im extremely dissapointed in this. i've been waiting for this game since 2018 cause the game grabbed my attention with its incredible graphics and top notch pixel-art. but beyond that, there's not much remarkable about this game. I'm not invested in any of the characters (except Sam), the combat is really boring (at least for me, it reminded me a lot to 2D zeldas, which i personally dislike. I don't think they're bad they're just not my cup of tea) and also i've encountered some technical problems such as frame stutters or some minimal graphical bugs. I'm not interested in the slightest on finishing this.

gameplay: 10 ME PUTO ENCANTA
musica: 10 pero mucha reusada del 1
artstyle: 10 igual que el 1
historia: 0 de lo peor que he visto en mi vida
duracion: 70% del juego no deberia existir

conclusion: es el mejor gameplay de un jrpg que he jugado nunca junto con kh2 pero la duracion y la historia se cargan el juego entero

I think out of every game i've ever played, none of them mean so much to me as Dungeon Zer0. This game isn't perfect. It has it's flaws. But the good of this game is so great that i'm able to forgive the big flaws. I won't talk about everything because otherwise i'd be here all day but i'm going to talk about this game a lot.

There's just so much to like in this game. The characters and gameplay are this game's biggest strength. I value friendship a lot and while this game doesn't do "power of friendship" (despite one of Peter's battle lines literally being "we'll beat them with the power of friendship"), this game's main cast genuinely feels like a family. Everyone is likable and everyone has enough screentime. Even lesser relevant characters like Peter and Peter are still present in the story enough times. "Character irrelevancy syndrome" is something i feel that's an issue with a lot of JRPGs when it comes to their main party but Dungeon Zer0 manages to avoid that pretty much entirely. Dungeon Zer0's main cast is honestly my favorite main cast in any game period.

This weaves into the gameplay because i think the best thing an RPG can do is make it's combat feel like the party is actually working together as opposed to individual actions simply overlapping. The Combo system of this game is excellent and it's flashy enough to where even if you wanted to make the argument that it gets repetitive, it never feels like it gets old. This is helped by the audiovisual presentation represented by the little blue ring accompanied by a "ding" every time you cancel an auto-attack into an Art, an Art into an Art and an Art into a Special. The fact that Art cooldowns are based on auto-attacks and not just you sitting there allows you to feel more involved with the combat more than previous games in the series. I also really like the way healing is handled. By weaving the healing into the combat itself, you can stay alive while still focusing on the combat. Healing will never interrupt the flow, which trust me, happens a lot in RPGs.

While i do prefer Torna's style of it, it's just preference at that point. Everything about the combat is just incredibly satisfying to me and i'd say it has the best gameplay in the series (though i do prefer Torna's way of doing it a bit more).

The gacha-like mechanic, while i understand the criticisms, don't really bother me. And i think gachas just aren't worth playing at all but this game actually managed to take this mechanic and weave it into the story. Unlike gachas, the Blade Summons aren't just a thing you do. It's something that's acknowledged within the world itself and the best part: no duplicates for the Rare Blades. I mean, it wouldn't make sense for there to be.

The story is better than most people like to give it credit for. The way i see it, the story has a consistent buildup. Some parts of the story are low points but it never reaches a point where the story is so good and then it just falls off a cliff (like what happened in the last 20% of Dungeon One's story). I do think it could've been a little bit longer but i really only started to think this after going through my fifth playthrough of the game. Or i could just be feeling like that because i know this game like the back of my hand and everything goes by quicker now. Dungeon Zer0 doesn't have the best story in the series, Dungeon Kiwami still reigns supreme in that regard, but it's definitely a fantastic story that some people tend to ignore because of the occasional fanservicy scene (which isn't even a lot, why do some people like to pretend that Ch.2 and 4 make up the whole game?)

Of course, it's a Dungeon game which means phenomenal music and world design is a must. This game has my favorite soundtrack in the series and while the world design isn't on the same level as Dungeon Nocturne (a game with a world in a tier of it's own above the rest), it's still an amazing world that takes the concept of living on the bodies of giants from Dungeon One and expands upon it. "What if the bodies weren't all humanoid? What if the bodies were actually alive"?

Now, i did say at the start that there are some big flaws with this game and while i can ignore it on account of being my favorite game of all time, it is still worth discussing. The elephant in the room is that the tutorials in this game are doodoo dogshit. If there's one thing that it seems IER Studios has been consistently struggling with in the past 10 years, it's tutorials. Dungeon One had fine tutorials. Then Dungeon Nocturne barely teaches you anything. And now Dungeon Zer0 tries to teach you but just ends up giving you bad advice or just not actually telling you. I've seen a few people say they couldn't enjoy the combat and there's a 95% chance it was because the game just does a shit job at explaining mechanics and whatnot. If this is you, i suggest watching KH Reaper's "Everything I Wished I knew about Dungeon Zer0" video, as it does a good job actually introducing you and teaching you the mechanics.

The voice acting is also kinda bad at times. Some people definitely exaggerate it but i can't really defend Peter's screams aside from "it's not that bad" and Peter, who has the worse voice acting in the game by far. The Field Skill checks are also annoying at times. In a series with a focus on exploration, i should not need HMs to do so. I don't mean to sound like huge chunks of the world are blocked off by Field Skills, it's usually just a cave and most Field Skills are for quest purposes anyway but i'd much prefer the way Dungeon Nocturne did it, by simply having it be for treasure troves.

I also do think that Bringer of Chaos, the game's highest non-Custom difficulty, is pretty stinky. It's geared towards NG+ playthroughs, which is fine, but Bringer of Chaos just stops being fun after a certain point. If you want a more challenging difficulty, i'd suggest using Custom to tune it to your liking.

I can't think of any other big flaws at the moment. I could mention some lesser flaws, like how i feel that some of the villains aren't as good as other villains in the game. Two of the main villains are really good, don't get me wrong, but they are basically in their own tier. But that's more of a genre problem, i don't think i've ever seen an RPG with multiple villains and all of them are good. Though i will say i really do like the Torna group's sense of comradeship. Helps them humanize them more.

Like i mentioned at the start of this review, Dungeon Zer0 is my favorite game of all time in my favorite video game series of all time. I haven't even talked about some other things, like how the DLC for this game is one of the best DLC deals i've seen (and that's not even counting the fact that it comes with a whole new game). Or a bunch of neat little details about the world that you'll probably miss on your first playthrough. Because like i said, i'll be here all day.

Dungeon Zer0 is the greatest game of all time, IER Studios is based.