I'm so addicted. -.-"
Reviews for "Monsters' Den Chronicles"
Love the game, I'm addicted! My medals don't work though :(
Now THIS is what a browser-ready Role-Playing Game should look like: a ground-up dungeon crawl with enough randomness and variety to keep a savvy player at it for hours at a time. Garin-Dan's series has gotten its renaissance, but this is just a step on the way to his upcoming epic, Godfall, which he should not have told his fans about so early....
Okay, so this is a dungeon crawler with comfortable familiarities. By that I mean the story is a hack and the characters are blank slates. That's okay--they're meant to be customized. You can even upload images to stand in for ordinary artwork, so you can have the luxury of forming a dream team of characters. The only drawback to that is how you cannot yet program your own abilities to approximate your ideal setup. In other words, Mario, should you use something like a sprite image, cannot pull off his cape or fireball techniques. Other characters like Solid Snake, on the other hand, may be approximated by one of the Rogue units.
The objectives, listed in a series of campaign acts, involve heading into a random-generated dungeon with a few simplistic mechanics. In this version of the series, the icon travels through each corridor and passage to its clicked destination, an odious arrangement since you cannot select instantaneous travel, assuming you played "Book of Dread." Also, the screen is very small, because if you zoom in, the graphic effects, notably fog, start to wear down the CPU. I'm not sure if this game's source code of Flash accepts graphics card support, but I bet it somehow doesn't.
The Emporium is streamlined and always available. You'll need to invest in its departments to see an upgrade in services, but otherwise things are okay. You have far more space for equipment since you're actually eating for ten; all the units are unique; buy the premium edition for a buck and get five more, greatly expanding the tactical options. Equipment may be upgraded with multiple slots. There is a spark of legend that allows a good piece of gear to level up with the character, staying on their tier. This is remarkable and takes out the annoyance of having to upgrade every few levels, even if the purple is a purple. Tiers make a little more sense; it's easier to figure out what the equipment delivers and how much per tier.
Due to time constraints and continued project development on Godfall, Chronicles has three line-ups of opponents--Undead, Fanatics, and Demons--and gone are Dwarves, Orcs, Deep Creatures, and their subsidiary, the Legendary Creatures. Those that remain each have their own Act, where they exclusively appear, while a fourth act is a survival gut check where you fight wave after wave of villains, and the fifth act is a long, engrossing challenge where everything is featured.
There are far more abilities, along with countless individual Conditions divided into broad categories (that way, certain characters can heal different kinds of afflictions). Notable are Terrain Conditions, which adjust your stats according to what the panel provides you, and Stance Conditions--three options per Unit--which adjust stats between moves and last until the next turn, where you can switch them out. This makes for some interesting setups, though each one has a drawback, like not having the benefits of the stance you switched out. Quickness has become something like Final Fantasy Tactics' Active Turn, an ongoing process rather than being static.
All in all, Monsters' Den: Chronicles does not quite blow its direct predecessor out of the water--this is but a sample of what Godfall is supposed to be like. An overworld map and return of female counterparts (and all the previous classes) are just a few of the things that are rumored to be featured in the next game. Even so, Chronicles blows most games of this category out of the water, and while that might not sound like much at times, remember the format. Sometimes, it's brilliance in simplicity. Garin-Dan has accomplished that here. Let's hope the next game features dwarves, eh?
Can't change difficulty but great game though
best