Dungeon Journey is a pseudo turn-based dungeon crawler set in a fantasy universe. We have a choice of one of multiple characters to play as, with more unlocked as you conquer new areas. Whoever we pick, the basis of the gameplay remains the same as we click on new tiles to unveil whatever lies beneath. Gold, potions, enemies, there is a multitude of things that can await us on our search for a key to take us down to a dungeon’s deeper floor. The same remains true for every floor we visit until we finally hit that last one, and either fight a boss or simply slay every creature in there. Easier said than done as you will likely be tired and battered by that point, with future dungeons containing far more floors to trudge through.
Every five floors there is a hidden door which serves as a checkpoint should you meet your end. Finding it is a risky ordeal since you have to click on every tile until you randomly do so, and that increases your chances to stumble across many nasty surprises. Even when you finally reach it, you will still need to pay cold, hard cash to activate it. They get far more expensive the deeper into the dungeon you get so it can be wise to occasionally skip any you find to make your delving into these hostile caverns actually profitable. Once you die and use your checkpoint it is gone for good as well, you either survive long enough to reach another one or start all over again should you succumb to an unfortunate end. You’ll also lose any rare trinket you find which contain incredibly useful benefits like 50% more overall health or extra critical damage.
Luckily, all your gold and experience will all carry over, meaning you’ll be able to get past a tricky dungeon eventually if you keep at it. Your stats include armor, perception, attack, and agility respectively. You’ll also be able to upgrade any of the four abilities a character has, with two of them being passive and two abilities for combat. Where the real substantial buffs come from is the crystals that you find throughout the caves. After defeating a few dungeons and reaching the Mystic smith, you can mash them together to create a more powerful gem and stick them into your gear for massive stat benefits. Later on, you can also upgrade your gear which is slightly less beneficial and will cost you an arm & a leg. If you can afford it, it is well worth it, though you’ll have to waste rare seals to remove a gem if you want to equip a more powerful one on it.
It sounds all well and good but I’m afraid it’s mobile phone roots really show here. The shop menus are absolutely dreadful and drives me completely mad whenever I find myself in enough need to use them. Using either the skills or inventory menus is passable enough, thankfully. You’ll find a lot of rubbish on your expeditions into the dungeons. Weapons, armor, accessories. Your inventory will fill up quickly so you will need to go into the store menus more often than you’d like. If you have an item there that you’d rather not sell then your situation just got a lot more annoying as you try to avoid accidentally selling it as you frantically sell off all your trash. You can’t even give it to another character so they could hold on to it or equip it themselves annoyingly enough. They do share the same gold so you will not start off from scratch if you switch to a new class, but it bothers me that you need to, say, buy a wand when your warrior character is drowning in them.
Whatever type of weapon you have in hand matters little as long as its stats are good, and with only two abilities each, there isn’t much incentive to switch to a new class later on. This brings me to the combat itself and what makes it pseudo turn-based. You see, whenever you dig up a tile that contains a foe, you’ll need to slay it to get at the surrounding blocks. You can click on it to attack or use one of your two abilities, but afterward, you will have to time when to block as they counter-attack. The damage you take is in relation to how well you timed your block and if you missed it completely, their attack will take a massive part of your life points. Each foe has one of several different types of counter-attacks. Some will retaliate immediately, others will toss a slow boulder your way, or a swing of their axe with a tricky windup.
It is an interesting system to get you directly in the action. I’m not sure whether I’d call it good or bad, its just different really. Where it will get on your nerves is when you face an enemy that attacks first and they do so extremely quickly. You will not have time to react unless you have your finger on the space-bar for every single tile you uncover and even then it is a difficult task. With how hard an attack hits for, it feels plain cheap and can end a run. Since it is a randomly generated game, there is nothing stopping another one from quickly spawning in somewhere else to deliver another sucker-punch. Not game-breaking, though it does detract from exploring caverns.
There is a nice selection of foes to face, with them becoming increasingly more dangerous as you progress. A few dungeons will have a boss to defeat at the and these hulking beasts are quite the encounter. They don’t really have unique abilities that separate them from other foes, though they pack a massive punch. They also become regular foes after defeating them, but in a weaker, smaller form. There is little variation to your fighting style aside from when you need to block. It is a very simple combat system of attack and defend, with the occasional skill thrown in if you’ve got the mana. As you dig up more tiles you may find spell-books to use on enemies and they can be quite handy as the more you use your equipped skills on any floor, the costlier they get to use.
You can’t pick up any spell-books or potions, if you don’t use them on that floor then they are gone for good. That also means there is no way to recover your health reliably which leaves your fate largely in the hands of RNG. There is very little strategy or anything to focus on other than timing your blocks correctly. The loot does help in that regard however, there is always a constant stream of riches to keep you motivated. It can get pretty grindy at times, likely due to its mobile phone foundations. Overall, Dungeon Journey did not transition gracefully onto the PC platform and is best played at short bursts, making it better suited on a phone. It does feature plenty of content, and at a mere $2, this simple journey into the dungeons can scratch your itch for finding tons of loot without denting the wallet.
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