Discussion topic about the mini game Dungeons & Takafumis in Tomoyo After: ~It’s a Wonderful Life~. The mini game is available from the beginning in the English version, and becomes available after completing the story in the Japanese version.
Please tag any late-game spoilers from the main story of Tomoyo After or references to outside works (including CLANNAD) with [spoiler], providing adequate context in parenthesis.
I was expecting a simple mini game without many attention paid to it during the creation of Tomoyo’s After, but Dungeons and Takafumis turned out to be a good quality game and, even though the duration wasn’t very long, there are some achievements that aren’t easy to get, adding more hours to the game.
The comedic approach to the game was perfect. With a game this short there isn’t much room for a well written story, so choosing to do something original that focuses on making the player laugh was great. With this, many sentences were straight up hilarious, while some skills were inside jokes from CLANNAD or the characters, like Summon Fuko and 10-kick combo.
Despite this, the plot itself isn’t bad. While strange, and funny, it also shows some mystery behind the characters and the epilogue is lengthy enough to show some insight in the world and the whole Takafumi production.
About the gameplay, the fact that it is so simple makes for a casual game great to enjoy from every time to time without having to pay a lot of attention to it. However, the difficulty keeps going up at a decent pace, so some fights have to be planned thoroughly, specially if you want get a good score once you complete the game.
Also, this simple score system gives a reason to replay the game, something that I appreciate in a game this short.
So overall, though it’s a mini game meant to be just an extra to a VN, I say that Dungeons & Takafumis is a gem itself, a game that could be featured in the Steam as a standalone and still be successful.
After going through the first level, I’d agree it’s as enjoyable as you say it is. I came across a difficulty after completing the second level, though. When it went to the screen that showed character’s stats after leveling up, I couldn’t find a way to exit. The button that would normally do it wouldn’t light up. Maybe my game just crashed, but the computer didn’t seem to act like that’s what happened…
You have to make sure to assign all the points you get when you level up or the button won’t work. It’s made so that you don’t forget to assign the points.
Yeah, you’re right. Silly me…
So I currently locked floor 10, and so far, I have to say, it’s really fun. While the system is simplistic, it’s actually complex enough that you can think a lot about your beginning layout. Also, after several years of Fire Emblem, it is very refreshing to have an AI that doesn’t try to inconvenience the player at every opportunity.
EDIT: Now that I have finished the game, I have to agree that the story is quite good. And no less written in-universe by Kanako, whose earlier writing talent was questionable at best. And I have to say, Light Colors instrumental makes for a surprisingly good final floor music.
This game is terrible. It’s just a hotpot of terrible AI, RNG and extremely punishing design choices. It’s not as much an RPG as it is a puzzle game, but you don’t know how the pieces will move without extensive notes from previous battles. They also expect you to clear the game perfectly, I guess, because you get zero experience from clearing a floor a second time. Like if a character dies on the first time you clear a floor, you usually lose out on an entire level worth of exp. RPGs are balanced by your ability to grind, but the clear bonus setup makes grinding close to pointless. Therefore, you’re just left trying to endlessly zerg a battle until you’re lucky enough. I also felt that having spent 20ish skill point on DEF was completely wasted. Damage calc is just a simple enemy ATK minus your DEF, so each point in DEF is worth 1 HP per attack. I don’t have the actual numbers but the miss chance from DEX seems so much more efficient. This means that I’ve wasted a large amount of points making the above grinding inefficiency an even greater issue. So not only am I supposed to predict the future in the “gameplay” but also in the stats menu. I only have 10 floors left, but I really don’t want to finish it.
I’m at a bit of a crossroads here…
I have a save at level 45, when you’re giving three days to finish the game. After attempting it once, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no way I will be able to get to the end without more time to grind (maybe I’m being a bit presumptuous…) I also have a save before at level 35, but that was a long time ago, and I REALLY don’t want to do more grinding. Part of me thinks I should start over and I try to have a more focused idea of how to level up my characters…
I decided to take the path of buffing up dexterity far too late (I’d pretty much always levelled up defense and attack in the past), and I think that’s stunting the potential my characters could have had. Thus, maybe if I had been more focused in the past, winning the final level would be more plausible?
Alternatively, I could just go back to the old save and grind. Or try where I am now a couple more times. I’ll have to think about it.
I’d say it depends. For my S-Rank run I only leveled attack and defense for the melee units as well, so I wouldn’t through in the towel yet. Sure, the lower dexterity means that some attacks might miss and that you’re slightly more susceptible to enemy crits. But to get a better feeling for your situation, what are your current levels and jobs? Or throw me a PM on discord or here if you don’t want to have that kind of helping and giving advise on the forum itself.
However, speaking of that S-Rank run, I do see issues with the minigame, as especially the beginning of such a run is a bit of a luck-based mission. If the game decides that you don’t get any potions during the first five floors, well, then your run is dead before it even began, just to give an example.
Thanks for the help. However, after some critical mistakes on my part, I’ve decided to start from the beginning. However, as long as it’s okay with you, I might consult you on what you think is a fitting strategy for a first run in the future.
No problem, you know where to find me 
I’ve yet to play Tomoyo After, but it’s next on my list. Not really expecting much from the mini game, but I’m still gonna play the whole thing through, otherwise I probably won’t be satisfied leaving an RPG-like game unfinished.
Wow…well, I guess I know what I should be investing in then. Normally, I tend to prioritise DEF in most RPGs to achieve a tanky playing style, but I’ll follow your advice and see how it goes. Once I’ve cleared it though, I might play around with the cheat engine and see if i can make any changes.
I think this whole dodge tank strategy only kind of works when you really invest all your bonus points into DEX, and I mean all of them. Otherwise I have made the experience that too many hits actually come through, and a dodge tank strategy means that everyone is also a glass cannon, if not a one-hit-wonder.
So bottom line is, only DEX is a high risk, potentially high reward strategy, whereas concentrating on mostly DEF is a safer strategy, in my opinion. Sadly, hit and avoid formulas are not really deducable from gameplay, so I can’t give a “You need X DEX in relation to Y enemy’s DEX to have a near 100% avoid rate.”
I guess the best advice would be to have one character do the DEX approach and another the DEF approach and see for yourself which works best. That way you shouldn’t screw yourself over into a scenario where you’re forced to grind.
It looks like the current champion of the leaderboards posted a comprehensive Steam Guide to help people out with their D&T run!
So I did a lot of item collecting in D&T, enough that I can confidently say to have seen every weapon and armor in the game (Accessories are too rare). I also wrote that stuff down. You might ask “Why?” Well, the reason is that there are several weapons that form ‘groups’ so to say, where one is the best and has the proper name with some worse weapons which are basically cheap copies, and I’m not talking about all the Almond Tofu Pudding items. Below I’d like to list those because most of the time that seemed to work on some sort of puns or other types of jokes, which were well localised, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the hunch that there were jokes in the original version. And I’d like to have @cloud668 talk about the localisation decisions a bit if possible and explain the original jokes. The latter part can also be done by anyone who’s fluent enough in Japanese thanks to this wiki.
So without further ado, to the weapons. Also, groups will be seperated by a line.
Daggers
Mango Juice (+46)
Fruity juice.
Main-Gauche (+52)
Short dagger meant for left-hand use.
One-Handed Swords
Broadband (+14)
Cutting edge network service. Also a sword. Equipped as a one-handed sword.
Broadsword (+20)
Double-edged sword with a wide blade.
Stressing Sword (+25)
Curved sword whose name means “curved like the hawk’s claw”.
Angering Sword (+35)
Sword whose name means “curved like the panther’s back”.
Shamshir (+40)
Sword whose name means “curved like the lion’s tail”.
Silence Sword (+50)
A sword made of silent steel.
Deceit Sword (+54)
A sword made of deceitful steel.
Damascus Sword (+62)
A sword made of Damascus steel.
Have a Wet Towel, Please (+74)
Person suited for cutting and serving customers. Equipped as a one-handed sword.
Next Person, Please Enter (+80)
Person suited for cutting and inviting in customers. Equipped as a one-handed sword.
Bastard Sword (+86)
A sword suited for cutting and stabbing things.
Loose Sword (+90)
A sword with a blade that seems like it might come off at any moment.
Gladius (+98)
Latin for sword.
Sword of Katsutoshi (+80)
A sword Katsutoshi-san forged. Made of win.
Sword of Victory (+80)
A divine sword forged by a fairy. Hits 5 tiles simultaneously.
Slayer (+100)
An influential Thrash metal band. Equipped as a one-handed sword.
Slayer Dragon (+112)
Dragon that kills swords. Equipped as a one-handed sword.
Dragon Admirer (+118)
Sword that admires dragons.
Dragon Slayer (+128)
Sword that kills dragons.
Katanas
Gathering Clouds of Heaven Ticket (+80)
Ticket to redeem one of the three Imperial Regalia. Equipped as a katana. Hits 3 tiles simultaneously.
Gathering Clouds of Heaven Sword (+94)
One of the three Imperial Regalia. Equipped as a katana. Hits 3 tiles simultaneously.
MURATASAN BLADE! (+105)
katana. Demon sword Murata-san. Hits 3 tiles simultaneously.
MURAMASA BLADE! (+120)
katana. Demon sword Muramasa. Hits 3 tiles simultaneously.
Axes
Wow Hammer (+78)
Bludgeoning weapon shaped like a hammer.
War Hammer (+84)
Bludgeoning weapon shaped like a hammer.
Morning Set (+94)
Breakfast set consisting of toast, sunny-side-up eggs, salad and coffee. Equipped as an axe.
Morning Star (+104)
A flail chained to a spiked steel ball.
Spears
Trident Gum (+18)
Gum. Chew while kicking ass. Equipped as a pike. Pierces 2 tiles.
Trident (+20)
A spear with 3 prongs like a fork. Pierces 2 tiles.
Note: I know that some of these are obvious, I just wanted to post all that I saw for completion’s sake. I’m also not counting the unusually short or long versions of some of the spears.
A lot of these item names and descriptions actually originated from the original fan translation. For the most part, the item names were already translated by someone else for the sake of image editing back when I joined the fan translation project (and I can’t remember if the images were redone for the couple things that I really had a problem with), so the credit for those go to someone else.
As for the item descriptions, Delwack and I sat down together and went over them back when we were working on the fan translation long ago. While we were at it, we joked about certain items, some of which made it into item descriptions (the “cutting edge” part of Broadband’s “cutting edge network service” and Trident Gum’s “Chew while kicking ass” were added during this process.)
I didn’t really have much of a hand in the item names/descriptions during the commercial release’s localisation process other than making a couple minor fixes for the mistakes that were in the fan TL, and as far as I know, the translator who went over them didn’t add any new jokes. If anything, I regret not adding extra puns or jokes to the item descriptions this time around.
I hate to necro an old thread, but I really, REALLY hate D&T…
Could anyone help me out? im trying to get S rank
While I was looking at how D&T works, There was one thing that I kept asking myself. Why is the game checking 5 players and 20 enemies when there is only 4 people in the party? So I decided to force all players to be alive and well… my question was answered, and the result was what I expected.
