Tangledeep - Dawn of Dragons - Switch Review

Tangledeep - Dawn of Dragons by developer and publisher Impact Gameworks—Nintendo Switch review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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Having released alongside the free and substantial update of The Legend of Shara, The Dawn of Dragons also graced the console release of Tangledeep for an even more intense dungeon crawling adventure. Forgotten by living memory, powerful dragons have returned to Tangledeep and if you’re planning on facing them? You’ll need to level up your character, your gear and pull out all of the dirty tricks in the book as the original final boss of Tangledeep has got nothing on these five new behemoths.

So I’m a little embarrassed that it took me the amount of time that it did to start tackling these new challenges. Having restarted Tangledeep from scratch for The Legend of Shara, I was already familiar with a lot of the new content, weapons, and used to the higher level cap which you’ll need because even the areas leading to these new bosses are tough. That said, I did at first have a few setbacks as I reconquered the original Tangledeep in its new form but once I made it up to the new and shiny first boss? I was both impressed with him as well as the area leading up to him.

The Dawn of Dragons hasn’t just added in new areas with new bosses. It too added in some new items and gameplay mechanics that can be both discovered and unlocked. In the first new area alone, you’ll be trudging through a swamp area where bubbles in the water can either be monsters lying in wait, treasure chests waiting to be opened or passageways to locked off areas for anyone without a good amount of shovels to dig their ways into them. Once you’ve gotten up to that first boss and defeated him though, everything changes.

Beating the first boss of The Dawn of Dragons unlocks the other four in any particular order that you wish to tackle. Having been defeated, the first of the Dragons Horatio the Frog Dragon sits inside of your camp and tells you where you can find the other four because he doesn’t think that you’ll be able to take them out. Not simply telling you where to look in order to proceed into these harder dungeons, he also brings about a new town feature in which you can feed him equipment, and in return for following the directions of what to feed him, he’ll give you new items in return. Combined with being able to use orbs in order to level up items or being able to go through the new dreams for epic level gear, there's more than one way to prep for the new challenges.

With everything that had already been added through the massive content update from The Legend of Shara, The Dawn of Dragons adds in that “late-game” content to keep the adventure going with new challenges as well as new items of its own. It’s a brilliant add-on as it never feels tacked on once you start to find these areas as you re-explore the original areas of Tangledeep in order to move forward. And while this content is only hitting the Switch now while it’s been out on the PC for some time, it’s proof that Tangledeep can continue growing and that the devs care as much for their console release as they have for the PC.

As a final verdict over these past few weeks of having dived back into the adventure? Restarting a title from scratch in order to experience it in a whole new way was worth it. Between the new features introduced from The Legend of Shara into the new features of The Dawn of Dragons, it’s all worth it and if you’ve been thinking about getting back into it? Now’s the chance. If you’ve been wondering if it’s for you? With all of the options that you can turn on and off, Tangledeep is a Rogue like/lite for everyone.

 

Score: 8.5 / 10

Check out our previous reviews for Tangledeep Tangledeep – Legend of Shara – Switch Review and Tangledeep – Switch Review

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Tangledeep - Legend of Shara - Switch Review

Tangledeep - Legend of Shara by developer and publisher Impact Gameworks—Nintendo Switch review written by Pierre-Yves with the Base Game Provided by Publisher, Legend of Shara is a free DLC.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes 

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Early in 2019 I had the pleasure to sit down to Impact Gamework’s Tangledeep which had just seen a port to the Nintendo Switch. Well designed gameplay with a ton of different classes that you either start off with or that you can unlock, there was enough gameplay to survive being stuck inside for a while, see present 2020 global situation. Instead of just leaving things be however, the team have kept working on it and have recently released two massive updates that have been on the PC for a while to the Switch which is what brought me back to this Roguelike wonder.

The first of these that I will be covering today is the free DLC of The Legend of Shara that revamps most of the framework and even adds another character to experience Tangledeep from another point of view. Adding in a new class for your main protagonist, she’ll have new ways to explore Tangledeep, new dungeons to test her might and new items to help keep moving forward all under an already seemingly well balanced package.

So taking things back from the top, Tangledeep is in essence a traditional Roguelike RPG. As you move across each floor, your enemies move at the same time. Adding a few unique to Tangledeep features are that while you can eat food, you don’t need to do it in order to stave off starvation. Instead, eating food and drinking potions can be used to regenerate stamina and energy that are used for different types of abilities that can be learnt from the various classes that you change into. Another neat feature is that there’s a meter that exists granting you an extra turn once it fills out allowing you another edge to this adventure, and believe me, you’ll often need every edge and dirty trick that you can think of.

So the best way to experience this new content is from the beginning as it changes things from fairly early on. And by fairly early, I mean the beginning. Now after having completed the tutorial there’s another more challenging path that has been designed and opened up to explore on the way to the first boss instead of taking the one that a player may know fairly well having already played through either multiple times or with multiple classes. This new area was great for leveling up a bit faster even if it was a bit tougher to go through. I’ll admit I died a few times having moved up the floors a bit faster than I should have so if anything, it keeps you a bit humble.

Speaking of humble, alongside the new starting area and the experience that can be found therein, there’s a whole new set of dungeons that can be explored and unlike the rest of Tangledeep, you don’t need to be leveled. Instead, these dungeons are challenge dungeons in which you head in as level 1, with no skills, often no items, and an extra set of conditions that are along for the ride. Why would you do and do these you ask? For the awards that can be found within. Some of these dungeons let you bring back items. Others let you bring back loads of cash. There’s one dungeon in particular that granted me a purple weapon that honestly made certain floors in the actual adventure be ridiculously hard, to moderate as I cheaped out the denizens of those floors for experience points.

There are loads of other modifications however the biggest new addition to the adventure is a brand new story mode that acts as a prequel to the main story’s events. The Legend of Shara is the story of how Shara came into her power and the journey that lead her to the point. Gone in this mode are classes to change into and learn abilities from as Shara has only her own power to rely on as she doesn’t even have a hub in which to rest at or teleport to for safety. Compared to the core experience, this truly felt like a Roguelike as there really was no way back, only forward.

To make things more unique, Shara because she doesn’t have job classes in order to learn skills from, instead gets to use the accumulated job points in order to raise her base stats as she also doesn’t level up in the traditional sense. Each stat point will raise an attribute by several points and then increasingly cost more in order to further level it up. So strength which increases attack and health was a good place to start. So to answer the obvious question, Shara if she doesn’t learn skills the traditional way learns skills in one or two ways.

The first way to learn skills as Shara is to find the Pandora boxes on each floor and open them. Once you’ve opened the box, you get the choice of one of three skills that can be learnt. These skills are random from any of the core game’s classes which means that you won’t always be getting what you want or even get choices that help you out at that current point in time. It also means that you get to create your own custom class as you go but the challenge factor is that you have to work with what you’ve got.

The second way to learn skills as Shara is to keep plowing forward and to make it to those wonderful camp sites which let you either fully rest or use the campfire in order to create stellar items to restore health, stamina or energy. Once you’ve made it to these floors Shara will have the choice between two new abilities that can be chosen. So between the Pandoran boxes and the campsites, it doesn’t take long before you’re trying to figure out which skills go where in your setup and which passive abilities you want equipped and which you’ll keep on standby.

Now like the original, the new flavour of gameplay also comes in two of the original three flavours. The first of these is permadeath as there’s no hub to go back to. If you die. It’s all over. The second of these will have you respawn on the floor while losing half your money and your job points but let you continue moving forward so that you don’t need to start all over again. While this changes the gameplay, it will not change the story so it really factors down to what kind of player you are and what level of challenge you are up for.

Being a free update to the core experience is honestly a steal if you’ve been thinking of diving back into Tangledeep or starting it up for the first time. The amount of items and features that have been revamped or added it almost felt like a new game at times, and this is just the beginning. Also new, and the review coming soon, is the Dawn of Dragons DLC which launched at the same time for the Switch which adds post game content and its own new gameplay flavours to the mix.

Score: 8 / 10

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Tangledeep - Switch Review

If there's one thing that I need several times a year, it's a good Roguelike. You move, they move, you attack, they attack, whoever is left standing can declare themselves the victor and take the spoils owed to them in the vein of loot and experience points in order to level up. Tangledeep, by Impact Gameworks, both scratches that itch and a bit more as it's not your normal Roguelike and there are some elements that others could learn to implement which could remove some of the frustrations for newer players. Does that make it easier? No. It just makes it more accessible for those starting out.

Speaking of starting out, Tangledeep offers you up front your choice of nine of the twelve possible classes for your heroine. An Edge Thane, aka what I call a badass Barbarian Queen, a Holy Paladin, a Sorceress of power or even a good old fashioned Bard. Each class offers a different experience because of their skill sets as well as their preferred choice for combat. Once this choice has been taken, it's on to pick two feats from a list that act as a permanent bonus until you die. What happens when you die? Other than life's greatest mysteries after how they get the caramel in a caramilk, it's really up to you.

There are three choices for your adventure. The first, and the most simplest and truest to a Roguelike experience Heroic Mode, is if you die, your character is dead, your inventory is lost, and you need to make a new character. Side to that however, whatever has been unlocked for job classes or the town are kept, items and money that have been stored and banked in town will remain up for grabs and while you need to pay a fee in order to store anything, there are no fees to remove them for use on a later character.

The second choice from the first, Adventure Mode, is more akin to Dragon Quest. When you die, you get ported back to the last safest point, in this case "town", you lose half of your money, all of your unused job points that you've been saving up, and whatever experience points that didn't make it to a level up. Finally you have the third mode, Hardcore, which basically sets everything back to zero with no questions asked.

Kicking off my adventure like the Roguelike fan that I am, loading up Heroic Mode, taking my first steps as a Barbarian Queen, it wasn't long until I was dead and dove back in as a Paladin. Hey, you're going to die, it's a Roguelike, it's a fact of life. Now having a bit more of an idea of what to expect, I was a bit more prepared. So like a standard Roguelike, in Taking for every step that your character takes, everything else moves. This is the basics of a pure enough Roguelike. Once you get close enough to an enemy, you can swing your weapon and from there RPG mechanics kick in for the amount of damage based on your character level, character stats, and weapons. If you attack from further away, which is recommended by the ingame tutorials and they aren't wrong, you can normally get two or three attacks in before the enemy can land their first. It helps keep your hit points up there.

From there, you explore various procedurally generated floors in order to uncover the secrets of the titular Tangledeep. Where things start to become a bit more interesting isn't the leveling up. It isn't the monster types. It isn't even the grounds that you walk on as you go deeper into the dungeon. Those are the basics. Where things get interesting is what Tangledeep does that a lot of others do not. Once you go up a set of stairs? You can go back down. Think you missed something? Go back and check. You can really take your time or you can rush forward and if the floor above is too much, you can head back down to level up a bit more. The only thing that you need to pay attention to in this case is your stamina meter as if it runs out, you'll start to lose health and then die once your health runs out.

Where things are also different is normally when you go into a Roguelike's dungeon, there's an uncertainty of whether or not you can actually make it out. Some are designed that you must make it through. Others give items that can be lost. Tangledeep gives you a freaking Town Portal. A TOWN PORTAL! Usable, whenever. You're never EVER trapped. Or are you? So while you have an unlimited town portal, the portal itself requires several turns in order to activate once you've selected it for use. I've honestly died after activating the portal so it isn't a full save but being able to go back to town whenever was amazing.

Town itself is two main sections. The first where you land has a few shops, the ability to change your class which is very useful if you took Adventure Mode, a bank to store cash and items. The second part of town has a pen in order to keep captured monsters in order to raise them to fight alongside you as well as a plot of land run by a frog for planting trees that will produce a variety of items from their branches. The town itself isn't meant to keep you around for very long, it's meant more for coming in, getting whatever you need to do one, and heading back out.

There are some issues with the control to Tangledeep that could be a bit annoying at times and there was no real way around it. Movement by default is aimed at moving the left thumbstick or the D-pad and then clicking on "A" to move. For every square that you wanted to move, you needed to click on it. There was NO way that I was going through that again after last year's Noamund. Thankfully there was an option that allows movement freely of this issue, however, there was no way to simply look into a direction without moving. So if you wanted to aim yourself in preparation for an enemy, you couldn't. The auto attacking is pretty good but when there are several enemies around, your best bet becomes moving into the enemy you want to attack as the move command also acts as an attack command when running into something that can be killed or destroyed.

Overall Tangledeep was a lot of fun and short of the movement scheme, very well designed. Adding in a bit of accessibility into something as unforgiving as a Roguelike made for a familiar yet new experience that takes some of the stress away from the front end of the experience while in another way never removing it at all as the sharp fangs are simply better hidden.

Game Information

Platform:
Nintendo Switch
Developer(s):
Impact Gameworks
Publisher(s):
Impact Gameworks
Genre(s):
Roguelike
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
PC

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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