Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon PS5 Review. Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon is a classic title that never made it outside Japan. Many hail it as the father of the Mystery Dungeon genre, which has inspired titles like Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon and the more recent Shiren the Wonderer franchise. Though modern Mystery Dungeon games have improved many mechanics, Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon keeps most of the original intact, with a few modern updates.
Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon PS5 review
Become The Greatest Merchant
You play as Torneko, a humble merchant looking to open a shop in the kingdom. To get new wares to sell, he decides to enter the Mystery Dungeon. A Dungeon that changes its layout every time someone new enters. That’s essentially the whole story. As you collect gold and wares and somehow make it out of the dungeon with all the gear and items you can carry, your shop expands, and Torneko’s home grows.
This is a nice way to show how Torneko is doing in his life. It’s also refreshing not to play a hero looking to save the world. You play a humble merchant just looking to survive and care for his family.
After speaking to the King and completing the game’s tutorial Mystery Dungeon, you are granted the go-ahead to explore the main dungeon. Your goal is to find the mysterious treasure hidden in the dungeon. The problem is getting to the treasure, and that’s where you’ll either fall in love with Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon or lose your mind in its frustration.
RNG Is The Name Of The Game
Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon is a hard game. A very hard game. It may not seem that way at first, but you’ll quickly notice difficulty spikes in monsters and traps throughout the dungeon. Every time you enter the dungeon, its layout changes so that you won’t play through the same floors over and over.
Torneko enters the dungeon at level 1 with no gear to help him out. You punch monsters you encounter to defeat them until you find weapons or shields in the dungeon. The biggest problem that you’ll run into is the game’s RNG. It’s all random. The layout, items, and weapons you find are random.
You can find a sword and shield in the first three floors in one playthrough, and in another playthrough you can go through ten floors without finding any weapons. You also find a variety of items and herbs you can use not only to heal yourself, but as offensive weapons to confuse enemies if you throw them at them, or even freeze them so they can’t move unless you attack them.
Advance At Your Own Risk And Reward
Every item and magic scroll becomes a key to survival. You won’t survive by simply attacking every enemy you see. Strategy is key, especially when you face multiple enemies. Some enemies even have unique abilities like putting you to sleep, teleporting you to another area of the floor you’re on, or stealing your items from your inventory.
Defeating enemies nets you EXP, and you can level up, but it only increases your health. You can find items like Seeds of Strength to increase your attack, but they are few and far between.
Spell scrolls can also help you. There is a nice variety: some are attack spells like Bang that attack all enemies in a room, while others are more supportive. They can increase the grade of your weapon and shield to make them stronger, reveal the entire floor you’re on, or reveal all the items on the floor.
Strategize Your Approach
Torneko must follow the dungeon’s movement rules. He moves on an invisible grid, square by square. The monster follows the same movement rules. Every time Torneko moves, the monsters move. If you hold still, the monsters hold still. Everything you do is turn-based. If you attack an enemy, they get to attack you right after. You can run from them, but they will chase you square by square.
Some things naturally go in your favor, though. Moving around the map slowly restores health, which can save you precious healing items.
Your hunger is also an issue. Torneko has a hunger meter that drains. When it reaches zero, Torneko starts losing health, so it’s important to have Loaves of Bread on hand. Again, these can be easy to find or hard to find, depending on whether the game wants to be generous. You can find Moldy Bread. Eating it restores your hunger gauge but costs you a random stat, like a point in your strength or maximum HP.
If you die in the dungeon, it’s over. You lose everything you’ve collected, including any gold. It’s a rough way to go, especially if you made it down to, say, the 20th floor.
Build Your Shop And Make Dungeon Crawling Easier
There’s no way to save what you have; this can be detrimental early in the game. Escaping with equipment matters, since everything you own gets sold and automatically upgrades your shop. The only way out with all your gear is to use a Zoom item that allows you to escape, and again, RNG may bless you, or it won’t with a drop of the Zoom item.
Once you unlock the Vault, the game gets easier, since you can store items you bring back and avoid a lot of the RNG. Imagine restarting a dungeon at Level 1 but with a Metal Babble Sword that can kill every enemy with a single strike all the way through the first 15 floors.
Visually, the game has gotten an upgrade, but it’s nothing like the Dragon Quest HD-2D remakes. A small boost in visuals and spell attacks, but nothing special. The monster designs still have charm, and Torneko’s design keeps that unique Akira Toriyama art style, but I wish they’d done a little more for the game’s re-release.
The game’s soundtrack has that special Dragon Quest charm you would expect. It’s nothing grand like a main-line title and only features a handful of tunes, but somehow they are catchy and calming at the same time.
Make Things Easier Or Harder Through Special Options
The game offers options to make it a lot easier if you choose to play that way, but doing so removes the real charm that made it such a classic in Japan.
You can remove enemies completely, increase item and gold drop rates, or even remove all the traps that appear in the dungeons. You can also make things harder by increasing the enemy count and the number of traps that appear, if you choose. Unfortunately, if you utilize these changes, your progress will lock you out of Trophies and not register you on the leaderboards.
Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon is a game of its time, and sadly it remains in its time. The game is great if you somehow managed to play the Japanese version back in 1993, and as an older gamer, I love it. Those new to it will find frustrations beyond their imagination. It’s a great game, but it may only be great for those who grew up with Mystery Dungeon games before PlayStation even existed.
Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon is out now on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series S/X, and PC.
Review Code kindly provided by PR.