Dunquest (ダンクエスト 魔神封印の伝説), launched 7/21/1995, developed and printed by Technos Japan

This sport is classed as an Motion RPG in lots of locations, however to me it feels extra prefer it’s someplace between a Mysterious Dungeon sport and a real RPG. The developer Technos Japan is finest identified for the Kunio-kun sequence (i.e. River Metropolis Ransom, Crash ‘n’ the Boys) and Double Dragon. In addition they produced the RPG-adjacent Sugoroku Quest (a kind of board video games that has RPG components), however I don’t assume they ever produced a full RPG.

The story takes place on Laster Island, a part of the Malkes kingdom. There’s a legend {that a} demon god is sealed there however will return some day, and the present king is gathering heroes in preparation — together with Kurisu, our hero. However Kurisu is simply despatched on varied missions in 4 surrounding dungeons, and there’s uncertainty about whether or not the demon god will truly revive or whether or not it’s only a legend. I solely performed about half the sport, however in keeping with the Wikipedia article there are literally some attention-grabbing story twists close to the top and it doesn’t finish with only a easy “after all the demon lord revives” on the finish.

The sport doesn’t have a standard levelling system. As an alternative, every main quest you full provides you the following rank, as much as 17 (“Duke”) on the finish of the sport. While you acquire a rank, you get some stat bonuses too. Excluding the HP, these will be freely switched between Assault, Magic, and Defend.

Along with this, the weapons and armor get higher as you utilize them (like Xanadu) as much as an outlined restrict. Lastly, you may have particular person XP with every monster within the sport, and the extra XP you get vs a monster, the extra injury you do and the much less injury you’ll take.

Discovering the following main quest is just not all the time a simple job, or typically you get a imprecise instruction like “discover out why these earthquakes are occurring” however no indication of even which of the 4 dungeons that is in. I don’t know whether or not it’s because I didn’t discover the suitable folks to speak to on the town for data, or whether or not it was the designers’ intent that you’d merely undergo the dungeons seeing what you could possibly discover.

There are 4 dungeons, every with 35 flooring. It feels a bit like a Mysterious Dungeon sport besides that the layouts are usually not random. One in every of my largest points with the sport is that you just all the time have to begin from ground 1 of the dungeon, and also you don’t do the dungeons in sequence. One quest can be on ground 7 of the Ice Temple and the following can be on ground 11 of the mines, then again to ground 15 of the Ice Temple. It might be useful to make maps of the dungeons with the intention to shortly get by the decrease ranges.

Every ground has a purple chest which might solely be opened with keys you purchase on the town. There are additionally brown chests which regenerate and provides gold, and random gadgets on the ground (like potions or scrolls that forged spells). Monsters seem out of summoning circles on the ground. The fight system is motion RPG type the place you hit the button to swing the sword. Some enemies have distance assaults, and you can too use spells your self from scrolls. The quantity 28 on the prime left in that image exhibits how lots of the present merchandise you may have (which can be utilized with X).

The system is actual time reasonably than the Mysterious Dungeon flip primarily based type. Typically you’ll be able to assault after which transfer again an area to dodge the enemy’s assault, and repeat. However you will get trapped in slim corridors and killed simply, and a few teleporting enemies are annoying.

One downside I stored working into was not with the ability to damage the monsters in any respect, regardless of having the perfect weapon at 100%. The weapon and armor upgrades are fairly restricted and don’t improve your assault/protection all that a lot. You may after all put extra factors into assault however typically even that wasn’t sufficient. I nonetheless managed to progress by merely avoiding the enemies, however this looks like both a design flaw or one thing I simply didn’t perceive in regards to the sport. You should utilize magic to defeat a few of these enemies however that offer is restricted. If you happen to die, you might be returned to the city with half your gold.

The dungeons even have lots of traps, and each ground has warps that ship you to totally different locations within the ground.

One factor that’s usually praised is the variety of issues you’ll be able to examine within the city for distinctive messages, however that is only for taste.

I performed as much as rank 10, so a little bit over half the sport. The most important quests after all contain doing issues within the dungeons — a few of them are beating a boss, some are discovering an merchandise, and others are speaking to folks on some ground of the dungeon. There are additionally further bosses and different issues that aren’t a part of the principle quests. I believe a few of these are for subquests, some may be for completion functions. There may be additionally some sort of post-game situation.

Trying round at varied blogs and opinions of this sport, it looks like opinions are pretty divided. Some contemplate it a foul sport, however some actually preferred it rather a lot — I assume it in all probability simply will depend on whether or not this type of sport appeals to you. I discovered the necessity to repeatedly undergo the early elements of each dungeon time and again annoying, however the sport wasn’t horrible. It’s simply (to me) not fairly an RPG.