Purgatory Dungeoneer

“They have little snippets of dialogue as you add them to your party, but they are too short to really do much other than give you a single adjective to describe their personality, like 'snarky' or 'bored.' They also all have 'remembrances,' individual quest lines set in their past.”

“There's no notification for when new recruits arrive, so after every mission I found myself searching through all the rooms for characters I thought weren't there before (which is hindered by the fact some of the sprites are the same as the rug their table sits on).”

“The characters who have remembrance missions available aren't labeled with their class, which quickly turns into tedium because you can have up to 5 characters hit the level cap necessary at a time, but only do remembrance missions for 1 at a time because their parties are auto-generated, rather than pulled from your roster.”

“Overall, the actual mechanics of the game are well thought out and easy to understand, but engaging with them feels like an afterthought or its own form of labor, with a lot of issues that could've been solved by adding one or two menus or imitating what other games in the space have been doing for some time now.”

“There's a few reasons, most notably that it was made by Damien Crawford, known for making punishing, unique, and at times needlessly pedantic mechanics without the slightest urge to protect players from the consequences of, say, needing to give orders to 100 party members.”

“A single round of the game is very quick (5 battles), and surface mechanics are easy to understand for anyone who's played anything in the genre.”

“Combat is a slog, graphics are uggo, and the writing is cringe.”

“The graphics are basic, but the soundtrack is solid, and I feel like simple graphics are not a blockade to a good game, when the return is hundreds upon hundreds of race-class combinations and abilities.”

“The theming of the game certainly helps to tie the visuals together.”

“However, it lacks enough polish in its UI that it actively hinders managing those numbers, and makes an initially effective formula of 5 encounters per dungeon unnecessarily tedious.”

“Some of the system info (like how defending works) is buried under a tedious amount of menus as items.”

“The combat is fast, punchy, and best of all, it's functionally impossible to waste time grinding just to learn you're too high level for the next fight.”

“- There are 11 equipment slots, but you can't see all the equipment at once on the equipment screen, so even hitting 'optimize' requires you to scroll down to see what equipment was optimized.”

“I don't consider myself to be a top-tier min-maxing player, and the game gave me space to work on party optimization without immediately crushing me.”