A question we’ve all asked ourselves to be sure, and one I can confidently answer by the end of this review. When I was asked to review this game for Nintendo Switch I was completely sold on it from the title alone and was eager to jump in and see what it was about.
First impressions count for a lot and this game (I’m not going to keep repeating that long title) delivers strongly in its opening. The sound design and anime art style are both solid and lay good groundwork for a potentially promising game. As for all that follows, that’s where it loses me.
Based on the manga and anime series of the same name which I hadn’t heard of let alone seen, the beginning of the game has us take control of protagonist, new to the profession of adventurer, Bell Cranel. The sole member of the Hestia Familia, Hestia being a goddess choosing to live among humanity, Bell must venture every day into a dungeon, appropriately named ‘The Dungeon’, to collect items to sell as well as to better himself as an adventurer.
The combat is very basic with the standard light attack, heavy attack, magic attack and dodge mapped to the main four buttons as you’d expect. The story quests I have played in my hours with the game comprise entirely of defeat ‘x’ amount of a certain type of monster or reach a certain location within a time limit. I’ve never liked timed sections in games, and these are particularly arbitrary though not particularly difficult.
I found the game far too eager to force dialogue down players throats only to then allow us out to complete a story mission with a basic objective every five to ten minutes. I found myself getting fairly invested with the story the more I played, though having stopped for a bit to write this review I’m beginning to suspect I was forcing myself to in an attempt to understand what was going on.
If you are a die hard fan of the manga or anime then this is the game for you, but unless you fill that incredibly specific criteria it is probably safe to give it a miss. The only proviso I would attach to that is play it if you want to experience a game that is out of your comfort zone or because you are as intrigued as I was by that title.
All that said however, I may continue playing it passed the publication of this review, so the fact I am open to the idea of carrying on is worth an extra point in its favour.
At the beginning of this review I said I would answer the question that the title asks us, Is it Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? The answer is yes though I would prefix that with the condition ‘unless the girl in question has a fondness for cutscenes and enjoys being spoken at a lot’.
In summation, the game has a good aesthetic that is true to what I have looked up of the anime, and on top of that it isn’t awful to play. However, for its tendency to lean on cutscenes and relative inaccessibility to new players who try to experience it, I score it