Guild of Dungeoneering: Ultimate Edition is the remastered including all the DLC of a famous independent role-playing game than in 2015 had landed on digital platforms of computers and smartphones. The product had already presented at the time some critical issues mainly due to the background repetitiveness that was created after a certain amount of runs and to the deficient AI. The sense of already seen was motivated by the very particular structure of the title, which added to the aforementioned nature of RPG also those of a sort of hybrid between a roguelike it’s a card game. Consequently, the colossal adding content of this new version has certainly benefited the production, which was originally also burdened by some technical problems. Guild of Dungeoneering: Ultimate Edition therefore looks like a title improved on several points, even if some chronic elements remain, we find out everything in our review.
What is Guild of Dungeoneering?
As previously mentioned, we are talking about a very particular independent title, similar to a turn-based role-playing game, with the inclusion of very strong roguelike and card game mechanics, and which is clearly inspired by Dungeon and Dragons. In this fantasy universe, the player is a Dungeon Master in a literally pencil-drawn version of the world of D&D, and will have to guide the protagonists to the various treasures in order to bring home the coveted loot. As in any self-respecting Dungeon, however, returning to the shelter even with your own legs will be a half a miracle, and the title can be incredibly punishing with players (at least in the very early stages), who will have to fight tooth and nail to hope to make their character survive the perilous mazes. This is because, as you have probably guessed, there is permanent death. Fortunately, it is also possible to obtain and keep some in-game currency, namely gold coins from the Dungeon, even after the defeat.
These coins allow you to buy mighty power-ups for our characters and to unlock new classes, with unprecedented skills and attacks. The situation is therefore somewhat reminiscent of that of Rougue Legacy, with each death still being a small step towards achieving the final result; but not before passing through the many labyrinths of this huge expanded version of the game. As already mentioned, from a gameplay point of view, the player’s task will be to to build – or better, “to draw” – the dungeons where the heroes will go to loot, to make them reach certain objectives of the quest of the place, such as killing a certain number of specific opponents, recover gods protected chests or face one of the fearsome bosses. It will therefore be up to us to trace the contours of the path that the hero will have to reach through a pre-configured number of available rooms represented on cards, which can be placed on the map with a maximum of three launches per turn. We will also be able to fill the rooms with precious loot additional or of enemies, based on our strategy. Here, however, comes one of the critical issues of the game. The path that the eventual protagonist will have to follow will indeed be built by us, but the character will move independently and following specific routines.
The main actions that drive the AI are to reach the nearest golden loot and, in the absence of treasures, to face the mission objective of the place as soon as possible. Paraphrasing the concept with a joke, the main character’s goal is to get himself killed in the shortest possible time and in the worst possible way. Therefore understood that the game AI will almost always tend to make our character suicide, what we will have to do is to try to convey him towards a safer path, perhaps inviting him to face even smaller enemies, in order to strengthen him in view of the lethal battle that awaits him at the end of the labyrinth. The problem is that since many times the rooms that we will have to trace on the playing field are absolutely random, combined with too basic AI routines, you could find yourself facing unfair defeats, especially in missions in which you have a limited number of turns for carry them out
Turning instead to something positive, the combat system is the true soul of the title, namely that of a Role playing game with strong card game traction. Taking down the hostiles will therefore be a matter of strategy and skill, with the possibility of selecting various types of cards that guarantee numerous effects such as that of attack first compared to monsters, to perform attacks that are impossible to block, and many other effects. The interesting side is that decks are often tied to a certain character class with different combinations available. Classes are therefore a great way to diversify the experience which otherwise would remain very stale, so it is excellent that in the new version there are three other types of characters.
Lots of more content
Guild of Dungeoneering: Ultimate Edition shows up for this review with a considerable amount of additional content and improvements compared to what I experience in our 2016 review, and below we make a list of the most important additions, following the trace from the official website of the Gambrinous guys and adding comments (in round brackets):
- 3 new classes dungeoneer (Guild Digger, Super Chump and Ultra Chump);
- 25 new monsters (some are quite tough and well characterized);
- 22 new pieces of equipable loot (very useful for obtaining new cards with which to defend and attack);
- 16 new missions (which increase the variety in game);
- Many new bard songs (they are songs sung by the court bard that very often make fun of the player after each departure);
- Tutorial in the first mission to teach some important information (which is very sketchy anyway);
- Improved customization of dungeoneers with many more options (an interesting addition although the life of our poor heroes is usually very short);
- Gildopedia added. Now it is possible to examine every unlockable card in-game, both friend and foe (but viewable only after having seen them by enemies or allies at least once);
- Sharper character rendering during gameplay;
- Full controller support (and keyboard support);
- Two DLCs incorporated into the main game and rebalanced accordingly (Ice Cream Headaches, Pirates Cove);
- Rebalancing of existing classes with changes and improvements;
- New animations, graphics and finishing touches;
- More dialogue lines for dungeoneers and bosses now have a trailing line when defeated;
- Improvement for the castle cemetery. More interesting information kept for each tomb (believe us when we tell you that it will be filled with tombstones very soon, unfortunately);
- Reworked 5 missions with the frustrating defeat conditions “Lose after X turns” (they are more permissive but still very annoying due to the AI);
- Final questline reworked;
- Cloud saves (Steam).
Simple and straightforward cartoon graphics
We believe we need to spend a few words on what is a technical sector with an extremely simple character and minimalist construction. From our point of view, the technical implementation is still successful with some small but important improvements that make us appreciate the work of the developers. Yet, we always talk about the same identical graphic style drawn in pencil from 2015, which had already divided the players on the quality or otherwise of the production between those who loved it and those who could not like it. Suffice it to say that the technical requirements to be able to run the work on your PC, in case you are interesting, are still extremely basic.
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