it more of a look later.

 

[minakami]

How's this game compared to Labyrinth of Touhou?

 

[j2alg]

How's this game compared to Labyrinth of Touhou?

completely different experience
personally I think LoT destroys this with its superlative combat.

 

[Thac0]

How's this game compared to Labyrinth of Touhou?

For what its worth, I bought both on the same day, 1 hour in Touhou, more than a dozen in this. Not that 2hu drpg is bad, but this is way more addictive.

 

[MpuMngwana]

From what I've played so far (around floor 30), it seems that one of the main reasons that keeps the game from getting boring is that you generally don't get different types of next tier equipment at the same rate, so your playstyle constantly changes up. So at one moment you're blasting everything with AOE magic, then you get a sword that heavily outclasses your spells and mostly switch to single-target physical attacks, then you get unlucky with drops and you're far away from a shop so one-hit kill gear becomes most efficient for a while. And of course, whatever your default strategy is, there will be enemies resistant to it which you have to work around. You're never doing the exact same thing for more than a few floors at a time (as it often happens in jRPGs), even if the options you have at any given moment are quite limited, what these options are shifts around constantly. I'm not sure this will work for the entire game, but it keeps my interest and I will be playing some more after work today.

I wonder what happens at floor 99. Like, so far there haven't been any boss encounters, so will there be some climactic battle or just "congratulations, you reached the end of the dungeon, here's your ending paragraph"?

 

[mediocrepoet]

I wonder what happens at floor 99. Like, so far there haven't been any boss encounters, so will there be some climactic battle or just "congratulations, you reached the end of the dungeon, here's your ending paragraph"?

They went old school: "A winner is you. This story is happy end." *credits roll*

 

[Thac0]

The 30x floors are pretty annoying. The short breath of fresh air they have been from the very mazey 20x floors has gone stale at 33 already. It is just a single corridor with a few branches for loot, level design from FF XIII lol. There is no longer skill involved in navigating the maze, and the simple loadout heavily encourages you to fight much more battles than on any previous floor. This destroys the precious balance this game has between dungeon navigating, fighting and looting. I am happy that I have two Franciskas with 25.000 damage from lvl60 Praying Mantisses who met their unlucky ends at my hands, so I can shred the encoungers there in a few turns. I am not entirely sure how you are supposed to beat Creeping Lava without such busted weaponry, 1500 Armor and 5200 HP is a bit silly for an enemy that drops 2000 damage swords.
At least I got a skill now that lets me teleport back to the academy, hope that the 40x will be better.

 

[Fluent]

Hey guys. How do I create a new expedition? Do I just return to the Academy and select 4 new members? Or can I "pause" my current party somehow and create a new expedition? Any tips here that also aren't spoilers? Thanks!

 

[Amurada]

Three days since purchasing Dungeon Encounters, and I've already played for about 22 hours. This never happens to me, as most games generally meander in a way that stops me from playing after 2 hours or so per session. This game has many ingenious implementations to it that ought to be staples to the genre in general. Every aspect of the game's design encourages improvisation, despite the fact that most aspects of randomization are completely voluntary (even the randomness of enemies damage, status afflictions, etc. are voluntary in a way if you think about it). Many general design decisions from other games are reinterpreted here, in a manner that is interesting, and usually better than where the inspirations originate (afaik) from. Team composition is the inverse of how it functions in Labyrinth of Touhou; Bravely Default's weight/agility system more significant, and has you thinking out turn orders for 'unit class' priority; HP essentially functions as SaGa's LP system (sorta); the balance the Proficiency Point system offers in place of locking equipment tied to a unit's level, is ingenious in a game that constantly auto saves and expects you to lose characters if randomness doesn't go your way; and maladies such as poison are as useful as they are in game's such as Dream Quest, with a similar implementation, re-interpreted with the ATB bar, which finally serves a proper function (essentially functions as LoT's does); the two pronged loot drop system is an absolute must for the genre going forward; and randomization is implemented in a manner that makes DE much more of a deck-building rpg than Voice of Cards (lol).

Never has either unit, or general team composition been as enthralling as it's been in Dungeon Encounters. --And the fact that this results in significantly different playstyles and outcomes in battle is beyond impressive; in a game that is so stripped down and barebones aesthetically. As soon as I unlocked the Isekai Kid, I've had this general team composition: McAllister with Malaflux 6, and either unarmed, or equipped with the Powder Gun (depending on the current floor's encounter pool); the Khajit (now replaced with the doge) with an attack accessory, and performing consistent aerial and melee damage with the strongest equips; Luigi with an Axe, and a shuriken to deal either consistent PD breakage, or random damage depending on enemy PD resource pools; and Sassafras with the ATB reset pocketwatch, an Enchanted Shuriken, and an agility accessory to ensure she's resetting turns or destroying MD ASAP. The best part is, there are many other team setups I'm completely ignoring, despite knowing that they are there. The Samurai's Katana is clearly a viable build, but I love the randomness and improvisation that comes with my current setup (and I've contended with enemies 20 levels my senior with my setup as well (level 50 enemies despite being at level 34-ish (currently in the 30's floors))).

I've had a chance run with an enemy that had initiative and destroyed a powerful and rare accessory upon the battle beginning; have gone 80k in debt upon a chance encounter with The House of Mouse himself; gotten vored the moment I took of the consumption passive; and have gotten my asshole spaghettified by a black one, just to be forced into re-recruiting all my party members with units less than half the level requirement, all improvised thanks to the lopsided nature PP offers lower level units. The game absolutely forces you to roll with these punches at all times, and I couldn't be any happier with it. There is no aspect of the game that feels unfair, despite RNJesus resulting in far 'worse' outcomes than the average game provides, and allows for you to overcome these obstacles. The loot destroyer is easily killed if you have a diverse enough team (and a later passive all but mitigates equip destruction); soon after being made Mickey Mouse's house negro, was I able to defeat him four times in a row with the right setup (for early game units at about level 23 apiece, ofc), and ended up with 160k, way well above the best game equips judging by the armories wares; and the encounters like the Black Hole make Traversal Ability passives an absolute must, something most game's completely gloss over.

There obviously could be various improvements that ought to be a part of the game.

For starters, I'm not against a minimalist approach, but either go all in or go with something a bit more conventional. Would be nice if the devs played Wizrogue; or have taken a gander at Labyrinth of Touhou 3's general visual approach. The general parchment paper visuals are great, and the animations and sounds associated with them are also pleasant, but the player avatar is completely out of place. I'm completely fine with all the hex values, but that's cos I'm an amateur programmer who appreciates buffing up on my base-16. Battle graphics are an absolute travesty though. I don't think the NES FF titles look all that great, but I always appreciated the battle UI, much moreso than what we're offered in DE, that's for sure.

Butt-rock reinterpretations of classical music is very much unappreciated. I may be a heathen when it comes to the classics, but I recognize the Earthworm Jim soundtrack anywhere, and I really would rather have the original compositions than deal with this garbled rock 'n roll that all but bastardizes otherwise great tracks. Obviously, the most ideal scenario would be to put a proper Square employee with the task of rearranging, or simply developing entirely new compositions.

I love that elemental magic is essentially gone, but it'd be nice to have more diverse magic categories that had a host of effects; for instance, let Petrify be 100% as Poison is, but with a randomized rate that can take up anywhere up to 8-12 ATB cycles to take effect (battles lasting that long are already a test of endurance), with a magic attack that does less damage, but exacerbates the effects of poison, petrify rate, and all other maladies; a defense syphon spell that recovers random units by a random amount would be nice; and anything else Ito can think up. I know now more than ever that Squeenix has been getting in their own way over the years by stifling a man of such talents over hacks like Sakaguchi.

Having some form of the GF system from FF8 would be nice as well. Just about one of the only unit custom system I've enjoyed, that grants significant freedoms. It was broken in FF8, but it'd be nice to see some aspect of it applied in a more sensible way.

And finally, the game could stand to be a little more difficult. As it is, the game is essentially balanced - damage pool wise - to the point that enemies could have their defenses crippled in a couple of shots given the very neat integer distributions that consider current floor loot. Knowing what the general damage pool is at any given point of time, literally incrementing the integers by a few digits each - even by +1 in some cases - could significantly alter the dynamics of battle.