I finally hit my limit and will be putting this game away briefly while I recuperate with less grindsome games. I’m 24 hours in, probably around the halfway mark. Very, very little has happened except I fought a lot of random battles and killed two bosses. Two bosses in 24 hours.

Still, if you like grinding and first-person dungeon crawling, you could do a lot worse than UnchainBlades Rexx. In fact, you might even like it. But this game is not for everyone, and before you pick it up there are a few questions you should ask yourself.

1. Do you like being prevented from progressing with a story until you go catch monsters for 3 hours?

2. For that matter, do you like grinding in the same small patch of dungeon for 3 hours?

3. On that note, do you like spending hours catching monsters that become obsolete almost as fast as you can catch them?

4. While we’re at it, do you like unimaginative monster designs and lots of palette swaps?

5. Do you like climbing through several vast, twisty, similar-looking dungeon floors?

6. Do you like making a little progress, warping out to save, coming back and starting all over again, making a little more progress and repeating the process 200 times to complete a dungeon?

7. Do you enjoy raising a party from zero to hero only to have them snatched from you and replaced with level 1 weaklings?

8. If yes, would you enjoy doing it twice in a row?

9. Answer the following question: I enjoy listening to mediocre, slightly grating background music, Y/N?

10. Do you like item fusion systems that require you to go foraging with highly breakable shovels, saws and pickaxes, and that taunt you by showing items you can’t possibly make at that stage in the game?

If you answered “No” to more than a few of these questions, you shouldn’t even be playing a dungeon crawler in the first place. Repetition is the name of the game for that genre, so if you want lots of different locations, tons of NPCs to interact with, or basically any variety of any sort, you’re barking up the wrong tree. For me, #1, #2, #7 and #8 are kind of bothering me, but not enough to make me dislike the game. Yet.

The story: UnchainBlades Rexx is set in a world where the Goddess Clunea can grant any one wish – provided you can get to her. The game starts with our super-strong protagonist Fang making his way to her only to insult her. She retaliates by stripping him of his immense powers, whereupon he decides to go back there and teach her a thing or two. A moment’s reflection suggests that she’s just going to strip him of his powers again, but Fang is a fighter, not a philosopher, so that’s your story. Elsewhere on the continent are several other people with wishes of their own, and the game switches from one set of people to another every chapter. Presumably they’ll all come together at the end.

The gameplay: It’s a simple, but repetitive process of going to a dungeon, exploring till you get too weak, warping out to save and recover and coming back to do it all over again until you finish the dungeon. The two dungeon bosses I fought were fairly tough, so you can be proud by the time you finish. Your party will be strong and you’ll have lots of money and items… which is why it’s really going to suck when they take all that away in the next chapter and force you to start afresh with a new level 1 party.

The game is called UnchainBlades because as you go along, you can “Unchain” monsters. This consists of beating a monster to within an inch of its life, and then playing a little mini-game with a shrinking circle to see if you can catch it or not. That part is not hard. The hard part is weakening the monster enough without killing it and then hoping it will let you unchain it, all while it whacks away at your party. Hard. ‘Unchainability’ is random and depends on your level and quite a bit of luck. It follows, then, that any monster weak enough to be easily recruited will become useless almost immediately, but you do get lucky once in a while.

The battle system: Standard speed-based turns. Speed counts for a lot in this game. You have your basic attacks, skills, items, defend, escape. Escape works in all battles except event-battles. Party members have a Burst gauge that fills up as they get attacked. When it’s full they can unleash a super-powerful attack. Nothing new there. UBR does only two new things with the battle system.

Firstly, the monsters you unchain can be set as “Followers” and if they like you at all, they will randomly either take blows for you or carry out follow-up attacks. Depending on your performance in battle, you may gain Charisma Points and rank up in Charisma. This will allow you to equip more followers and will improve the mood of those you’ve already got on. Additionally, your monsters will occasionally ask you questions after battle, and depending on your answer your Charisma/their mood can go up or down (trying to be nice to them is usually counterproductive. They are monsters, after all).

The second new thing UBR has is Link Skills. Link Skills are attacks activated by having certain monsters with certain Anima as followers. If Skill A needs Earth, Wind and Fire to become usable, you have to find monsters with that Anima and put them on. In my experience this is way too much trouble for regular battles. And for boss battles it’s more important to have monsters who love you enough to take hits for you. But it’s still early days yet, so I might revise this opinion depending on what skills I get later.

Character growth: You level up normally, but with every level up your party members get 2 Skill points to use on the Skill Map. Skill Map, Sphere Grid, Ether Grid, whatever, you know the drill. This is the only way to get new attacks, Link Skills, passive abilities, etc. These grids are huge, and you only get 2 SP per level up so filling out the whole thing is probably impossible on one playthrough. I started out going blindly, but now my advice to new players would be: 1. Head straight for the Burst Gauge nodes. These will give you access to stronger burst attacks. 2. Ignore Link skills unless they’re buffs 3. Get useful passive skills 4. Speed! Speed! Speed!

Where I am right now: On my third real dungeon and third party. Being robbed of my powerful party was not okay the first time, but I adjusted. But this time I don’t even have a party, I just have one lone swordsman. That means if he gets wiped out, it’s game over. That’s not a problem because he’s actually quite strong – the problem is he’s so strong, in fact, that he’s one-shotting monsters instead of recruiting them. It’s just all kinds of frustrating right now, which is why I’m taking a break. I’ll be back soon enough. This game is pretty addictive, in its own way.