Azure Dreams - Dungeon Cralwer meets town builder meets monster raising simulator

I really like dungeon crawler roguelikes for some reason. I was playing the more recent Crypt of the Necrodancer and I was wondering when this all started. The earliest I could remember enjoying something like that was Azure Dreams. The game is a dungeon crawler roguelike with a town building simulator, kind of like Dark Cloud in a way. Basically you spend the entire game trying to climb the 100 floor tower while collecting items. Each time you go in you are reduced to level 1. Everytime you die you lose everything you have. If you managed to find a rare wind crystal you can warp back to town and keep all the loot you find, which is used to upgrade the town. Unless you find a monster egg! This game has a huge variety of monsters which can be hatched and then raised to level and fight with you. Some monsters if you raise them long enough can evolve into new monsters as well. If you want to you can also fuse monsters together making them incredibly powerful. It basically has everything you can wish for.

When you first start the game you get a few cut scenes of your dad teaching you to be nice to girls and stop picking on girls. Then fast forward to a dark and stormy night where you are waiting for your monster hunter father to come home when suddenly the door bursts open and one of your dad's monsters walk in without him. Then everyone realizes he is dead because there's no way it will come back without him. Then fast forward a decade and its your 15th birthday! You're getting woken up by your tomboy childhood friend neighbor who kicks you out of bed, literally. You wake up talk to a priest, get blessed, blah blah blah, after an hour of talking you finally get to head into the tower. There you meet a random talking monster who wants to be your friend and the two of you head off into the dungeon to beat up monsters. Combat is simple. Everything is turn based and you have to walk in either of the 4 directions and even move diagonally. You may attack in front of where you are looking at or use and item. Every time you move or attack, the enemy will move or attack as well. Your monsters are AI controlled and will fight on their own. You may set the pet to fight normally, conserve mana, use spells, or support. Supporting monsters will cast support magic for your weapon every time you swing. It will boost your attack but at the same time drain its mana. Once mana is depleted the monster will be unable to fight and has to be returned into your bag. Mana also depletes over time while fighting/travelling around the tower as well.

Moving around the dungeon you will see the background change often. Usually every 5 levels you will reach a new area where different monsters will show up. Each monster has their own trait as well as skills. For example, a Kraken has electric skin that reflects damage back to the attacker. Its usually the first monster you meet in your mid teen floor and the first monster that will kick your ass so hard you sit there wondering what the heck happened. Something like a Block monster has really low attack but enormous armour. These are inherent traits in the monster that can be passed on in fusions. So for example, you can fuse a Kraken and a Block together to make a monster with both the electric skin and bonus armour. However, you can only keep the traits found on the original monster. Say you make a Kraken and it has both armour and skin if you fuse that to a Dreamin whose inherent trait is sleep immunity, you'll only keep electric skin and sleep immunity. You cannot pass the armour bonus down. You start off only able to bring one monster out at a time and later on you'll find another collar to bring two with you at a time. To find more monsters you need to collect eggs which are rare and a lot of the time not the monster you want.

So you beat up a few monster reach really far into the tower and then suddenly something comes over and punches you so hard you are one step from dying. If you die right here, all the eggs you have collected are gone, all the items and gold you got are gone. If you have a wind crystal, which are fairly common items in the dungeon, you can instantly warp back to town saving your hide and allowing you to keep everything. There is no way out of a dungeon except to use a wind crystal. There are no check points, no exit elevator no nothing. You might think this is an easy way to get out and you run no risk, think again. There are plenty of traps in the dungeon that can kill you as well as monsters using skills from across the screen killing you unexpectedly or a monster simply hitting too hard that you die before you can run away. When you get back to town, sell your items, you can spend the gold on upgrading the town or your own house. You start off in a little shack because your mom is a useless shit and didn't do anything for the last 10 years that your dad died except sell off his monster to get by. You need to support your family by beating monsters and spending that money on your house. Upgrading your house allows you to store more monsters and items as well as make it more visually pleasing. You can also buy items from the general store and customize your house to look more fancy. Besides upgrading the house, you can spend it on public buildings to help the entire town because they are useless shits that can't get anything done without the help of a 15 year old kid.

Public buildings serve one of two purposes. One is a time waster such as bowling and casinos. The other purpose is to meet girls. Yes this game also lets you romance a bunch of girls that ranges from your childhood friend, to some dying sickly 8 year old, to some 20ish dancer from out of town. In the Japanese version you can also romance your rival but homosexuality is frowned upon in the west so it was removed. Marriage was also removed because the people involved are too young, as well as gay marriage being illegal. Romancing girls are pretty easy depending on which girl. For example your childhood friend, Nico, you need to build fountains and other "cultural" buildings and once your rival's sister starts showing interest in you because you reached very high in the tower, she will realize she loves you and that you are actually a really cultured person. The sickly dying girl needs you to build a hospital, then find a rare herb on a high level floor and give it to her and she will magically be cured, but still really weak and gets tired often. The waitress Patty needs you to buy a lot of food and she will realize she loves you because you spend so much in her shop. Once you romance a girl she will randomly show up every morning to wake you up and then give you a goodbye kiss when you leave. If you romance a lot, a random one shows up. However once you upgrade to a big house. ALL OF THEM will show up and wake you up and kiss goodbye. This really really drags on every single day. If you want to leave sooner then keep an ugly house. The mid size house isn't that bad looking but if you want to live like a king then you have to spend 5 minutes with your harem every morning.

Overall there isn't too much to do in this game, and its not really very complex but its highly entertaining and will keep you entertained for hours. Finding good monsters then evolving and fusing them gives a sense of accomplishment and progression. Upgrading your town and romancing girls are a great distraction from the endless dungeon crawling. If you like dungeon crawlers or monster raising games, don't miss this one. Its one of the most overlooked gems on the PS1.