Hey guys, Mankoto here, unfortunately I wasn’t able to grab a review copy for Dungeon Travelers 2 so give me a week or so after the game comes out to get a review out. So for now, here are my thoughts on the demo released on tuesday.

My impression after 5 hours of it and completing the demo, is that it’s really enjoyable. The story is as as follows: in the beginning there was God, Humans, a Demon God, and Monsters. God and Humans fought against Demon God and Monsters. Eventually Humans created the class known as Libras. They have the ability seal, this is to seal away Monsters and even the Demon God by creating Sealbook – tomes. Let’s first talk about the backstory; it’s been roughly 400 years since the Demon God’s defeat. Enter our hero Fried Einhard, a rookie Libra who works at the Royal Library and wants to do nothing more than to study monsters with his abilities. Sadly due to Libra shortages in the Order (a military designed to keep the monster population in check) Erin has to join them.

The word “difficult” doesn’t describe how hard this game can be.

I’ll be real here, this game is hard. I’ve heard plenty of stories of people dying in this game; in the tutorial dungeon of all things. Honestly, yes, this game can be that brutal if you aren’t good at RPGs. Granted, during my session I’ve never died, but at the second boss I made a slight error in which I thought I would be able to heal a party member before the boss would attack. This ended up costing me two of my party members and the only survivor poisoned and close to being one shot by the boss. Truth be told, if I didn’t have an emergency item that would allow me to leave the dungeon at any time outside of battle, I wouldn’t have made it back to the entrance. The mage, as powerful as she is, is incredibly easy pickings as she has no defense whatsoever so even normal monsters could kill her easily. This game just keeps you on your toes at all times. Don’t take these cute enemies for granted they will kill you. Easily.

Now as for game play, as hard as it is, it’s fair and solid. Granted yes, the enemy output is high, if you play it right, you can keep damage to your mage to a minimum. Early on your Knight (Alisia) can learn a skill to taunt your enemies so she can take the heat and not Melvey. You don’t have to worry about your character since you don’t fight. You sit back and command your party and once the monster is defeated, you seal them away. The dungeon mapping is standard DRPG fair – gray squares are pit falls, yellow squares are treasure chests, red X’s are traps, etc. But of course, you have to fill in the map yourself so until you step on that tile on the map, nothing is official. So hypothetically speaking, you don’t know if there’s a pitfall or a trap between you and that chest unless you step on that tile.

This is only the third dungeon and the map just continuously increase in size.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again, so far, I love this game. It’s the right kind of difficult. You can restart party members all the way back to level one if you don’t like their build, and there is the writing in this game. When it needs to be, it’s absolutely hilarious. There are a pair of characters that teach you a little about the game by breaking the fourth word. There is even a boss that says it’s wrong of you to come up to monsters, beat them up, take their money, take their clothes to either put on your party members, and then to just seal them in a book. The monster isn’t wrong, but it’s funny all the same for it to bring it up.

Final thoughts, as great as this game is the only thing holding it back is the fact that the prequel was although just as good, it was actually a porn game. Although this one isn’t a porn game, it still shows its roots; when you beat a boss you’re rewarded with a suggestive image, and even some scenes can be somewhat suggestive as well. Which, while I don’t mind, discussion is banned in some places (Neogaf for instance) because of how lewd the images can be. Discussion of the game when it was released in Japan was approved, but when localization hit and it was discovered as to how erotic some of the artwork is, it was no longer allowed. People praised it as one of the better DRPGs to come out in a long time, so to neglect it because of some artwork isn’t right. But I digress. Point is, this might turn the game off from some people and it’s a really, really solid game and deserves to be talked about.

But hey, these are only my thoughts on this demo. If you played it, what did you think about it? Did you like it? Did you not? Do you think you’ll buy the game because of it? It certainly solidified my purchase.