Gameplay

Metal Dungeon starts out really well, with a nicely done full motion video opening sequence that makes you think you're about to start up one of the best RPG's around. Unfortunately, the FMV is the best part of the game, both in graphics, and in general interest generating ability. The storyline of the game is your first hint that you're about to descend into tedium; basically there's a military research facility where things have gone haywire and it's up to you to head into it and clean it out. Along the way, you'll encounter a variety of monsters which of course you can only get past by killing, and you'll pick up some treasure on the way. The dungeon itself is a living environment which switches its layout randomly between your adventures.

Your first task in Metal Dungeon is to put together your party of characters, which you'll be using to explore the monster-infested dungeon. You can either build your characters manually by choosing their sex, appearance and skill set, or you can let the computer randomly create characters for you, which you can either add to your five-man team, or "roll again" to let the computer give it another go. This is about as much interest you'll have in your characters for the rest of the game, since you really won't care if they live very long or not. While the developers claim the character system can generate over 2,000 combinations of characters, you won't notice much of a difference between them except in how well they attack or defend. Other than that, you've just got a bunch of generic cardboard cutouts. Once you have your team, you eqiup them for battle and head into the dungeon. From here on out, it keeps getting worse.

The dungeons themselves are randomly generated, meaning those maps you make while playing will be worthless the next time you play. You roam around as one character from the party (they saved on graphics by just showing one character) opening doors and treasure chests. If you bump into a monster icon (again, they saved their graphics workload by just having a floating 3D icon annotate where a pack of monsters will be), you'll be thrown into combat.

The combat system is a throwback to the Phantasy Star series on the SEGA Genesis, except it's nowhere near as fun or interesting. You have two options: let your party fight it out automatically, or manually command each character through a simple selection menu system. Each character is limited in the combat options available (normally just "attack", "defend" and "spell") which makes for some pretty inane fighting. Whether you choose a combat action or let the computer do it, the characters shift into a generic animation as they attack the monsters. The combat is turn-based, so your team gets to launch its attacks, then the enemy attacks back, and it repeats until someone dies or gives up the fight. If your team wins the combat round, they are all granted experience points, which are supposed to make them more powerful, but from what I could tell, didn't do much for them, even after they gained several skill levels.

Being a dungeon crawl, there's nothing else to the gameplay in Metal Dungeon. You just keep exploring randomly generated dungeons, fighting ever-more nasty monsters, and gaining experience points.

Graphics

Don't let the pre-release screenshots fool you, as the real in-game graphics are nowhere near as stunning as the screenshots show. Character graphics have a polygonal shape with rubbery textures, resembling nothing human whatsoever. The monsters themselves are equally simplistic, though from far away almost trick your brain into thinking they look good. Character animation is, quite bluntly, a joke. It's always in a very herky-jerky style that simply doesn't resemble anything even vaguely realistic. The wall textures in the dungeon are actually pretty nice, but it's obvious that they have about four different wall panels that they used for the game, and so there's no variety in the textures.

The combat system, being turn-based, relies on very little fluid animation as it's a "my attack, your attack" combat system. When it becomes your characters' turn to attack or defend, there's always a little bit of basic animation, but it's always that same bit of animation, which gets very tedious after just a few combat rounds.

Sound

The musical score is dull and lifeless, lacking any interesting qualities at all. If you decide to play Metal Dungeon, plan to turn up the stereo in your living room so that it overpowers this collection of stale music. Voices are limited to a few annoying screams of pain and monster growls, and weapon sounds are laughable. Perhaps I'm spoiled by the realistic weapon sounds of Ghost Recon on the Xbox, but the machine gun in Metal Dungeon reminds me of someone stomping on a huge pile of bubble wrap.

Replayability

With a good RPG, you've got the option of changing up your party to introduce some variety, then start the game over again. Since Metal Dungeon is so pointless, however, you'll find no replay value in it. Even with the randomly generated dungeons and the combinations of character abilities and classes, you still won't find a reason to play this game more than a few times. It will quickly find its way to your "retired game" shelf.

Overall, Metal Dungeon was a good idea that was just poorly executed. You had a character creation system that with a few tweaks might have actually been pretty solid, coupled with a gameplay concept so simple anyone should enjoy it. Unfortunately, nothing feels like it was completely thought out, and reminds me of some of the worst games I played on my old SEGA Genesis. While earlier I compared Metal Dungeon to the SEGA Phantasy Star series, don't let that fool you, that was for illustrative purposes only, this game is nowhere near the caliber of Phantasy Star titles.