Dungeon Encounters

released on Oct 13, 2021

Dungeon Encounters is a unique dungeon exploration RPG in which you lead an expedition to chart the depths of an otherworldly labyrinth. Plan and prepare to overcome numerous obstacles, solve puzzles, and defeat monsters. Strategize to survive!


Released on

Genres


More Info on IGDB


Reviews View More

there's some maybe interesting thoughts here but they're held back by an exhaustingly large dungeon and dice rolls upon dice rolls upon dice rolls

admittedly didn't get suuuuuuper far but the slog's gone on long enough i can't see it getting any better, especially with my significant issues with its systems (the large amount of highly random damage, floors being big and uninteresting, heavily encouraging skipping around and thus just... not engaging with the actual gameplay). overall 0/10, play Etrian Odyssey instead

A game made for a very, very particular kind of freak, and I happen to be one of those freaks. I love close to everything about it--its clean, minimalist aesthetic; the lack of story; the flavor text it gives its characters even though they all might as well be paper dolls; its oddball, playfully mean sense of humor. I'm not sure I'd necessarily call it deep, but there's a lot hidden underneath its seemingly simple surface, and the way its systems feed into each other...the intelligence and thoughtfulness of Hiroyuki Ito and his team really come through here.

To say it's not for everybody would be an understatement but I would call it equally suited for adventurous newcomers to dungeon crawlers and veterans alike: newcomers for its immediate accessibility and pick-up-and-play quality; veterans for the fun, interesting ways it toys around with genre conventions. Cannot believe something like this came from Square Enix.

Layer 1: Dungeon Encounters looks like the devs said "good enough" and called it a day.

Layer 2: There's a surprising level of polish here. Nice little character bios, cool rock guitar battle music, and the battle system has more depth than it lets on.

Layer 3: Once again I find myself starting all the way back at the first floor with my weakest characters, tediously trying to save my main party who were all KOed and/or turned to stone by a surprise overleveled enemy party. They're stuck on floor 20, which took me forever to get to, but I know there's 99 floors total and I've barely scratched the surface of what this game expects me to do. What started as a lean distillation of my favorite aspects of JRPGs has turned into the grindy tedium that I originally feared it would be.

I spoiled the ending for myself by looking it up online. I won't ruin it for you; I will simply say that if I spent the hundreds of hours necessary to get there, and that's all that happened, I would be pretty upset.

Dungeon Encounters does a lot of things right, and it could have been fine-tuned to be a much more enjoyable and stimulating journey than it is. I like the idea of an Into The Breach-style approach to the JRPG format; simplified aesthetic + deep strategy. But clearly, the devs said "good enough" and called it a day.

to me this feels a bit like the Vampire Survivors of dungeon crawlers and JRPGs: a heavily distilled, barebones approach to typical genre conventions. if you're anything like me and you loathe VS too then you might take that as this game being a mindless stimulant, but it's less flagrant than the comparison may suggest. there's at least some creativity here, but it's funny how drastically different critical reception is between the two.

in Dungeon Encounters you walk over tiles on a grid, get stopped by battles on random tiles, leave to the next floor once you run over every tile, rinse and repeat. battles are the ATB flavor of turn-based combat against what seems to be a preset enemy formation, selected at random. both parties have physical defense and magic defense to protect their HP, both defenses auto-regenerate after every battle, and magical attacks are free to cast rather than being tied to a resource. abilities are active and passive and use a resource by taking up a certain number of slots; you gain more slots by walking over as many tiles as possible. you have to start from 0 and make it all the way down to floor 99 with zero meaningful developments -- no dialogue, no overarching narrative, no characterization, nothing.

that's about it yet somehow I found myself losing track of time as I played it. I'm still enjoying it to a certain extent but after 4 hours I'm on floor 11 and can't help feeling like it's just not worth the time or effort. I haven't had more than one party member die at a time so I've never truly felt challenged or pressured, especially not to the point of having to strategize whatsoever. I wouldn't be looking forward to a party wipe either, I've read that you have to find your downed party with your underleveled B squad so it's like pseudo-permadeath with tedious strings attached.

I can't be bothered grinding out the monotony just to find out if the game might get even remotely engaging. it's not gonna happen. at this point I play it a lot like I did with "survivor clones" where I mute the audio and listen to some of the many albums I've been meaning to get to... and I truly despise the idea of consuming several forms of media at once so that's not really saying much. I play video games to get absorbed in them and take in every element, mainly the music and sound in this case and the lack thereof, not to zone out and juggle my attention between the game and a TV show, movie, YouTube video, whatever it may be unless I'm grinding post-game content or an achievement in one of my favorite games or something. I just think that nonsense should be reserved for mundane chores and work, and games shouldn't be a chore to play like this one is.

I don't outright dislike Dungeon Encounters but it's a hard sell even to someone that'd be into it. I kinda like how bold it is in its minimalism, I just can't justify the time investment given the shallowness. if I wanted to play a JRPG with less story and more gameplay I'd play SaGa, it's got plenty more mechanical depth. if I want to play a similar dungeon crawler I'll play a blobber or whatever. in a time where we're spoiled with so many great video games out there and plenty more to come, I fail to find a reason to see this one to the end.

A minimalist, ATB-system dungeon-crawler. Some interesting features, but the barren presentation and padded-out campaign really kill its appeal after more than a few hours. I'm sure it's a good game, but I think I need more ambiance in my dungeon-crawlers.