Quest of Dungeons review
Already available on a zillion other platforms, Upfall Studios’s turn based roguelike dungeon crawler ‘Quest of Dungeons’ has finally come to Nintendo Switch courtesy of Flyhigh Works. Adopting 2D top-down pixelated graphics, the developers are obviously appealing to a certain demographic. The gameplay too doesn’t exactly offer anything particularly new although what it does deliver; it delivers well, very well.
Choose between four different character classes (Warrior, Wizard, Archer and Shaman) or a fifth -Necrodancer- after completing the first dungeon, and between four difficulty levels; you enter your first room with the aim being to get to the bottom floor of the dungeon and reclaim the stolen light by defeating the evil Dark Lord. Each of the characters is reasonably different in both appearance and ability.
Each floor in Quest of Dungeons is randomly generated and filled with the usual enemies, items and even a Castlevania-style merchant. The game is self-intuitive even if you are unfamiliar with the genre or even with Japanese language (there is no English text whatsoever) with the turn-based battles adding a different strategic element to the Gauntlet-style of roguelike games where carnage is key.
Every enemy defeated earns you experience points (allowing you to level uo) plus drops items and/or money enabling you to advance more easily on your adventure. Buying and selling from merchants is also an absolute necessity as you can only carry so many items and stocking up on potions and keys, and upgrading your armour and weapons certainly helpful as you approach the evil Dark Lord.
Perhaps the biggest villain in Quest of Dungeons is not in-fact the Dark Lord but in the game’s Permadeath where all money and experience points earned permanently lost when you meet your maker. This understandably is a HUGE issue to some but does underline the importance of each move in an era filled with infinite continues and an inherently diminished value generated from each in-game action.
Unlike most other ports from Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, the developers really have attempted to create a superior version with the addition of the new Arena Mode which tests how long the player can last against an onslaught of enemies. The 3DS’s bottom screen and Wii U Game Pad’s map screen is missed somewhat although arguably the Switches map in the top right hand corner should suffice to most.
Conclusion
The graphics maybe lacking (although the soundtrack is excellent) and the gameplay isn’t all that original, but the execution is superb with an absolute addictive dungeon crawler which encaptures the excitement and exploration of 80’s computer games without a lot of the misgivings of the decade. Quest of Dungeons is easily one of the better Switch eShop games although most would be advised to wait for the localisation.
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