well i'm playing it,it's pretty good but the difficulty of the game is completly reversed,the more you play,the easier it gets,which hurts my enjoyement a little,but you can see N1 trying,each dungeon has his gimmick something pretty unique to this roguelike,monster do have unique skills but they rarely come into play so most of them ends up being just enemy fodder
the equipment section is where this game really shines,you can equip crocodile heads,drills,frying pans,baseball bats,rocket punches,fishing poles,and most amusingly of all a pair of boobs,each item comes with a stat increase (which sadly works on percentage so a dagger doesn't give you a +5 attack but instead gives you a 10% increase) and most of the times an attack skill and a unique passive skill (we go from "immunity to a kind of trap" to "ability to see the enemy elemental weakness",the boobs give a damage increase against male monster
) most item comes with similiar stat bonus but as you use the item,the quality of the item decrease and when the quality reaches 0% it's stat bonus crumble and you can't use the attack skill of that item anymore forcing you to switch (tough you can repair broken items for a fee)
of course you ends up with tons of unused equipment so you can turn those items into chips which further increase your stat,you place these in a stickman shaped diagram,different item gives different stat increase (so an axe increase your attack but an helmet increase your hit rate) you can also puts capsule in the same diagram which give you further stat bonus or increased inventory space
you also have an operative base which give you access to a variety of service,for example if you get a rare item in the dungeon and you want to sent it to the homebase you have a mailing service which let you send an item instantly and if you are hungry,you can summon your wife which will prepare you a meal (amusingly the default character for the wife role is a prinny
) there is also a church which let you increase the strenght of your enemies and a caravan if you want to quit the dungeon early,going in the random dungeon also let you recruit more people for your base by beating them up a-la disgaea specialist giving you better use of your facility
mmm... what else,the game has the usual oddball humour found in NIS games,everytime you finish a chapter,you get thrown in a hopeless battle against the final boss,the first time this happens it's all in 8-bit,the character reactions?
"a lame hero gets a small budget but i guess we can justify that saying we were going for a retro look!"
also in a plot twist that seems to be written by your average evilbore dweller
spoiler (click to show/hide)
president brick oldlama has just launched a nuke against japan!
i'd also says for a roguelike this is pretty easy for beginners while still killing you occasionaly,one of the main complain you hear coming about roguelikes is that everytime you die,you restart at level 1,here you do restart at level 1 too but those level you lose gets stored into a bank,get enough level into the bank and your level 1 stat will increase so a level 1 character that reached level 10,7 times and stored 70 level will be stronger than a level 1 character which just started (i'd say this is the main culprit in the lack of challenge)
if you wanted to play a roguelike i'd still would recomend shiren the wanderer over this (the original not the 3rd one on the wii) the soul of a roguelike is in fearing for your life and this game doesn't achieve in that sense but that shouldn't stop you from giving it a spin