So, as of writing this post, I’ve been playing Dungeon Travelers 2 for a while. I’m just starting Chapter 5 out of supposedly 10 Chapters, but there’s supposedly a lot of game to play after the story ends, with optional dungeons and the like. I’m hearing that there’s about 88 hours of content in the entire game, but if that includes dungeons then it might be more or less depending on how quickly you do dungeons. I think I’m a little slower than average.
Anyway, the game is pretty fun. One of the things that could make it addictive is that it does a good job of always giving you something to do or to be striving for. You need to explore the dungeon to find the mutant, or find the person you need to recruit, or finish off a quest or two, or, well, any number of things. But each chapter has both a dungeon and a dividing line, so there are always places where you can think “Here’s a good place to stop for the day”, making it a bit more casual friendly. It’s a game that you can play for a couple of hours and feel that you’ve made some progress.
There aren’t any difficulty levels, so I can actually comment on the combat. So far, the game hasn’t been all that difficult. There is some variance in skills and the like, but for the most part I tend to just do what my characters do best. That being said, I know that I under-utilize Alisia’s “Defender”, “Cover” and “War Cry” abilities, which might make some fights go easier than they have been. That being said, I lost one fight to a boss … and almost beat it the first time. The reason for this, I think, is because I’m a bit over-leveled in the game, mostly because I spend a lot of time wandering back and forth from the entrance. Early in the game, I did that to restore HP and TP and to cure statuses. Later, as TP became more plentiful and my Maid/Bard was able to restore it, I did it to sell off items before I lost them, and to generate seal books to generate some cash so I could top up on items. I’m pretty reliant on items, actually, especially in the final boss fights; there’s one item that you can buy from the treasure hunter that heals all of your characters for a large amount, and I’ve used one of those in each of the last two boss fights to get through it (Melvy’s “Circle Heal” works well enough, but sometimes I’d really rather she blast things). Because of this, I’ve found myself pretty short on cash for most of the game, especially since after starting to get quests I’ve been hesitant about selling the things you find in the dungeons because often those are needed to solve quests, and if you sell them all off you have to go out and get them again.
That being said, I’m disappointed in the quest system. I would have liked it to be something like the ones in Persona 4, where you get a list of things to do, you do them, they get completed, you get the reward, and then you get new ones. Here, there are multiple levels of quests, and they recommend quests for you to do, but you can do the same ones over and over again. Also, as far as I can see they only list some of the total quests, and it changes every time you return to the Library to check. Which means that if you know that you can solve a quest, you may not be able to trigger it when you want to, which is annoying. That being said, it does give you some rewards when you’re out doing things that you’d be doing anyway, so it isn’t bad that way, and might give you some kind of purpose if you have to grind some levels to be able to win a fight, which is nice.
The dungeons can get a bit convoluted, with traps and one way doors and locked doors and things like that. However, they almost always give you quicker ways to get places as you explore the dungeon and need to push further in to further your quest, like unlocked doors and portals. I got a little confused in the tower at times, but that had six floors … and, as per usual, I ended up spending a lot of time walking back and forth from the entrance to my latest explorations.
I guess I have to comment on the purported fanservice. I don’t really find it all that big a deal, really. Both the main characters and the monsters have a variety of costuming from demure to risque, depending on class and model. So, in-game, there’s really not much there to bother anyone that’s, well, played games at all. The events also range from fanservicey to normal. The worst are probably the defeats of your fellow party members (these are the ones that typically include the “tying up” scenes), but so far only one of them was all that explicit. So I don’t really see fanservice as an issue here, but your mileage may vary. I will say that there’s much more fanservice in Conception II than there is here; if you can tolerate that game, you should be able to tolerate this one.
In terms of characters, so far the women are quite stereotypical, but generally fun. At least to this point, the game is quite goofy and not particularly serious, and the personalities reflect that. There are more serious storylines coming up, but for the most part the story is shallow but kinda fun, which is probably all you want in an explicit dungeon crawler.
Overall, I’m enjoying the game. If the difficulty jumps up because I’m not sure how to build proper characters, that will probably end and the game might not get finished. But, so far, it’s looking like a game that I can play for short and long periods of time, which makes it a pretty good game. Although I can’t imagine restarting it once I finish it …
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This entry was posted on September 9, 2015 at 9:11 am and is filed under Not-So-Casual Commentary, Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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The Verbose Stoic 
Dungeon Travelers 2: First Impressions
So, as of writing this post, I’ve been playing Dungeon Travelers 2 for a while. I’m just starting Chapter 5 out of supposedly 10 Chapters, but there’s supposedly a lot of game to play after the story ends, with optional dungeons and the like. I’m hearing that there’s about 88 hours of content in the entire game, but if that includes dungeons then it might be more or less depending on how quickly you do dungeons. I think I’m a little slower than average.
Anyway, the game is pretty fun. One of the things that could make it addictive is that it does a good job of always giving you something to do or to be striving for. You need to explore the dungeon to find the mutant, or find the person you need to recruit, or finish off a quest or two, or, well, any number of things. But each chapter has both a dungeon and a dividing line, so there are always places where you can think “Here’s a good place to stop for the day”, making it a bit more casual friendly. It’s a game that you can play for a couple of hours and feel that you’ve made some progress.
There aren’t any difficulty levels, so I can actually comment on the combat. So far, the game hasn’t been all that difficult. There is some variance in skills and the like, but for the most part I tend to just do what my characters do best. That being said, I know that I under-utilize Alisia’s “Defender”, “Cover” and “War Cry” abilities, which might make some fights go easier than they have been. That being said, I lost one fight to a boss … and almost beat it the first time. The reason for this, I think, is because I’m a bit over-leveled in the game, mostly because I spend a lot of time wandering back and forth from the entrance. Early in the game, I did that to restore HP and TP and to cure statuses. Later, as TP became more plentiful and my Maid/Bard was able to restore it, I did it to sell off items before I lost them, and to generate seal books to generate some cash so I could top up on items. I’m pretty reliant on items, actually, especially in the final boss fights; there’s one item that you can buy from the treasure hunter that heals all of your characters for a large amount, and I’ve used one of those in each of the last two boss fights to get through it (Melvy’s “Circle Heal” works well enough, but sometimes I’d really rather she blast things). Because of this, I’ve found myself pretty short on cash for most of the game, especially since after starting to get quests I’ve been hesitant about selling the things you find in the dungeons because often those are needed to solve quests, and if you sell them all off you have to go out and get them again.
That being said, I’m disappointed in the quest system. I would have liked it to be something like the ones in Persona 4, where you get a list of things to do, you do them, they get completed, you get the reward, and then you get new ones. Here, there are multiple levels of quests, and they recommend quests for you to do, but you can do the same ones over and over again. Also, as far as I can see they only list some of the total quests, and it changes every time you return to the Library to check. Which means that if you know that you can solve a quest, you may not be able to trigger it when you want to, which is annoying. That being said, it does give you some rewards when you’re out doing things that you’d be doing anyway, so it isn’t bad that way, and might give you some kind of purpose if you have to grind some levels to be able to win a fight, which is nice.
The dungeons can get a bit convoluted, with traps and one way doors and locked doors and things like that. However, they almost always give you quicker ways to get places as you explore the dungeon and need to push further in to further your quest, like unlocked doors and portals. I got a little confused in the tower at times, but that had six floors … and, as per usual, I ended up spending a lot of time walking back and forth from the entrance to my latest explorations.
I guess I have to comment on the purported fanservice. I don’t really find it all that big a deal, really. Both the main characters and the monsters have a variety of costuming from demure to risque, depending on class and model. So, in-game, there’s really not much there to bother anyone that’s, well, played games at all. The events also range from fanservicey to normal. The worst are probably the defeats of your fellow party members (these are the ones that typically include the “tying up” scenes), but so far only one of them was all that explicit. So I don’t really see fanservice as an issue here, but your mileage may vary. I will say that there’s much more fanservice in Conception II than there is here; if you can tolerate that game, you should be able to tolerate this one.
In terms of characters, so far the women are quite stereotypical, but generally fun. At least to this point, the game is quite goofy and not particularly serious, and the personalities reflect that. There are more serious storylines coming up, but for the most part the story is shallow but kinda fun, which is probably all you want in an explicit dungeon crawler.
Overall, I’m enjoying the game. If the difficulty jumps up because I’m not sure how to build proper characters, that will probably end and the game might not get finished. But, so far, it’s looking like a game that I can play for short and long periods of time, which makes it a pretty good game. Although I can’t imagine restarting it once I finish it …
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This entry was posted on September 9, 2015 at 9:11 am and is filed under Not-So-Casual Commentary, Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.