Guild of Dungeoneering Ultimate Edition

The art style is adorable and the soundtrack is funny (although you hear the same stuff a little too much). Very accessible to new players but can get a bit repetitive in the late game. Full review: http://www.therockstargamers.com/guild-of-dungeoneering-review/

There are a number of gaming mechanics that work in this game, and are fairly unique. The idea of adding cards to a deck at the same time you are equipping your character is very interesting. The fact that there are classes in this game that have insanely unique abilities which make their decks play like no others in the game is also quite surprising. The fact that there are a few quests (including boss fights) that take a bit of planning and careful play is refreshing. The dungeon creation is often fun and has interesting interactions with the deck building. The combat is also well animated and generally quite fun. There are negatives however. The biggest issue is the balancing. After a certain point some of the classes are completely unplayable. You will lose every time if you try to play a Chump, for example, past a certain point in the game. There is no way to fix this, no amount of deck building will allow you to play certain classes after a certain point, and if you try, you'll just be frustrated. This is not game breaking, you just have to realize it and play the newer classes instead. Certain classes, once you learn their trick, will win almost every battle. There is still some challenge as you begin again with a default deck when you enter each dungeon so it is possible to have a string of bad luck and not be able to recreate your ultimate deck even with the same character in every single dungeon. This really isn't game breaking either, as the classes with overpowered decks aren't available until late in the game. Make no mistake, this is a unique and strangely fun game. It can be repetitive, but the new classes that unlock will tend to keep things fresh. It plays like a collectable card game with RPG and dungeon crawling elements baked right in, which is very interesting and can be a great deal of fun. I do recommend this. Besides, the music will make you smile if nothing else.

This game just misses the mark for 3 stars. Overall, it's a fun game but with several frustrating elements. Unforunately, it becomes repetitive, fairly quickly. With a little work, it could have been much stronger. 1. Nothing carries over. Most frustrating of all is that your characters don't retain levels and don't keep items. You feel cheated after completing a dungeon, only to have progress nullified and items vanish. 2. No treasure score. Another major problem is that you can't see how much treasure you've accumulated during a quest. It's deeply frustrating, wandering around with no idea how much you have; that's the one thing you CAN keep. 3. You can't go back. Once you complete a quest, that dungeon is gone. You can progress in the game very quickly and just as quickly feel like you've gone too fast. 4. Endless grind. It's easy in the first couple of dungeons to level up a character and have them meander endlessly, collecting treasure. The rewards for completing a dungeon are simply too shallow, on their own. Combined with the issues listed above and this becomes a very tedious task, to try and maximize the quests and grind out what you need from the dungeons. 5. Building Your Guild I found it difficult to understand what I was getting from expanding the guild. The blacksmith, for example, doesn't make weapons that I can give to my adventurers. Combined with the fact that they always reset to level one, it makes it hard to care about progressing in the game. Basically, it feels like once you played a dungeon, you've played them all.

I tried to like it, I really did. But when your characters die so regularly as they do in this game, then there is nothing to keep me (personally) invested in coming back. Having your characters survive depends extreme heavily on RNG, both in regards to cards drawn in fights and loot found. And since you don't get to keep any good loot for later dungeons, the next dungeon also becomes an equal RNG nightmare. I bought this game with the expectation that it was, in a sense, a traditional RPG. It is not. Unless you enjoy a rogue-like game with heavy RNG and starting over again and again, then steer clear of this title.

The premise is great: a five minute dungeon crawl where you try to control your dungeoneer's encounters to influence the adventure and claim victory. Each monster defeated gives you a choice of loot to add to your dungeoneer's hand, which are played as actions during battle. The card-battles are novel and simple, but at the cost of nuanced strategy. Many enemies, outside of minor traits, are very same-y within a dungeon, so I didn't really find myself considering which bad guys to place. Likewise the dungeons, which change thematically, are all very much the same mechanically. You'll find yourself playing with a similar strategy whether you're in the plains, jungles, or caverns. I would have loved to see a setup where each class type of physical, magical, and mixed had a chance to shine in the different areas, but once you unlock a higher tier of hero, there's no real reason to experiment. I do like how you can try and pick loot drops that start playing around a class's traits (e.g. get card-drawing equipment for a guy that deals damage based on his hand size) but treasure in tier 1 and about half of tier 2 (out of 3) almost all are not worth picking up when an item that gives health is in the mix, making it a non-choice. Health is EXTREMELY important for the first 2 battles, and in later dungeons you'll just find youself throwing dudes carelessly into the meat grinder until someone is lucky enough to survive to level 3 and have enough health to start picking more esoteric stuff. ***SPIOILER:*** The last level is disappointing. I thought I was on the second-to-last level and when the game suddenly ended, I felt like I had wound up for a pitch without throwing the ball. I would have loved to see a proper announcement and dialogue for the final boss of the game, just like the final bosses of the previous dungeons had. The concepts are really cool, but Guild just isn't able to get the right mix of difficulty, strategy, and novelty it's going for.