A neat little game. Highly recommended if you don't mind the limited scope of it.
The good:
+ Very good tactical combat.
+ "The highschooler you would roll on the ground laughing" type of humor. There's something very 00's about it, in a good way. Just stupid uncensored fun. As a grumpy adult, I do find it quite fun. Maybe with a little bit of guilty pleasure.
The bad:
- Most passive skills focusing on support seem useless. So we have a whole category of not very usefull skills. In general, some mechanics could use rebalancing.
- Camera fixed on character makes exploration feel very clunky at first. The games mitigates it somehow with smart level design.
Buy it if you like turn-based combat. Thumbs up.
I've just finished my first playthrough of the base game, about 40 hours worth and that was also acheivement hunting for as many as i could the first play through. Overall the game is good, it's funny, makes fun of alot of the rpg cliche sterotypes. The combat is easy to understand but hard to master, probably especially more so on the higher difficulties. The only reason i gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is there was a few bugs where a turn during combat would lock up or the combat would never end, would just freeze. However a reload usually fixed it. other than that it's a very solid game! Will probably return to it on higher dificulties.
Well, I'm not much into five stars reviews but this game deserve it from the perspective of a lad who was a young adult when "Le donjon de Naheulbeuk" was released about 20 years ago.
I advise this game to teens as it's ludic, and to people who enjoyed the audio series back in the early 2000's. For other people, it's just another turn-based tactical game.
The game is loyal to the original material, and I laught during the whole playthrough. They got it right.
Then, with a big party composed of dumb adventurers, you clean a dungeon. You just need to know that luck is against you and even if you have 132% of chances to hit, you can make a critical fail. Making combats as epic as in the audio series. Note that hitting an ennemy allow him to make a dodge or parry roll.
It's fairly easy in normal except at the beginning. But once you're geared everything is easy. Harder difficulties provide a proper challenge to any player that enjoys it.
I'm now looking forward the next game. There's a prophecy ongoing.
I like the cartoonesque graphics and humorous dialogs (although many cliché's). This review focuses on some issues, even though in general I enjoyed the game.
It is good that the combat is turn-based (party of 8!). The downside of such a large party is that every combat also has a similar number of opponents, so they take time, with combats lasting usually between 4 and 12 rounds, and in each round you choose an action 8 times, and see an action performed 16 times. (There is a setting to increase combat speed.)
The game is challenging at first. Even on normal diff. it is hard work, until you find the best skills/stats.
In some cases the humor can get annoying; some remarks you can turn off, but e.g.every time you open the map one of the characters makes a remark (1 per char); some irritating.
Stability had a few issues. Regularly I had the game freeze on me several seconds (while not loading). It always resumed though.
The game crashes reproducibly if you start it without GOG galaxy active. OK, but it should give an error message instead of just dumping you back to the desktop. And I also had regular crashes when using the elevator between floors, esp. when I tried to go to the tavern floor.
Duration is pretty short; might take about 40 hours (1st time). It is only 1 dungeon with about 14 levels. It is suitable for casual players, since it is easy to learn and has few extra complexities.
Replayability is low: there is nothing random in encounters, treasures, etc. Of the party 7 members are fixed, and for the 8th you have 3 choices. With leveling up you can assign points to the different stats, and choose 1 new active and 1 new passive skill. You can vary a bit with that, but in the end you can choose most skills, and some are obviously inferior. Most of the time you are following the predefined path of the main quest, with only occasional side quests available.
I just finished my first run of the game, and had a lot of fun doing it, from start to finish. When I say fun, it's both because the game is good and both it's immensely funny.
This is an old-school tactical RPG: turn-based, with synergies between abilities, alterations, skill trees... You have a mostly fixed party (6 characters, plus one extra chosen among three) going through the dungeon of Naheulbeuk. The progression inside the dungeon is far from linear, and you have your fair share of optional sidequests.
It must be said that the game is based on a French podcast from before they were called podcasts), a parody of a tabletop RPG session with archetypal characters falling into every trope, and tons of jokes about it. It's still going strong to this day, as novels and comics.
While you can enjoy the game just fine going blind, there is additional depth to the story and the jokes if you're familiar with the source material.
My only gripe is with the UI, which is a bit clunky. I started playing with keyboard and mouse, but switched to a Dualshock 4 after a few hours and didn't regret it. Also, some puzzles were not very interesting.
The story is well fleshed-out, fully voiced and perfectly in the spirit of the source material (John Lang, the author, was directly involved in the game). At least in French, the dialogs are an endless well of jokes that you'll remember until the end of times. ;)
The fights have a lot of variety, fun ideas and never feel stale, with many opportunities to use the terrain to your advantage (exploding beer kegs, throwing the dwarf over obstacles, and so on). Power progression felt tightly tuned, as you never lingered too long before gaining new abilities and ability points.
I did my first run on the second difficulty setting (out of 4), and found it well-tuned. I had to think my way through the fights, but kept the freedom to take skills I liked or found fun without risking gimping my characters.
Have fun, and lots of it!
