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.

A nice arcade experience, with great art and sound direction. good for just popping on and playing a round while you watch some youtube! Roguelikes tend to fall into the trap of early game being too hard until you learn its mechanics, so I really appreciated how Doom Keeper eases you into its gameplay before you're digging around a huge map.

I really appreciate the amount of of options they give you to tweak your rounds. Having options for alternate play styles like drillbert mode or auto defense only is a lot of fun!

And prestige mode is a nice twist on your basic gameplay loop, but endless mode is so dangerous to me. I WILL just mine hours upon hours with no higher thinking going on in my brain.

As someone who only played about ten minutes of the original, I can really only give my thoughts on this game from the angle of JUST playing this remake.

Holy hell, what a game this was. A fulfilling bite-size chunk of RPG - completed the main story and all the bonus postgame bosses in just under 20 hours - but despite the short length, it is stuffed to the GILLS with charm and fun character moments. It's vibrant, snappy, smooth as butter, and I enjoyed (almost) every minute of it. Very pleased I took a chance with this game.

I am so, SO glad I took a chance and played this game.

The story, and the way it connects the player with the delightful cast of characters, goes places I have never seen another game go before. My jaw was on the floor with certain a certain plot twist, and it's pulled off amazingly.

The pre-rendered (pre-painted, I believe?) backgrounds give this game a timeless look... Outside of some awkward character animations. The creativity on display is on another level.

The luck-based element of the deckbuilding combat can be frustrating if you get a crap hand at a critical moment, and there's some frustrating bosses towards the end - the remaster's framerate is insanely spotty too - but those issues are waylaid but just how amazing the game looks, the writing, and the satisfaction of kicking you enemy to the curb with the combat system.

Please, PLEASE give this game a chance if you're even remotely curious or enjoy RPGs - you may just find a new favourite, like I did.

A breath of fresh air that Mazza SORELY needed.

The amount of creativity packed into the game's (a little disappointingly) short runtime is nothing short of delightful. You'll never quite know what's coming next, and the presentation factor with the vibrant graphics and fantastic sound design make it a treat for the senses. The uniqueness in course aesthetics and overworld theming compared to the previous games (even if they're based on old trends, like 'grassland' and 'lava') remains fresh.

The only real major disappointment is the bosses, which are both far too sparse, and are also unable to catch up with the game's own wellspring of ideas, leaving them feeling far too tame for the game, and boring in design. The design of the final boss made me roll my eyes, and if you've played other Nintendo games, you'll know exactly why.

Overall, though, this is an absolute diamond of a game, and proof that, even after all this time, when Nintendo know what they want to do with an IP, they know HOW to do it.