RPG Dungeon Crawlers

What's /vr/ opinion on the genre? and what would be the best starter game for it from your personal experience?
from an outsider perspective it's seems like the genre focuses on the freedom of the player over everything else.
And why did the genre die?

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >And why did the genre die?
    normies who play games today can't handle anything that doesn't hold your hand

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I have played a lot of blobbers and I think World of Xeen is the best one.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >why did the genre die?
    It didn't "dungeon RPG" is still a big genre in Japan today, but they don't *usually* look like that anymore.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    What are some good games like this in the ps1? I already know about wizardry and baroque

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The Shin Megami Tensei PS1 port got an english fan translation recently.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Loved them as a kid, dont have as much time for them as an oldgay.

    Anvil of Dawn
    Order of The griffon
    Slayer
    Deathkeep

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Best starter game
    EotB for sure once you get past the second edition d&d rule set, but it's better then having to learn a game that has its own convoluted made up rules. EotB is cut the shit. You are plopped into the dungeon and ready to go. No shops, barely any npcs (which also benefits the game's lonely atmosphere), and it's also one of the best looking blobbers IMO rivaled only by its sequel.
    >Why did the genre die out
    It was destined to become primitive by design. I'm pretty sure Grimrock could be considered a modern success and an introduction to today's gamer, but it'll never hit the mainstream again. Japan is the really the only place where these kinds of games are still going besides a notable release or two on steam.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >opinion on the genre
    it's shit and gay
    >And why did the genre die?
    because it's shit and gay

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Stfu homosexual

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It didn't die, it became niche. First games like Baldur's Gate took over the CRPG market, then Bethesda poisoned it further (everything after Morrowind really). Games are still coming out relatively often, both in the East and in the West. In the West you are more likely to find real time combat nowadays due to success of Grimrock.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Aren't turn based JRPGs basically Dungeon Crawlers just from a top down perspective? What elements of DC games are absolutely necessary to be considered one?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Aren't turn based JRPGs basically Dungeon Crawlers just from a top down perspective? What elements of DC games are absolutely necessary to be considered one?

      Well the first person perspective for fricking starters.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Well the first person perspective for fricking starters.

        No? Telengard is a Dungeon Crawler, same with Temple of Apshai.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          They are absolutely not. Just being set in a dungeon does NOT by itself make you a dungeon crawler. Not in the way that word is actually used by people.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >They are absolutely not

            That's cool, too bad I couldn't give a shit what you think about on the subject.

            >Interesting perspective. Too bad it's WRONG. RPG's in general focus on freedom of the player. Dungeon Crawler's have their fair share of player freedom, but they focus primarily on encounter-based-design. By this I mean the games are designed primarily around efficiently structuring your character/party for the combat encounters they will come up to in the future.

            That's also wrong. Proper dungeon crawlers are focused on PUZZLES first and combat a distant second. In Dungeon Master, the granddaddy of the genre, like 80% of the challenge came from environment puzzles and 20% from enemies. EOB and Grimrock follow this same formula, the main challenge is just figuring out how to get forward. The enemies can usually be cheesed with ease.

            This is also the likely answer to OP's question of why they became unpopular: puzzles, real honest head-scratchers that will block you from progressing if you don't solve them, became unpopular outside dedicated puzzle games. Just look at the RE series for an unrelated example of this. The first few games were filled with puzzles and gradually they were removed and made easy to the point of trivializing them. The great masses are very dumb, and games cater to them now.

            > Proper dungeon crawlers are focused on PUZZLES first and combat a distant second. In Dungeon Master, the granddaddy of the genre, like 80% of the challenge came from environment puzzles and 20% from enemies.

            That's fricking moronic, and it's definitely not the "grand-daddy" of the genre. Wizardry is, and it came out 6 years before it.

            >80% of the challenge came from environment puzzles

            Navigating mazes was part of it, but it was secondary to the combat.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >And why did the genre die?
    Ultima Underworld happened (as well as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Descent, MechWarrior 2 and so on.) But Ultima Underworld really marked the beginning of the genre, and RPGs in general, transitioning into 3D. It's worth noting Underworld was heavily influenced by Dungeon Master and its UI and interface makes a lot more sense if you've played DM or Eye of the Beholder. Thing is that once they'd made a 3D dungeon it made way more sense for it to be a single character game with you swinging your sword around and jumping and swimming in real time rather than a first person view of an entire party of characters doing these things. Obviously there were a few attempts to merge the new fully-3D first person RPGs with party mechanics like Might and Magic 6-9 and Wizardry 8 but they were few and far between and in the end single character games won out for 3D RPGs in general.

    Here's a quote from an interview with Doug Church, the lead programmer behind Underworld 1 and 2 , System Shock and Thief 1, about this. It's from an interview from December 1992 about Ultima Underworld 2:
    >Q: GB: Will the game be single person still, or will a party join you in the dungeons? If no party, why not?
    >Doug: Still a single player game. The action/motion nature of UW makes a party very hard to deal with. Say there was a chasm of lava, and you want to jump it, so you run and jump and make it. Your companion who you make carry all the food jumps as well, but is carrying so much that their top speed is too low to make the jump, and they fall in the chasm. Lots of problems like this crop up, along with the interface issues of real time control of the first person characters. Basically, we think that restricting the game enough to make it a party game would ruin a lot of the things it does well.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20040502002424/http://www.uo.com/archive/ftp/text/intrview/lglass.txt

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Not sure what you're talking about Etrian Odyssey is fairly recent

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This. It’s still reasonably alive.
      However it’s very anime now.
      Also OP posted Eye of the Beholder which is a sort of real time dungeon crawler like Dungeon Master and Bloodwych. As

      Beginner
      >Shining The Holy Ark
      >Lands of Lore
      >World of Xeen
      >Etrian Odyssey IV
      >Busin Wizardry Alt

      Real Time
      >King's Field IV
      >Grimrock II
      >Ultima Underworld (has other sim elements; more ways to tackle objectives)

      Open-Ended
      >Might & Magic 6
      >Wizardry 8 (or 7; both are excellent)

      pointed out real time is really a slightly different genre.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >and what would be the best starter game for it from your personal experience?
    Lands of Lore is babies first blobber. Only two attributes (might, protection), three skills (fighter, roughe, mage), three party members (which you don't create), and for the most part the game is pretty linear and straightforward.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >and what would be the best starter game for it from your personal experience?
    Arcana for the SNES. same devs as Kirby, great OST, way easier than other Dungeon Crawlers.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Beginner
    >Shining The Holy Ark
    >Lands of Lore
    >World of Xeen
    >Etrian Odyssey IV
    >Busin Wizardry Alt

    Real Time
    >King's Field IV
    >Grimrock II
    >Ultima Underworld (has other sim elements; more ways to tackle objectives)

    Open-Ended
    >Might & Magic 6
    >Wizardry 8 (or 7; both are excellent)

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Where does Wizardry 4 fit in with your difficulty rating?

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >what would be the best starter game for it from your personal experience?
    Dark Heart of Uukrul. Because it's the Cadillac of blobbers.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Because it's the Cadillac of blobbers.
      in what sense?

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Never got into these but I want to play Madou Monogatar I and Shining the Holy Ark at some point.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Anyone here played the SNES/PS1 Wizardry remakes? They look great and it consistently surprises me how many Japanese people cite Wizardry as an influence on them. I was recently watching an interview with the creator of Konosuba and even he said Wizardry was his primary influence.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I played the first WIzardry compilation on PS1 and W6 on SNES.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Is there any point to playing the PS1 versions over the SNES?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        PS1 has automap.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It didn't die it's still alive they just realized mixing real time and turn based was fricking moronic
    >it seems like the genre focuses on the freedom of the player
    Umm no that's Elder scrollls

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >See cool looking screenshots of a Dungeon Crawling game
    >Decide to check it out
    >It's real time combat instead of turn based

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It didn't die, it's just as niche as it always was.
    Blobbers however are a scourge on the genre, running in a circle to hit a dumb AI drone with poor pathing is fricking moronic. The exception that proves the rule
    >Anvil of Dawn
    You're on your own so the gameplay actually makes sense.
    >Lands of Lore
    Even if the story is basic the world and characters are charming and imaginative and the visuals are unique.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      When I was younger I found myself only enjoying the real time blobbers, but growing up is realizing that the turn based ones are the right way to go. This way you can't exploit the AI by square dancing around them. I think blobbers could gain some modern longevity if devs stuck with this rather than repeating Grimrock's real time over again. Even now when I play EotB or the like I try to stay still when a battle starts because I essentially ruined the game for myself the day I realized cheap movement strats.

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >what's /vr/ opinion on the genre
    Ah yes, because /vr/ is a single person.

    >genre focuses on the freedom of the player over everything else
    Interesting perspective. Too bad it's WRONG. RPG's in general focus on freedom of the player. Dungeon Crawler's have their fair share of player freedom, but they focus primarily on encounter-based-design. By this I mean the games are designed primarily around efficiently structuring your character/party for the combat encounters they will come up to in the future. This is what inspired so many jarpigs, where they ignored the character creation, ignored the player freedom, and went whole-hog into just focusing solely on the player's ability to manage character progression and design challenging encounters. There are some exceptions to this rule, like Ultima 4.

    >why did the genre die
    It's still rabidly popular in Japan, but it "died" in the West, mostly because as technology increased, the West became more focused on building immersive worlds with believable characters over designing specific encounters that the player needed to hone themselves to overcome.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Interesting perspective. Too bad it's WRONG. RPG's in general focus on freedom of the player. Dungeon Crawler's have their fair share of player freedom, but they focus primarily on encounter-based-design. By this I mean the games are designed primarily around efficiently structuring your character/party for the combat encounters they will come up to in the future.

      That's also wrong. Proper dungeon crawlers are focused on PUZZLES first and combat a distant second. In Dungeon Master, the granddaddy of the genre, like 80% of the challenge came from environment puzzles and 20% from enemies. EOB and Grimrock follow this same formula, the main challenge is just figuring out how to get forward. The enemies can usually be cheesed with ease.

      This is also the likely answer to OP's question of why they became unpopular: puzzles, real honest head-scratchers that will block you from progressing if you don't solve them, became unpopular outside dedicated puzzle games. Just look at the RE series for an unrelated example of this. The first few games were filled with puzzles and gradually they were removed and made easy to the point of trivializing them. The great masses are very dumb, and games cater to them now.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >muh puzzles
        Lol no puzzles oriented crawlers like Grimrock are shit, if I wanted to solve puzzles I would play an adventure game, this anon

        >They are absolutely not

        That's cool, too bad I couldn't give a shit what you think about on the subject.

        [...]
        > Proper dungeon crawlers are focused on PUZZLES first and combat a distant second. In Dungeon Master, the granddaddy of the genre, like 80% of the challenge came from environment puzzles and 20% from enemies.

        That's fricking moronic, and it's definitely not the "grand-daddy" of the genre. Wizardry is, and it came out 6 years before it.

        >80% of the challenge came from environment puzzles

        Navigating mazes was part of it, but it was secondary to the combat.

        is right.

        The appeal of dungeon crawlers is building a party (without muh backstory character drama like jrpgs and some modern wrpgs ) and make them stronger to win the harder battle deeper in, the puzzles only used to get in the way of the actual meat of the genre, battles and party building

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