2317: 25 Floors Up

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I’m on the 25th floor of the Tower of Bogomil, Dungeon Travelers 2’s very definitely, totally, positively final dungeon, honest. There are just five floors to go until I reach the top and the final final boss, though I suspect I will probably have to go and fight at least one of the “Gods” that lurk at the bottom of the other postgame dungeons before it will let me in to get my teeth kicked in by the boss. Oh, there’s also a five-floor annex to the tower, because of course there is. Each floor of this is pretty small, from what I understand, though; they’re mostly about additional boss fights.

I checked the clock when I made my last save tonight: 208 hours. This is officially the longest I’ve ever spent on a completely single-player game. Final Fantasy XIV has it beat in terms of total playtime, of course, but being an evolving MMO, that’s a somewhat different situation. Previous holders of the personal playtime records for me included Persona 3 (somewhere around 90 hours), Persona 4 (likewise), several of the Hyperdimension Neptunia games (100+ hours each, albeit split across several playthroughs) and Xenoblade Chronicles X (well over 100 hours and I hadn’t even finished half of it — must go back sometime).

What’s kind of impressive about that playtime for Dungeon Travelers 2 is that it’s a single playthrough. I haven’t started again, I haven’t done a New Game Plus — this is the same save file I started months ago. And only now, after 208 hours, am I even vaguely near finished.

What’s also impressive about the playtime for Dungeon Travelers 2 is that the vast majority of it occurred after the main ending to the story. The “Otherworld Chapter”, as the postgame is called, unfolds largely without an ongoing narrative — it simply unlocks a series of challenging dungeons in sequence and tasks you with navigating your way through some increasingly perilous and head-scratchingly confusing locales with a mind to eventually opening up the aforementioned Tower of Bogomil and making your way to the top. Why? Just because. (Well, technically you think the final boss of the story, who managed to escape after you defeated her, might be lurking up there.)

This motivation for dungeon-crawling is one of the purest there is: the simple joy of exploration and discovery. And this is one thing that Dungeon Travelers 2 is absolutely exceptional at that. It may obviously be working within some tight budget constraints — there are a lot of palette-swapped enemies throughout the game, and each dungeon is based on a single tileset, which in the case of the Tower of Bogomil you see a whole lot — but the absolutely exemplary level design makes up for these limitations and then some.

What I found interesting is that Dungeon Travelers 2 keeps a lot of its tricks up its sleeve until the postgame. One of the latter story dungeons features some switch puzzles that involve opening either red or blue gates at once, never both, but the postgame also adds floors with conveyor belts, floors that are interconnected by ladders and pitfalls, floors that are full of teleporters on every step, one-way walls, secret passages and doors that demand you have a specific party makeup or class present in order to proceed.

Essentially, the main story of the game is getting you prepared for this pure exploration, combat and character-building experience in the postgame. You get a taste of what to expect in the future in the story; you get thrown in at the deep end once you’re past the “final” boss. And it’s hugely enjoyable, as my playtime will attest.

Five floors to go, then. I’m hoping I get it finished by the beginning of next month, because there’s a ton I’d like to write about this game over on MoeGamer, so watch over there for some in-depth thoughts.

2299: The Sprawling Endgame of Dungeon Travelers 2

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I must admit, when I first started playing Dungeon Travelers 2 I was concerned that its dungeons were a bit on the small side compared to the dungeon crawler I had previously played, Demon Gaze. As the game progressed, however, it became apparent that I didn’t have anything to worry about.

And then I heard about the post-game content. And then I got into the post-game content.

Demon Gaze had a certain amount of post-game content — most notably a fairly straightforward dungeon where you re-fought all the bosses from earlier in the game, then a horrendously difficult true final boss right at the end. It took me quite a while to plough through it, mind you, though this was partly due to the fact I was also chasing the Platinum trophy, which necessitated a certain amount of grinding on the random number generator in the hope of getting some of the best item drops in the game.

Dungeon Travelers 2’s postgame is on a whole other level, though. It’s practically a whole other game’s worth of content; you finish the main story of the game around about the level 50 mark or so, and the postgame will take you to 99 (and beyond, if you level reset in the hope of “crowning” your characters through permanent stat bonuses) across a number of different dungeons.

What I find most fascinating about Dungeon Travelers 2’s postgame is how much effort has been put into it. I find myself wondering how many people will beat the final boss of the main story, watch the credits roll and then put the game down. It would be perfectly valid to do so, after all, since the game is technically “complete” then, even if you haven’t even seen half of what it has to offer. There aren’t even any specific trophies for the postgame — the only trophies you’re likely to see pop in the postgame is the enormous grind that is “kill 20,000 enemies” (you won’t even have killed 10,000 by the end of the main story, but you most certainly will have at least 20,000 under your belt by the end of the postgame) and the Platinum. In other words, the only reward you’re going to get from seeing the game through to its true end is the satisfaction of having beaten it.

But boy, is that going to feel good when it happens. The postgame dungeons are significantly more challenging than their main story counterparts, and in some cases make use of mechanics that haven’t been seen anywhere else in the game. There are dungeons where you have to contend with the relationship between several different floors, dungeons where you have to flip switches to open coloured doors in the right order, dungeons where you have to bring certain classes in order to pass through certain doors (bet you wish you’d leveled Tsurara now, huh) and dungeons that are just a single floor, but absolutely enormous.

Each of the dungeons has two or three bosses to fight as you progress through them, and a level 99 God boss at the very end who will most likely destroy you if you charge in there when you first reach them. Instead, what you’re supposed to do is explore each dungeon until you reach a trigger point (normally just before the door to the God battle) which opens up the next one. In a couple of cases, you have to increase your Quest Rank to a certain level before the next dungeon will open up, too, so hopefully you’ve been paying attention to the Quests as you go through the game!

I’m currently on the second-to-last dungeon, Gear Castle. This is a five-floor futuristic tower with a lot of puzzles. The first floor featured switches that opened blue or red doors (and closed the others), while the second was largely based around conveyor belts that you could switch the direction of with levers around the level. The third, which I’m currently on, features a mix of these two aspects, and I’m yet to see what the fourth and fifth floors offer.

Once I’m through Gear Castle I’m on the home straight: all that stands between me and final victory — aside from that 20,000 kills trophy, which I have no idea how close I am to — is the 30-floor Tower of Bogomil and whatever lies at the very top. I understand that reaching the 26th floor of Bogomil is a significant moment, as it’s at this stage your party should be levelled enough to take on the Gods, so I’m looking forward to that with a certain amount of trepidation.

All in all, the clock is going to be well over 200 hours by the time I’m finished with this beast, and I have absolutely loved it throughout. It’s seriously one of the best dungeon crawlers — if not RPGs, generally — that I’ve ever played, and more people need to play and love it.

Assuming I make it to the end by then, I’m planning a month of coverage on MoeGamer next month. There’s certainly a hell of a lot to write about.

2245: Dungeon Travelers 2: Some Tips and Tricks

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With my post from the other day in mind, I thought I’d do the greater community a favour and compile some observations, tips and tricks that I’ve stumbled across during my time with Dungeon Travelers 2 on the Vita.

Dungeon Travelers 2 is a surprisingly complex game. Don’t be discouraged if you find yourself struggling in the early game — there are plenty of opportunities to power yourself up and even put right any mistakes you might have made with character advancement. Experiment and find things that work for you; there is no real one “definitive” way to play that works for everyone, which is part of the beauty of the game.

I say this because the tips and tricks I’m about to share with you are based on my own experiences, and your mileage may vary according to how you prefer to play. In other words, these are not definitive strategies; rather, they’re what’s worked for me and the way I play.

So let’s jump in.

Illuminate the situation

Light is your friend. It may not seem important in the early dungeons — largely because it isn’t, for the most part — but the further you progress in the game, the more you’re going to start running into illusionary walls, which are a real pain, since they, well, look like walls, but you can walk through them.

Fortunately, you’re not expected to walk around butting your head into every wall on the off-chance it might lead somewhere. Firstly, you can use your map to determine if there’s likely to be something beyond a wall; if there’s a conspicuous gap, there might be something there, so you could try walking into it — or you could light up the dungeon using either the Flashlight item or the Priestess spell Light.

What does this do? Simple. Not only does it make the field screen brighter — helpful in those pesky Dark Zones — but it also renders all illusionary walls invisible, making formerly hidden passages visible. As such, you’ll want to keep Light pretty much permanently up via one means or another — if you have a Priestess in your party, they can take care of this, otherwise you should make sure you carry a bunch of Flashlights with you.

Don’t be too proud to retreat

Along the same lines, being able to escape quickly is also your friend. Conveniently, there’s both an item and a Priestess spell to help with this too: the item Emergency Exit and the Priestess spell Return both immediately transport you out of the dungeon and back to the world map, allowing you to nip back to the Library to lick your wounds, sell all the crap cluttering up your inventory and restock on any items you might have used up.

Don’t be too proud to do this. If your inventory is full, or your party is struggling, take a step back and return later.

Look out for shortcuts; unlock them before ending an expedition

With the above in mind, you’ll want to keep an eye out for shortcuts, particularly if you were deep inside a dungeon. Shortcuts can usually be spotted by doors that are locked “from the other side” when you first come across them. At some point later in the dungeon, you’ll reach the other side of that door and be able to unlock it, allowing you quick and easy access to the deeper reaches of the dungeon without having to go through the rigmarole you went through first time. Ideally, if you can push far enough through a dungeon to unlock a shortcut before escaping, that will make your life easier when you return.

Buff up before bosses

You will always get a warning before a boss fight — you’ll “hear someone on the other side of the door” or “sense a strong presence on the other side of the door”. When this happens, save and use any and all buff spells and abilities you have — because many of them can be used outside of combat. If you can go into a boss battle with useful skills like Brave, Protect and Moon Curtain up before you start, that means fewer initial turns wasted getting into a good position — initial turns where the boss may well decimate your party if you’re not careful.

Think about party composition

There’s a certain degree of flexibility in party composition, but you’ll have an easier time of it if you stick to the old faithful “holy trinity” of tank, healer and damage-dealers. One or two tanks can make up your front line, while your back line can be ranged damage-dealers and your healer.

Remember that not everyone has to deal damage to be useful; tanks, for example, are well-served by investing skill points in defensive abilities that help them protect the rest of the party, rather than trying to be a physical damage-dealer class.

Do note that if you want to see all the sub-events in the game, you’ll need to take trips into the dungeons with as many different combinations of characters as possible — and sometimes ensure you have some peculiar items in your inventory.

Know your stats and equip your party accordingly

Tanks want DEF and probably some decent ATK too.

Ranged attackers want ATK, DEX and AGI doesn’t hurt.

Mages want INT, which primarily comes from staves.

Priestesses and other healers want RES, which primarily comes from tomes.

Maids want AGI.

Everyone wants as much physical and elemental resistance as you can possibly get them.

Tank, tank, tank?

I’ve spotted three distinct ways to tank with the characters I have so far in the game.

Alisia is set up to be a damage-resisting tank — she progresses naturally into the Paladin and Valkyrie classes, which are able to equip heavy armour, protect and cover the party and have extremely good defensive capabilities on their own. Alisia works well using the Paladin’s Cover ability, perhaps coupled with the physical damage-nullifying Parry, since this can protect squishy back-liners from powerful single-target attacks. The Valkyrie ability that allows her to reduce damage to the back line if she has a shield equipped is very helpful, too.

Grishna, meanwhile, is set up to soak large amounts of damage through her large pool of HP and her Berserker abilities that allow her to buff her maximum HP still further. She also benefits from a very helpful ability that debuffs enemy stats if they hit her — the more points you throw into this, the more stats are affected when she takes damage. The fact that you essentially want Grishna to be the one getting hit is further compounded by abilities that make her more powerful and faster when she is low on HP — though, obviously, use these with care!

Eltricia, you may be surprised to hear, can also tank to a certain degree if you advance her into the Magical Princess class, even though this class is an offshoot of the Magic User base class. Magical Princess boasts Paladin’s Cover ability as well as a Kunoichi-style ability to absorb damage into illusionary afterimages. In other words, you can use an appropriately set up Eltricia as an evasion tank; as a Magical Princess, she makes a decent front-line fighter even if she’s not tanking, too, particularly with her stat-boosting Magical Change ability, AoE strikes and Circle skills that buff the whole party with Brave and/or Protect.

Maids: the backbone of your party

You’ll want a Maid in your party at all times. Whether it’s Conette or Ist is a matter of preference, though Ist does have a unique passive that gives her a bonus to all her Maid abilities, so once you get her she’s technically “better” in that role.

Why do you need a Maid? Well, because they’re an amazing support class, particularly when you develop them into their later evolutions. Even as a base Maid, though, they’re an essential part of your party due to their completely TP-free skills that heal HP and TP, as well as Generous Heart, arguably the most useful passive in the game, which restores party HP and TP after battle — whether battle was concluded by victory or escaping.

Once Maids develop into Bards, Dancers and their advanced-level counterparts, they become even more formidable, able to buff the party or debuff the enemies while continuing to provide their essential TP battery services. One thing worth noting is that song-based skills are treated as magic — they have a Chant time and are affected by Anti-Magic Zones — while dance skills are physical, and can consequently be used even if the user is Silenced. Freeze will stop a dance in its tracks, though.

Enchant, enchant, enchant

Make sure you step into a dungeon with a bulging coin purse — more on that in a moment — just in case you run into the blacksmith. If you do, be sure to enchant as much equipment as you can; note that you can otherwise defy the laws of the game during this process by using Sealbooks in your Guild storage to perform enchantments, and even bring equipment out of your Guild storage into your party’s inventory by enchanting it.

When you enchant a piece of equipment, its +x value increases by the “tens” digit of the level of the Sealbook used to enchant it. Thus a level 15 Sealbook will increase a piece of equipment by +1, while a level 35 Sealbook will increase it by +3. Try to enchant efficiently; you can only enchant each piece of equipment five times, so that could potentially be the difference between an increase of +5 and an increase of +20 or more depending on the levels of the Sealbooks you use.

The passives that get attached to the piece of equipment aren’t fixed, either; you’ll notice that most equipment is only able to hold two additional characteristics, with further enchantments potentially “overwriting” attributes that you previously attached. However, you can game the system somewhat by choosing a Sealbook, checking the preview of what the new equipment will look like, then cancelling out. When you choose the Sealbook again, there’s a decent chance you’ll get a different combination of attributes. Keep doing this until you get the combination of bonuses that you want.

Making money

Enemies don’t drop much gold and gold drops from treasure chests are fairly rare, too. Your main sources of income will likely be equipment drops and making Sealbooks. Be sure to identify equipment and check whether it’s an improvement on your party’s loadout before selling it on, and take a look at each Sealbook’s bonuses before tossing it. Also remember that Sealbooks can be used for enchanting, too, so it’s worth keeping those with particularly useful bonuses in your storage for later use. Those with crap attributes, though — or those that are too low-level to be particularly useful any more — are fair game for selling on. Take a trip to a dungeon where you can clear out enemies easily, rip through them with AoE attacks, make a bunch of Sealbooks, profit. Simple.

Also worth noting: the Treasure Hunter passive Negotiate works even if the Treasure Hunter in question isn’t in your party. If you’re not planning on taking a Treasure Hunter out and about with you, at least pump as many skill points as you can into this skill to get you significantly cheaper prices in both the Libra-Shop and the wandering merchants.

If you’re spamming Attack, you’re doing it wrong

Basic attacks will become more of a last resort later in the game, since with a well-levelled Maid in your group, your party will be considerably more self-sufficient than one without. Even without a Maid, though, most classes have a passive that allows them to regenerate TP to varying degrees, and it’s a very worthy investment. There are also a number of Sealbooks that include TP restoration as one of their bonuses, so either equip one or enchant the effect onto your equipment to make yourself even more self-sufficient.

Once you have a good flow of TP going in the party as a whole, you’ll want to forego the Attack command in favour of your characters’ more specialised abilities. They should play to their strengths, in other words: mages should cast, healers should heal, archers should pelt everything with arrows, tanks should protect themselves and the party. Don’t be shy with your skills; while you might find yourself short on TP in the early game, it doesn’t take long before your party can survive for much longer expeditions without getting exhausted. Once you reach this point, the only time you will probably use the Attack button is if your weapon has a particularly useful “on hit with basic attack” effect attached to it.

In most combats, you’ll want to debuff the enemy group as much as possible while putting yourself in an advantageous position. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to buff yourself in every combat, but debuffing the enemy, preventing them from casting or using skills, is always useful, particularly if you recognise the foe as having unpleasant party-wide attacks. (Beware the Kraken in the Underground Waterway; their party-wide water attack is horrid.)

Gear is more important than levels

The golden rule of dungeon crawlers: equip your party effectively, and they’ll be able to fight effectively. If you’re struggling to overcome a particular challenge, don’t immediately assume you need to grind, particularly if you’re still playing the main story, which is paced quite well in terms of XP gain. Instead, take a look at your equipment and see if there’s anything obvious you can improve. Do each of your classes have optimised primary stats? Can you improve their DEF or resistances at all? Is there a Sealbook or enchantment that might help the situation?

With this in mind, if you have a character you think might be useful but you feel they’re underlevelled, don’t be afraid to bring them along on an expedition, probably in the back row and definitely in as good gear as you can find for them. They’ll get a decent amount more XP for being part of a kill on a monster that is higher level than them — assuming they don’t get knocked out, of course — so be sure to protect them and they’ll catch up with the rest of the party in no time.

2230: A Reminder that Dungeon Travelers 2 is Excellent

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I forget why I paused my playthrough of Dungeon Travelers 2 a while back, but it certainly wasn’t because I didn’t like it. On the contrary, I absolutely love it, and have been really enjoying getting back into it sporadically in the evenings over the last week or so.

For those who missed my previous enthusings on the subject of this game, allow me to explain.

Dungeon Travelers 2 is an old-school “gridder” dungeon crawler for PlayStation Vita, developed by Sting and published by Atlus. Absolutely no-one would have heard of it were it not for Polygon’s Phil Kollar writing an indignant article called “Atlus can do better than this creepy, porn-lite dungeon crawler” a while back, after which everyone who thought Kollar was being a shallow, judgemental douchebag promptly preordered the game and eagerly awaited its arrival. While a lot of this immediate backlash was simply to spite Kollar’s terrible article — which didn’t even make an effort to understand anything about the game beyond “it has somewhat suggestive images in it” — those in the know were quick to point out that developer Sting has an impeccable pedigree when it comes to mechanically solid and interesting role-playing games that are often just a little bit unusual, making them very memorable.

Structurally, Dungeon Travelers 2 is fairly business as usual for the gridder genre; it’s the moment to moment gameplay where it shines, and particularly the variety of ways in which it’s possible to play. Heavily based on party composition and character classes, the frequent combat in the game is not the sort of thing you can get through by mashing the “Attack” button — indeed, this is a game that will happily obliterate your entire party in the very first dungeon if you don’t take appropriate precautions and play cautiously, remembering that in dungeon crawlers, it is usually inadvisable to attempt to clear out an entire dungeon in one single expedition.

No, rather Dungeon Travelers 2‘s combat is based very much on making appropriate use of your party’s abilities, both active and passive. There’s a certain amount of MMO-style conceit in there, too; unlike many turn-based RPGs, it is absolutely possible to have a tank up front maintaining the attention of the enemies as much as possible, while the back row rains down death from a distance.

Timing is absolutely key, too, even though the game is strictly turn-based. Spells and certain abilities don’t cast immediately; they have a period of time during which the caster has to chant the spell or song, and it’s only after this that it activates. Spells can be interrupted by a significant amount of damage or being afflicted with a status effect such as Stun or Silence — see, told you it was MMO-ish.

A lot of the passive abilities are really interesting, too. There’s one of the Berserker tank abilities that afflicts enemies with some significant stat debuffs when they hit you, and others that counterattack with nasty status effects or even outright damage in return. Certain buffs and debuffs can make these procs (there I go with the MMO lingo again) more or less likely to trigger, so effective combat is a case of judging the situation and making your party handle it in the most efficient manner.

A good example comes from the Girimekhala boss I fought in my last play session. She had a bunch of really unpleasant abilities, including a heavy physical attack on a whole row of party members, another heavy physical attack on characters adjacent in the turn order, a dance that lowered party stats and inflicted damage every round, and an ability similar to the Berserker’s counter-debuff mentioned above.

The first couple of times I fought Girimekhala, I went all-out attack and was quickly obliterated; tanks can’t tank very well if their stats are shot to shit, and once they went down, the back line quickly followed.

What I ended up doing was have Alisia the Valkyrie (defense tank) use her Cover ability for a one-off (until recast) chance to take damage in place of a party member, her Parry ability to completely nullify damage from one physical attack, and her Material Barrier ability to shield the entire party against physical damage. I then activated Grishna’s Blood Rage ability to boost her maximum HP so she could soak up some damage, too; as a Berserker, her defence isn’t anywhere near as good as a Valkyrie, but she makes up for this with her auto-debuff ability and strong offensive abilities which, while not very useful in this battle as they would always be countered, are often a big help.

Meanwhile, the back row got to work. Melvy the Witch (one of the strongest caster classes) repeatedly cast heavy damage single-target spells on Girimekhala, and acted as the main DPS (or DPT if we’re being picky, I guess) of the group. Fiora the Priestess, meanwhile, simply acted as a healbot, throwing out Circle Heal every turn to cure any damage that had managed to get through Alisia’s monstrous physical resistance. And Conette the Diva (support class) sang a song that helped Melvy and Fiora to chant their spells more quickly as well as using her Cook ability from her base Maid class to keep everyone’s TP (needed to use abilities or cast spells) topped up.

Puzzling this out and putting the plan into action was extremely satisfying, and much more interesting than simply throwing attacks out and occasionally healing. This fight simply wasn’t possible to win with an all-out attack strategy; as you’ll see from my description above, only one out of my five party members was inflicting damage on the boss, with the others all simply supporting the group in various ways. Thankfully Melvy’s magic damage as a Witch is absolutely astronomical, so her burst damage more than made up for the relative infrequency of hits on the boss.

To cut a long story short, Phil Kollar could not have been more wrong about Dungeon Travelers 2. While it is filled with suggestive artwork and distinctly ecchi scenes both involving the main characters and when you defeat the monstergirl bosses, that’s certainly not a reason to write it off or wag your finger at publisher Atlus, telling them they “can do better”. In fact, it’s absolutely one of the best examples of the dungeon crawler genre I’ve had the pleasure of playing to date, although be ready for a seriously stiff challenge, particularly once you start getting into the optional dungeons and boss fights.

2099: Further Travels in the Dungeons

I’ve played about twelve hours or so of Dungeon Travelers 2 so far, and despite my relative inexperience with the genre, I’m inclined to agree with those people who describe it as one of the best dungeon crawlers on the Vita. The really exciting thing about it is that I know I haven’t seen everything the game has to offer, and that it’s gradually increasing in depth and complexity as I progress.

This is a good structure: it keeps a challenging game accessible and easy to understand, and allows the player to spread their wings a bit as they become more confident with the various systems.

A case in point is the party formation and progression systems, which gradually introduce you to core concepts of the game a little bit at a time, then present you with more and more unusual cases, then open up progression a bit, then a lot, then give you more party members, and so on.

You start the game with just two characters: a Fighter (tank) and Magic User (damage dealer/healer). Shortly afterwards you’re joined by a Spieler (essentially a damage dealer, but with many skills relying on RNG), then later by a Maid (a support class that doesn’t use “TP” to power her skills) and a Scout (a high-speed damage dealer that can either be a melee or ranged combatant).

Once each of these characters hits level 15, they can move up a tier of classes, with each class splitting into two or three alternatives, then each of those splitting into another two possibilities further down the levelling track. Fighter can become either Paladin (damage-soaking tank) or Berserker (damage-dealing tank), for example; Magic User can become a Sorceress (straight damage dealer), Enchantress (buffer) or Priestess (healer). The interesting thing is that changing class in this way doesn’t prevent you from accessing the skill tree of the old class; it simply adds a new skill tree, offering you more choices to spend your skill points on with each level up. In this way, you can customise each character significantly — and, importantly, there’s the opportunity to undo things if you made a mistake, though this does involve resetting their level to one of the significant milestones (level 1, level 15 and so forth) and levelling them again.

I like this approach; it’s a little different from the Demon Gaze/Etrian Odyssey approach of allowing you to create your own party completely, because it means that you’re eased into the game’s systems with a proven, workable party lineup that you get more and more freedom to play with as the game progresses. The drip-feed of new characters into your party is entirely deliberate, too; in total, there are 16 different playable characters in the game, but rather than overwhelming you with endless possibilities from the outset, you’re introduced to these characters and their classes one at a time, giving you the opportunity to get a feel for how they work in a party situation, then by the end of the game you’ll have a complete lineup of available characters to pick and choose for your active party as you see fit. Given the apparent complexity of the game’s systems, this seems like an eminently sensible way to do things, striking a good balance between accessibility for genre newcomers and flexibility for veterans. True dungeon crawler vets will doubtless be most interested in the “endgame” dungeons, anyway, by which point any frustration they might have felt at the artificial limitations imposed on them in the early game will have been removed entirely.

So the systems are good, then — at least, they certainly appear to be from my experience thus far. What I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see alongside these solid mechanics is some decent writing, story and characterisation. Dungeon crawlers are often designed in such a way that the story just sort of happens with or without the player character(s) having an active role in the unfolding narrative, but Dungeon Travelers 2 makes a point of making each and every party member — including your protagonist — into a human being rather than a set of stats and abilities. This is achieved in a variety of ways: interactions and conversations in the story scenes between dungeon missions; one-liner comments as you explore the dungeons; and “sub-events” that are triggered by the actions you’ve taken in the dungeon and in battle. This latter aspect is particularly impressive; there are sub-events for a wide variety of different situations and events, ranging from equipping a particular item to a character getting knocked out in battle, and as well as being entertaining and amusing, they can also help you figure out things about the game systems for yourself. When Melvy the Magic User complains that her spells were being interrupted by heavy hits, for example, you then become aware that you, too, can interrupt enemy spells if you hit them hard enough — and that you need to shield Melvy from attack when she’s chanting.

The other good thing about this part of the game is that it gives a strong sense that the game world is bigger than the part of it that you see. As the name suggests, Dungeon Travelers 2 unfolds almost entirely in dungeons, with story scenes confined to menu screens and visual novel-style talking head segments. Despite the lack of an “overworld” and “towns” to explore, you get a very clear sense that the writers have thought about the game’s overall context, including off-screen characters, how society works, events that occurred prior to (and during) the game’s narrative and relationships between characters. You see all this through the eyes of just one individual, but there’s a strong feeling that you’re part of a much bigger world, even if you won’t see most of it in the game itself. This is good; it gives your actions in the game context and meaning, and helps provide some impetus to keep pushing forwards. It’s no good being told to save the realm if you don’t know anything about the realm in question, after all.

As you can tell, then, I’m having a real blast with the game so far. After my initial embarrassing death in just my third fight, the game hasn’t kicked my ass too severely, though it is pretty good at sending clear signals that Now Would Probably Be A Good Time to End This Expedition and Go Back to Town, usually by flattening one or more party members unexpectedly. It never feels cheap, though; any and all character KO’s are usually the result of overextending yourself and getting a bit ambitious, and as I recall from my tentative first steps into Demon Gaze, dungeon crawlers are all about being cautious as well as killing things and taking their stuff.

I’ve no idea how long the game is or indeed how large the dungeons get. I’m hoping this is a game that’s going to last me a while, though; I have every intention of trying to see everything it has to offer.

2097: Dungeon Travelers 2: Some Initial Impressions

Dungeon Travelers 2 came out on PlayStation Vita yesterday. To say I’ve been eagerly anticipating this game is something of an understatement; I’ve been deliberately holding off playing anything else “big” until it came out, because I was keen to be able to devote some time to it. And, after a good few hours with it today, I’m not at all disappointed with my decision to do so.

For the unfamiliar, Dungeon Travelers 2 is a first-person perspective dungeon crawler RPG (of the Wizardry mould that Japan loves so) created as a collaborative effort between visual novel producers Aquaplus, weird-but-cool RPG specialists Sting and That Company People Mostly Know The Name Of Because of Persona, Atlus. It has a somewhat convoluted history: its Japan-only predecessor Dungeon Travelers was a fleshed-out remake of a dungeon crawler that was part of a fandisc for Aquaplus’ visual novel ToHeart 2, though Dungeon Travelers 2 itself doesn’t have anything to do with either the first game or ToHeart 2, simply sharing some aesthetic sensibilities and mechanics.

Dungeon Travelers 2 shot to notoriety a few months back when Polygon’s Phil Kollar berated publisher Atlus for localising the game, which he referred to as a “creepy, porn-lite dungeon crawler”. I responded in some detail to Kollar’s nonsense back when he first blurted it out over at MoeGamer; take a look. Ironically, Kollar’s condemnation of the game actually made a lot of people — me included — who had never heard of it before aware of its existence, and I can’t help feeling that the game has been a bigger success than it probably would have been if he’d just kept his mouth shut. In that sense, I’m not complaining; it’s just a little frustrating to know that he almost certainly won’t have given it any time and attention since that initial piece, having written it off as the usual pervy nonsense.

Dungeon Travelers 2 is an ecchi game, though, make no mistake, if you hadn’t already noticed from the artwork that peppers this post; within five minutes of starting the first dungeon, you’re presented with a rather fetching view of one of the heroines’ panties-clad buttocks, and every boss fight is followed by some rather beautifully drawn artwork of said boss in a somewhat disheveled, suggestive state. Not only that, but the vast majority of enemies are scantily clad cute female characters (the rest are, inexplicably, sentient fruit) that draw a certain degree of inspiration from the popular “monster girl” aesthetic, albeit in a less overt way than something like the anime Monster Musume.

Here’s the thing, though; the ecchi content of Dungeon Travelers 2 works because, like other games that fully embrace their ecchi (or even hentai) side, it’s consistent in its use and it thus becomes part of the overall aesthetic. It’s a sexy game; it’s not about sex as such, mind you, but beautiful girls in sexy poses are very much part of the way it looks, and it is not at all ashamed of that fact. In order to fully enjoy it, you absolutely can’t be ashamed of it, either.

But the ecchi content is the least interesting thing to talk about when it comes to Dungeon Travelers 2, because it’s a really solid game with some interesting mechanics. Of particular note is the game’s approach to teaching you how to play; the electronic manual provided with the software gives you only a bare-bones outline of the interface, but through a combination of in-game lectures (delivered by the deliciously sarcastic Maid-Sensei) and in-context, in-character sub-events that are triggered by your various actions in the dungeon and in battle, the game teaches you how to play and things to watch out for without resorting to insulting your intelligence. Maid-Sensei’s lectures are the nearest thing to an outright tutorial, but those are skippable; the sub-events, meanwhile, are short, snappy, humorous and get their point across without being dull.

There are some interesting systems at play. The concept of the game revolves around “Libras”, who are individuals that are able to seal away monsters in books. The protagonist character is one of these Libras, but he doesn’t take an active role in battle; instead, the game is presented as you, playing the role of Fried the Libra, issuing orders to your gradually expanding party of pretty girl bodyguards and performing the important task of sealing away the monsters when they’ve been defeated.

It doesn’t stop there, though; the Libra concept is a core system of the game. By defeating enough monsters, you can create “Sealbooks” which have two main functions: firstly, they represent the fact that you have researched the monster sufficiently to understand their behaviour and characteristics, depicted in game as revealing their full stats, and secondly, they can be used as a piece of equipment, with each individual monster’s Sealbook having a different special effect. Thanks to a “completion percentage” figure in the game, there’s a definite element of “gotta catch ’em all” going on that I anticipate is going to cause me some issues in the future.

Alongside this is a detailed class system for all your party members, with each character able to level up a number of different classes and learn skills using earned skill points. It’s possible to build and specialise characters in a variety of different ways, and the early game introduces you to a selection of interesting classes, beginning with a fairly straightforward tank and DPS combo — pleasingly, the tank class is able to provoke enemies and increase the likelihood that they’ll be hit in favour of squishy mages — before giving you the peculiar “Spieler” class, which so far appears to be heavily based on luck and random chance, and the “Maid” class, which plays a supportive role that is very distinct from a dedicated healer by buffing and allowing characters to restore the points they use on skills as well as their all-important HP.

I’m not particularly deep into the game as yet, so the dungeons haven’t got especially complicated so far. There have already been some challenging fights, though, and the game is not afraid to slap you about a bit until you remember that you have to play dungeon crawlers a little differently to more conventional RPGs. I got a Game Over in the third fight I had in the whole game, for example, because I overextended myself and forgot that it’s perfectly acceptable in this type of game to advance a bit then run screaming for the exit to lick your wounds and restock; compare and contrast to your more typical JRPG, meanwhile, in which you tend to always be moving forwards rather than backtracking or making multiple expeditions.

In fact, what Dungeon Travelers 2 reminded me of, of all things, is a board game of the Advanced Heroquest ilk. The basic structure is the same: get overarching quest, go into dungeon, come back out if things get hairy, go back in, find treasure, go back out, resupply, go back in, fight a bit further… and so on. The “multiple expeditions” nature of exploration in the game is inherently satisfying, since you can easily see on the convenient automap when you’re making progress, because you’ll be revealing new areas. Discovering new monsters is enjoyable, too, since they’re all depicted with some truly lovely artwork, and the juxtaposition between the “pretty girl” monsters and the “sentient fruit” monsters is bizarre and hilarious.

I’m enjoying it a great deal so far, then, and I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time with it. I’m a relative newbie to the dungeon crawler subgenre of RPGs as a whole, but between Demon Gaze (which was my first real hardcore dungeon-crawling experience) and what I’ve experienced of this so far, I’m very much a believer already.

To the dungeons, then, where pretty girls await!

1996: Daylight

I gave the PS4 horror game Daylight a go this evening. It was super-cheap thanks to a hefty discount on PlayStation Plus, and I’d always found the concept to be interesting, so I felt like giving it a shot, even though its reviews hadn’t been all that positive. (But when have I, a proud Hyperdimension Neptunia fan, ever cared what reviews thought of a game?)

Daylight’s unique selling point is that it’s a procedurally generated horror game. What this means in practice is that the various environments you wander through as you piece together the fragmented story are chopped and changed around a bit with each playthrough. I’ve only done a single playthrough so far — it’s pretty short — so I can’t say with confidence quite how much it’s different each time around, but I can see how it would make changes without altering the fundamental structure and “journey” that the protagonist goes through.

Daylight casts you in the first-person role of Sarah. We don’t know much about Sarah upon starting the game, save for the fact that she’s woken up in what appears to be a ruined hospital, and some random dude with a frankly villainous voice is talking to her through her cellphone, which she has the good sense to use as a torch to light the darkness. (It’s also a handy minimap.)

Gameplay is, I am assured, somewhat of the Slenderman mould, in that the vast majority of what you are doing throughout the game is picking up notes with various bits of Plot on them while attempting to fend off the unwanted attentions of various lurking horrors and ultimately unlocking the way to the next area. In Daylight’s, case, you achieve this by collecting a particular number of “remnants” — notes and memos scattered around the area — until a “sigil” unlocks in a creepy room covered in strange symbols, and you must then take the sigil to a locked door to open it and proceed to the next area. The game alternates between these “scavenger hunt” sequences and calmer puzzle areas until you eventually reach the game’s conclusion.

There’s no combat in the game; this is a horror game in the Amnesia mould, in which just being near an enemy is enough to hurt you. However, there are several means of dealing with them rather than just running away screaming: simply making sure you’re not looking at them keeps you safe, for one, but if you do happen to find yourself face to face with one of these bloody horrors, lighting a flare will cause them to combust in a satisfying fwoof of supernatural smoke and fire. These flares are, naturally, in rather limited supply — you can only carry four at once — so on occasion, it’s better to try and avoid trouble rather than defeat your foes. You also can’t use flares while you’re carrying the sigil for an area, so it’s a good idea to find the exit before you pick up the sigil just so you can make a break for it.

Like a lot of horror games, Daylight’s story is piecemeal and leaves a lot up to interpretation — perhaps a little too much. It’s not especially clever like the stories of its genremates in the Silent Hill series, and it’s riddled with cliches, but it was enjoyable enough to pick through and come up with a few theories about, and it had a nicely creepy atmosphere to the whole thing.

Not the best horror game I’ve ever played, then, but an interesting one, nonetheless, and worth giving a shot to while it’s cheap on PSN.

1499: Per. So. Na

So, Atlus confirmed today that the four new Persona games — Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth for 3DS, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for PS3 and 360, Persona 4: Dancing All Night for PlayStation Vita and Persona 5 for PlayStation 3 — are coming to English-speaking territories. And there was, as they say, much rejoicing.

My love of the Persona series is well-documented on these very pages, but I’m particularly pleased the three spinoff titles are all making it West. I’m especially excited about Dancing All Night — as evidenced by yesterday’s post, music games are very much my jam, and Dancing All Night is looking very lovely indeed. I can take or leave Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for now — I’m still yet to beat the first one, though I will get to it eventually — and Persona Q intimidates me a little as someone who is still yet to play an Etrian Odyssey game. But all of them are appealing in one way or another; all of them are games I will play and love.

And then there’s Persona 5, which we know next to nothing about so far. I’m really looking forward to this. The Persona team’s previous game on consoles was Catherine, which turned out to be seriously great — not to mention a hefty challenge — and set a certain level of expectation for what a Persona 5 might look like. I’m thinking cel-shaded visuals interspersed with anime cutscenes, and that same sense of exquisite stylishness that has permeated the series since at least its third installment.

As for the others, I would worry that they’re milking Persona 4 dry were it not for the fact that all the spinoff games featuring the Investigation Team and pals are very different beasts. Of the upcoming titles, only Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is remotely similar to a Persona 4 game we’ve already had — and given that game’s surprisingly visual novel-ish nature, I don’t mind all that much, since it’s the story that’s the important thing, rather than the fighting. (Although competitive players might disagree.)

As for Persona Q and Dancing All Night, though? I can’t wait to give them a try — particularly, as I say, the latter. Rise was adorable in Persona 4, and the opportunity to spend another game in her company as she does what she does best — singing and dancing in an indefatigably cheerful manner — is not something to be passed up, particularly with the prospect of other Persona 4 stars putting in an appearance, too. Yu, Persona 4’s original protagonist, looks particularly fetching strutting his stuff — I very much like how he’s taken on a lot more of his own personality since the original game thanks to spinoff titles and the official anime adaptation.

But sadly we have a fair while to wait before we can get our hands on them. Persona Q and Ultimax aren’t showing up until autumn of this year, and Dancing All Night and Persona 5 are next year. Still, the fact they’re not just around the corner is probably a good thing — gives me time to clear my backlog a bit, not to mention review the several games I’ve got on my plate at the moment!

1154: Operation Successful

I beat Trauma Team this evening, and I am very happy with the way it all played out. Despite having a touch of that recognisable Atlus craziness about it, the team did kind of keep to their promise of providing a more “realistic” experience that veered less into the realms of sci-fi and more into the realms of vaguely plausible… I don’t know what you’d call it, really. Disease horror?

Of course, that realism doesn’t extend to the operation sequences being in any way “authentic” — the Trauma Center series has always been about being quick and skilful rather than accurately simulating real-life surgical procedures — but it really doesn’t matter too much. The six different styles of gameplay all complement each other very well, and the pace of the narrative is such that you never really get bogged down in a single discipline for too long — unless of course you choose to do so in the non-linear first half of the game.

As I predicted even before I played the game, I think the Dr Naomi forensics sequences were my favourite aspect. These combined some lightweight adventure game-style gameplay with a lot of lateral, logical thinking and some great character development. There was a wonderful sense of piecing together a narrative in these cases, even though you didn’t directly see any of it unfold until you’d “solved” it all. Instead, Dr Naomi’s habit of thinking out loud fulfils the same narrative function as things like Phoenix Wright’s internal monologues in the Ace Attorney series, of the narration text in a more traditional visual novel. You have to use your imagination a fair bit, but somehow this doesn’t diminish from the emotional impact of some of the tales told. The very nature of Dr Naomi’s specialism means that there was always going to be a degree of darkness about her cases, but I was quite surprised how far they went in a few cases.

Trauma Team manages to be so emotionally engaging throughout thanks to its strong cast of characters. The focus is very much on them instead of the patients — indeed, in the surgery sequences, patients are always represented as abstract mannequin-like figures — and the game has a strong character-led story as a result. If we were getting bogged down in the individual tales of each and every patient these doctors came into contact with, the impact of the game’s “true” story (which unlocks after you’ve completed all the individual episodes for each of the six doctors) would be somewhat diminished. Instead, each of the doctors’ episodes is to do with their own sense of personal growth and coming to understand something about themselves, or about life, or about each other. By the end of the game, it’s very clear that they’re all better people in one way or another.

I think this point above is why I like the Trauma Center series so much. I was initially drawn to it by the fact that games about surgery are something you don’t see very often, but it quickly became apparent that these aren’t really games that are overly concerned with providing a realistic depiction of life in a busy hospital — though Trauma Team does a much better job of that than its predecessors. No, instead, they’re games about the characters, and about the overarching plot, which is usually fairly ridiculous in nature but somehow seems perfectly reasonable in context.

Atlus’ skill at storytelling — achieved through its excellent character artists, talented music team and skilled writers (and localisers, for that matter) — has pretty much earned them a “free pass” from me for anything they put out in the future. Between strong offerings like the Trauma Center and Persona series plus quirky one-offs like Catherine, they’re easily one of my favourite developers, and I hope they continue to make great games for years to come.

Now, let’s have a new Trauma Center game for Wii U, hmm?

1150: Further Enthusing Regarding Trauma Team

It’s not an exaggeration to say that I have been eagerly anticipating the ability to play Trauma Team ever since it was first announced, and I have been inordinately frustrated until recently at Atlus’ complete lack of a regular European distributor meaning that it never got an official release on this side of the pond. Now that I am happily playing my North American copy on my hacked Wii, you’ll hopefully forgive me if I perhaps dedicate a few posts to the awesome things about this game I’ve been waiting to play for a very long time — because judging by the bit I played tonight (I know I said I wouldn’t, but I am weak) there are going to be a lot of them.

I specifically wanted to talk about the Forensics missions today, because they’re one of the reasons I was so interested to play this game. A friend of mine described the presence of these missions as “you got Ace Attorney in my Trauma Center” — and if you know me well, you’ll know that that sounds like a match made in heaven for me. I’m pleased to note that these missions very much lived up to their promise.

In a Forensics mission, you take on the role of Dr Naomi Kimishima, a character who occasionally showed up in Trauma Center: Second Opinion. Naomi is a forensics specialist with a curious (and secret) talent — when she enters a crime scene, she can hear the victim’s dying words on her phone. Exactly why this is the case hasn’t been explained yet, but given that we’re dealing with a game in which an orthopaedic surgeon is also a superhero and the hospital’s resident endoscopy specialist comes from a long line of ninjas, I’m not entirely surprised by this turn of events.

Anyway. Gameplay in a Forensics mission involves nipping back and forth between Naomi’s office, the evidence room that houses the corpse and their personal effects, and the crime scene itself. By examining various items and pointing out abnormalities, Naomi collects “cards” that represent items of evidence or thoughts about the situation. By combining these cards together or sending them off for analysis to her FBI partner “Little Guy” (rather charmingly represented as a Mii avatar on her computer — this is a Wii game after all) she can inch them closer to being “solid evidence”. When all the cards she has in her possession are “solid evidence,” the case is solved, and you have to point out the relevant cards as she does her police procedural-style “wrap up” of the end of the case.

It’s not quite that simple, though. You effectively have to “show your working” as you deduce various things about the situation by answering multiple-choice questions. These generally ask what you, the player, have deduced from the items of evidence you’ve observed or combined. Most of the time, thinking logically through them will get you through, but there have already been a few headscratchers and pieces of misdirection along the way — plus you have to make sure you remember plenty of details about the case as you go along. You can’t just try every answer until you get it right, either — make too many mistakes and you’ll fail the mission.

The whole thing was brilliantly presented with some atmospheric music, excellent visuals and decent voice acting, and it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d like to see more of in the console space. Essentially, it was nothing more than a kind of point and click adventure, but it was hugely fun and massively engaging. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Naomi — and of seeing how her story ties in with that of the other doctors, as so far she’s been largely separate from the rest of them. Trauma Team has a very interesting narrative structure, but that’s something I’ll save talking about until a later time when I’m a bit further on.

This sort of experience is exactly why I love Atlus, and why I love the Trauma Center series in particular. I’m doing things in this game that I have never done in any other game before — not just in Naomi’s forensics section, but also in the diagnostic and surgery components, too. The game is also a fantastic use of the Wii’s distinctive control scheme, making brilliant use of all the Wii Remote and Nunchuk’s features, ranging from their accelerometers to the pointer function and even the speaker in the handset. It’s a game that really couldn’t be done in the same way on any other platform — perhaps PlayStation Move, though making a Move-exclusive title is pretty much commercial suicide — and a fantastic experience that I would very much like to jam in the face of anyone who complains that the Wii doesn’t have any good games.