Dungeon Encounters seems to have some interesting mechanics, but doesn't have enough depth or variety over its length. It leans heavily on my willingness to grind for levels and equipment, which doesn't sustain it for me.
The game is purposefully simplified in terms of graphics and world. It pulls it off well enough for what it is, but is definitely boring to look at while playing. The character portraits are well done, but static. Characters have short descriptions that hint at some deeper world building and the character's place within it, but don't ultimately seem to come to anything. Some of them have connections to other characters (some of which are trapped in the dungeon for you to find later), but this stuff seems tenuous and isn't very impactful overall.
Exploration in Dungeon Encounters involves walking through grid-based levels to find staircases to the next levels, enemies, treasures, and other special events like wandering heroes you can add to your roster. It plays very much like Etrian Odyssey or older, text-based, computer rpgs. There isn't a ton of interesting level design going on and exploring the dungeons quickly gets tedious.
There is also a mechanic that rewards you for stepping on every tile in a level, which is... pretty bad, since it encourages you to do the most boring part of the game in the most boring way. I really don't understand this, since there are many other non-destructive solutions for whatever behavior Dungeon Encounters is trying to encourage here.
Dungeon Encounters uses the ATB system invented for Final Fantasy IV, which is nostalgic, but doesn't do a lot to explore it much farther beyond speed stats that have a minor effect.
Characters in the game have magical defense and physical defense and weapons strike one or the other. When you wear down the defense of one type, you start dealing damage directly to their HP. I didn't find this to have that much depth, in practice. Most combats just ended up with me using whichever type of attack was strongest.
Weapons also are of two different types, random damage and static damage. Static weapons have lower attack potential, but random weapons are truly random, doing as little as 1 damage to an enemy. I didn't feel like this was much of a choice since the randomness can be so punishing I favored static weapons 90% of the time.
Character development is entirely based on these weapons and though the game presents it as though it is complex and deep, it sort of just isn't. There simply aren't very many interesting choices to make. Physical vs. magical doesn't matter because it is easy to focus one or the other and random vs. static doesn't matter because having 2-3 characters with static weapons offsets any negatives the random weapons have.
I grew tired of this game pretty quickly. The combat felt VERY solved almost immediately, and I never really had to vary my strategy or make any real choices. Exploration quickly became tedious as well and while there are hints of interesting design, in 30 levels the game didn't do anything worth mentioning in this regard.
I think the idea of a stripped down, focused dungeon crawler that explores some interesting mechanics is a super cool idea, but Dungeon Encounters just doesn't do this for me.
The game is purposefully simplified in terms of graphics and world. It pulls it off well enough for what it is, but is definitely boring to look at while playing. The character portraits are well done, but static. Characters have short descriptions that hint at some deeper world building and the character's place within it, but don't ultimately seem to come to anything. Some of them have connections to other characters (some of which are trapped in the dungeon for you to find later), but this stuff seems tenuous and isn't very impactful overall.
Exploration in Dungeon Encounters involves walking through grid-based levels to find staircases to the next levels, enemies, treasures, and other special events like wandering heroes you can add to your roster. It plays very much like Etrian Odyssey or older, text-based, computer rpgs. There isn't a ton of interesting level design going on and exploring the dungeons quickly gets tedious.
There is also a mechanic that rewards you for stepping on every tile in a level, which is... pretty bad, since it encourages you to do the most boring part of the game in the most boring way. I really don't understand this, since there are many other non-destructive solutions for whatever behavior Dungeon Encounters is trying to encourage here.
Dungeon Encounters uses the ATB system invented for Final Fantasy IV, which is nostalgic, but doesn't do a lot to explore it much farther beyond speed stats that have a minor effect.
Characters in the game have magical defense and physical defense and weapons strike one or the other. When you wear down the defense of one type, you start dealing damage directly to their HP. I didn't find this to have that much depth, in practice. Most combats just ended up with me using whichever type of attack was strongest.
Weapons also are of two different types, random damage and static damage. Static weapons have lower attack potential, but random weapons are truly random, doing as little as 1 damage to an enemy. I didn't feel like this was much of a choice since the randomness can be so punishing I favored static weapons 90% of the time.
Character development is entirely based on these weapons and though the game presents it as though it is complex and deep, it sort of just isn't. There simply aren't very many interesting choices to make. Physical vs. magical doesn't matter because it is easy to focus one or the other and random vs. static doesn't matter because having 2-3 characters with static weapons offsets any negatives the random weapons have.
I grew tired of this game pretty quickly. The combat felt VERY solved almost immediately, and I never really had to vary my strategy or make any real choices. Exploration quickly became tedious as well and while there are hints of interesting design, in 30 levels the game didn't do anything worth mentioning in this regard.
I think the idea of a stripped down, focused dungeon crawler that explores some interesting mechanics is a super cool idea, but Dungeon Encounters just doesn't do this for me.