SO here is a somewhat quirky dungeon crawler in the mold of Wizardry, as seen through the eyes of Japan. It’s not too anime so far, though, so keep that in mind. It also brings a few new things to the formula.
Rolling characters is a bit different. You pick an age from I think 10 to 60. The older you are, the more bonus points you get. The tradeoff is that you get less life points. Outside of the main character, anyone who dies when at zero life points is lost forever. I’m not clear how dangerous it is to have low life points, but the break points in terms of age are 20 (from 3 to 2) and 41 (from 2 to 1). The bonus point range gets pretty big once you pass 40. It’s sort of weird. You can recover life points either resting for a long time back at base or paying large sums of money to do it up front (this is also how ressurection works. You have to wait a bit before the character is brought back or shell out $$ to get it instantly). The main character is not subject to this; you have an immortal soul and cannot be lost.
The game play has quirks. Present is a quick battle system, just repeating the last set of actions you chose. When walking around in one of the game’s dungeons you sometimes see enemies (as stationary pillars of “fire”) and sometimes see items (can appear is a spinning loop, or a chest). But there are still “pop up” encounters. Monsters will drop bits and gewgaws but not equipment. Instead, you find equipment via a new mechanic.
Some special areas in dungeons are designated as ambush locations. Here you can spend divinity points (more on those in a second) to hide and wait for a special type of enemy called a “transporter”. These are elite versions of enemies typically found in the area. They will flee combat after some number of rounds, so killing them is important. If you kill them (there can be more than one), a chest will be left with items in it (I believe killing multiple just increases the # of items in the chest). These are always gear. They can be equivalent to what you can buy in the store. Or they can be more powerful. I’ve seen +s up to 6, and seen a lot of gear I either couldn’t purchase or was way more expensive at the shop. Ambushing is a critical part of the game and allows you to focus on gearing up with, so far, a little less randomness than typically is part of the genre.
Divinity ties into the other brand new mechanic. There are other special monsters in areas called Lineage Monsters. Lore wise, you are one of the few people in the world who can permanently kill them, by claiming their bloodstone after defeating them and then returning the bloodstone to one of the game’s 3 vessels (each representing a faction and. . see below!). Some of the beasts have spawn critieria but I am not very far into this aspect yet (I cleared the 3 out of the starter dungeon, plus one more in another dungeon). Sometimes they appear as part of scripted interactions.
Giving bloodstones to vessels increases your max divinity and gives you some special powers you can use in battle. The two best I currently have are Holy Light I (10% regen for all party members, every round) and Black Wall (phys resist for 1 round, but if you stack it the duration grows by some algebraic formula apparently so repeated castings will make it last significantly longer than 1 round per cast). There’s a shitload more, an entire upgrade tree in fact. This will apparently also tie into the story so I’ll be curious to see how my min maxing makes the plot turn out (fuck your goals, I need powers).
The game can be difficult. There are enemies in each area (the starter and first dungeon I visited, anyway) that will auto rofl-stomp your party. And the RNG seems a bit capricious. I’ve lost a lot of characters (I started over and am doing better now, but I have had to close the app a few times and re-load even in the new playthrough). Also Ambushing has a curious risk/reward mechanic. The first ambush in a given area costs 5 divinity. You can “pass” if you don’t like the look of the monster or chest (you can examine the former, and the latter has a symnbol indicating the type of item, down to weapon types like bow, spear, sword,katana). But the longer you chill out, the greater the chance that you get ambushed in kind (I have never had this happen while waiting for the first encounter). After you do an ambush (regardless of success) the next ambush in that specific area costs a lot more divinity (20) and has a chance of drawing outsized monsters (by way of example the starter dungeon hydra enemy typically shows up level 10-12, but I got him level 19 once). I haven’t pressed my luck much but I want to investigate more. A dungeon will have multiple ambush areas, and leaving resets everything. The HP totals are typical of the Japanese take on the genre: inflated, but often not enough to protect you from nasty enemies without other things in play (e.g. that Black Wall ability).
The low bonus points if you play a young character don’t help. Basically something like 3-7 (and you won’t roll a 7 except over many attempts the rolls are heavily weighted towards the lower amounts). Ther’e’s some debate in discussions on steam about whether favoring bonus points or life points is better. That’s probably a good time to discuss the progression mechanics, which are quite good.
Firstly, you get a single ability point to use to increase stats at every new character level you gain. Each class has a selection of abilities - it’s more varied than Proving Grounds, for sure. Some of these are passive abilities like “Bow Soul”. These allow you yo equip e.g. bows if you change class. Class change costs money and drops your overall character level by some amount. You are then that level for the new class. I’ve done two class changes and these characters got two slots with which to equip abilities they had previously learned (so I had two Rangers switch to cleric and mage respectively and both could wield bows and wear medium armor thanks to equipping those abilities they learned as Ranger). This looks pretty interesting. As you start re-leveling you won’t get new ability points until you surpass your previously max attained character level. I saw something that suggested max char level was 30 but I’m not sure if that is true or not. It’s not enough to max all stats unless you go for an old character with say 17-21+ bonus points. But there are magic items that increase stats so it will be interesting to see how it shakes down.
