Tag Archives: dungeon crawler

Cover Games, MeiQ

MeiQ: Girls and Guardians

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By attempting to provide an accessible dungeon crawler experience, MeiQ has put itself in an interesting position.

Too much mechanical depth and it will alienate the very people it’s hoping to attract. But not enough depth and the hardcore gridder enthusiasts will tire of it long before things get interesting. How to approach this, then?

Through a combination of approaches, as it happens, and the result is both effective at what it does and surprisingly distinct in a subgenre that is sometimes accused of taking a bit of a “cookie-cutter” approach.

Let’s take a look at the game’s mechanics in more detail.

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Cover Games, MeiQ

MeiQ: Introduction and History

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First-person, grid-based dungeon crawlers have, over the years, become the place to go for those who like hardcore, mechanics-driven, combat- and exploration-centric role-playing games.

Often de-emphasising narrative in favour of deep customisation, challenging encounters and devious level design, the dungeon crawler has gone from strength to strength over the last few years in particular, but also remains a subgenre that is notoriously difficult to get into.

Its with this in mind that Idea Factory and Compile Heart developed MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death (or Death Under the Labyrinth as it was known in Japan) — it’s designed to be accessible and enjoyable even to newcomers, yet incorporate the elements of the genre that longstanding fans enjoy so much. And it’s very successful at what it does.

So how did we get here?

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Cover Games, Dungeon Travelers 2

Dungeon Travelers 2: Sights and Sounds

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A big draw of Dungeon Travelers 2 is its gorgeous presentation. This shouldn’t be surprising, given its heritage, but it really does have a distinctive look and feel to it.

Its visual aesthetic also proved to be the most controversial aspect of the game, with commentators such as Polygon’s Phil Kollar refusing to take the game seriously due to its appearance. This is particularly sad, as the game has some lovely art, some distinctive character designs and a very strong sense of style to it.

Let’s take a look at the art and sound of Dungeon Travelers 2, then.

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Cover Games, Dungeon Travelers 2

Dungeon Travelers 2: Narrative, Themes and Characterisation

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The dungeon crawler genre isn’t particularly renowned for its storytelling, though this isn’t necessarily a criticism.

The genre grew out of tabletop adventures where the players just wanted to hack and slash their way through some monsters and take their treasure, after all, so it’s understandable that a computerised version of this type of adventure would emphasise mechanics — particularly combat — over narrative.

That doesn’t mean that your average dungeon crawler is completely devoid of plot, however, and in recent years Japanese developers in particular have shown how to strike a good balance between narrative, characterisation and satisfying mechanics. Dungeon Travelers 2 is a prime example.

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Cover Games, Dungeon Travelers 2

Dungeon Travelers 2: Historical Context and Mechanics

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The dungeon crawler subgenre of role-playing games has a long and proud history that stretches right back to the dawn of gaming.

Dungeon Travelers 2 perhaps doesn’t deviate particularly significantly from the more well established conventions of the genre, but it executes them with such polished competence that it becomes clear shortly after starting to play that it is a game that has had a great deal of thought put into its mechanics.

But how did we get to this point? Let’s take a look back at the history of the genre, and how it relates to Dungeon Travelers 2 in particular.

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Cover Games, Dungeon Travelers 2

Dungeon Travelers 2: Introduction

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You’ve probably heard of Vita RPG Dungeon Travelers 2, even if you haven’t played it — but for all the wrong reasons.

You may well recall that around May of 2015, Polygon’s Phil Kollar incited the wrath of Western Japanese game fans by reporting on the impending localisation of Dungeon Travelers 2 with the provocative headline “Atlus can do better than this creepy, porn-lite dungeon crawler”.

Kollar’s impressions of the game were primarily based on the trailer that Atlus released after announcing the localisation of the game, and on the preorder incentives, which included a calendar featuring various illustrations of the game’s characters. The game was not available in English at that point — though it had been out in Japan for a while — but it was pretty apparent Kollar hadn’t played it, nor did he have any intention to.

Which is unfortunate for him, really, because Dungeon Travelers 2 is probably one of the finest dungeon crawlers ever created. Your loss, Kollar.

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From the Archives, MoeGamer 1.0

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Dungeon Crawler

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I was something of a latecomer to the RPG party; yes, I was one of those people who discovered RPGs with Final Fantasy VII.

Consequently, I didn’t really grow up with first-person perspective grid-based dungeon crawlers like The Bard’s Tale and the early Dungeons & Dragons games. To the teenage me, an “RPG” was a narrative-heavy game with predefined characters who had limited customisation, and in which battles and boss fights were but punctuation in the overall experience’s storybook rather than the central attraction.

This isn’t to say I didn’t play any first-person dungeon crawlers, of course; just not many of them. And, while I enjoyed some of them — the original Lands of Lore from Westwood Studios being probably the most standout example — I still found the “J” approach to RPGs to be the most compelling and interesting to my specific tastes.

Which is why I was so surprised to find myself enraptured with Kadokawa Games and Experience’s Demon Gaze, a title which recently made it to the West courtesy of localisation specialists NIS America.

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