However, if you are still interested after reading this review, I recommend giving Dungeon Encounters a try. You very well might find yourself digging what Ito has to offer, and I hope he gets more chances in the future to make projects like this. I found it a fitting end for the type of game Dungeon Encounters is, but if that sounds unpleasant to you, it’s probably not the game for you. If you beat them, your adventure is over and the credits roll, though there is some post-game content. It also turns out you can hit the credits by complete accident - run into the right encounter (or wrong encounter, depending on how prepared your party is), and you will find yourself fighting the ‘final boss’. I also found some of the later sections of the labyrinth were visually difficult to parse and that the developers had used up their best ideas within the first sixty floors. And despite how mellow it may seem and how much of a rhythm it tends to lull you into, Dungeon Encounters punishes mistakes harshly, so you always have to be paying attention. Dungeon Encounters is a very relaxing game most of the time, and the kind of excitement it offers is not comparable to the bombastic action and cinematic scenes of many popular games. Still, it is definitely not for everyone. The character and monster art is gorgeous, the minimalism is refreshing, and filling out the maps is a real dopamine rush. Even the battle screen just shows static art of the characters and monsters with the occasional overlay of a simple attack animation.
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The entirety of the game exists within straightforward menus and grid-based maps. Aesthetically, Dungeon Encounters is a dungeon-crawling JRPG boiled down to its essentials.
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However, its sheer dedication to minimalism suggests a deliberate design decision. With Dungeon Encounters, Ito and his team have made something undeniably strange that’s also unusually charming.ĭungeon Encounters is minimalist in every sense, to the extent it is easy to suspect it of being a prototype or of having had an exceedingly low budget. Final Fantasy XII debuted 15 years ago, so it was quite the surprise when Dungeon Encounters was announced just two short weeks before its release with Ito at the helm. Hiroyuki Ito has directed some of Square Enix’s most beloved games, including Final Fantasy VI, IX, and XII.