Release Date: 14 February 2018
Date Played: 13 May 2022
Dungreed is a cute, fun, addictive, but faily flawed rogue-lite dungeon crawler. It certainly came out during the rogue-lite craze that was taking over the indie game scene in the late 2010s and is still going strong. It draws heavily from the games that influenced it and seems to mainly take its queues from other rogue-lite darlings, Rogue Legacy and Enter the Gungeon. While it isn't as well designed, expansive, and well... good as either of those, it's still a nice game that can get it's hooks into you for at least a dozen hours or more before you're able to wriggle free.
You play as an unnamed adventurer who visits a town that's been swallowed by the gaping maw of the anthropomorphized dungeon gate. As you explore deeper and deeper into the dungeon, you'll rescue the town's inhabitants and build new homes for them as you rebuild the world above. Of course, your goal is to venture further and further into the dungeon to stop whatever great evil is hidden there. It's a basic story without much lore going on. It really only serves as a vehicle to get you into the gameplay, and that's totally fine with me. If you're one of those gamers that likes to delve into subtle clues and hints about the game's world, you're not going to find much of that here.
The gameplay loop is the same as most rogue-lites and consists of two parts. There's the main gameplay element of exploring randomized dungeons that are full of randomized weapons and upgrades. You're supposed to "build" your run around the strengths of the items dealt to you in order to string something together to conquer the dungeon. You'll collect gold, unlock new items, rescue town members, and defeat bosses as you work your way deeper and deeper. When you die, you lose all of the items you've collected on the current run and are only able to carry back a fraction of your gold before attempting the dungeon again.
The second half of the gameplay loop is the "meta" game that occurs in the overworld between your attempts in the dungeon. As you progress you'll earn experience that will help you level up your character and make him a little stronger for the next run (up to level 30). Depending on which skills you decide to improve as you level up, you'll gain new abilities like a double jump, and damage bonus, and extra dash, etc.. Since you have a maximum level, it won't take long until you realize that you can't put skill points into everything and you'll have to pick and choose how to best build your character for your playstyle. Luckily, you can rearrange your skill points at will with no penalty. In addition to this, you can unlock new costumes (which are actually new characters) that have different strengths and weaknesses to take into account. Finally, the town members you've rescued can provide you with randomized gear to help you get started on your next run. This is supposed to give you a sense of progression in the game in those moments where you fail miserably in your dungeon crawling attempts. Unfortunately, the "meta" game isn't very expansive and you'll soon exhaust that sense of progression and will be stuck trying the dungeon over and over again without any changes or improvements to aid you.
The gameplay itself is just a sidescrolling hack and slash platformer almost exactly like Rogue Legacy. You run around, and avoid enemies and their projectiles while killing them for their loot as you explore the dungeon. Each room serves as a battle arena that has to be cleared before you can move onto the next room. There are a couple of tweaks to the formula to help Dungreed stand out from Rogue Legacy. The first is that you have access to guns in addition to melee weapons. This is where the game draws its inspiration from Enter the Gungeon. Often times, these guns are very powerful as they let you keep your distance from the hordes of monsters. To balance this, they have to be reloaded when they run out of ammunition thus leaving you vulnerable to enemy attack. Luckily, unlike Enter the Gungeon, you have unlimited ammo for your guns and don't have to worry about running out of it. The second tweak that sets the game apart is the hunger system. Near the entrance of each floor of the dungeon is an tavern keeper who sells a randomized assortment of food. This food is used to strengthen your character and make them more powerful during each run. The food also comes with a fullness level that will fill your character's hunger meter. As you continue to find and clear new rooms of the dungeon, your hunger meter will deplete and allow you to purchase more food. Thus, it behooves you to find the tavern keeper as soon as possible on each floor and then to fully clear all of the rooms of the dungeon to build up more hunger so you can eat all of the food you possibly can. If you're able to manage your hunger meter well, you'll soon find yourself absolutely wrecking all of the enemies you come in contact with. This is by far the most interesting mechanic of the game, and I wish they had expanded on it more because there is some real potential there.
You'll also run into shop keepers, treasure chests, challenges, and other various non-combat rooms as you work your way downward. Hopefully, you'll find some equipment to help synergize with your current build. You have two weapon slops and 4 accessories you can equip to make a loadout and you'll often be tinkering around with the items you've collected while trying to make your character as strong as you can. After you've explored sufficiently, you'll find the entrance to the boss fight for that floor. There is only one boss per floor and they are always exactly the same. So, once you learn their patterns, they become more of annoyance rather than a challenge. When you take them down, you'll be rewarded with a boat load of gold, a healing item, and your choice of 1 of 3 items (or upgrades) to help you along your way. With enough min/maxing, skill, lucky upgrades, and awesome items, you should be able to build a run that will take you all the way to the end.
The graphics of the game are very cute and have a nice pixel-art aesthetic to them. Once again, it's very heavily influenced by Rogue-Legacy and at first glance, it might be difficult to tell the games apart. Still, everything is nice and colorful and all of the areas feel very different from each other. It really breaks up the flow of the game, which is desperately needed in a repetitive game like this where you're doing the same areas over, and over, and over. The music on the first floor is an absolute banger and can hang in there with some of the best video game songs of the last decade or so. Unfortunately, after this the music isn't quite as memorable or catchy. It serves its purpose well enough, but it stands out in stark contrast to that awesome first track. You'll be humming along to it while you play... the other songs, not so much.
On the technical side, the game plays fine. However, as of the current date, the game's trophies are bugged and almost none of them unlock if you're playing the physical copy of the game. Even after putting in a dozen hours I hadn't unlocked a single trophy in the game (some of which are just for killing the first boss in the game, etc.). The only two trophies I was able to get to unlock were the one for eating 13 pieces of food in a single run and the one for finishing the game for the first time. It looks like a lot of other people are having the same issues getting the trophies to unlock. I messaged the publisher, Nicalis, and didn't receive a response. Oh well... If you're a trophy hunter or completionist, you'll have to stay away from this one.
Conclusion:
Dungreed is fun, but just doesn't have the staying power as many of the best rogue-lites out there. The overworld "meta" game hits a road block with only 9 town members to save and a cap at level 30. It makes the vast majority of your runs feel like a waste of time. There's not really anything to spend your gold on outside of buying food from the tavern keeper, so bringing it back to town when you die is pointless. Not only that, the items the people in the town give you to help are usually garbage items that you don't even want to bother using. Also, the vast majority of the items you pick up on your run don't do anything to help. Most of the items are different weapons, and once you have the one that you've decided to use for your run, picking up another weapon that you're not going to use feels like another waste of time. There's nothing like finding a legendary weapon that you built your run around, and then the next 25 chests you open are all common weapons that you'll never use. Also, being limited to 4 accessory slots really inhibits how much fun you'll have in the game. It prevents the ultra-zany builds you get in a lot of rogue-lites where you're so overpowered that the game becomes more of a spectacle than a challenge. I think this is one of the best parts of any of the games in the genre and Dungreed really shoots itself in the foot by curtailing your ability to go out of control. It gives players an endorphin rush knowing that there's the possibility that they'll find some crazy combination of items that will allow them to get past the hurdle that they've stumbled over again and again. In Dungreed, you never really feel that way. There are extremely powerful items, but the same ones show up over and over while others never appear. The game needs a bit more randomness and items that work together rather than replace each other.
In the end, Dungreed is just an average game. It is more fun at first when you're leveling up, unlocking new items, and saving townfolk. But, after a few hours of that, you've unlocked everything. If you don't finish the entire dungeon, you've just wasted an hour of your life because your previous dungeon run was meaningless. With only a few characters, a smallish weapon and item selection, and limited accessory slots, most runs start to feel the same. This is not something you want to happen on a game that's meant to be played over and over in an endless manner. If you've played some of the rogue-lite greats (Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy, Enter the Gungeon, Hades, Slay the Spire, and Faster than Light, etc.) give this one a shot. You might be able to kill a couple of dozen hours with it. If you haven't played one of the aforementioned games, play one of those instead.
Final Status: Beaten
Final Score: 7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment