Torneko no Daiboken: Fushigi no Dungeon/Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon (SNES, 1993)
Graphics-8 Sound-7.5 Control-7.5 Challenge-7.5/8.5* Story-6.5
Level Design-7 Frustration-8/9* Fun-7 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-7
*Bonus dungeon
+
Rogue-inspired gameplay (enemies move when you do though you do take turns here, randomly generated dungeon, various item mechanics, resource management, line of sight mechanic, can throw most items at enemies, regenerate HP - can regenerate faster while being vulnerable to enemies)
Story is a comical spinoff of Dragon Quest IV in which you play as the merchant Torneko/Taloon who wants to open up a shop selling treasure from a certain dungeon)
Basic map system (good but could've shown where a path ends and let you mark locations, semi-transparent overlay in-game like in Diablo - toggle in the menu)
Trial/tutorial dungeon (10 floors, some mechanical explanations)
Can examine all identified items
Nice art direction, facing mechanics (getting hit from the side or back is more dangerous), certain scrolls can reveal a dungeon layout completely as well as remove fog of war (single use), run move (moves you to the end of a straight path (or adjacent to a room entrance/exit or next to a monster) instantly, makes you skip picking items you move into), automatically pick up items until your inventory is full, random teleportation item (some enemies can also do this to you), enemies are also affected by mine explosions, some enemies can kill other enemies (this can even level them up), unlockable bonus dungeon (30 floors, last quest item) - basically hard mode, replay feature (lets you see what you've done on the current floor if you save/end in a dungeon), in-game epilogue,
+/-
NPCs around the king act as walking tutorial messages (useful but could've been intertwined with gameplay)
Starts off fairly tough
Dying means getting sent back to the beginning of a dungeon and losing your progress (except half the gold you found - or all gold if you've found a safe)
Need to identify certain items and eat food when hungry (you don't get hungry that quickly though and there's a ring you can find which removes hunger completely)
While you can name the new town where you set up shop you can only use four letters
Can't exit the main dungeon without an Outside scroll (randomly placed) and you go back to char level 1 for doing so (making it important to be able to use gear for later), items are auto-converted to gold when exiting the dungeon until you've gotten the vault (after ~15k gold?) - the vault lets you store 10 items but only grab 2 when going back into the dungeon (trade in the bread you get from your wife to be able to grab the second one), gold is used to automatically upgrade your shop and home rather than letting you buy gear that would help in the dungeon (eventually you can start storing found items in the vault) - at least you get a piece of big bread from talking to your wife before going back in, can't drop items on top of each other (they end up on an adjacent tile), no manual control over how the store develops as you progress, limited inventory, dungeon floors randomly generate again when backtracking through a dungeon (and again if you fall into a pit), weapon corrosion attacks (can lower all regular gear's bonus down to -3 - can gild the item with a plating scroll to protect it but you'll have to find it first), save anywhere (better to save in town since you only have one slot), new monsters will spawn after a certain amount of actions are used on the same floor, two enemies can steal from you (trick bags steal gold and demonites steal items (even key items)) and then warp to a different part of the floor and try to avoid you, it's possible to complete the game by finding the box of happiness before you're told about it in the story (this also means you don't get to store the items you found during that run in the vault since the scene is skipped which makes the bonus dungeon even harder),
-
The random elements can make playthroughs much easier or harder depending on where certain items (food and Outside scrolls) are placed (increases replay value but could've been balanced better) or if you miss or hit (also goes for traps)
Plenty of dead space and dead ends
Inconsistent line of sight (one tile long in corridors, entire room after entering it, can't look into a room from right outside it) - leads to surprise attacks in corridors when you don't have arrows to scout with
Time limit on the explanation text that pops up when picking up an item
Need to hold a separate button to move diagonally (instead of holding down Y and facing diagonally then letting go)
No item merging or NPC party members, trial & error (a thrown item disappears if you hit an enemy with it, if you stay on one floor for too long you'll automatically drop down via an earthquake, you can progress the story/shop building further at times by ending and reloading a gaming session, surprise attacks in narrow paths - need Eavesdrop scroll to see enemies on the map, traps only reliably detected by Torch scroll (in-game but not on the map) which is usually pretty rare - can be detected with your sword but it's a dice roll and you're likely to walk into most traps since there are no visual or audio clues and monsters don't trigger them), plenty of mundane loot, silver arrows don't end up on the floor if you don't hit anything (unlike wooden ones) - why?, fairly easy to miss (temporarily) some NPC dialogue from customers unless you hog the counter until they start looping, need to hold Y and R to aim diagonally around corners and the attack still won't hit?, no item that lets you keep some experience after exiting the dungeon?, can't see how a piece of equipment affects your stats without equipping it nor how much experience you have left until the next level, difficulty spikes when trying to get the box of happiness (can't use an Outside scroll to warp out (using one just wastes it) and there aren't any items on the way up except some you can get from enemies and one or two extra Outside scrolls), repetitive backgrounds, all rooms are rectangular, lacks puzzles (besides combat itself), no hidden passages or rooms, 99% translated (intro has some text glitches and the "floor #" text when entering a floor is untranslated)
Level Design-7 Frustration-8/9* Fun-7 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-7
*Bonus dungeon
+
Rogue-inspired gameplay (enemies move when you do though you do take turns here, randomly generated dungeon, various item mechanics, resource management, line of sight mechanic, can throw most items at enemies, regenerate HP - can regenerate faster while being vulnerable to enemies)
Story is a comical spinoff of Dragon Quest IV in which you play as the merchant Torneko/Taloon who wants to open up a shop selling treasure from a certain dungeon)
Basic map system (good but could've shown where a path ends and let you mark locations, semi-transparent overlay in-game like in Diablo - toggle in the menu)
Trial/tutorial dungeon (10 floors, some mechanical explanations)
Can examine all identified items
Nice art direction, facing mechanics (getting hit from the side or back is more dangerous), certain scrolls can reveal a dungeon layout completely as well as remove fog of war (single use), run move (moves you to the end of a straight path (or adjacent to a room entrance/exit or next to a monster) instantly, makes you skip picking items you move into), automatically pick up items until your inventory is full, random teleportation item (some enemies can also do this to you), enemies are also affected by mine explosions, some enemies can kill other enemies (this can even level them up), unlockable bonus dungeon (30 floors, last quest item) - basically hard mode, replay feature (lets you see what you've done on the current floor if you save/end in a dungeon), in-game epilogue,
+/-
NPCs around the king act as walking tutorial messages (useful but could've been intertwined with gameplay)
Starts off fairly tough
Dying means getting sent back to the beginning of a dungeon and losing your progress (except half the gold you found - or all gold if you've found a safe)
Need to identify certain items and eat food when hungry (you don't get hungry that quickly though and there's a ring you can find which removes hunger completely)
While you can name the new town where you set up shop you can only use four letters
Can't exit the main dungeon without an Outside scroll (randomly placed) and you go back to char level 1 for doing so (making it important to be able to use gear for later), items are auto-converted to gold when exiting the dungeon until you've gotten the vault (after ~15k gold?) - the vault lets you store 10 items but only grab 2 when going back into the dungeon (trade in the bread you get from your wife to be able to grab the second one), gold is used to automatically upgrade your shop and home rather than letting you buy gear that would help in the dungeon (eventually you can start storing found items in the vault) - at least you get a piece of big bread from talking to your wife before going back in, can't drop items on top of each other (they end up on an adjacent tile), no manual control over how the store develops as you progress, limited inventory, dungeon floors randomly generate again when backtracking through a dungeon (and again if you fall into a pit), weapon corrosion attacks (can lower all regular gear's bonus down to -3 - can gild the item with a plating scroll to protect it but you'll have to find it first), save anywhere (better to save in town since you only have one slot), new monsters will spawn after a certain amount of actions are used on the same floor, two enemies can steal from you (trick bags steal gold and demonites steal items (even key items)) and then warp to a different part of the floor and try to avoid you, it's possible to complete the game by finding the box of happiness before you're told about it in the story (this also means you don't get to store the items you found during that run in the vault since the scene is skipped which makes the bonus dungeon even harder),
-
The random elements can make playthroughs much easier or harder depending on where certain items (food and Outside scrolls) are placed (increases replay value but could've been balanced better) or if you miss or hit (also goes for traps)
Plenty of dead space and dead ends
Inconsistent line of sight (one tile long in corridors, entire room after entering it, can't look into a room from right outside it) - leads to surprise attacks in corridors when you don't have arrows to scout with
Time limit on the explanation text that pops up when picking up an item
Need to hold a separate button to move diagonally (instead of holding down Y and facing diagonally then letting go)
No item merging or NPC party members, trial & error (a thrown item disappears if you hit an enemy with it, if you stay on one floor for too long you'll automatically drop down via an earthquake, you can progress the story/shop building further at times by ending and reloading a gaming session, surprise attacks in narrow paths - need Eavesdrop scroll to see enemies on the map, traps only reliably detected by Torch scroll (in-game but not on the map) which is usually pretty rare - can be detected with your sword but it's a dice roll and you're likely to walk into most traps since there are no visual or audio clues and monsters don't trigger them), plenty of mundane loot, silver arrows don't end up on the floor if you don't hit anything (unlike wooden ones) - why?, fairly easy to miss (temporarily) some NPC dialogue from customers unless you hog the counter until they start looping, need to hold Y and R to aim diagonally around corners and the attack still won't hit?, no item that lets you keep some experience after exiting the dungeon?, can't see how a piece of equipment affects your stats without equipping it nor how much experience you have left until the next level, difficulty spikes when trying to get the box of happiness (can't use an Outside scroll to warp out (using one just wastes it) and there aren't any items on the way up except some you can get from enemies and one or two extra Outside scrolls), repetitive backgrounds, all rooms are rectangular, lacks puzzles (besides combat itself), no hidden passages or rooms, 99% translated (intro has some text glitches and the "floor #" text when entering a floor is untranslated)