Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of the Ancient Arts (DS)<\/strong><\/p>\nThere seems to be some common elements to dungeon crawlers on handhelds: average graphics, decent soundtracks, thin plots, simplistic controls and an almost maniacal focus on combat.\u00a0 Dungeon Explorer pretty well fits that mold, but let me dig into the specifics a bit.\u00a0 The game is a fairly basic hack-n-slash affair, and the basic motivation for your dungeon crawling is laid out in the opening scenes and quick tutorial quests.\u00a0 Simply, there is a ancient evil god who was sealed away, but there are plans by some to bring him back to support their evil schemes.\u00a0 It is up to you to thwart those plans.\u00a0 Along the way there are plenty of NPC’s you can talk to who will provide you with loads of backstory and flavor as well as some quests.\u00a0 It is a nice addition that provides even more motivation for your main quest.<\/p>\n
Technically the game is below average.\u00a0 The graphics are GBA-standard at their best, and lousy at worst.\u00a0 The soundtrack is fairly standard stuff, but is of pretty high quality in terms of sound fidelity and also the quality of themes.\u00a0 As expected, the dialogue isn’t voiced, but there are plenty of other sound effects which are all pretty decent as well.\u00a0 The controls are quite basic – you use the D-pad and buttons to play, with no touch-screen utilization.\u00a0 Paired with the graphics, it makes the game feel like an early DS game that was originally intended for the GBA and then reworked slightly for release on the new system.\u00a0 Note to Hudson: the DS isn’t remotely new anymore, so there is little excuse to release a game that feels like it could have been a 2002 GBA release.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/dungeonexplorerds_1.jpg\")
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Of course, a game like this lives or dies in the dungeons.\u00a0 Fortunately this is the best part of the game; unfortunately it still isn’t great.\u00a0 You choose from the standard fantasy classes (fighter\/rogue\/mage) and enhance your abilities and skills as you gain levels.\u00a0 You also gain power through new equipment, and also by gaining a pet robot that can gain the ability to evolve into a powerful companion.\u00a0 Mages will gain new and more powerful spells as they progress as well.\u00a0 The simple controls work quite well and allow easy access to spells and items.\u00a0 The different classes provide a fair amount of replayability, which is good because the main quest is fairly short – about ten hours or so.\u00a0 Unfortunately the only multiplayer option is multi-card (meaning all players need a copy of the game), and the multiplayer quests are also rather short.<\/p>\n
There is little reason for me to recommend this game to anyone: if you are not a fan of dungeon crawlers you won’t like this game, and even if you are a fan there are several better options available on the DS: Izuna, Tao’s Adventure, Etrian Odyssey (with the sequel coming soon), and the recently released Shiren the Wanderer and forthcoming Mazes of Fate DS.\u00a0 Yet if you are a true die-hard fan of the genre, you will not consider the game a waste of money: you know that the graphics will be sparse, the story thin, and the combat system and character classes satisfying enough to carry you through a few playthroughs.\u00a0 And what else can a fan of classic roguelikes ask for?<\/p>\n
Score: 2.5 \/ 5<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/dungeonexplorerpsp.jpg\")
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Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of the Ancient Arts (PSP)<\/strong><\/p>\nTaking a somewhat different approach than the DS version, the story takes place a few centuries earlier and focuses on heroes that rise up to battle the emerging evil.\u00a0 There is political turmoil and you are forced to take up as an adventurer, though your experienced pedigree allows you to advance more quickly through the adventuring classes than a fresh new recruit. The game is also more visually focused than the DS release, allowing you to select your general appearance, your gender, race and basic class before getting started with the adventure.\u00a0 Depending on what race you select you get a slightly different starting story, all of which end you at more or less the same place.\u00a0 The game starts off pretty nicely – you help seal off a cave which should seal away the monsters who have been overrunning the world, but strife amongst men creates evil in the land which feeds the power of the trapped monsters and allows them to break free again.<\/p>\n
The structure of the game is fairly simple: you go to the adventurer’s guild, take on an adventure, then exit through the town gates into a random dungeon where you battle enemies, collect items and treasures, and destroy ‘monster generators’.\u00a0 These generators do exactly what they indicate – produce a non-stop stream of monsters until destroyed.\u00a0 After completing all tasks in the dungeon – or failing – you are transported back to town.\u00a0 Back in town you can rest in your room, which allows you to store items and save your progress; you can also buy items and allocate attribute and skill points gained through completing quests.\u00a0 Be careful buying items – unlike so many games in the genre, gold remains tight throughout.\u00a0 This entire quest process is repeated for the entire game – story quests are pretty much the same as optional quests, but often are accompanied by a cutscene.\u00a0 There is little compelling content – the story feels incoherent at times, and there is just not much to motivate you to get to the next quest or level.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/dungeonexplorerpsp_1.jpg\")
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Technically the game looks and sounds pretty good, but isn’t going to win any awards.\u00a0 Translations are particularly spotty – they start out badly, but actually improve to be reasonably done for the majority of the game.\u00a0 Controls work quite well – and fortunately so, since combat is the core feature in this dungeon crawler.\u00a0 Your character has primary and secondary skills and spells you can assign to various buttons, and you often get to bring a companion or two or three along on a quest.\u00a0 Added team members allow you to unleash time-based team attacks that can be very powerful.\u00a0 The game also allows easy changing of your character’s combat class, which keeps things fresh at the possible expense of replayability.<\/p>\n
The game rounds out the experience with a solid crafting system and reasonable multiplayer.\u00a0 You can take up to two other players through dungeons with you, but you cannot do this to gain additional levels as you only gain items through multiplayer.\u00a0 Items from either single player or multiplayer can be used in the crafting system, which allows all manner of offensive and defensive items.\u00a0 This helps augment the typical dungeon crawl process of gaining levels and loot to fight more powerful enemies to gain more levels and loot and so on.\u00a0 This game is better than something similar such as Valhalla Knights, but unless you are a die-hard dungeon crawler junkie there is no reason to even give it a try.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Score: 2.5 \/ 5<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Apparently there was a game called Dungeon Explorer released on the TG-16 back in 1989 that was also released on the Wii Virtual Console last year.\u00a0 The game was a fairly blatant Gauntlet-clone with additional RPG elements and some nice varied locations, but nothing all that revolutionary even nineteen years ago – it is certainly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/dungeonexplorerds.jpg\")
Apparently there was a game called Dungeon Explorer released on the TG-16 back in 1989 that was also released on the Wii Virtual Console last year.\u00a0 The game was a fairly blatant Gauntlet-clone with additional RPG elements and some nice varied locations, but nothing all that revolutionary even nineteen years ago – it is certainly not one of those historic gems that brings a nostalgiac tear to older gamers’ eyes.\u00a0 So it is perhaps surprising that Hudson chose this franchise to resurrect for a pair of games on the DS and PSP bearing the same name but otherwise very different.\u00a0 But neither new Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of the Ancient Arts game owes much to the original other than the moniker, and they are different enough to deserve their own reviews.<\/p>\n