Dragon Ruins II

alot more fun than expected

What do you get when you take the idea of a classic Dungeon Crawler and whittle down or streamline everything not about the core loop of crawling, getting rewards, and leveling up? Everything else, from story, to graphics and sound design is intentionally minimal and practical. That doesn't mean that this game looks or sounds bad, but it's all to serve the purpose of getting you into the dungeon and fight some baddies. The soundtrack in particular is very fitting dungeon synth. Mechanically, Dungeon Ruins II feels very much like an idle game except that you need to manually move your party around, but without the additional expansion options that such an idle game would include. Combat is completely automated, with the only real mid-crawl decisions being 1. Do you think you can make it back to the entrance before you die? 2. Who should be in the front vs rear row? Classes are differentiated by their singular starting skill, and their general stat distribution. Periodically when your dudes level up, they'll unlock new abilities, but there is no real "skill tree" - only a handful of randomly selected options shared between all classes, including the starter skills. This means that you can get to the point where every adventurer has the same "healing cleric" skill, etc, and these will stack. Equipment selections come down to "status effects" (which are effective, but do not stack), the base stats used for damage calculation, and stat boots. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this little gem, though it seems that I've seen most of what there is to see. I managed to make it through several of the dungeons before deciding that while this was very relaxing, I'd rather be playing something a little more involved for now. I may come back and reinstall later. Whenever that may be, this is the sort of game that is incredibly easy to pick back up again. 4/5 Graphics 5/5 Sound 5/5 Convenience 4/5 Controls 4/5 Overall

The game is just alright - for full price I would not recommend it but on sale for a few dollars its not bad for a time waster. The battles are automatic so you are basically playing a manager who stands back while your adventurers do all the battle and just manage their gear and leveling. I feel with a bit more effort the third game could double down and make this more of a management game while still having the casual dungeon crawl experience. The art is very nice and what really pulled me in - if this series was more involved like Wizardry or EO I would definitely buy it up.

Review in progress: On the whole DR2 resolves most of the things I disliked about DR1 (returned after an hour). It's a good game that's tapping into an interesting concept but I'd say not a great game, and it leaves a bit of potential on the table. For the reviews that say 'what's the point' it is true it is semi-idle, and while it's possible to discover that's not for you, I'm surprised by the reviews that are surprised that it's automatic combat resolution when that's front-and-center. That said, after 90 min or so I do have a couple observations on places where I think it still comes up short a bit: 1) The town UI could definitely be better, or at bare minimum include a little orientation. It took me longer than it reasonably should have to find that the guild is for level ups (just call it 'Trainer' instead?), and working through gear changes is just clunky. The shop is ok but seems like selling could be streamlined. 2) While I can live with quest givers re-using the same maps - not great, but acceptable at the price point - I do wish they at least reset a 'fog of war' effect, or just reset the map and test my memory. 3) Not quite as bad as the first, but early on gold is the major bottleneck. You might have 3 characters ready to level up but only enough gold for one. Which doubly sucks because xp freezes for those characters. Certainly some friction/bottleneck is a good thing in games, but I think this needs a bit of rethinking if there's going to be a DR3. I think the biggest issue is the number of mob types who don't drop gold should come down, or the ones that do should drop 10% more or something. 4) I also think a 3rd entry needs more differentiation between classes other than the visual. I took the priest (cleric?) thinking I'd get at least decent healing out of it and...even at level 14 I still only get the +1 heal at end of combat, which is apparently a skill my fighter also could learn. That's both weird and a minor bummer.

Me gustó mucho, totalmente recomendado.

it's called a dungeon crawler for tired people because everyone naps for 2 months when you get back to town.

Very peak, very simple awesome art and music too. shouldve been goty last year !