Now bear with me, as I've never played a Fushigi no Dungeon before, but I have played nethack quite a bit and enjoyed it. Still can't get it running on my iBook though, well the command line one that is, its having some write protection issues, but that's another story.
I'm enjoying it. NoD has this really nostalgic feeling to it, and I never played those old arcade games either, it kinda brings me back to shit like Haunted House on Atari, or playing some text adventure game on the C64. I don't know why, but it really gives me that vibe, and I like that. Or like playing Hydlide on the NES, except the game doesn't suck.
But anyway, onto the game itself. Just talking with the characters in the town, what with inscribing items so you don't lose them when you die and you can only inscribe one at the beginning, taking on quests with level caps and restricted items/equipment, transferring skills amongst equipment, there's more to this game than I originally thought. Although load times are pretty annoying I'll say. Walking through the town you get hit with a few seconds if you switch zones. Traversing the actual dungeons at first felt a little slow, but once you get to more meatier, more enemy filled floors, it just begins to feel smoother. Something about the tiles always being at that slight angle bugs me as well, and I'm not sure why, but it is still obvious where you'll go when you press a direction. For those of you unfamiliar with the games, it works on turns. Each time you take a step, or attack, or pass a turn, then the enemies can move attack and what not. The game also lets you know by the color underneath an enemy whether it will attack before or after you. To piss off some people, I'm gonna draw a comparison to Unlimited Saga here, as you can pass turns to get HP back. Not exactly fair though, as after a certain number of turns pass you'll get some HP back even if you're not passing them. But too many turns go by and your field of vision narrows it seems. I'm gonna have to make some offerings to Ishtar apparently.
Anyway, there's a lot more to the game than my half-assed review notes, and I might have gotten some of it wrong. Personally, I'm enjoying the whole not knowing a damn thing about it other than it shares the name of a tower in Tales of Destiny that was based off an old Namco arcade game, and just plunging into a game with almost complete ignorance, and I'm pleasantly surprised.
Drinky, you might not like it because characters talk, and Alex, you probably won't to just confuse me. And Ferricide will obviously hate it because he's the worst reviewer evar.