Game: Dungeon Village 2
Genre: Adventure, Simulation, Strategy, RPG
System: Nintendo Switch (also iOS and Android)
Developers | Publishers: Kairosoft
Age Rating: US E | EU 3+
Price: US $12.00 | UK £9.89 | EU € 11,00
Release Date: June 2nd, 2022
Review code used, with many thanks to Kairosoft.
Dungeon Village 2 is an RPG town management sim and the sequel to Dungeon Village; it’s the latest simulation game from Kairosoft. The company’s previous sims have covered activities from managing shopping malls, basketball clubs, wild park management, and plenty more.
Management Game
This time, in Dungeon Village 2, another management game, you are tasked with running an adventure town, with the goal being to get it to five stars.
You’ll set up inns and weapon stores to help attract adventurers to your town. Then you’ll send out the adventures on quests to help them earn gold and experience battling monsters, and boost your town’s popularity.
Build a Town
A short tutorial plays at the start of the game that sets you on the right path. You only have a few buildings in your town to start with. So you’ll have to construct new buildings to build up your town to be the best in the kingdom.
Similar to other Kairosoft games I have played, you can’t directly control the adventurers as they act independently. Once they move outside the town’s fence, they automatically start to fight any monsters they find. You can also send them on specific quests to defeat monsters in caves, bring back treasure, and take care of boss monsters. You can watch your adventurers progress on quests as shown at the bottom of the screen.
Upgrade Adventures
The weapons, armour and consumables that your adventurers find in chests can be sold or given to your adventurers to upgrade their kit. If an adventurer has a nasty accident and faints during a monster battle, other adventurers will carry them back to the town to rest in the inn. It’s a nice touch that each adventurer will look out for another.
Questing isn’t the only thing adventurers will do; each adventurer has a job in town, such as looking after crops in the field. As your town develops and becomes more popular, adventurers won’t just visit but move in for good. By making them happy, you will convince them to stay in town by building their own houses. Doing so increases their productivity and makes it so that they never leave the village. The best way to convince adventurers to stay is by giving them presents.
Increase Stats
All the adventurers that visit and stay in your ever-growing town have stats to increase to help level them up. Depending on their job, adventurers have six different attributes, which are either higher or lower. Each also gives a unique beneficial effect to that character. These can range from increasing attack power while using certain weapons or earning more money per month.
I noticed that some of the monsters in Dungeon Village 2 are recycled from other Kairosoft games, but regardless of that, they all have Kariosoft charm. Some of the monsters also felt a little overpowered for my little adventurers. Many of them returned to the town being carried by their teammates. It can be difficult to level up your adventurers at the start of the game since they are always fainting during fights.
Invite Monsters To Live in Town
In addition, once a monster tamer visits your town, you have a chance of taming enemy monsters you defeat. If successful, you can link a monster to one of your adventurers that will significantly increase their power. Once your monster’s happiness reaches fifty, your adventurer can ride on top of them, making them stronger.
Visuals
The game has the classic Kairosoft visual look, bright and colourful, with the cute little NPCs walking about with speech bubbles above their heads, cheering on their teammates.
There is one niggle I have about the game; there is an over-abundance of informational pop-ups. Of course, they’re always slightly intrusive in Kairosoft games, but it’s annoying how often the game pauses to tell you something that has just been mentioned on the bar on the bottom.
Conclusion
Dungeon Village 2 is a management game with several different subsystems that reward and encourage you to keep playing. In addition, it’s a great relaxing time sink where you can spend many hours building up your town to five stars.
Final Verdict: I Like it a LotÂ