Tower of Time
Tower of Time
Tower of Time is a squad-based dungeon crawler with predetermined character types whose attributes and skills can be leveled up occasionally and who fight in battles that require strategic and tactical thinking.
TL;DR
Though I felt the game got off to a slow and perhaps not so interesting start, after aquiring a few companions and getting down to level 5 it grabbed my interest and continued doing so as I progressed. I ended up enjoying the game quite a bit. This is one of those games that you need to get into a ways before you really start grooving on it. The fact that I bothered to write such a long review shows how much I liked this game, even with some stuff that bugged me.
– Real player with 81.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dungeon Crawler Indie Games.
In short:
AMAZING 50+ hours RPG with gorgeous graphics, an enticing story, tactical battles, balanced gameplay and original mechanics!
Summary
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Very smooth gameplay, with gorgeous graphics and scenery and non-claustrophobic dungeons
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Unintrusive interface, with sophisticated RPG mechanics
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Original take on RPG mechanics, specially regarding the battles
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The battles feel very tactical, due to the slow time feature. It is not turn-based, but it feels like XCOM, and has a lot of variation like diverse objectives and scenarios.
– Real player with 68.2 hrs in game
The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians - Enhanced Edition
TL;DR for the Gamers:
If you enjoy a good dungeon crawler and games like Wizardry and Dungeon Master (or more recent titles inspired by these classics), but tire of the classic square-dance mechanics of most modern entries into this genre, then you could easily fall in love with the Fall of the Dungeon Guardians. This game mixes the feel of real-time combat with turn-based strategy through skill queues and a unique pause/play system. It features an optional slider to customize the battle speed (if you would rather handle party actions in real-time) and in-game pause with a menu full of auto-pause options reminiscent of games like Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Pillars of Eternity (for those of you who like to crank up the difficulty and sit back to think). With a variety of races, classes with their own sets of specializations, and the ability to create hybrid specializations, party creation and customization is definitely available here. Mix these features with auto-attacks, cooldown skills, and a solid threat management system, and you get a highly addictive dungeon crawler that plays like nothing I have ever experienced before. And, with a variety of difficulty settings covering the spectrum from casual adventurer to die-hard tactician, there is a comfort zone for anyone.
– Real player with 300.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dungeon Crawler Old School Games.
Dungeon crawlers
The vast majority of people on this planet don’t know, and will never know, the beauty of it. Every time I play one, I feel I belong to a secret society. Is it all nostalgia? The countless days, nights and weeks playing FTL’s Dungeon Master back in the late 80’s on my Atari ST? Or is it simply a matter of taste, this genre rubbing me the right way? I’m not sure, but I will do my best to analyse my thoughts about this game, The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians (TFotDG), created by French indie developer Mana Games.
– Real player with 100.5 hrs in game
Corpoct
The advertisement videos shows gameplay that isn’t consistent with the actual choices/options/theme of the game. Buyer beware. Other than that, it’s a simplistic wanna-be “FTL”, but its not. It could be good for small children who just barely know how to read. In fact, it should come with an expected player age of 7 years old. This isn’t insult or malice, I just think that the target audience should be an upfront aspect shown to the buyer.
– Real player with 18.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dungeon Crawler Space Games.
This is a neat game. It combines some travel elements of FTL with combat similar to a pared-down Gratuitous Space Battles. There’s some resource management, cardplay to influence battles, and satisfying meta-progression. It’s worth checking out
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
Dredgers
This is tough, because I love this game and it’s concept. It’s so fun! I have a lot of praise for it.
Unfortunately, I feel like I can’t recommend it at this time for two reasons:
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Missing basics like any type of saving, which pretty much everything I’ve played since the days of shareware has had, seems quite sloppy. The display of the amount of hours I’ve played isn’t really correct: most of that has been on pause because I didn’t want to exit and lose all my progress on the run.
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Do you know how my last run ended? No? Neither do I. Based on all the information I had, it didn’t make sense. Many key things are just not explained, so new players are going to go through several baptisms by fire, creating a lot of frustration.
– Real player with 152.5 hrs in game
Pretty solid roguelike with emphasis on speedy playthroughs and choosing your next step, though that can be its weakness too. Its big selling points are the 30+ races and crazy class combinations which are very very satisfying to play with, as well as actual honest-to-god necromancy where you can have a zombie horde if you want. Or you could skip zombies altogether, dominate the minds of your enemies, send them at your foes, blow up their (animate or inanimate) corpses into a huge mess when they die and then revive them and your former foes as skeletons. Full crafter build is viable, and thats before we get onto races. Pretty much anything that spawns in the dungeon is something you can unlock and play pretty quickly. Only exception afaik is the slime MAN (you can be a regular slime) but I suspect that’ll be implemented in time.
– Real player with 61.1 hrs in game
Dungeon Siege
Dungeon Siege 1 is a very simple game in terms of gameplay. Meditative action without guts covering the whole battlegroud, plus some actions with your items, such as changing your equipement, reading a few books, and walking through the game in a rather thin corridor…
…would say someone and, despite that description works, that won’t be true in placing the accents.
Most noticeable part is the party work. Every character has only a little of story, but… you can play from a point of view from any of them, just as with your hero - you can even give a boot to your created character and beat the rest of the game just with your conpanions without hero! You can specify their roles, formations in groups, actions of each other like “to seek and destroy anyone” or “not to fight even when attacked”. It reveals you some interesting cases, nearly impossible in other games, such as “you are a healer, all others are stunned, so you run around, heal one, but get stunned instead, so he runs around instead, trying to rise someone else”… or “companions form a group around dragon by themselves, so you don’t need to correct their formation at all”. Yes, there were flaws, like, the big parties could not by themselves stand together on a lift, so you have to move some of them. But it’s still amazing how simple and at the same time workind that solution is, so you can imagine, how it was 17 years ago!
– Real player with 100.4 hrs in game
[My steam total is much less than I’ve actually played since you can play offline without Steam connection. EDIT: Game is of quite sufficient length. Longest mazes I’ve ever played.]
Fun game from 2002. I started as a huge Diablo 2 fan. I’m catching up and enjoying the era of now-cheap RPG/action games before upgrading my system to run more modern games. Just so I don’t spend before I really need to. (currently a Radeon X-600) This includes the Dungeon Siege series + Fallout, Torment, Torchlight 1/2, Baldur’s Gate, Titan Quest, Morrowind, Oblivion …before hitting Skyrim, D3, etc. Bottom line: In many ways, this fits in the older era. – So, those are your ganeral Action/RPG + hack/slash comparisons.
– Real player with 96.8 hrs in game
Dungeon Siege II
Dungeon Siege is a series of action-RPG, where every chapter feels very distinct from others. You can see the evolution, but there is so much diversity, that people who like DS1 may be strongly against DS2, DS2 fans might be opposing DS1 and DS3… At least, it is not that hot, as “apple vs. droid” holywar now.
Dungeon Siege II made much to expand all that was good in the DS I - the system of character development, an interesting setting of fallen and reshaping empires - just like from known history, only with magic, demons, and angels… To add pathos and glory, you know.
– Real player with 161.1 hrs in game
Update 04-24-18:
Another special thanks goes to Killah not just for providing us the the expansions to DS2 & DS1 but also fixing the no mouse cursor issue in fullscreen and not being able to play the DS2 Broken World expansion in 1366x768. It is awesome to have someone work so hard to keep this legendary title running on newer systems.
I still own the physical Deluxe Edition of this DSI & DSII and was very excited to see them reach steam so that I can access and install it no matter where I might be in the world. I have probably put roughly 3k hours or more into this game alone.
– Real player with 119.8 hrs in game
Crawlyard
The performance starts – unending, ever changing, cruel to its actors and viewers alike. Yet you are far from being powerless: you can affect the Mansion’s backstage, send puppets to explore its mysterious rooms and rewrite the play however you see fit.
Every new pattern will bring new opportunities, your bonds with other members of the audience will grow stronger, until one day you finally discover the perfect scenario that the previous owner of the Mansion was obsessed with.
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Card combos: rooms affect each other in many surprising ways. Find out how you can utilize it to develop your own winning strategy or make your runs more challenging. But beware: some patterns may prove to be too difficult for specific puppets.
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Indirect battle system: strategy and preparation are the key to success. Plan your way carefully, exploit the rooms' mechanics, use spells and make event-related decisions at crucial points to end up victorious.
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Adaptability and growth: your puppets already offer different play styles for you to choose from, but with the items found in the rooms you can customize and buff your heroes even further – or uncover new doll parts to build unique fighters.
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Intertwining stories: meet other characters bewitched by the call of the Mansion. Get them to open up to you, learn about their traumas and manias, and affect their future – perhaps in a romantic way. The more you give, the more you obtain in return.
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Choices matter: the others are stuck, but you can still move forward, unraveling the threads of their unfortunate fates. Will you advise your new comrades to do what they want? Or will you suggest they search for what you think they need?
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Reach the Endgame: grow stronger, collect enough hints and find the perfect pattern – the ultimate room layout that will reveal the Wishmaster. Have your desires fulfilled at last… unless you found something, or someone, along the way that made your change your mind.
Going strong! We’re a small indie team, and every wishlist brings us closer to completing our passion project. Thank you for your patronage!
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Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition
I hesitated honestly to recommend it, but Beamdog has been doing bugfixes still in 2020-2021 (!), so that certainly deserves respect and appreciation as such! (Beamdog is the company responsible for the Enhanced Edition. The original was developed by Black Isle Studios [Fallout 1-2, Planescape].)
Though it looks like Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 (same engine, though not the same designers), the design and story are very different. I highly recommend playing BG1 and 2 in priority. IWD is much more linear (though I like the ambiance), with very little choices, and the AD&D rules used in BG1 and BG2 were butchered a bit in IWD. Although the rules are very similar, many of the character statistics have changed. The game balance (difficulty) is sometimes very odd in IWD. Many creatures can hit -15 AC easily (beyond rolling natural 20 which are always automatic hits in all those games). In terms of being linear, it is more of a dungeon crawl, from point A to point B, and so it is not a region to explore in an uncertain order à la BG2 or Fallout. And, really, sometimes your party is crawling forward under waves of creatures to slay.
– Real player with 155.9 hrs in game
Having never played neither D&D or an Infinity engine game before, I was pleasantly surprised by just how much value was put on the table in Icewind Dale: EE, not just as a videogame, but also as an introductory of sorts to D&D for new players.
Right of the bat you’re given the option to create a party of six (though you can choose to roll with a smaller party, or even solo the whole game) with a ludicrous amount of customization at your fingertips. For those new to the whole thing such as myself at the time, the options available might seem too overwhelming at first with all the different races, classes, weapon proficiencies, etc. Needless to say I’d spent the first few hours just to setup my party. This is a good thing.
– Real player with 129.7 hrs in game
Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition
What an experience! I recommend it to anyone who likes crpgs but hates combat.
– Real player with 149.9 hrs in game
Planescape Torment has a great story. The atmosphere of the game is really cool, and the soundtrack is really nice. The soundtrack for the city of Curst is my favorite. It is an old rpg, and a lot of the game is centered around dialogue options. I recommend it if you have the time to play a slower paced rpg. If you play it stat up Wisdom, Charisma, and Intelligence for expanded dialogue. It is not my favorite classic rpg in terms of combat and game play, but I’m glad I took the time to beat it and experience this classic. Great game that doesn’t just feed you the story, you have to pay attention and piece it together as you go or you might just miss the deeper meaning. What can change the nature of a man?
– Real player with 111.6 hrs in game