Dungeon Encounters

Every so often, when Square Enix isn’t busy creating another entry in the beloved Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest series, the giant Japanese games company likes to take risks. Sometimes it works out horribly and leaves you wondering “Why?” Other times, they re-release sleeper hits and it works out… okay. Most rare and special is when they drop a title so unique, begging for players’ attention. Dungeon Encounters is that very game.

Dungeon Encounters is one of the best games I’ve played this year. I get that may be kind of hard to believe given its stripped-down presentation. After all, this isn’t exactly the type of game we expect to come from Square Enix, a developer that is no stranger to extravagant graphics and battle systems. But if you’re judging it on looks alone, you’re really not going to be able to see the rewarding dungeon crawler found within. Give it a shot, and once you get into it, you might see it the way I do: as a gripping, strategic adventure that is not only a game but a celebration of one of the gre...

With some serious talent behind its creation, Dungeon Encounters deserves much more fanfare than it has so far received. This might not be as flashy as a typical RPG from Square Enix, but it’s clever, it’s engaging, and its simple but deceptively deep gameplay loop will keep you coming back for more. Add to that a killer soundtrack overseen by Nobuo Uematsu, and you’ve got something rather special on your hands.

When your only motivation to continue is to see just how far down a tiled dungeon you can get, I became exhausted. I Love the combat system. The amount of weapons and armor you can equip your party members is great. But by not providing any story or character motivation, I became weary of the game. The repetitive music fit perfectly with the same look and feel on floor one as it did on floor 24. While I enjoyed the mechanics and searching, the somber feel of Dungeon Encounters made me realize why they don't quite make them like they used to.

Japanese role-playing games are among my personal favorite genre of games to play through and for me, mechanics trumps all. That’s why when Square-Enix announced a game that would be purely mechanical driven without any of the fluff like story or setting, I was immediately curious about what a project would entail. Dungeon Encounters, at first glance, looks like the rough draft of a dungeon crawling RPG yet somehow Square-Enix has put together a complete RPG experience that fills out the $30 experience with thirty hours of gameplay.