Dungeon Encounters: Hands-on Preview – Tokyo Game Show 2021

Dungeon Encounters is directed by Hiroyuki Ito, involved in the creation of titles such as Final Fantasy IV, V, XII, and Tactics. I started to sweat a bit when I started playing because not only is he well known for his work on battle system design, but I was told it was mostly about his systems so naturally I was prepared to have to take a lot. on board. Some of you may also be interested to know that Cattle Call, known from the Metal Max series and The Legend of Legacy, was in charge of its development.

It is not a game with lush visuals and effects or a deep and fascinating story, but rather a kind of basic turn-based RPG, focused on numbers. IGN Japan had a chance to test it before launch, so here are our initial impressions.

This dungeon exploration RPG involves forming a party of up to four characters and delving into the depths of a board game-style square grid map. Although the dungeon is divided into squares, you can focus on exploring and making your way through the maps without having to worry about systems like stamina or hunger. As you progress through the floors, the maps get bigger and the enemies get tougher.

Despite the board game-like design, these are not linear dungeons, with maps containing many branching routes.

Stepping on one of the numbered squares across a map triggers a battle or event. Think of these numbers as replacements for enemy symbols or treasure chests, with black numbers representing battles and white numbers leading to events. Almost like a sinister version of snakes and ladders.

The game’s simple battle system features bars that fill according to the speed of each friendly and enemy character. Once a bar is full, that character can act. Some of you may know this as an active battle system, a part of Final Fantasy that begins with FFIV. Although attribute-based weaknesses and resource management for powerful offensive or healing techniques and spells are commonly found in RPG battle systems, this game does not use attributes or MP, not even items! However, what you will find are simple but deep battles.

What makes the battles in this game stand out are the three values ​​that both enemies and allies have: Physical Defense (a shield that absorbs physical damage), Magic Defense (a shield that absorbs magic damage), and HP (which for course means defeat). for allies or enemies if it reaches zero).

Physical and magical defense stats are relatively popular in RPGs, but in Dungeon Encounters they act as shields taking damage instead of HP. In other words, taking physical damage from swords and bows first will reduce your physical defense, and your HP will only start taking damage once that defense reaches 0. The same goes for magic damage, so you’ll need to reduce first. gradually the magic damage of an enemy. defense if you want to defeat them with magic damage. Also, excessive damage in most cases is not transferred. Even if an enemy has 1 physical defense and 1 HP, you will have to attack twice to defeat him even with a 200 damage physical attack.

Each character only has two types of attacks at most, which further complicates your decisions in battle. Physical and magical attacks have different levels of effectiveness against different enemies, requiring you to consider how your party’s attacks are balanced. Also, while MP may not exist in this game, the multi-target attacks and hard-to-use random damage attacks force you to make every simple choice very carefully.

During the time he was playing he seemed to get reasonably good results with a group of characters each having a physical attack and a magical attack, but it felt like a pretty basic strategy that anyone would come up with, and which I doubt it would still be. so effective as you progress through the game.

Bare-handed attacks are an exception to the rules, ignoring defenses to deal 1 damage directly to an enemy’s HP. This attack may seem almost useless, but it is a practical way to defeat 1 HP skeletons in a single turn.

Forcing you to think and change things is the fact that not all enemies can be approached in the same way: flying enemies can only be damaged with ranged physical attacks like bows and weapons or with magic attacks, enemies with petrifying attacks. they can completely disable your party members. As a result, I began to get the feeling that the variety of fierce and nasty enemy attacks would only increase. One attack in particular completely drained the action gauge from all of its targets, trapping me in a loop when its user appeared alongside other enemies. You will definitely need to pay close attention to the order in which you take down your enemies to avoid difficult situations.

Another important point to note is that while his physical and magical defensive shields are reset after each battle, his HP remains the same. Not only that, but there are very few ways to restore your HP, so it’s important to efficiently navigate each battle while taking as little damage as possible.

As crucial to Dungeon Encounters as its battles is its exploration. As noted above, players progress through maps of squares, some of which contain numbers. Although the black numbers represent enemy encounters, the white numbers trigger events that benefit the player. These can be a large number of things: stores where you can buy and sell equipment; opportunities to regain HP, status issues, defeated allies, and more; information on specific enemies; treasure that provides new elements; new skills that can be learned; and riddles to solve.

An example of a map puzzle.

Skills are a vital part of this game, ranging from HP recovery and defense against specific condition ailments to those that aid exploration, such as an expanded map screen. Using these requires skill points, but they are earned as you travel across the map, which organically encourages exploration.

Puzzles can show the coordinates of an item after a series of questions are answered, while others ask you to deduce the location of a hidden item based on the shape of a map, adding a bit of extra excitement to what might otherwise become a boring exploration.

I only had a chance to play at the beginning of this game, the first 19 of 99 floors to be exact, but still, I found myself in situations where a wrong decision in battle or a paralyzing state disease put my entire party down. in danger of descending. Because this game uses an auto-save feature, you’ll even break a sweat when you can’t run away multiple times in a row. It was hard to tell from my experience how far the game’s battles could go in terms of challenging the player without feeling unfair, but I left with the feeling of wanting to win the game and see all that Dungeon Encounters has to offer.

With its heavy design focus on systems and numbers in particular, rather than rich construction of the world and visuals, Dungeon Encounters It may not be the type of game that will find a large audience. But if you are the type of gamer drawn to fighting simply but deeply, you should definitely give this a try.

Dungeon Encounters is scheduled to release on PS4 and Switch on October 14, 2021 and on PC (Steam) on October 15.

Preview written by Yoshiki Chiba, editor of IGN Japan.