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. that's about it. 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.
there's really not much to it and I still somehow found myself losing track of time as I played it. I'd say I enjoyed it to some extent, mainly as a change of pace from all the action games I've played, but after 4 hours I'm on floor 11 and I feel like it's just not worth my 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, particularly 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.
in fact while I was playing it I couldn't help but draw vague similarities to Vampire Survivors. not as in it's another mindless stimulant; if I had to choose I'd pick this instead every time, although it is funny how different critical reception is between the two. what I mean is that it's another heavily distilled and barebones approach to genre conventions. where Vampire Survivors is like watching paint dry for ~30 minutes just to unlock other stuff and upgrade stats between runs, this game is all about the dungeon crawling without the theatrics, atmosphere, worldbuilding, narrative, etc etc. I know there's other dungeon crawlers with a similar design but nothing about this one managed to captivate me.
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 want to play a dungeon crawler I'll play a blobber or whatever. if I wanted to play a JRPG with less story and more gameplay I'd play something like SaGa, it's got plenty more mechanical depth. 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.
there's really not much to it and I still somehow found myself losing track of time as I played it. I'd say I enjoyed it to some extent, mainly as a change of pace from all the action games I've played, but after 4 hours I'm on floor 11 and I feel like it's just not worth my 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, particularly 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.
in fact while I was playing it I couldn't help but draw vague similarities to Vampire Survivors. not as in it's another mindless stimulant; if I had to choose I'd pick this instead every time, although it is funny how different critical reception is between the two. what I mean is that it's another heavily distilled and barebones approach to genre conventions. where Vampire Survivors is like watching paint dry for ~30 minutes just to unlock other stuff and upgrade stats between runs, this game is all about the dungeon crawling without the theatrics, atmosphere, worldbuilding, narrative, etc etc. I know there's other dungeon crawlers with a similar design but nothing about this one managed to captivate me.
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 want to play a dungeon crawler I'll play a blobber or whatever. if I wanted to play a JRPG with less story and more gameplay I'd play something like SaGa, it's got plenty more mechanical depth. 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.