RPGWatch Feature - Monster's Den: Godfall Review

Myrthos

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In 2015 Monster's Den: Godfall was Kickstarted by 761 people. Now the results of the labor of a single man is available and Forgottenlor crawled through its dungeons to see how good a dungeon crawler it is and surfaced again with some reservations.

Excellent combat, varied loot, and interesting character building are essential parts of a successful dungeon crawler. But those factors alone don't make a great dungeon crawler. The dungeon itself is an important part of the equation. Great dungeon crawlers take players to mysterious and unusual places, where its never clear what is around the next corner. They also offer the player a break now and again from combat. Whether its clever puzzles, enviormental hazards, scrolls full of lore, strange fountains to drink from, a story of sorts (though this is never central to a dungeon crawler), or varied locations, it is essential that a dungeon crawler mixes things up to keep combat from becoming too repetitive. Monster's Den: Godfall is an impressive one man project. Its also a fairly low priced indie dungeon crawler, and while it does many things well, in the end it forgets the “dungeon” in “dungeon crawler.”
More information.
 
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Thanks Forgottenlor.
 
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Thanks for reviewing this. It's on my Steam wishlist. After reading this review it may stay there a little longer. Exploring is always one of my favorite activities in these type of games.
 
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I played the free versions of monster's den and the release version looks nearly identical to the past games. I just don't see a need to pay for something I've already played for free. I did paypal the author $5 back in the day of his freebies. This is a supremely simple game with decent battle tactics. That's about it; or it was in the free days at least.
@forgottenlor; seemed to match my general expectations.
 
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Thanks for reviewing this. It's on my Steam wishlist. After reading this review it may stay there a little longer. Exploring is always one of my favorite activities in these type of games.

I make mine your words, @Hastar;: the game is also on my wishlist and it probably will stay there a bit more,

As always, thanks for the great review @forgottenlor; :)
 
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Thanks for the review! Gonna pick it up at some point. I liked to play it on Kongregate back in the days, so it should be a nice time-waster for inbetween.
 
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Thanks for reviewing this. It's on my Steam wishlist. After reading this review it may stay there a little longer. Exploring is always one of my favorite activities in these type of games.

While I can enjoy fairly linear games with limited exploration (Like Final Fantasy X or Dragon Age 2), but games with next to 0 exploration or boring exploration are also a major downer for me. I like finding new and interesting things as a game evolves and when that's missing I often can't be motivated to continue.
 
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I played this for about two hours today, and I'd disagree about no exploration in this game. If you stick to the generic quests ya, you won't see much, but just go exploring the big map and you'll run into lots of fun stuff. I got my nose bloodied but good once or twice!

I'll be playing more tomorrow!
 
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I played this for about two hours today, and I'd disagree about no exploration in this game. If you stick to the generic quests ya, you won't see much, but just go exploring the big map and you'll run into lots of fun stuff. I got my nose bloodied but good once or twice!

I'll be playing more tomorrow!

There are random encounters on the map and some of them are quite challenging, but I always got random treasure in return. I didn't find this very rewarding once I figured this out. Perhaps you'll find something interesting on the world map I missed. If so I'd be interested to know! I did find some unique monsters on the world map, though.
 
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Thanks, forgottenlor!

Never been a big fan of dungeon crawlers, and it doesn't sound like this is the game that's going to change my mind on that.
 
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It's on sale at Steam. Think I'm going to give it a shot. How would you compare it to Battle Brothers forgottenlor?
 
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Sorry for the late response, I missed it when I came back from Christmas. Its definitely far inferior to BB IMO. The loot system is sort of like Diablo, and its basically a dungeon crawler. Battles are far shorter, and more repetitive. Still its pretty fun for 10 hours or so. The mercenary management aspect is also only important for 10 hours or so. Afterwards you have so much money, that you can afford most anything.
 
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Played for 35 h before I lost interest. It's not bad and the different classes have some interesting abilities.
In the end the dungeons are too boring (as forgottenlor already wrote in the review).

They could have done so much more with random events (and shorter dungeons). What I liked was that some dungeons have special features like mana not regenerating and so on.
 
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On Mac and I didn't noticed, so thanks for this very useful review even if the game seems have many weak aspects and is perhaps hard to finish because of repetitiveness. :)
 
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I just got the game yesterday and have played for about 8 hours. It seems like they have added more random areas on the map and special encounters. I like it so far and enjoy all the loot and battles. Thanks for the review again. It made me try the game out. It's the perfect beer and pretzel kind of game so far.
 
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I played the game quite a bit, and I don't agree about the need for more non combat content.
My main gripe with the game is the tediousness of the fights, because most of them are a foregone conclusion. Some fights are very good (most of the ones you do when you are underleveled, and the fights against the stronger bosses), but to get to them, you need to plow through trivial encounters.
Also, the hard fights feel pretty unrewarding: After beating the two 'anniversary bosses' in the game, I got sparks to make 2 items legendary, which is the what I did find in a random altar.
The problem is that the trash fights don't even deplete your supplies most of the time (sometimes, they let you heal and have more mana than you started with, as you don't regenerate health or mana outside of combat), and reward you with random junk items, so there is very little point to them.
I would prefer to have these parts trimmed down, or made more intense and rewarding.
 
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