Jan 222018
I love RPGs, especially JRPGs. This is no secret.
But there’s one style of RPG I’ve never really gotten into: DRPGs. Dungeon crawling RPGs often seem to have a lessened emphasis on story and character development, which are the main things I play RPGs for. Instead, they focus on exploring dungeons (obviously).
Last year, I played my first DRPG, Mary Skelter, to review it for MonsterVine. I actually enjoyed it a lot, especially because it does have a story with some interesting features.
Still, the longer I played, the more tedious it felt to go through floor after floor of the maze-like dungeons.
At first, I found the exploration fun, but eventually I got tired of dead ends, branching paths, and even more rooms to check for items, and I just wanted my exploration to have a more meaningful payoff. Yet it seems like this sort of exploration is what DRPG fans like.
On the other hand, some people describe Severed as a DRPG, and that game was fantastic. And I keep glancing at Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux even though it’ll probably have these mazes.
So for those of you who have played a lot more DPRGs than I have, what do you think? Is it just not the genre for me? Are there specific ones I should give a try? Do some have great stories and non-tedious exploration?
(Side note: are the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games considered DRPGs?)
Let me know in the comments! Also, thank you to everyone who has supported Ascendant Hearts so far!
“(Side note: are the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games considered DRPGs?)”
I believe they are.
I didn’t play many of them myself. Chocobo’s mysterious dungeon is supposed to be fun, I tried a little of it, the voice acting and childish scenes were off-putting but the gameplay seemed nice. To be honest, I’m not too sure what games are counted, some people seem to count games that other people wouldn’t.
I’m going to try one of the Mystery Dungeon games eventually, so I guess I’ll see then if they have the same sort of feel as Mary Skelter.
Yeah, like I mentioned in the post, I’ve seen people call Severed a DRPG, but it seems completely different than others. Usually I see it described as action-adventure or metroidvania.
I didn’t reply to this right away because I haven’t heard these referred to as “DRPGs” before, just “rogue-likes” and I wanted to figure out if there is a distinct difference and I don’t know if there is since hardly anyone says “DRPGs”.
I thought rogue-likes involve permadeath and (usually) procedural generation and stuff like that. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Etrian Odyssey classified as a rogue-like.
(Unless it’s the Mystery Dungeon spin-off.)
Fair enough.