Picdun 2: Witch’s Curse

Genre: First-Person Dungeon-Crawler / RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Picdun 2 is a First-Person Dungeon-Crawler with RPG elements released on Nintendo 3DS in 2013, following in the footsteps of 2011’s GO Series: Picdun on Nintendo DSi in 2011. This game puts players in the role of a hapless guy who wishes he had more luck with the ladies who finds himself whisked away to a strange dungeon where he will be accompanied by one of three attractive female companions who will fight enemies for him.

The presentation here uses a combination of some very nice 2D art for the girls and monstrous enemies, and some decent but unspectacular 3D for the dungeons themselves. This is joined by some jazzy but somewhat repetitive music backing everything up. For the most part, the presentation is good here, but unfortunately the game’s dungeons are far too repetitive.

The gameplay here is fairly simple. The dungeon-crawling is all pretty standard stuff – you walk around a tile-based maze, hitting switches, opening doors, and looking for the warp portal that marks the floor’s exit. Technically each floor is only considered “completed” if you step on every tile on that floor, but you needn’t “complete” a floor to move on.

The combat here is a bit more original. At least nominally, the game claims that the player is only raising a shield, and their current female companion is the one doing the fighting, but you’re the one tapping the button to attack, so it works out to be much the same as if it was you in any case. In combat, players must time their use of the shield and attacks based both on what the enemy is doing at the moment, as well as their partner’s readiness to strike (as indicated by a meter in the lower-right corner of the bottom screen).

When you want to act, you have a few options – there is a defensive shield button and three types of attacks – a vertical attack that does a good amount of damage to one enemy, a horizontal attack that spreads damage among multiple enemies, and a powerful special attack that players can set into motion by timing their block at the moment an enemy attacks. Each of the three female companions specializes in one of these attacks, meaning that you may opt to choose that companion if you favor that type of attack.

Unfortunately, the major problem with this game is that there’s just not much more to it. Combat is just going to be an endless series of attacking with your preferred attack type and using the shield when the enemy makes a move to strike back, and the dungeon-crawling may have a few curveballs it throws you every now and then, but overall everything looks far too bland and samey to hold your interest. It doesn’t help that between the Etrian Odyssey games, the Persona Q games, and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux, there are already plenty of better, much deeper First-Person Dungeon Crawlers on the Nintendo 3DS.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing unique or interesting about Picdun 2. If nothing else, the combat is definitely original and the quirky theme is adorably tongue-in-cheek. If you’re a fan of First-Person Dungeon Crawlers, or just looking for a simpler entry in the genre, you may find this game to your liking. But most would be better-served by getting one of the other games I mentioned above.

tl;dr – Picdun 2 is a First-Person Dungeon-Crawler with RPG elements with a unique real-time combat system involving three female companion characters. Unfortunately, as far as games in this genre go, this one is pretty shallow and repetitive. It’s not a horrible game, but you have much better options in this genre on the Nintendo 3DS.

Grade: C-

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