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[PSP] Classic Dungeon (Nippon Ichi goes retro)

Alex

Member
Must have missed this. don't typically care for NIS, but this looks really great, my kind of thing entirely.

Half-minute Hero rocks, a definite must-buy for the PSP.

If you have a PSP and dont have Half Min Hero, you're doing it wrong.
 

Jonnyram

Member
There's a bug in the PSN version of Half Minute Hero (in Japan, at least), so they took it off PSN until they can fix it. I'll definitely get it when it's back up.
 

Bebpo

Banned
Jonnyram said:
Anyone playing this?
I got this and 100manton no barabara yesterday, but I'm playing this first.

Soon. Mine shipped yesterday so I should have it over the weekend. Gotta support Nippon Ichi before they go out of business!
 

d+pad

Member
Jonnyram said:
Anyone playing this?
I got this and 100manton no barabara yesterday, but I'm playing this first.

Introduction to gameplay was fairly long, but I seem to be getting somewhere.
The story is very light-hearted. Not directly parodying anything that I know of, but perhaps parodying the genre in general. e.g. right at the start of your bizarre quest, there is an exit you can go through to go back to the real world and "finish the game". I haven't tried it yet, but it seemed like a funny thing when I passed it.

Also, the game has retro music or modern music - the choice is yours. The modern music has vocals and is pretty cool; retro music sounds like 8-bit level of retro.

Ah, a man of taste, I see :)

Can't wait to read more of your impressions. Please post impressions of 100manton no barabara as well :)
 

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
Oooh, how did I miss this thread the first time?
This seems right up my alley. Here's hoping it gets localized.
 

Bebpo

Banned
Ok, time to restart this thread.

THIS GAME IS GOOD

I just played 5 hours straight. To get me to do that on a portable machine takes a lot. The fact that the only reason I stopped is because I have actual work to do in the morning tomorrow or else I would have played another 5 hours straight says even more.

This game is win


Imagine your favorite parts of Disgaea combined with gameplay straight out of the latest Ys games combined with the best parts of Shiren...yeah, that is a good combination.

Before I get into details about the inner workings of the sub-systems which are very confusing and hard to explain, I'll just give an overview of how the game works.

Like Disgaea you have a main base town. There's a shop, a place to make characters, ITEM WORLD, a place to change your color scheme, and the main dungeon portal. Like Disgaea you click on the dungeon and do a floor of it and then the next one unlocks and after a handful of floors the next dungeon unlocks. Between floors (which are about 1-3 mins long; perfect for portable size) there are story scenes like Disgaea.

Just like Disgaea you can make characters at any time and you'll get a bunch of story characters that cover all the basic job types if you prefer to use them.

Now when you get into the dungeon floor, that's when it stops being Disgaea and starts being Ys x Shiren. You move around realtime arpg style and you move quickly aka Ys. You can dash and slide from a dash at any time by holding R. But while R is held down your DEF is halved. On the other hand if you hold Square you pull out a shield and your DEF is doubled while you have it out, but you can't run while holding square.
51hnp9PryML.jpg


As you can see by this, what's nice is that you always see your ATK/DEF stat so in realtime you'll see how running/slide & shielding affect it

You can run and slide in 8 directions, but you can only attack in 4. The goal is to move/run/slide to the side or back of an enemy and hit them for critical damage. The enemy will try to do the same to you because likewise you take critical damage from the back or side. You can attack with combos or charge attacks from your weapon. Or you can use magic (you can equip 3 at a time and switch with L, cast with triangle) that uses up SP. There are loooots of spells. Attack spells, healing, support spells, random. Each job class learns a different set of spells. For example the shopkeeper will learn spells that increase the money and item find %, whereas the guardian will have heal & debuffs for enemies while buffs for themselves. Fighter will have elemental sword slashes and dash rams and stuff, mages will have all sorts of things that go boom. The classes also have different base stats and stat growth.

The enemies are varied and have different patterns, some will breath fire on you, some will run away and shoot you with spit that casts slow on you, some will try to run behind you and slash you in the back. The environment is just as evil. There are trap panels EVERYWHERE and they activate a second or so after you step on them. Some fire ice arrows, some cause earthquakes (damaging all enemies on screen), some heal you, some cast status effects, etc... the icons are all different so you can tell what a panel does before you step on it. On top of that there are environmental dangers such as fire, tar pits, grass that slows you down, slippery ice. Luckily between dashing and jumping (yes, you can jump with X) you have the skills to avoid things. And even if you get set on fire you can usually find some water somewhere in the level. Each stage has a "boss" type enemy that unlocks a gate which leads either to the exit or the next section of the stage. The combat is pretty intense and like the Disgaea games, it's a high damage game for both parties. The stages are very short and it's more about CAN YOU BEAT THESE ENEMIES than longterm endurance (although that does come into play later). Oh and the monters drop gold and random loot.

Ok, so hopefully that gets the basics out of the way. You go through dungeon floors and fight monsters like Ys and boss monsters with attacks and spells and avoiding traps and environmental dangers and there's story between stages. That's the general sense, but of course since it's an N1 game there's far more to it.

As I mentioned earlier, you have job classes with unique stats and spells. You also have equipment in the Disgaea/Diablo style where you might pick up two iron shields but one has better stats than the other and is strong against fire. Then you have the configuration circle, which like stats and spells is unique for each job class. As the class levels they will get more and more configuration circles. If you have played Soul Cradle (or whatever they called it in the US) it's very similar to the "rooms" that you got in that game to put your characters in.

616D1K5D7eL.jpg


At the center is the character you want to play as. You can switch at anytime outside of a stage. The character you play as determines what spells and configurations you'll use.

In all 4 directions from the center there will be 2 circles each. These are where you place your characters you aren't playing as. Think of it like your party. When you take damage from an enemy in a dungeon. They are the ones who lose HP, not you. When they lose all their HP they die. When all 8 support people die your main character's HP appears and if they die you lose the stage. Thankfully when you die the only penalty is loss of all items picked up since the stage started and loss of 50% of gold and exp earned since the stage began. Anyhow look at that first pic. The four circles in the top right are your support characters and the numbers are their HP. When you heal you heal them until they are gone. Now what else do the support characters do besides soak up damage (and gain xp along with the lead)? Well they allow you to equip stat and skill modifiers. See all those items in that 2nd screen? See how there are lines going from them to the circles?

A circle can connect to artifact equip boxes. These boxes will vary depending on the overall configuration circle and will either say ATK/DEF/SPD/SP/HP/etc... in these boxes you can equip items from the same category. So for example, in the 2nd pic the guy on the far left has 2 lines going from his circle SPD/SPD and DEF/DEF/DEF/DEF. In those spots he put two speed items that will each increase the speed stat of the main character and 4 def items that will raise the def stat. But for every item a support character equips, it comes at the cost of mana. If you look below the "lvl.29" on that same guy you will see 2 numbers. The first is his HP, important to know how much damage he can absorb for you and the 2nd is his Mana, important to know how much he can equip. For example a DEF item might be "DEF+10 for the cost of 50 MANA". These aren't permanent so once you unequip the item you get the mana back. Between 8 characters and all sorts of stat increasers, this because a major aspect of making your lead character strong. In fact thinking about it now this whole system is REALLY similar to Soul Cradle where all the support people affected the main units' stats. I wouldn't be surprised if this game was made by the same team.

On top of this the support circles might have bonuses and disadvantages. For example, a circle could say EXPx3, HP-60%, Michizure. This boils down to:
1. The character in that spot will earn 3x the xp
2. The character in that spot will have -60% of their HP, so they will be more likely to die and get less xp
3. Michizure description will say "if one support character dies...they all die together"

So you have to not only take into account the advantages and disadvantages of a circle, but the artifact equips that are attached to it. A circle may have 10 equip boxes attached to it while another has zero. This means whoever you put in the 10 equip box one needs to have A LOT OF MANA to support all those equips :p

So yeah, that was complicated as hell to describe. Luckily, after an hour or two of playing it's all fairly sensible and works in practice.

Now lastly I will talk about THE ITEM WORLD or here it's called the RANGEON short for RANdom dunGEON. If you've played a Disgaea game you know the addiction of the item world. Well it's here and it will eat your soul.

You jump into a randomly generated dungeon floor with all the enemies lvl.1. On this floor there will probably (but not definitely) be an exit. Take this to get out. There will also be at least one GATE but up to six. The gates take you to the next floor. There are six different types of gates and while taking you to the next floor they all randomly adjust 3 parameters: X/Y/Z
1) enemy level + X
2) item drop rate +/- Y
3) rare item drop rate +/- Z
Hell gates (the worst) will bump the enemy levels and drop the item/rare rates. OTOH Angel gates (the best) will bump the enemy level by 0 or 1 and will bump the drop rates by possibly A LOT.

This stacks every floor.
So say you get 3 angel gates in a row and are on the 4th floor. Your enemy level might be only lvl.3 but the item and rare drop rates are lvl.15. Maybe you'll find some great loot. Say you find an exit. You can leave with your loot and exp/gold. But then you lose your item/rare rates and have to start over again next time you enter. So you keep pushing it and pushing it to get your rates higher and higher and get all kinds of amazing loot.

...and then you stumble into some floors with only hell gates and no exits and now you're fighting enemies that are SCARY and you've accumulated all this rare loot over 20 mins and you know if you die you will lose it all (but you'll keep 1/2 the xp and 1/2 the gold you've earned). So you're scrambling around looking for an exit and all you find are gates so you keep going further and further ...and then you find an exit and are REALLY HAPPY and everyone doubles their levels :p Or you die :p :p It's this feeling of pushing the grind as far as you can while risking more and more that makes these runs so addicting in Disgaea and just as much here.

Also like Item World, set floor numbers (10, 20, etc...) are preset "boss" stages and if you beat them you get access to a room with an exit and all 6 gate types for your choosing.

So yeah, that's the game in a nutshell. The addicting item world grind of Disgaea with a fresh different feel in the palm of your hands to steal many moments of your life away. Coupled with a main (designed) dungeon, very good and fast combat and deep stat systems. For some people, the game will be pretty much what they've always dreamed of.

By the end of my 5 hour session I was playing a Guardian Monk I'd made, equipped with a staff that shot 3 balls of light, a cool looking armor (all equipment is visible!), and a rare shield that has high resistance against all elements. With DEF BUFF, ENEMY DEBUFF, and HEAL equipped and support skills that buffed his DEF to high heights and highly increased his running speed to make him super fast (speaking of which, every story stage has an optional "clear time". If you go back and beat it quickly later on you'll get a star or something. If you beat enough you get access to the private shop for winners). I was running and slide dashing around enemies. But when they got tough I'd pull out my shield and would be A FORTRESS and take like .5 damage per hit. Sure I'd do less attacking them head on, but it got me through some tough bits already. I like my walking fortress healing/buffer monk :p

So yeah, really really good and now after writing all that I think it's the spiritual successor to Soul Cradle x Ys x Shiren x Disgaea.
 

sprsk

force push the doodoo rock
Ah shit.
I need this game. Was trying to resist temptation, but that sent me over the edge.
 

sprsk

force push the doodoo rock
Bebpo said:
Yeah, you like N1 games. You will like this a lot :)

I like N1 Games.
I like Roguelikes.
I really like Soul Cradle.

Why didn't I get this day one?
 

Bebpo

Banned
bcn-ron said:
Obligatory please release on the US PSN!
Yeah, right, as if that'll happen.

I dunno, it might just be me but this strikes me as something that will definitely come to the west. The only N1 games that haven't are the stuff that's really niche like their hayarigami detective games or tori no hoshi their flight sim game and the Rhapsody series, but I attribute that to it being a pain to localize musical rpgs.

This being a dungeon arpg makes me think it's an easy sell. If NIS for whatever reason doesn't do it, maybe Atlus would?
 

Bebpo

Banned
I NEED SCISSORS said:
Is it anything like 3D Dot Game Heroes or are the similarities limited to the camera perspective?

I haven't played 3d Dot Game Heroes yet (waiting on cheaper US release), but from the videos I've seen, there's no similarities besides the visual pixel style and both being arpgs (although classic dungeon is about as "rpg" as it is "arpg" with all the stat stuff).
 

Bebpo

Banned
toythatkills said:
Quoting myself... Just need this answering before I blindly buy!

Hmmmmmm, maybe. All the stat stuff is straightforward ATK/SPD/DEF/MANA/HP-20%/etc...and if you've played Disgaea the structure is easy to grasp. A lot of spells you can just try and see what they do. Though some might not be so apparent. And some effects of circles require you to be able to read what they do.

I would say it's possible, but it'll definitely be tougher. Imagine playing any of N1's srpgs in Japanese. If you think you could handle that you'll be ok here. I'd probably wait a bit and see if it gets a US release date first.
 

Anso

Member
It's a shame Nippon Ichi are doing so badly nowadays. However if a game like 3D Dot Game Heroes sells a lot (it won't) there might be a chance someone picks this up (they won't), I truly hope we'll see an English version (but we won't).
 
I NEED SCISSORS said:
Is it anything like 3D Dot Game Heroes or are the similarities limited to the camera perspective?
Judging by the excellent post by Bebpo, it's anything but 3D DGH.

Btw, my Japanese colleague bought it too and liked it a lot. He said the Japanese there was pretty simple btw. He also said the game is difficult but the story makes up for it. ^^

One more thing - Classic Dungeon was not developed by the Soul Nomad team, it was an oursource to System Prisma, who previously did Phantom Brave Wii and Disgaea DS.
 

Parallax

best seen in the classic "Shadow of the Beast"
Damn i love my psp. So many good games coming out that have a good chance of making it to the west makes me happy
 

Doctor_No

Member
I NEED SCISSORS said:
Is it anything like 3D Dot Game Heroes or are the similarities limited to the camera perspective?

Played/playing both games. 3D Dot Game Heroes is more a Zelda-like ARPG, this game is more a dungeon crawler with roguelike influences. So there is very little exploration outside the dungeon, and there is a lot more focus on grinding/leveling/stats then 3D Dot Game Heroes.

Classic Dungeon is Disgaea roguelike as Bebpo excellently put it, but its a real ARPG unlike most roguelike games like Shiren/Mystery Dungeon which has turn-based movement. Personally, this makes grinding and progression a lot more enjoyable. You progress in the story like Disgaea, but the Rangeon portions are more classically Rogue-like in experience; randomly-generated dungeons, high-cost of death. The main story dungeons aren't randomly-generated, so they are a lot more polished, but less roguelike by some purist's definitions.

It has all the Nippon Ichi characteristics of fun grinding, and the main/sub character system encourages you to play around with different characters, and the artifact system encourages the utilization of different items, which makes getting loot that much more fun. It starts off slow, and It took me a bit to completely understand the system, but once I did the game has really clicked. Progression in this game is how you set-up your circle relative to artifacts since the enemies can get really strong.

My major gripe so far is the minimal use of kanji which make it hard to follow the text. I know its suppose to be all 'retro' like the old 8-bit days when kanji was sparingly used due to the limitations of memory, but that's one of the things hated of old jRPGs back then. Its not an issue that will really impact an eventually English version, but that's my main gripe so far, and it really isn't much of a gripe. The game is excellent so far, and it may become my favorite N1 game by the simple virtue that I have a fetish for roguelike games.
 

Bebpo

Banned
Doctor_No said:
My major gripe so far is the minimal use of kanji which make it hard to follow the text. I know its suppose to be all 'retro' like the old 8-bit days when kanji was sparingly used due to the limitations of memory, but that's one of the things hated of old jRPGs back then. Its not an issue that will really impact an eventually English version, but that's my main gripe so far, and it really isn't much of a gripe. The game is excellent so far, and it may become my favorite N1 game by the simple virtue that I have a fetish for roguelike games.

Yeah, it's a pain to read the story text. I wish if you used "real" sound instead of "retro" sound you got voice acting. Since every other N1 game has voice, it feels a little empty without it (yeah, yeah retro style and all).
 
Wow, I didn't see this before. And the impressions are making me more interested. Keeping my fingers crossed for NI and a US release.
 

Jonnyram

Member
Bebpo said:
Yeah, it's a pain to read the story text. I wish if you used "real" sound instead of "retro" sound you got voice acting. Since every other N1 game has voice, it feels a little empty without it (yeah, yeah retro style and all).
Or a real font would be nice too :lol
 

sprsk

force push the doodoo rock
duckroll said:
No, honestly CFW folks should just forget about playing most new import games from 2010.

Rumors are a new CFW is due really soon!

I went to buy this today and couldn't find it anywhere :/
Times like this I wish PSP games on PSN were playable on PS3 :(
 

duckroll

Member
sprsk said:
I went to buy this today and couldn't find it anywhere :/
Times like this I wish PSP games on PSN were playable on PS3 :(

I don't get the correlation between those two statements at all, if you couldn't find it at retail, and you considered buying it on PSN, why would it being playable on the PS3 factor in at all? :lol
 

sprsk

force push the doodoo rock
duckroll said:
I don't get the correlation between those two statements at all, if you couldn't find it at retail, and you considered buying it on PSN, why would it being playable on the PS3 factor in at all? :lol

I dunno, I have a weird thing about PSP PSN. And since I don't have a credit card, I'd have to get a PSN card and I buy way more PS3 PSN stuff than I do PSP (which is to say zero).
 
duckroll said:
I don't get the correlation between those two statements at all, if you couldn't find it at retail, and you considered buying it on PSN, why would it being playable on the PS3 factor in at all? :lol

because cfw blocking psn store presumably. I'm so close to buy psp go so I can have the best of both world (and my old psp 1000 is showing its age) but the fact that Birth by Sleep is not available on psn is a major issues. I'll wait until there's confirmation that US are more committed to digital download before I buy Go.

if they didn't come through with Go, then I'll have to buy 3000. too bad. I really like Go sleek design and I heard the analog is better.
 

duckroll

Member
sprsk said:
I dunno, I have a weird thing about PSP PSN. And since I don't have a credit card, I'd have to get a PSN card and I buy way more PS3 PSN stuff than I do PSP (which is to say zero).

But... it's the same store...
 

duckroll

Member
sprsk said:
Is it? I turned my PSP on for the first time in like 2 years on Sunday, LOL.

Yeah, it is. You can login to the same account on both the PSP and the PS3. In fact, you can buy the game on your PS3, and then copy it to the PSP from there...

-_-
 

Bebpo

Banned
Does anyone playing know the best way to power grind? I'm finding the grinding a lot harder than N1's srpgs because the rangeon gives very little xp/gold in the first dozen or so floors (lvl.30 now) and then I die by floor 15ish. Even though I've gotten stronger (been doing this since like lvl.8) I still die around the same spot! So while the xp/gold was great early on, it's not so much and the loot even with good drop and rare rates is worse than I get in a story dungeon at this point (just beat the first "boss").

Is the trick to use hellgates to get the enemy level really high quickly so you get more xp/gold/better drops? But then the drop rates will be crap, so is it like hellgates until the enemy level gets high and then angel gates to bring the drop rates up?

The main problem is that even though the enemy level stays low if you get angel gates, the trap damage increases every floor and by floor 15 or so I'm sliding through grass and there are flame bursts and earthquakes and that stuff is doing like 15-20 damage every hit and kills my support guys and eventually myself REAL FAST. Wish the traps leveled along with the enemies.

I figure there has to be a secret to how to use the rangeon appropriately when you are higher level.

sprsk said:
Rumors are a new CFW is due really soon!

I went to buy this today and couldn't find it anywhere :/
Times like this I wish PSP games on PSN were playable on PS3 :(

Shipment must have been really tiny :(
 

jj984jj

He's a pretty swell guy in my books anyway.
This sounds wonderful, getting this and Zettai Hero as soon as NISA localizes them.
 
Hand held gamers keep getting the most interesting stuff this generation. Too bad I can not stand playing hand held consoles. :(. I pray for PSP emulation on PS3 one day.
 

Anso

Member
Host Samurai said:
Hand held gamers keep getting the most interesting stuff this generation. Too bad I can not stand playing hand held consoles. :(. I pray for PSP emulation on PS3 one day.

Or you can just, you know, plug it into your TV?
 
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