One of the best games of the year is also probably one of the titles that you have either heard nothing about, or you have only heard things about it that don’t make you want to buy it. For the former, find out as much as you can and understand why you should run out and purchase Dungeon Travelers 2 as soon as possible. For the latter, almost everything that you have heard seems to have been blown entirely out of proportion. Either way, anyone even slightly interested in JRPGs and all things anime should go out of their way to pick up this game, it is just that enjoyable.
A spinoff title from almost an entirely different genre, you almost can’t tell that Dungeon Travelers isn’t its own thing from the moment it starts. While the lore itself isn’t anything that is going to set the world on fire it does the job well enough of setting the characters in an interesting enough space to journey around in. The characters that end up joining the party are fun and manage to walk the line of being trope-y without being annoying or amazingly predictable. That is also keeping in mind there are around a dozen characters that can/will join the party.
The battle system is a pretty standard first person dungeon crawler; mainly that it is painfully difficult unless the player spends enough time grinding out a handful of levels when a new area is entered. There is next to zero compassion given for any player that goes into an area without knowing fully well what they are getting into. The tutorial dungeon of the game I managed to have my entire party wipe because I foolishly opted to keep pushing instead of leaving to go rest. My punishment was going back to my last save, some 20 minutes before. The level up system also allows for players to fully exploit its system, so those that either have learned a handful of things in their time with the game can go back and re-level-up their characters.
I was expecting to enjoy my time with this game when it came out, but not nearly to the extent that I did. Most of the experience seems rather well paced, characters are introduced at a decent clip, and the dialog is interesting enough to avoid the standard “wall of text” feeling that is standard in so many Japanese games now a days. Even ignoring everything else I said before, it is one of the few times I have played a game with a smile on my face from the moment it started to whenever in the night I would turn it off.
If you are even on the fence mildly about Dungeon Travelers, you should hope off and pick it up. It is honestly worth the purchase. For those that are trying to use one excuse or another, mainly the censorship angle, not only can’t notice unless you were told beforehand, but it honestly seems like Atlus has heard you concerns for going forward. The only people who should probably steer clear, though, is everyone that hates fun.
