your favorite "first dungeon" in a jrpg

[jonthefox]

of all the jrpgs you've played, what's your favorite "first dungeon"? What made it so memorable and enjoyable and gave you a very positive first impression of the game? How can game devs use this as a learning tool to make better first dungeons and start their games off on the right foot?

 

[Yethwhinger]

I'm not sure whether it's my favorite, but I thought Phantasy Star IV's first dungeon, the academy basement, was well done. It was a very simple dungeon, providing a gentle introduction to the gameplay. It being right inside the first town made it easy to get healed while learning the combat system. It ended with an easy boss battle that gave you an opportunity to try out the battle moves you might not have tried against the weaker enemies. I think I especially liked the way the story was interwoven with the exploration, the way you could get to know the setting and the characters you were playing as while at the same time learning how to play the game.

As for the takeaways, perhaps it can be helpful to make opportunities right in the first dungeon for your players to learn the basic gameplay mechanics and to experiment with some of your game's special mechanics. It might also be a good idea to let your characters' personalities show in these early moments of your game.

 

[Sharm]

Lufia 2 was my favorite. Most first dungeons are your first slog through monsters to get the MacGuffin, but Lufia 2 did a little more than that. It was a tutorial for the unusual nature of all the dungeons of the game, where moving forward or getting the chests involved a little problem solving. The dungeons are half puzzle. It was also super short and had no boss, so you weren't overwhelmed with information and could get it out of the way and move on with the game, trying out what you learned in the next, more unstructured cave (the one I keep forgetting isn't actually the first dungeon). Lufia 2 is pretty good to look at for making dungeons fun overall, I think. I liked how the monsters were on screen, and were sometimes part of the puzzles. You could have cutscenes happen in them. Moving forward wasn't ever just "push A to win", you had to actually think about the best way to do things, in and out of battles. Being able to interact with the environment also opened up the possibility for secrets, which were always fun to find.

So, I think the takeaway is that the first dungeons should give you the information in the quickest way possible, then give you a chance to experiment with what you've learned. Dungeons should be part of the game play and narrative, not just a generic wander until you find the easy boss. Make it easy to come to a solution, but don't make them follow step by step instructions, let your players choose and think a little. Then, even if it's way too easy for an experienced and smart player, it at least won't be quite so annoying. I've found that humor can go a long way in this area, when it's just going to have to be simple, at least make it funny.

 

[Black Pagan]

My Favourite Dungeon is from an MMORPG called Perfect world. That game had really interesting Dungeon Layouts for a start, Its a pretty old game.

Well, Let me explain a few mechanics of it :
- It wasn't quite complicated, It just had a Small Maze-like feature where if you get lost, You get cornered by dragging too many enemies on you at once, which kill you. It had a lot of dead-ends and entranced which looked very similar to each other.
- It had a bunch of high level elites in between normal monsters, Which means we had to make sure we clear the Elites first then head to kill the Normal mobs.
- Finally at the ending lies the Giant Boss. Surrounding it are a few Elite Creeps along with a scouting troop of normal monsters. You had to first clear the Normal monsters, Lure the Elite monsters and then battle the Boss.

If you did any of these steps in the wrong way, You had a chance to aggro all of them on you at once. I found this concept interesting - Knowing which monster to kill first, Makes it something like a strategy. These principles can be somewhat applied to even RPG Maker Games.

 

[Sharm]

So, if I understand, you liked it because it presented a new and interesting puzzle, was hard enough not to make you feel like it was babying you, gave you the tools to solve the problem, didn't overwhelm you with difficulty or extra challenges, and it taught the important mechanics for the rest of the game? If so, that's pretty similar to why I liked Lufia 2's dungeon. Interesting.

My old roommate was a huge fan of PWI. I'm surprisingly familiar with it considering I haven't played.

 

[VisitorsFromDreams]

Spoiler: Viridian Forest

Pokemon Red was the first JRPG I ever played. Viridian Forest is a nice simple strait forward introduction to the game where it has plenty of optional paths but its impossible to get lost. It also really pushed the start of the games trainer battles, all in all a great tutorial dungeon. I also remember hearing kids at school talking about how rare Pikachu was so when I found one only a few battles in I remember being incredibly excited. Ill always remember it even if going back to it now it feels super basic.

 

[Dankovsky]

Spoiler: Viridian Forest

Pokemon Red was the first JRPG I ever played. Viridian Forest is a nice simple strait forward introduction to the game where it has plenty of optional paths but its impossible to get lost. It also really pushed the start of the games trainer battles, all in all a great tutorial dungeon. I also remember hearing kids at school talking about how rare Pikachu was so when I found one only a few battles in I remember being incredibly excited. Ill always remember it even if going back to it now it feels super basic.

Yeah, but probably don't put that map into your RPG Maker game.

 

[VisitorsFromDreams]

Yeah, but probably don't put that map into your RPG Maker game.

The mapping in Pokemon is generally pretty bad going back to it now ha ha.

 

[M.I.A.]

It's not really a dungeon, but one of my favorite first "maps" is from Secret of Mana. It was beautiful!

 

[JosephSeraph]

Definitely Akropolis Dungeon in Parasite Eve. It's simple, but quite expansive, it's self contained which is great for a game that will proceed to have its entirety happen in another entirely connected area, and it provides a still nice challenge, with its self contained (minor) puzzles, etc.
It's an effective first chapter for the game, introducing all of the gameplay concepts you'll find from there on,

 

[Wavelength]

Amazingly, I've been trying to come up with a JRPG's "first dungeon" that I really loved ever since I saw this topic a month ago, and I still find myself unable to! I think this genre tends to be really difficult to start well, and most of the time I tolerate a poor initial experience for an hour or two in hopes that it gets better (it often does).

The Final Fantasy games, from VII onward, tend to have pretty good starts in that they immediately provide compelling plot hooks and deliver on their strong points of Character and Action. They'd be near the top of my list as far as JRPG starts go. However, they also tend to either break immersion by explaining too much, cause intimidation by asking you to use tools you don't understand, or both.

Outside of the JRPG subgenre, I want to point out an extremely early quest in World of Warcraft that I might compare to a great first dungeon - the quest where you have to gather grapes from a vineyard that is crawling with Defias Brotherhood members, right outside the start point for Humans. Here's what I love about this quest:

• Its purpose is practice rather than teaching. You don't learn anything new, but you use what you know in a deeper way than you did in the first quest (which introduces things like moving and attacking). There's a lot to learn in WoW, but they turn that into a marathon rather than a sprint, and let you play around with and master a much smaller selection of tools in the early running before they introduce more tools.
• It feels epic. You immediately face down human enemies that look, feel, and act like worthy foes (even though they are not), rather than slimes or mushrooms. The way the enemies move and gang up on you make you feel like you're in real danger - they don't stand there and let you whack them. The numbers are tuned so that you'd have to be AFK to actually die here, but a beginning player doesn't know or feel that. And you're treated like a hero when you succeed.
• The activity is compelling in its own right. You need to gather the grapes throughout the vineyard by interacting with them, so players who feel the threat from these threatening-looking Defias will be doing a lot of dodging and weaving as they try to make safe beelines to the grapes.
• The interface is kept relatively simple throughout the first hour of gameplay, allowing the player to focus on the core engagements instead.

 

[Aesica]

Lufia 2 was my favorite.

Lufia 1's intro dungeon was also pretty good for its time, even if the game itself hasn't aged well. It shows off all the character archetypes and lets the player try out all the high-end attacks. Since the characters are so overpowered compared to the enemies, the player can mess around and learn rather than being required to perfectly strategize with all the tools they have.

The first dungeon in my current game is actually somewhat inspired by Lufia 1's intro dungeon, except it's just the main character daydreaming she's a total badass, so everything is massively over the top.

 

[Wavelength]

The first dungeon in my current game...[is] just the main character daydreaming she's a total badass, so everything is massively over the top.

I think there are pros and cons to letting the player "glimpse" what their lategame kit will be like, like Lufia does, but I just wanted to say that I think that your own concept of starting the game out by having the character daydreaming she's a badass is so, so awesome. It's funny, it's relatable, it should be fun for the player, and it lets you go absolutely wild as a designer.

Does the player understand they are playing a daydream beforehand, do they not find out until after they complete the dungeon, or is it something the player is expected to infer at some point during the dungeon?

 

[Aesica]

I'm still trying to think of the best way to handle it, but right now, it starts off feeling like an actual dungeon where the main character is there to save her friends from the bad guys. As the player progresses, I drop little hints here and there, but upon reaching the final boss, the main character dismisses the usual I-am-evil-so-I-will-destroy-you-and-I-have-your-boyfriend-mwahaha speech with something like, "Seeing how this is my daydream, good luck with that." Then, after the fight, the boss explodes and she starts getting all lovey-dovey with her man, someone wakes her up and...surprise. Turns out she's pretty weak/ordinary/mundane and her "boyfriend" is someone she likes, but who only sees her as a friend. And the big bad ultimate evil of the dungeon was a peer she doesn't get along with.

As for design, I kinda did go crazy with it because I put a lot of extra complexity into the battle system and wanted to show it off right from the start. Since it's basically meant as an open-ended tutorial, the player's skillset is a sampler pack that they're free to play around with. As a player, I find this approach far more enjoyable than the drag-you-around-on-a-leash approach of, "you're facing an ice creature and its only weakness is fire. Use fire to continue because you can't select anything else right now!"

Hmm, hope I didn't get too off-topic with this.

 

[Conflictx3]

Gotta say FFVII first "dungeon" of blowing up that reactor and that damn "attack while tail is up!" Robo scorpion who you should totally NOT attack while tail is up is by far the best to me.