Even with specialized weapons and custom spells, the real damage modifiers come from character statistics. Unlike other RPGs, killing monsters won’t help you level up. In fact, DMHG has no levels. Instead, a well-designed meal system helps increase character statistics. Only one meal can be eaten per day and is selected from the player’s house at the village. The meal menu displays recipes, each with different ingredient requirements that can be found in the dungeons by killing monsters or purchased at the market. Recipes are unlocked as DMHG progresses and grant different statistical increases. Some greatly raise health, while others raise health and magic. Of course, the greater the recipe the more rare and expensive it’s materials will be, so gamers need to make sure they keep their cupboard well stocked.
Another way to increase weapon effectiveness is by equipping Roots. A Root is a magical creature with an elemental ability. By equipping Roots to weapons, the attack strength of the weapon is increased and augmented by an elemental attribute. Some monsters are weak to specific elements. For example, clothed monsters or monsters with fur are very vulnerable to water and ice. In this same way, magic can be used on monsters with specific weaknesses. It’s possible for players to increase a Root’s strength too by feeding them fangs collected from monsters in the dungeon. Each fang type raises a different attribute. Players must be smart about which attributes to raise though because each root can only be fed a certain number of fangs.
With all this building it’s easy to get bored of your own dungeon. The same winding paths, the same rooms, what about something different? Well DMHG’s devs thought of that. Once a dungeon grows to a considerable size, about three floors, portals to unknown dungeons start to appear. These are computer-generated dungeons with randomly placed monsters and lots of loot. I was disappointed with the paltry opposition put against me by the computer in the first few unknown dungeons I visited. Bats and cats were all I could find, thousands of weak monsters that rewarded me only with fangs to upgrade my root – boring. Then I entered one of these special areas on my dungeon’s third floor and I barely made it out alive. Skeletons, ghosts and goblins, finally some real opponents!
DHMG has few flaws. It’s not a fast-paced game, but that’s expected from this style of hybrid action RPG, sim dungeon. One thing that was pointless in my opinion are the boss rooms. Every few floors, a dungeon must be equipped with a large room that is used to attract a boss monster. Once this boss monster is defeated, no other boss monsters (or regular monsters for that matter) show up in the room...so it’s dead weight. The price of these rooms increases as the game progresses, so by the time your dungeon has a fourth floor the cost is around 10,000 Gilbert, not something I want to pay for a one-time-use room. That’s my only major complaint with DMHG.
Bottom Line:
If you like the hack and slash genre, you’ll probably enjoy Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground. It’s not the typical action RPG adventure, but the unique twist of building your dungeon is a lot of fun. DMHG is a refined game with an excellent interface and combat controls as well as beautiful visuals and en excellent musical soundtrack. I wasn’t able to test the ad-hoc multiplayer ability, which lets you trade dungeon layouts with friends, but I’d assume the chance to explore a human-built dungeon of unknown size and filled with many dangerous monsters would be a plus. The bottom line: buy Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground. It’s an excellent addition to any PSP collection and will provide your with hours of monster-slaying goodness.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
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| 8.0 |
Posted: 2007-08-25 11:11:48 PST