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jp's Dungeon Maker (DS)
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| [February 17, 2018 11:28:51 AM]
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Another game I picked up for next to nothing. That being said, the premise (from the back of the box) seemed really interesting. In a nutshell you're in charge of creating a dungeon (digging, placing rooms, etc.). The dungeon then attracts monsters (different monsters are attracted to different rooms) which you fight with in order to get money and loot. Loot consists of either equipment or food ingredients. You spend half the game in the dungeon, wandering around fighting monsters, etc. and the other half in the village buying stuff (new rooms,magic items), selling stuff (equipment, etc.) and, most importantly "leveling up".
The progression system is different - every night you can eat a meal and rest. Resting restores your health and magic. Eating is how you "level up" - different meals (some created with several ingredients) have different permanent effects on your stats. So, you can gain 1 HP, or 1HP and 1 STR point, or some other combination of things. Initially I was pretty excited by the system because you have some flexibility on what you want to increase and such. Also, it means that you always level after a dungeon, no matter what! However, for the meals to work you need the ingredients, that means either buying some of the basic ones OR killing specific monsters and hoping they drop the food item you want. It works on paper but it becomes REALLY grindy after a while. A short while. This is because you have to spend a lot of time fighting monsters you don't really care about anymore (too easy) just for the chance of an item drop AND the progression starts to feel really, really slow. My "fix" for it would be to make certain ingredients easily purchaseable after a while, so that you focus only on getting new/special ingredients from the monsters you're currently equipped to fight.
As you fill out your dungeon you also learn that each level has a goal - you need to build it out to a certain point (minimum number of monsters and/or enough of a certain type of monster) in order to fight a boos that appears. The bosses are obviously a significant step up in terms of challenge. The boss then leaves a hole and you now have access to a lower dungeon level.
I played all the way down to level 3 of the dungeon and although the grinding was really grindy and starting to get really boring I do appreciate how the game has started to mix things up. First, I found a slime companion (who can help in fights). And then, a girl who used to cook meals partied up with me as well. It makes for more interesting combat BUT also makes things MORE grindy. You have to cook meals for the girl as well - which means you now need double ingredients. The slime progression is kind of cool though - when you kill a monster there's a chance the slime will try to mimic something of the monster which can provide you with a stat upgrade (or lower!). You can choose not to, but it's the only way to improve the slime, for example by copying the monsters arm it gets more STR or something like that. You have a higher chance of a "mimic opportunity" against solo monsters, which is the complete opposite of the item drops where the chances are higher against groups (up to three).
In all, it's an interesting game but the grind was too much for me....
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jp's Dungeon Maker (DS)
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Current Status: Stopped playing - Got Bored
GameLog started on: Sunday 11 February, 2018
GameLog closed on: Saturday 17 February, 2018 |
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