Most RPG dungeons may as well have been designed me in said classes, the only difference being that a) dead ends often have treasure chests, and b) random encounters interrupt you every five seconds. I hate that style of dungeon design.

As Mr. Cruz said, however, Square thankfully solved this problem ages ago. On of the key aspects of this is the placement of treasure chests: unlike conventional mazes, in bad dungeon design, the player wants to hit all the dead ends in order to pick up all the dungeon's treaure. This leads to frustration when the player realizes that s/he has to back track because at some fork three rooms back, they went towards the exit unstead of towards a dead end which might contain treasure. Instead, Square tends to place treasure chests on the proper route and forgo dead ends completely. The clitcher is, to get the chest, the player is usually made to interact with the environment in some way. This isn't always handled as well as it could be, but it's a hell of a lot more immersive and entertaining than wandering though some poorly designed maze that could easly have been lifted from the math notebook scribblings of the designer's school aged kid.

-Davon

I love the old NES game Wizardry. For those who haven't played it, the game consists of one gigantic dungeon and practically nothing else. The story is almost nonexistent (There's a maze full of monsters and treasure. Heroes kill said monsters and take said treasure. Hopefully they eventually kill the evil wizard at the bottom). The graphics are poor, even by NES standards, and you never even get to see what your characters look like. Here's the interesting part: you have no control over the save function, the game constantly saves automatically. Yes, when your characters die, it's serious. Out of a pool of 20 characters, you can take six into the dungeon at a time. If the party is wiped out, you must form a rescue party from the remaining characters, go to the spot where they died, and bring the bodies back to the temple for resurrection. Yes, it's frustrating, and if a couple rescue parties go down, you have to delete some of your veterans and start advancing new characters to the point where they have a hope of recovering the bodies. But, it makes combat satisfying and meaningful; you'd be amazed how much more interesting a random battle is when there's something at stake.

My point is, dungeons should be hostile, dangerous places. In-dungeon recovery should be more difficult to come by, so that resource management matters more, and savepoints should be much sparser, or even nonexistent. To those who say this would make games too frustrating and time consuming, I say think back to FF1. Saving was impossible in dungeons, as was replenishing magic (though not HP), but the dungeons were still fun, and they weren't ridiculously difficult. In many modern games, savepoints placed every few screens, and almost unfailingly right before the bosses, combine with cheap and plentiful recovery items to make dungeons pointless. Random encounters aren't so boring if they actually pose some threat, or at least if they can wear down the party before the boss battle.

-Sirius's Bastard

Anyhow, I don't think I'm the only person who tires of two-hour slog-a-thons. I think half an hour in a dungeon is enough (not including combat.)

Another thing designers need to get back to are "gimmick dungeons" (the much-reviled SaGa Frontier had a lot of these, and it was the best part of the game.) The lazer puzzle from luminous, the big/small puzzle from the Time Entity's palace. Those were cool. Melkava from Xenogears was also rather cool, at least the dial-turning puzzle was. Lufia 2 had some of the best dungeons ever. I really enjoy these added brain-strains. However, the designers need to make sure they don't bog down puzzles with combat every three steps.

The last thing they need to work on is more "damn, thats cool" dungeons. I remember looking at the parralax effect in the water caves in FF2, seeing the river at the bottom of the crevase, and just being stunned by how cool such a simple effect looks.

(Also, why is it seemingly impossible for the pop theme song of RPGs to not suck? The intro theme to Zone of the Enders is far more beautiful than any since Xenogears' Star of Tears.)

Aaron Gover (aka VincentValintine)
http://members.fortunecity.com/everythinggoodistaken/

Ah, the Punic Wars! I remember them well:
Littora littoribus contraria, fluctibus vndas
Imprecor: arma armis: pugnent ipsique nepotes
I hope you enjoyed them as much as I, Chris.

Dragon Warrior VII's text count is 17,000+, according to the "Info" section Enix's DW7 Web Site.

Cato
Carthago delenda est.

Anyhoo, dungeons: The fact is, most of the time I don't normally notice a lot of the background designs unless there's something that jumps out at me (color scheme and design, or some nifty waterfall graphics or moving palm trees, like in FFIX and CC). That yellow-on-blue color thing in VS where you fight the giant crab, coupled with that Danny Elfman-like music, really creeped me out. The blood-colored rusty metal gratings and jagged broken rocks of Silent Hill really made you feel the desperation and fear of the game. And, yes, Midgar really was an important part of FFVII. It was a symbol of modern life: the little guy getting beaten down by the big guy, the poor being out-ranked by the rich, power and money being the driving force in people's lives, even the way we treat the environment like it's just a fad that's past it's prime...

Actually, it sounds like I've noticed them quite well. Yeah, I have to admit that backgrounds really do make the game. After all, would any of the FFs be what they are today if they all took place in generic white rooms? Would Chrono Cross really have been all that great if not for it's incredible use of color and music? Would Resident Evil have been as creepy if not for it's haunting surroundings and darkened passages?

So, if you think backgrounds don't make much of a difference, just look at Super Mario Bros., and ask yourself if you'd by the next MGS if they looked like that.

-Banjax, in the background

It seems Mr. Cruz has a problem with dungeon designs. I have a problem with the whole dungeon concept! Why? I'll tell you:

All interior designs for these ''dungeons'' can be traced back to either Zelda or Final Fantasy1(try it!) and can be classified in six categories: castle, cave, forest, technological, living and paranormal (like memoria). Plus you can add an element of your choice to add an exotic touch. (ie: A normal cave can become a volcano by adding a little lava! and so on.)

Can you think of one truly original setting that does not fall in the ''rat in the maze syndrome''? You know, go-in-fight-the-minor-monsters-get-the-key-fight-the-bigger-one-and- leave. Or that you could not solve by simply following the left wall? Ok, I can hear you saying: Quit bitching and toss some ideas.