This is not a game for everyone. It's a game from the 1980's even with a new coat of paint and a few balancing and QOL features, but it's still a tough, unforgiving dungeon crawler that is as much about preparation and patience as it is about learning to roll with the punches when the dice form a middle finger in your face.

Despite all of this, I found this game very gripping and captivating. Every victory felt earned and you start feeling attached to your guys whom have no given personality. The graphics feel like it's an updated old school game like the Sega AGES games back in the day and the atmosphere can be tense. It's a game that I, once I got over the frustrations and accepted that I usually should keep a party of people that you can send to carry your bones for revival out, made even easier by the recruitment system. Really I feel money is the issue in this game where the most issues are. You either have barely a coin to spare or you are flushed with gold that it kinda feels meaningless.

I found the game super engaging and captivating. If you wanna see what was one of the three great progenitors of Roleplaying video games and a piece of important video game history, I would say this game is worth experiencing! Just don't try to 100% achievements, those 40 hours of searching every enemy to complete the bestiary were carried by my lizard brain liking the sight of levels going up.

... So when is the Knight of Diamonds scenario coming out?

I find the game just too much of a slog, requiring saving to a backup file after every visit to the dungeon. Otherwise, it's an endless procession of party wipe-outs and taking characters who are paralyzed/stoned/dead to The Temple to severely drain your gold supply restoring them.

I just took a party of Level 8-9 characters into their initial foray on dungeon level 3...and had three of them almost immediately assassinated by an encounter with Level 3 Ninjas. Time to load the backup save.

I play computer games to relax, not to battle endlessly against barely-solvable problems only to have my progress wiped out by RNG. My real life provides plenty of that.

Other reviews have defended the difficult and sloggy nature of the game. Hey, if that's your thing, you do you. I will probably endure one playthrough then never bother again. Had I not played this back when it came out in the 1980s, I would have already stopped. Only my sense of nostalgia is making this at all worthwhile.

I played this in 1986 and this remastering is pretty dang good. I went full nerd and beat it in 37 hours over 3 weeks of play