Dungeon Travelers 2: The Royal Library & the Monster Seal (PS Vita) Second Opinion Review

The world here is one in which an elite group of fighters from the Royal Library are tasked with controlling the out of control monster population. What makes this experience different is that, just like its predecessor To Heart 2: Dungeon Travelers, the main protagonist controls an entire cast of female fighters, with all the monsters also being female demons, witches, and other magical beings. Fans of Atlus games will pick up all the hallmarks of the well-known publisher in here; a traditional turn-based battle system, significant level grinding, and an epically long campaign. It is fair to say the aforementioned all-female cast comes with a slice of 'traditional' Japanese liberalism with regards to the sexual innuendo, creating the danger of turning this magical quest into something downright tawdry.

Getting straight to the point, from the first five minutes of gameplay to the 50th hour of crawling through mazes, Dungeon Travelers 2 is filled to the brim with overtly sexualised characters, dialogue, and imagery (this word chosen very deliberately). The amount of sexual innuendo is staggering. Practically every conversation between main protagonist Fried and his female companions (particularly Alisia) involves some moment that could be interpreted in a number of 'interesting' ways. Many of the game's character development takes place in the hub between dungeons in which one of Fried's 16 companions finds their way into his bedroom.

Moreover, said innuendo strays very close to (but importantly never crosses) the line between attention-grabbing and downright creepy, a prime example of this being that the 'reward' for clearing each dungeon and beating the female boss, is to see an anime-style cutaway of her in a salacious pose for the player to ogle. It is a testament to the 'boundaries' (if they can be called that) being pushed here, that even after a censoring of a number of these images for the Western release, it still maintains a 16 rating for sexual content.

All of this would be fine in a lot of ways if it didn't permeate into Dungeon Travelers 2's incredible moronic and tedious dialogue and story, which creates walking clichés of nearly every character. Yes, it could be argued that all these females the player controls are strong powerful women, warriors, sorceresses, scouts, spies, and son on. However, on the other hand, the majority of them are just there to be eye candy with overly enlarged breasts and posing in suggestive, sex-doll poses.

The dialogue isn't much better, with the most interesting thought of many characters being availing of the various ice cream snacks to be bought in the Royal Library. Sure, some of the characters such as Houzouji and Tsurara are more interesting, but overall the cast is a real let down for anyone looking for an engaging story. The strange thing is that developer Sting Entertainment was indeed capable of creating some memorable dialogue - usually coming when the bear and penguin characters pop up in dungeons and break the fourth-wall, with downright funny observations and musings about the adventure and the game itself.

Even apart from the characters themselves, the actual plot is not the most revolutionary… but is adequate. Monsters infest the dungeons, caves, and forests throughout the Kingdom of Romulea, kept in check by the Libras of the Royal Library - a powerful fighting force. Clearing each dungeon is not the most satisfying grind in gaming, but it does provide the scratch to the itch many fans of this style of RPG crave. Grinding is definitely the order of the day here. From a few dungeons in, it is very clear that the difficulty spikes quite high. Each new area usually requires 30 minutes or so of random encounters in order to level up the few levels to keep on top of everything. The good thing is that battles play out in a fast pace, using a time-honoured JRPG tradition of turn-based battles. This keeps things nice and simple, and provides a suitably strategic layer on top, with the various classes and spells coming into their own as the game advances.

Dungeon Travelers 2 definitely offers content for those who do latch onto its dungeon crawling and battling. There are at least 50-60 hours of main story content to slog through, and then a mammoth amount of post-game activities and battles to engage in. Whether anyone will want to get that far is a question of their personal taste. The benefit of these first-person RPGs is that creating a lot of areas to explore is relatively easy and cost effective. The downside is that this content comes at the cost of much variety. Sure, graphically it all looks fine, even quite great in the times when there is a splash of colour and anime charm. The problem is that, after a few hours, most of the areas the player spends the most time in just start looking like each other, and there are only so many times it is possible to be surprised by one of the endless 'surprises' of a monster trap being hidden in a treasure chest down another generic corridor.