RPG Review #113: Deep Dungeon 2
NuMetalManiak Well it's not often I beat a game on my birthday, but there you have it. All this week I'll be having a notable lapse in activity for birthday stuff (even though it happened just yesterday), but the gaming will continue. And so it has, as I play the sequel to the first Deep Dungeon, titled Deep Dungeon, Yūshi no Monshō. It's yet another Famicom Disk System game, only in Japanese, but I got a translation working. And I managed to beat it in about three days. So how did I do it?Gameplay: The gameplay overall is largely similar to the first. A few tweaks here and there made the experience better. Now we don't have to rely blindly on luck to actually hit enemies, instead the agility stat governs how often the player can hit. Of course, this is all saying that items must be equipped before doing so, and I made that mistake at first, going in completely unarmed. The overall concept of leveling isn't too hard to figure out either, but what I enjoyed was being able to distribute bonus points that are received to certain stats. This predates quite a few RPGs that have done this, and that's real neat. Also the encounter rate is higher, meaning that staying in place will give you an encounter quickly. A player with good agility can hit and not be hit while simply standing in place.
The rest of the gameplay follows the typical dungeon-crawler gameplay the previous game had, rooms, doors, treasure chests, fixed encounters, floor traps, messages. A few new things like statues that either hurt or harm the player, and the key items still unfortunately are required and take up inventory space. The game got less fun the more I got to the endgame. It tried to be somewhat interesting, in that you start on the first floor of the castle which has four floors, with the dungeon of four floors directly below it. But other than that there's not a whole lot of excitement. Grade: C
Plot: I'll skip characters entirely because nothing really changes. The end of the first Deep Dungeon says that after the first hero has killed Ruu, he's somehow alive again, and the main hero of this game is a descendant of the previous hero. There's no princess to save, just journey until the ultimate goal is met after getting the necessary key items. It does have a minor plot twist when you find Ruu, who reveals the location of a Dark Emperor, an even bigger bad guy, who's the final boss. But it's a fairly plain plot overall. Grade: C-
Music: The battle theme is a little more engaging, and again the different floors of the dungeon have different music. There's credit where it's due, but it's not gonna make people love it that much. Grade: C
Overall Grade: C
Honestly you shouldn't be surprised. This series doesn't have a whole lot going for it, but there's quite a bit of curiosity in better mechanics in this sequel. That's a nice thing to have.