Crescent Tower

It's like Final Fantasy III (NES) remixed with Etrian Odyssey. Don't come into this expecting a story--it's very much a dungeon crawler with only a basic premise. Your hero and first two party members are premade but you can create more characters to swap or bench at the guild. Works great on Steam Deck. The music and visuals are delightful. Battle speed toggle helps keep the game moving at a good pace. I've been playing on "old school" mode (even though I'm not sure what all that impacts) and it's been a good challenge. You have to play cautiously. It's the kind of game where +2 DEF will make a big difference and buffs/status effects need to be taken seriously. E.g. Poison doesn't go away until you cure it and curing it isn't cheap. (Priest learns DePoison at level 7 thankfully.) Status effects you inflict onto enemies are likewise super powerful and should be abused. I've made it to the 4th floor out of 10 in about 4 hours, so the 10-20 hour game length seems about right. I'll ...

Wizardry ruleset Final Fantasy NES visuals Steam Deck support Chiptune BGM Interesting classes and skills QoL built in Love it

Fun game until the very last floor, you are forced into using terrible gear to prevent the absolute worst possible effect, de-leveling. It can take hundreds of battles to level up a single time near the end, and a single de-level erases all your progress. Terrible game mechanics like this should not exist. Due to this absolutely rage inducing terrible game design, I cannot recommend this game. It's a shame since up until the final floor, the game is quite fun.

This game truly does feel like a rare if not once-in-a-lifetime gem with how well it seems to understand every last bit of the style its going for, the combat, grind and dungeon design are all absolutely phenomenal in how all of the classes on-field and combat skills mesh with both each other and in game systems but the depth taken with the sound and UI design to feel both so of era yet so smooth is truly something else to me. Absolute love letter in every way and an easy personal GOTY contender despite its surface level simplicity.

I mean this in a good way: Crescent Tower is a short game that feels like a long game. A streamlined (but still deep enough) dungeon crawling experience that packs what is usually a lengthy genre into a well designed, brisk 8-15 hour experience. Well worth it at full price. +Fast paced battles +Great music +Almost zero story +Fun class system -Massive difficulty spike on final floor -More unique boss type enemies would have been appreciated

Literally Wizardry that looks like FF1. It's a lot more forgiving/easy than Wizardry, which is evidenced by the fact that I actually beat it. Good game.

This feels like the JRPG genre core gameplay with all the extra faff stripped away. Sometimes I like the bells and whistles, but sometimes I just want the nostalgia and this gives me that without the pain of playing an actually ancient game that is inevitably not quite as good as I remember. That's a good way to put it actually. This feels like what I remember old games being.

Wizardry with a Final Fantasy interface. You can get ambushed and have your entire party paralyzed in one go by the cruel whims of the dungeon. I don't think resurrection failure made it in though. There is a main character with a unique "brave" class, who can't be removed from the party, but you can remove the other story character from the party to make your own once you find the Proof of Courage. I'd love to have a "hero-less" mode, but regardless, I think it's a really good game. The music and graphics are great too. Watch out for level draining undead!

Just as a heads up, there are story spoilers regarding the ending, but I'll tag the part (just keep scrolling to avoid it if necessary though). 8 hours and 19 minutes later, Crescent Tower has been cleared it was alright, but I didn't really like the ending too much since it felt like your entire journey was kinda pointless, lol [spoiler]you reach the top of the tower, but just before reaching the exit, it collapses, so the hero "dies", I guess? now adventurers have to wait another 50 years before it opens again no additional dungeon, no extra boss after the final boss (though, there is a secret boss on floor 9, BEFORE the final boss on floor 10, lol), no extra dialogue, just... "CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR JOURNEY, UNFORTUNATELY YOU DIDN'T MAKE IT! HERE'S TO HOPING THE NEXT ADVENTURERS WILL CARRY ON YOUR COURAGE!"[/spoiler] the game was missing some quality of life stuff too and it's definitely rough (at least on Retro difficulty anyway) since it doesn't really make sense, even in ...

Just an utterly delightful love letter to 8-bit rpgs. I went in blind expecting a Final Fantasy clone but was both very surprised and very pleased to see it was more akin to a Wizardry game with a Final Fantasy skin on top even if there were some Hydlide and Dragon Quest elements present too. For fans of that era, I can't recommend this enough.