Dungeon Shoujo / Dungeon Girl,  is yet another game from Japanese indie developer inutoneko. It was released before both Soul Smith of the Kingdom and Witch Ring Meister, but I skipped it earlier because mentally I couldn’t reconcile the dungeon exploration setting with the puzzle gameplay. If it’s a dungeon crawler then I want to crawl dungeons, dammit! …is what I thought. But when I played Witch Ring Meister, it turned out the puzzle gameplay wasn’t so bad and not as complicated as I’d first thought, so I went back and gave Dungeon Shoujo a try.

Verdict: As I expected, if it’s a dungeon crawler then I want to crawl dungeons. I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would because the controls are super simple and the enemies are pretty easy, but still… It wasn’t anything special.

Story: Monika is a member of a task force charged with exploring a new dungeon down to the 200th floor. So you explore to the 200th floor and get a “Congratulations” from your boss, credits roll, the end. But you can keep playing and try to make it down to the 1000th floor. I can’t imagine why, though.

The main screen:

You go exploring and find/craft items, then you equip up to 6 of them to give you stat boosts plus helpful effects in battle. “Weight” affects how much you can carry because better items weigh more. There’s also item cost, which is how much item power it takes to use an item. Item power refills every day in the dungeon, so in theory you can eat the same riceball hundreds of times without losing it.

Actually it’s this whole “item” thing that killed my enthusiasm. The game is supposed to have 300 items to craft and I love me some crafting. Match made in heaven, right? Umm, nah. There’s a small issue, which is the severe lack of materials to craft with. In the early stages, you’ll be forced to run and re-run lower level dungeons just to get enough materials to craft one or two new items.

Later on you’ll have to re-run for money as well as materials because crafting costs get astronomical. I won’t deny that crafting is useful. Equipping items gives you stats, a few items have useful effects, crafting items lets you reduce weight and costs, and clever crafting lets you make items with great stats and few drawbacks.

In theory the game has 300 items, so you should be able to have a great time collecting items and fusing effects, etc etc. But I already mentioned the pointless grind. What’s even worse is that fully 80% of the obtainable items are either completely useless or just duplicate other item’s effects with different stats. And the interface for comparing item effects… well there’s no such interface, really. You just have to try swapping things in and out to see what works. Useless.

So the crafting and equipment aspect are a wash. What about dungeon crawling itself?

It’s a puzzle game. Click enough of the blue “search” panels and the stairs will appear so you can go deeper. The pink “Life” buttons refill your life. The yellow “work” panels give you money. And the red/white “Attack” buttons are for fending off enemies that show up, like that mud monster thing on the left. The more blocks you break at once, the stronger the effect. Doubly so if you break a horizontal row. So for the grid you see above, I could eliminate the “Work” panel in the middle to get a long chain of Attack panels to deal massive damage to the enemy. Or I could use one of my attack items if I have enough item power. It’s not a complicated game at all.

The only slightly hard part is replacing items regularly and leveiling up often enough to stay alive because the bosses and enemies get tougher as you go deeper. If you don’t wipe them out quickly enough, they’ll quickly fill up the whole screen. Creating an item that changes single-hit attacks into all-hits can be a game changer. Or items that create more “Search” panels so you can change floors and run away.

So there’s a little bit of strategy involved in knowing when to move and when to retreat and how to make the best use of items. But it’s not really that interesting compared to a “proper” dungeon crawler RPG IMO. This is just something cute and light to pass the time with, nothing you can really sink your teeth into.

The usual Ishwald gang is around to help, as usual.

Pour Friend Points into their grids to get temporary and permanent boosts in the dungeons and unlock new classes like Explorer, Warrior, Samurai. The number and types of puzzle panels change depending on your class. A more combat-oriented class will get more Attack panels, a more commerce-driven one will get more Work panels, etc. Useful for re-running earlier levels and stuff.

As usual Tico is the hardest character to lock and gives the best boosts. +10% to all stats is simply ridiculous. I’m still skipping most story events because the status quo changes too slowly in these Ishwald games, but I did read one or two skits. In which nothing of import happened, as expected. Inutoneko is still mounting a fierce campaign to soften Tico’s image, but it’s too late. Dungeon Girl may be a disappointment, but I won’t stop playing these games until Ruvel-kun gets his revenge!

Final thoughts on Dungeon Shoujo

Waste of a good premise, really. The puzzle dungeon wasn’t too bad and was useful for passing the time, if nothing else. But the joy of exploration was zero because you don’t actually explore anything, you just click buttons. Crafting was a time-consuming pain. Most of the promised 300 items were useless. Treasure chests are locked and you have to do quests to get enough keys to open them to get more useless items.

In short it was a whole lot of work for a middling amount of pleasure. I won’t say “Don’t play it” but don’t get your hopes up either. If it’s the puzzles you like, stick to Witch Ring Meister. And you want to explore and fight monsters and collect stuff, the new Shio to Ayakashi no Mori looks more promising. Dungeon Shoujo is something you should get on sale when you’ve played all the other inutoneko games.

What’s next

Almost done with Atelier Shallie Plus. I just have zero motivation to finish it because it’s the least exciting Atelier game I’ve ever played. There’s zero reason for me to play it. The combat isn’t fun, the story is going out with a whimper, the trickle of alchemy recipes is so low it’s barely there, etc etc. The only reason I want to finish it quickly is so I can start Atelier Sophie. I’m busy this weekend, but I’ll try to muster the energy to power through to the end on Sunday.