Dungeon Encounters

 PC
User Score
6.4

Mixed or average reviews- based on 7 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 7
  3. Negative: 2 out of 7

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  1. Yshkimiry
    Oct 17, 2021
    8
    Good game for old gamers/ Good game for old gamers// Good game for old gamers/
  2. hatlock
    Jan 5, 2022
    10
    The user reviews so far are very vague so I have my switch review to help you understand what exactly is this weirdo of a game.
    I wanted to write a review as this game is under reviewed and it is hard to understand what you are getting into with it. I wanted to help people decide if this is the game for them (and it really could be your next gem!)
    This is a dungeon "blobber"/dungeon    The user reviews so far are very vague so I have my switch review to help you understand what exactly is this weirdo of a game.
    I wanted to write a review as this game is under reviewed and it is hard to understand what you are getting into with it. I wanted to help people decide if this is the game for them (and it really could be your next gem!)

    This is a dungeon "blobber"/dungeon crawler-type game, very much in the vein of Wizardry, but even though it is a JRPG, it is really a different evolutionary path than most other JRPGs.
    Essentially, this is a camping/hiking simulator, but instead of being outdoors, all of your hiking is a massive 100 level deep dungeon. You will plan, you will consult maps and your guide book. You will delight as your log book fills in with more and more facts and info that help you make fewer mistakes in the future.
    -Supremely high exploration focus. You get a robust set of mix-and-match party-wide abilities and your options expand through exploring the dungeon. You find specific skills in the dungeon
    -Supremely high level of abstraction. Your brain shades in the narrative even more than in a Saga-style game. You'll never "see" the dungeon. There isn't even descriptions of environments or narrative justification of the events.
    -Very low emphasis on luck or really any randomization. More emphasis on problem solving situations and decision making.
    -Emphasis on simple easy to understand rules with many permutations and options.
    -Characters essentially have 2 "abilities" which are equipment/weapons. Some armor gives a passive (like a chance to evade). Combat is much like a game like Fire Emblem in that all the math is very obvious and simple to calculate in your head. e.g. Your weapon does exactly 300 damage and the enemies HP is 301, so you know it will take exactly two hits to eliminate. Weapons either do magic or physical damage (in fixed or random amounts and either to one or all enemies). Magic and physical defense is basically a separate HP pool that is depleted first before true HP can be damaged.
    -Character basically grow in how fancy their equipment can be and total HP, but there are still a ton of decisions to make and ways to differentiate your party. But sadly, it kinda means new characters are really only about what equipment they have or their level.    … Expand
  3. Mathander
    Oct 26, 2021
    5
    There are positive things to be said for all of the deconstruction/reconstruction going on in grindy RPGs these days, but Dungeon Encounters feels like a step in the wrong direction.

    The game is an exercise in minimalism: there is no storied introduction, you just pick your heroes from a list and begin the game. There is no princess to save or legendary weapon to retrieve (that I know    There are positive things to be said for all of the deconstruction/reconstruction going on in grindy RPGs these days, but Dungeon Encounters feels like a step in the wrong direction.

    The game is an exercise in minimalism: there is no storied introduction, you just pick your heroes from a list and begin the game. There is no princess to save or legendary weapon to retrieve (that I know of, it's possible I missed it) just a town full of shops and stairs that lead down into the dungeon. Oh but you have to imagine it because the entire world is made up of squares and hexadecimal numbers.

    I like this concept and it would all be well and fine if the game wasn't also just one step away from a nethack game with bad UI. There are no animations or beautiful artwork to look at, just a bunch of text and (artistically inconsistent) portrait thumbnails that flash different colors when things happen. Backdrops look like SNES backgrounds that have been scaled up to the wrong resolution. Text and buttons feel slapped on without much thought to function or efficiency. If more than 5 people worked on this game I am very curious where they think all the work went.

    When picking your initial party there is no real distinction between the characters you can choose except their portrait and some start at level 2. The only stats are HP, Speed, P Def., M Def. and Proficiency (determines abilities and advanced armors you can equip). The one interesting thing they do is treat P. Def and M. Def as "barrier" health bars that have to be reduced to 0 before HP can be reduced by physical or magical attacks respectively, and they fully restore between battles. Other than that, there are no jobs or distinctive features I could discern between party members. So far I haven't found a reason to replace anybody in my party with any of the many recruitable characters roaming the dungeons.

    Combat has also been stripped of much of the "flavor" that has been introduced since NES era RPGs like Dragon Quest 1. So far the only spells available are basically various versions of the Harm spell, no elements. Weapons and spells either do a set amount of damage (malio) or a random amount of damage within a range (malaflux), and either hit one target or all targets(maliare/malafluxare). There are also 10+ levels of each you can buy. That's the entire list of harmful spells. There's no MP so you can cast them as much as you want, which is nice, but you only need one and it gets dull. There are healing spells too but they have a set number of uses between rests.

    There are different types of weapons like axes and swords and spears, but after 16 hours in the game I am not finding any significant functional differences between them.

    All of this mediocrity with a $30 price tag is baffling to me. I was really itching for a stripped down party based RPG. Pretty easy to please, I am the kind of person that loves min-maxing and watching numbers go up. But something about this game feels like a shallow farce.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
60

Mixed or average reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 4
  3. Negative: 1 out of 4
  1. Game World Navigator Magazine
    Oct 19, 2022
    31
    It’s almost as if there was a lottery among indie developers, with the grand prize being the right to publish their game under Hiroyuki Ito’s name (but without his oversight). Otherwise, we can’t fathom how something like Dungeon Encounters could come to be. [Issue#259, p.61]
  2. RPG Site
    Dec 6, 2021
    80
    I'm glad Dungeon Encounters exists. It falters in a few ways and it is definitely not for everyone, but overall it offers a satisfying dungeon crawler with simple rules, subtle depth, and just enough teeth to remain engaging.
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  3. The Games Machine
    Oct 29, 2021
    60
    RPGs have been an ever-evolving genre for years, and while most developers strive to introduce some new details to innovate, Dungeon Encounters follows the path of hardcore minimalism. The result is a game that looks outdated and with rusty game mechanichs, sold at a price that is everything but minimal. It offers a couple of interesting details but also wild grinding, very repetitive gameplay, and poor graphics. We should expect more than that from Square Enix.
    Read full review
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