Dungeon Antiqua 2

This is not a large scale epic fantasy, this is a compact dungeon crawler. Think Final Fantasy 5 but without any of the dialogue or exploration, just a raw RPG game loop. That said, it does what it is supposed to do incredibly well. The combat is fast, fluid, rewarding. Characters always feel like they're getting stronger and building meaningful tools to deal with situations. The difficulty is hard to describe. It's high, but gives you all the tools to overcome it if you're paying attention. If you try to brute force the bosses, you'll die, but figuring out how they operate and exploiting them is a fun little puzzle that makes them very manageable. If you actually try skills and read descriptions, it's a fairly easy game. This is because the status ailment system in this game is actually good and worth using. I was sleeping, silencing, poisoning, confusing enemies all throughout the game. Even using Death and other instant kill skills were not universally useless due to immunities, I found myself using instant kill a fair bit. The job system is compact but rewarding. Unlike FF5, none of the jobs here feel totally useless, and mastering a couple of them per character …

Fun and grindy time. Great game to chill with if JRPGs spark your fancy.

For a particular type of person, this could well be a top 5 game, I'm serious I know, I know, it's one of a million retro RPGs us gen Xer's can pick to relive the decade owned by the SNES. Half Wizardry, half FF. What's the big deal? Well, do you find yourself mashing through the text and having no patience at all for being lost in a world map? Got you covered. Do you enjoy grinding but get sick of healing on the pause screen? Yeah, there's a single button for that. Do you like farming late game gear with a low drop rate but a payoff that makes you glad you did it? Base stat boots come from mastering each class, so while you absolutely don't have to, maxing out your party is rewarding! The game's not perfect- there's one "guide-dang-it" moment in story progression that's pretty aggressively bad... but it doesn't lock you out of anything (after a patch, thanks for listening to feedback Dev) and if you care, you can easily see it on the discussion pages before you get that deep into the game. There's an enemy that drops great XP but has a high chance to run away (I always hate those) Honestly if you're the sort of person who will love this game, you probably already know. What …

a good time. a dungeon crawler with no frills attached. more Final Fantasy (III / V) than pure Wizardry compared to the first game but a swell game all around.

A nice, polished improvement. I like the job appearance and name customization even after selection, and how the fairy is optional and not intrusive. Story is light and how I prefer to play immediately. You can also auto heal after battle.

:)