u/AGDude

Game URL: https://dofugames.itch.io/dig-dan-dig

AI Disclosure: N/A - This is not my game.

Controls: Keyboard to move, and mouse to aim/shoot.

Description: Dig Dan Dig is a short top-down mining game with a skill-tree. You navigate dig through rocks, collecting ore to buy upgrades. The developer has tagged it as a prototype, but even as-is it feels like solid, self-contained, complete experience. If you're sick of skill trees, this game probably won't change your mind. If you still find them fun, I see no reason why you won't enjoy this one. It's short enough to avoid overstaying its welcome.

Link/Title: Knight and Dragon

Monetization: There's an IAP for premium currency, but it's sectioned off enough to be ignorable. However, the daily currency rewards aren't enough to maintain Exp and Drop boosts during extended play sessions, though as often as not I'd just play without such boosts. Those who don't like IAPs should probably just grab Knight and Dragon III instead (II is untranslated, IV is a worse, more expensive version of III), which is reportedly a slightly better game in various ways. I've already put in 15 hours on K&D I and don't really feel like starting over with III.

Storyline: There are text blurbs between missions and quests, but this game isn't really about the story. Don't play this game expecting a story. story.

Gameplay: This is just a simple turn-based RPG with an ATB (active time battle) system. It's not the kind of game that keeps you absorbed for hours, but it's an excellent game to play when you have a spare 5-20 minutes. If you find combat and grinding to be boring, this probably isn't the game for you: That's all it has.

The Critical Hit System: What prompted me to want to talk about this game is the crit system, because it's the best crit system I've ever encountered. Most games have crits randomly trigger when a given move is used. However, K&D instead has individual moves intermittently become critical, allowing the player to decide if and when to actually use a critical move. Using a critical move does not spend SP, makes the move more powerful, and largely guarantees that any status effects will proc. Consecutive critical hits build up power, with any move that breaks your 2+ critical streak also being treated as a "finishing blow" (basically, a critical hit). This injects a a lot of decision-making into an otherwise very simple combat system:

• Your characters can hold up to 8 moves, but having fewer moves means you are more likely to have a crit be attached to better moves. Thus, you are naturally encouraged to be selective about your characters' equipped move-set.
• Maybe you really need healing, so you intentionally ignore the opportunity to fire a critical attack in favor of using a non-critical healing move (possibly allowing the crit to time out).
• If a given character has no critical moves, you might choose to intentionally delay their turn in order to continue to form a critical chain.
• Once you form a critical chain, selecting an appropriate finishing blow has strong effects. You can guarantee a sleep status on a specific enemy, fire high-powered mass AOE, overheal your entire party (with the right setup, it's possible to simultaneously bring your entire party to over 2X their max HP), or merely deal damage to an enemy that has too much defense/dodge for traditional moves. Sometimes you just want to kill an enemy before their next attack fires.

The Skill System: This game has 8 skill categories. Characters have no base level, only skill levels in each of 8 categories, with levels capped based on classes. Classes are unlocked purely based on skill level, with one skill category being sufficient to access any given job (e.g., a player who focuses on one skill category can just switch to the next tier of the corresponding class each time they hit a skill cap). A character's move loadout choices can use any move where their skill level is high enough AND their class's category cap supports that move. However, passive moves apply regardless of cap (e.g., it's relatively easy to sneak a shield onto a mage). Most classes include 5 of the 8 skill categories (4 physical and 1 magical or 4 magical and 1 physical), with one primary skill category and one secondary skill category).

The nice thing the skill system does is that dismissing a character allows you to feed 75% of their skills into another character. This enables you to rotate out characters with weaker base stats. Rewarded characters come with skill levels, either providing a head start or making them excellent fodder for other characters.

The Party System: The game mechanics are designed to reward forming a set of 3 parties of 4 characters (I believe K&D III is a bit less prescriptive: More parties has benefits, but I don't think any of the quests enforce party requirements). Usually this means just having 3 parties fight in order from weakest to strongest (since each quest has 3 combat rounds in ascending difficulty). Since there are 8 skill categories, this makes it very easy to experience all of the skill categories (and doing so also makes weapon distribution easier). Personally, I often find it a bit unfortunate when an RPG's party mechanics encourage me to ignore some of the game classes. So, I like this design.

Overall: K&D is not a masterpiece. However, sometimes I just want something casual to play when I have a spare moment. That means a game that can be played in short sessions and where I won't be frustrated if I'm forced to put it down. For that purpose, K&D is a excellent game.