Dragon Ruins II: Aftermath

I have played one hour and beat the first dungeon and I am loving it. I loved DD1 and DD2, so I was waiting for this one. It's a really fun dungeon crawler, where you customize your party members by choosing skills when you level up and their equipment. I am playing now with a lord with a beast Sword (imagine Cloud's buster sword), a dwarf priest to guard and heal, a witch that debuffs enemies, and a mage that's also a trickster. Buy!

I love this game. It is simple but really fun.

I've played for a couple hours and reached the B dungeons. Overall the pace of the game, with one exception, is pretty good. Each dungeon tier gets more challenging and complex but also comes with better equipment and items to find. The one exception that I found was that the first dungeon was exceptionally brutal for a first dungeon. Compared to the rest of the dungeons of that tier (D) the monsters hit way harder than they should be and even fighting just 1 encounter (after going to town) would send you back to town to heal. It was tedious and kind of a slog of trying to get a good run to the boss without any encounters in between. Luckily the other dungeons don't exhibit that behavior and are much more fair and balanced. I like the upgrade system, which allows you to still purchase upgrades to items, but also favors that you exchange your items for new ones when you do find them, allowing for progression even if you are unable to find new items for your characters. The normalization of leveling up is a bit unfortunate (10 or 5 hp per level, etc.) but it can serve as a good way to balance the game maybe. The new skills are pretty cool, but I'm not a fan of the new way to 'heal' b…

Super chill and fun game

A decent standalone expansion, that can integrate itself into the basic game, allowing a replay of it with all the new features. There are 21 new dungeons of various sizes to choose from. This time it´s not required to replay them several times in order to fully finish them. One time is enough, following replays only increase the overall difficulty and reward. Some new items and skills were added as well as new heroes, which are unlocked after completing the new quests. There´s also an optional wanted list of monsters to hunt down in the new dungeons for extra money. They are quite tough (much more then the standard bosses), so prepare for some grinding if you want to kill them all. They do respawn though - I was initially expecting them to be a one time thingy.

Love this newest entry. Lots of great quality of life updates, deeper mechanics, more content. Perfect for Steam Deck