{"id":10676,"date":"2018-01-18T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/ydanji"},"modified":"2018-01-18T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T16:00:00","slug":"review-yodanji-switch-eshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/01\/18\/review-yodanji-switch-eshop\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Y\u014ddanji (Switch eShop)"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 1 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87285\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87285\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Yod2\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>While some videogame genres remain quite open-ended in interpretation &#8211; puzzles or platformers, for instance &#8211; others have become decidedly codified. Perhaps no template exemplifies this phenomenon as much as the \u2018roguelike\u2019, a game type born from its 1980 PC namesake and with a modern presence on nearly every console under the sun. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/ydanji\">Y\u014ddanji<\/a><\/strong> is a new instantiation of the concept from eShop RPG veterans KEMCO, and it\u2019s a demonically difficult delight; fun, fast gameplay, a great theme, and tons of replay value and variety make this an excellent addition to the Switch\u2019s treasure chest of old-school experiences.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 2 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87287\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87287\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Yod4\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Y\u014ddanji kicks off with an appealingly left-field, Denpa Men-esque premise: y\u014dkai &#8211; ghosts and monsters from Japanese folklore &#8211; are floating among us in the real world, and your Nintendo Switch is equipped with the power to scan and uncover them. After a cutely tongue-in-cheek introductory sequence, you\u2019ll be introduced to three of the little creatures, and can then choose any one from among them to start your journey.<\/p>\n<p>Y\u014ddanji is an old-school, classical roguelike, which means you\u2019re in for a dungeon-crawling experience with randomly-generated floors, turn-based movement and combat, a hunger system, and a heavy focus on positioning, items, and exploration. If you\u2019ve played any recent Mystery Dungeon games &#8211; either in <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/3ds\/pokemon_super_mystery_dungeon\">Pok\u00e9mon Mystery Dungeon<\/a><\/strong> or <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/3ds\/etrian_mystery_dungeon\">Etrian Mystery Dungeon<\/a><\/strong> form &#8211; you\u2019ll have a good idea of what to expect, although Y\u014ddanji also retains another element common to older titles in the genre: a difficulty curve that points about 90-degree north.<\/p>\n<p>Once you jump in, the gameplay is simple enough to grasp: you\u2019ll move your monster one tile at a time with the left analog stick, and combat is handled automatically, <strong>Ys<\/strong>-style, with standard attacks doled as you bump into enemies. Every action &#8211; from walking or attacking to using an item or resting to recover HP &#8211; takes a single turn, and nothing else happens in the dungeon until you act, giving you plenty of time to plan out your strategies before putting them into action.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 3 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87286\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87286\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Yod3\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Each floor of the dungeon is procedurally generated from a set of basic elements &#8211; monsters, traps, stairs, and treasure chests &#8211; and your overall goal is to equip yourself well enough to make it all the way down. That preparation comes in the form of items like recovery potions, amulet upgrades which boost certain stats or abilities, and, of course, plenty of food. Incorporeal or no, y\u014dkai still have to eat, and if your character goes too long without food, they\u2019ll start to suffer and eventually die from starvation, meaning keeping hunger in check is one of the biggest keys to success here. Munch management is made much trickier by the fact that your inventory only has five spaces \u2014 shared across items, amulets, and snacks \u2014 so you\u2019ll have to think and plan very carefully about what you want to take with you.<\/p>\n<p>Along with useful items and a full stomach, you can also keep yourself in top shape by levelling up as you descend. Rather than levelling up from experience points, in Y\u014ddanji you\u2019ll raise ranks by finding and defeating a spirit known as the Hitodama, with one on every floor. This flighty blue wisp could be anywhere &#8211; including invisibly possessing another enemy! &#8211; and since levelling up is one of the best ways to ensure survival, tracking it down is of upmost importance, and a refreshingly unique take on character growth.<\/p>\n<p>Once you\u2019ve snared a Hitodama, you\u2019ll also be able to allocate a single point to unlocking or powering up one of your monster\u2019s four unique skills. These vary greatly between characters, and choosing to invest in certain skills can make for very different playstyles as well. The weasel-like Kamaitachi we started with, for instance, has access to a healing skill, a multi-hit attack, a paralysis spell, and a slap with a speed buff. Some runs, we chose to throw all our points into the heal for faster recovery, on others we went all in on speed, and once in a while we went for a more balanced build; experimenting is not only a great way to out what works, it\u2019s also fun in and of itself, and helps make each dive into the dungeon feel distinct.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 4 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87289\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87289\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Yod6\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Typically, roguelikes challenge you with simple, subterranean survival; how far down into the ground can you make it before you expire? Y\u014ddanji uses its theme to add a welcomely concrete goal to the mix: unlocking the rest of the 21 playable y\u014dkai in the game. In the main Y\u014dkai Hunt mode, your mission is to make it down 10 floors and collect three scrolls along the way, each of which contain part of a (creatively written!) tale centred on a certain y\u014dkai. Placing all three in an altar on the bottom floor will trigger a boss battle, and if you defeat the massive monster, you\u2019ll unlock the y\u014dkai described in the scrolls as a new playable character.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t just a nice gameplay goal &#8211; it\u2019s also a means to experience one of Y\u014ddanji\u2019s best features, because each of those 21 y\u014dkai play vastly differently to the rest. They\u2019re essentially each their own micro-\u2018class\u2019, with different strengths, spells, and styles of play. Some (like our weasel friend) are focused on offence, others on defensive moves, and other still on running away from battles. Some have area-of-attack spells which cover long ranges, while others are entirely confined to melee combat. A very few have access to healing, while many more focus on inflicting debuffs of various kinds on your enemies to make things smoother. As an extreme example of the variety on offer, you\u2019re even able to unlock the Hitodama, whose only attack is to \u2018possess\u2019 and then become any enemy they run across &#8211; a fantastically fun divergence from the norm.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 5 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87288\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87288\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Yod5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Unlocking new y\u014dkai is a real highlight, but it\u2019s also very much easier said than done; as we alluded to above, Y\u014ddanji is a seriously tough time, even on the easier \u2018Y\u014dkai Picnic\u2019 mode which gives you more favourable conditions on earlier floors. And the fact that the easier mode basically only grants better RNG shows one potentially polarising aspect of Y\u014ddanji: a great deal of your success is down to pure, rotten luck. The random systems in place don\u2019t particularly care about being \u2018fair\u2019, so on some runs we found ourselves surrounded by monsters that could each one-shot us individually on the second floor. Getting hit with two particularly nasty status effects at once, not finding any food when you need it, or being ambushed at low health are all just a few of the fatal scenarios that killed us at least once, and which will swiftly introduce players to another feature of the rougelike genre: permadeath.<\/p>\n<p>There aren\u2019t any \u2018save points\u2019 as such in Y\u014ddanji, and dying means heading back to the main menu, with progress completely reset and the dungeon re-randomized for your next attempt. Happily, however, your score and time for each run is saved, and is shown in comparison with other adventurers in online leaderboards. We found this helped quite a bit with the motivation to dive back in, and considering how many times we watched the death counter rise (well over 50 attempts in before we unlocked our first y\u014dkai) that\u2019s saying something.<\/p>\n<p>And while luck plays a starring roll here, there\u2019s still plenty of strategising to be done, and the quick-fire nature of the game (we average about five minutes per attempt) means that trying out novel approaches each run- with new characters, new spell sets or new techniques &#8211; is a distinctly satisfying option. Even as we stretched into triple-digit dungeon dives, each time through felt appreciably unique, and we always had a story to tell; whether that involved success and a new y\u014dkai or dying in the first 30 seconds, each trip was worth it. It\u2019s telling that following our first win, after having already spent several hours trying to make it to the last floor, the first thing we do is jump right back in again to try and beat our score. Y\u014ddanji is punishing, but snappy enough that that never works against its appeal.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 6 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87284\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87284\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Yod1\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>In terms of its gameplay, Y\u014ddanji is simple but endlessly compelling; diving through the dungeons is a blast, and unlocking new y\u014dkai makes for a wonderful feedback loop of replay incentives, where you\u2019ll want to test out each new monster to find a winning strategy for unlocking the next. And when you\u2019re done hunting y\u014dkai (or just want something different), a Challenge Dungeon option provides the endless dive of traditional roguelikes, where you can attempt to get as many floors down into an infinite abyss as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Its presentation, in contrast, is more of an acquired taste. Graphically, Y\u014ddanji hearkens back to the days of its genre\u2019s genesis, with a limited colour palette, heavily tiled textures, blocky, full-fill pixels, and the stark white-on-black fonts of the computer consoles from which these adventures originated. Some of its more archaic aspects are charmingly so \u2014 like the text-based log which keeps a running account of everything that happens \u2014 but others are eyesores, like the massive inventory overlay and the controls cheatsheet which takes over a good bit of the right side of the screen.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 7 of 7\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87289\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/87289\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Yod6\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>The controls legend can be turned off, but another problem is that you\u2019ll likely need it; originally a mobile title, Y\u014ddanji\u2019s transition to Switch comes with an unfortunately awkward control mapping that never totally makes sense. Using the left stick for movement is easy enough to grasp, but things get more complicated from there; pressing \u2018A\u2019 will use an item you\u2019re standing on, but to pick it up and add it to your inventory, you need to flick the right analog stick to the left, while flicking the same stick to the right will drop the top item in your inventory. Expanding and collapsing your inventory fall to the vertical axis of the right stick, though navigating through it is back to the D-Pad, and only when it\u2019s active on the screen; a distinction which we found difficult to make quickly.<\/p>\n<p>Each of your character\u2019s four potential spells are also mapped to the D-Pad, which makes sense in and of itself, but we\u2019d much rather have seen spells on the left stick and movement on the pad. Since there\u2019s no hold-to-run option when enemies are on-screen (an understandable function of the turn-based system), you have to flick the analogue stick continuously to move across a room when running away from danger. It feels silly and cumbersome, and seems like a much better fit for the discrete buttons of the Switch\u2019s D-Pad, while spells would work fine on either input.<\/p>\n<p>These quirks are manageable, but it all adds up to an interface that feels more than a bit clunky. It\u2019s a shame especially because elsewhere, Y\u014ddanji feels lovingly polished: the genuinely well-written lore and backstories for each y\u014dkai and colourful portraits on the character select screen, the cleverly balanced movesets of its many, many classes, and the sunny Japanese theme of mochi, tofu, and sake cups that lends a playful feel to the otherwise dreary depths. While its fast pace and clear goals make it perfect for Switch\u2019s portable play, a bit more optimisation would have been needed for it to feel entirely at home on the console.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While some videogame genres remain quite open-ended in interpretation &#8211; puzzles or platformers, for instance &#8211; others have become decidedly codified. Perhaps no template exemplifies this phenomenon as much as the \u2018roguelike\u2019, a game type born from its 1980 PC namesake and with a modern presence on nearly every console under the sun. Y\u014ddanji is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}