A while back I picked up the game Metro Quester through GOG during a KEMCO sale. I always keep an eye on what KEMCO is putting out because it’s basically the place for mostly-decent mostly-classic-styled JRPGs.
QUESTER on Steam¹
It is a decadent future world built by manga artist Kazushi Hagiwara. A dungeon exploration RPG specializing in hack-and-slash. The game is full of challenging elements. There are 24 characters (8 classes), skills to enjoy combos, modifiable armaments, "NEW GAME+" to enjoy playing around, etc.
Metro Quester caught my eye because it’s a “dungeon exploration RPG” but not in the first person crawler style. Also that it leaned very heavily into very old PC styles with the greens and very limited color usage other than portraits.
The game itself is basically thus: You explore, revealing the map and making sure to gather enough food every week to not starve. If you don’t hit that marker the penalties are a huge set-back (you lose tons of equipment, etc). You find new camps, who have new Questers you add to your available squad. They have different jobs with different class skills and expertise so you can cobble things together based on where you’re going. As you fight bosses and strong enemies you unlock new map areas and get a higher level cap.
There is a story but I don’t remember what it is. It’s not really that important, society has collapsed and you have to explore the remains of Tokyo.
The battles are turn based, you get a bit of info about what moves the enemies are going to do and can plan around that. Party-members draw aggro by the amount of damage they do but players with defensive skills can pull more to themselves and fortify with their sets of skills. After you input your commands, everything gets spit out in a text box, which you can make go fast (I make go fast).
It’s very easy to repeat the same set per turn, which lets you automate things on non-big-boy fights quite a bit. This is good because you’ll leveling up to beat those area bosses.
I would recommend this game to anyone who likes the bones of a dungeon crawler/RPG without much flash. I really enjoyed the lack of flash, honestly; it is very intentional and executed well.
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