Dragon Ruins II Steam Charts & Stats

Great dungeon crawler. Takes everything that was great about the first one and improves on it in every way.

Sequel to a minimalist dungeon crawler, which is this time much longer and more complex than the first game (which took me approx. 2 hours to fully finish, this took me 15). There´s 16 dungeons to choose from (15 regular + 1 bonus at the end), new characters and expanded game mechanics - e.g. a band attack that can be performed by filing up a damage received bar, characters can be upgraded in a form of special skills. Sprites again come from a graphics library by Torio, which is okay, but some sprites are drawn in anime style that mixes quite badly with the rest. In terms of music, there are multiple tracks, all of them again excellent of course. Towards the end of the game the difficulty gets up quite a bit. As a veteran Wizadry player I like that, but the rest be warned, that some extra grinding, money saving and strategy will be required if you want to beat the final bosses. My biggest complain is, that after a certain time the gameplay will get monotonous due to the necessity to replay dungeons in order to fully finish them (each dungeon has a certain number of quests that you must finish if you want to fully complete it). There´s also one minor thing - I noticed a weird camera tilting after turning . It´s like the party it on boat or something....

Reminiscent of Wizardry where you're just grinding out xp and gold to take on the next level. The auto-combat is an interesting way to abstract combat and keep things moving. Everything is a little sluggish, it takes awhile to max out your power gauge (the one way to interact in combat). Getting money for later upgrades takes a ton of repetition. There's no indication of what weapons are going to be worth keeping around. All the classes are interchangeable, though at higher levels some just seem a little better. Despite the wrinkles, the graphics, music and visual style makes this a chill experience. It looks like I'm coming up on 12 hours at the time of this review and I'm fairly sure I've done basically everything. I don't think there's an end per se, but end missions will start repeating themselves.

All style over substance. But with a style like this, fuck substance! (Played mostly offline on the Steam Deck, so MUCH more than the 25 min reported here...)

Chill autobattler to go through while you have something playing in the background. Simple story, fairly straightforward. Maps were also unique enough to not make things a slog. Could do with a fast forward / speed up option though. BGM also got bland after a while.

Great game. Way better than the first one and adds a bunch of new stuff

A dungeon crawler with auto battling and a map system reminiscent of Etrian Odyssey (but a lot less deep) If you want a dungeon crawler like this but with more of a genuine challenge and more depth, then I recommend Etrian Odyssey 3 or Fafnir Knight instead :) I enjoy it in small bursts at the end of the night but its not something I'd put hours at a time into.

game's alright, I like the art style and the idea behind it, I just wish the dungeon exploration was varied, my experience more or less felt like running around samey dungeons with barely anything to interact with in them, it could really stand to have more things to interact with, buying Dragon Ruins II is kinda like an investment for the next dragon ruins because the project as is, is very barebones but i'd for sure play a 3rd one with more content.

It's a simple laid-back dungeon crawler experience that is fun until you start feeling the repetition which was after about 5 hours for me. I enjoyed the process of getting stronger with level ups and equipment but I do sort of feel like the party members you pick don't really matter in the long run. It was interesting to see the maps get bigger as you gradually do higher rank quests but I feel like nothing changed in terms of how you approach them like the gameplay loop didn't evolve at all albeit it's a short game with a small budget so it's a bit unfair to expect a lot of complexity so I guess it could be ideas for improvements in future projects. Anyways it's still worth picking up if you want a short experience that can let you turn off your brain for a bit.

The experience is overall enjoyable. There are multiple dungeons, organized by quest. Gameplay is about exploring and managing your health as a resource to risk going deeper or turning back, and incrementally improving your character equipment and stats. I like that treasure is central to advancement in this game, and that each quest area has it's own unique art assets and color theme. The art style itself is pretty good even though it reuses art from previous games. It's cool how each room has it's own furniture layout to match implicit purposes of the room (burial, religious, sleeping, etc.). Combat is swift and fast paced; which can be a good thing if you want to emphasize the other aspects of dungeon crawling. The weak parts of the game are that character classes don't feel different/distinct from each other. A dwarf is going to fight exactly like a warlock would; character advancements every five levels let you choose a new skill from a random selection, but every class has access to the same skills. Different effects like "stun/paralysis", "confusion", or "poison" are difficult to recognize the impact of due to speed of combat; in general conditions and effects feel completely irrelevant, and there are no spells. Interaction with the dungeon is also very limited; I haven't found any secret doors, interactive objects other than chests and the occasional magic symbol in the boss room, nor have I had any interaction within the dungeon other than straight forward fighting (i.e. no parley, dialogues, factions, etc.). Some specific improvements I could recommend for the next iteration: * Occasional room descriptions in a text pop up upon entry (helps players navigate the dungeon, builds dungeon "presence" within the player's mind, and provides novelty.) * More interactive non-combat elements to supplement the shift in emphasis away from nuanced combat. * Tactile elements of combat (i.e. push "a" to initiate each attack rather than just autoattacks)[see zAvatar game on Cyber1 PLUTO Mainframe for an example] * More distinct character classes, abilities, and capabilities. * Bring back spells (can be done in autobattler format by having magic-users randomly (or intelligently) select spells to use, adding casting time, and random factor to whether it is successfully cast or resisted). * Multiple resources to manage other than just health in a dungeon expedition. In conclusion, the game is a much needed revisit to the Mordor/Demise series. It is worth the money and the framework holds even greater promise for future releases. Keep it up. You may want to revisit some even earlier titles like Avatar, Oubliette, and Moria; or even the original inspirational source 1974 D&D to identify very novel elements and mechanics that were left behind at the time due to technical limitations of computer systems and enshittification of later editions of the rules by profit motives.