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As of late I've been pretty heavily into dungeon crawlers, or I guess the proper fully accurate term is "Grid based first person dungeon crawlers". You know the genre: you're dropped in a maze in first person and have to navigate your way around either with the aid of a top-down map, or by drawing your own. The big examples are Apple and MS-DOS titles such as Wizardry and Bard's Tale.
Well, there's a ton of less well-known titles for consoles. The main examples that were known in the US at least were Arcana and Shining in the Darkness (both amazing games by the way and I wholly recommend them). Popular in Japan, and never seen in the western world was the Deep Dungeon series. Over the past month I've been chipping through all four games of the series on my Twitch stream and at this point feel like I've reached the point where I almost have to ramble extensively about them.
First of all, Deep Dungeon was developed by HummingBirdSoft, a Japanese Real Estate company that branched out into video games for some strange reason. They had been developing games for three years when they made Deep Dungeon, but Deep Dungeon was their first game for the Famicom Disk System. Honestly, the game could have easily been a standard Famicom cart and probably would have fared better for it, but alas.
As far as dungeon crawlers go, Deep Dungeon is both very generic and very basic for its first two iterations: you only have one character to worry about and only battle one foe at any given time. 99% of battles involve you mashing A to attack and hoping you outlast your opponent. There's some semblance of a magic system in the form of purchasable items that are not consumed on use and can inflict damage, silence, sleep, etc. At first glance there's really not much here.
Since this is practically a novel, I'll cut each game into its own clicky link.
( Deep Dungeon I: Madou Senki )
( Deep Dungeon II: Yuushi no Monshou )
( Deep Dungeon III: Yuushi he no Tabi )
( Deep Dungeon IV: Kuro no Youjutsushi )
In total, all four games took me about 70 hours to complete. If I had to rate them in order, it would go something like IV, II, I, III, with III a significant distance behind the rest and IV a leap ahead as well. All in all they're solid games if you like dungeon crawlers. They're just not anything unique, and can suffer from shallow design and monotony until the fourth iteration.
Next I may try the Bard's Tale series...
Well, there's a ton of less well-known titles for consoles. The main examples that were known in the US at least were Arcana and Shining in the Darkness (both amazing games by the way and I wholly recommend them). Popular in Japan, and never seen in the western world was the Deep Dungeon series. Over the past month I've been chipping through all four games of the series on my Twitch stream and at this point feel like I've reached the point where I almost have to ramble extensively about them.
First of all, Deep Dungeon was developed by HummingBirdSoft, a Japanese Real Estate company that branched out into video games for some strange reason. They had been developing games for three years when they made Deep Dungeon, but Deep Dungeon was their first game for the Famicom Disk System. Honestly, the game could have easily been a standard Famicom cart and probably would have fared better for it, but alas.
As far as dungeon crawlers go, Deep Dungeon is both very generic and very basic for its first two iterations: you only have one character to worry about and only battle one foe at any given time. 99% of battles involve you mashing A to attack and hoping you outlast your opponent. There's some semblance of a magic system in the form of purchasable items that are not consumed on use and can inflict damage, silence, sleep, etc. At first glance there's really not much here.
Since this is practically a novel, I'll cut each game into its own clicky link.
( Deep Dungeon I: Madou Senki )
( Deep Dungeon II: Yuushi no Monshou )
( Deep Dungeon III: Yuushi he no Tabi )
( Deep Dungeon IV: Kuro no Youjutsushi )
In total, all four games took me about 70 hours to complete. If I had to rate them in order, it would go something like IV, II, I, III, with III a significant distance behind the rest and IV a leap ahead as well. All in all they're solid games if you like dungeon crawlers. They're just not anything unique, and can suffer from shallow design and monotony until the fourth iteration.
Next I may try the Bard's Tale series...
