I’ve been playing first-person dungeon crawlers since AD&D: Treasure of Tarmin on the Intellivision. The genre has certainly expanded since then, but Dragon Ruins II takes me right back to 1983. In fact, it may even be more basic than that 8-bit adventure that got me started.
As you’ve surmised from the title, Dragon Ruins II is the follow-up to Dragon Ruins, also released by KEMCO just a few months ago. Narratively, you don’t need to have played that before braving the dungeons of II. With regard to gameplay, however, I don’t think you’ll want to go backwards.
This is because the gameplay and depth in Dragon Ruins II has been expanded since the original, where there wasn’t a lot of depth to start with. That’s kind of the point, after all. Whereas most games of this type require you dig deeply into the minutiae, Dragon Ruins is simply about choosing your party members, equipping them, and diving in.
This time around, you can select from 21 classes to build your party of 4. How well they work together and complement each others’ skills is up to you to find out. Considering potential mismatches and your lack of quality equipment at the start, getting things going is quite rough. Thankfully, the loop is quick and easy to manage.
As you’d expect from a grid-based dungeon crawler, you explore the dungeons block by block, automatically drawing out the map as you go. You’ll find equipment and cash as you progress, but you’ll also enter into combat against unseen enemies. Well, unseen until they attack you. The differentiator here from other dungeon crawlers is that you don’t actively engage in combat, it just happens. You don’t heal or buff or defend, the attacks just go on automatically until you win, escape, or die.
This may sound unfair or—worse—uninteresting, but it actually creates a wonderful dynamic. All the preparation is at the start, and you then just make a mad tear through the dungeon. How far can you get this time? You can keep pushing until you die, but you then won’t get to keep everything you found. Better to actively retreat to the start with at least one party member active so you can hold onto your loot.
Back at base, you not only get to level up your party, you can also accept side quests. Missions can be played more than once, and you’re often rewarded for doing so. These give you a reason to thoroughly explore the maps, which can be quite massive. It was rare that I ever completed a side quest in one run, and never with the full missions. The loop asks you to just get a bit further each time, get better, and try again.
This means Dragon Ruins II works better for 10-minute gaming sessions than it does for hour-long crawls. Honestly, it’s built more for mobile gaming than for consoles, making it a solid match for the handheld Switch.
That applies to the visuals, too, as they’re as stripped down as the gameplay. The original Dragon Ruins took an almost vector-like approach to the dungeon display. Dragon Ruins II adds some depth, using visuals that had me recalling games on the Mac SE or the illustrations in my friends’ sketchbooks. Battle animations are relegated to vibrating thumbnails. In other words, not even the design interferes with the actual dungeon crawling. The dated graphics are likely to turn away some gamers, but having cut my teeth on games like this, I loved the way Dragon Ruins II looks. The simple, forlorn imagery perfectly compliments the game’s approach.
That said, aside from shading changes, it means visual monotony will set in. This can be an issue when you’re grinding for the much-needed gold.
Still, at only $15 (appropriately priced for the 10 to 15 hour time to completion), Dragon Ruins II is an easy recommendation for those seeking a new grid-based dungeon crawler. It doesn’t recreate the experience of an Etrian Odyssey or Labyrinth of Galleria, but does a wonderful job of carving its own path through the deepest of dungeons.
