A few years ago, I was browsing old strategy guides in a Tokyo game shop when I stumbled across one dedicated to Rogue, the classic ASCII-based dungeon crawler that spawned the entire roguelike RPG format. It was a surprising discovery, because until that moment I had no idea that Japan was familiar with the genre’s origins. While western developers produce all kinds of crazy iterations on Rogue and Nethack (e.g. ADOM, Dungeon Crawl, Dwarf Fortress, etc.), Japan seems to use Chun Soft’s Mystery Dungeon series as its reference point to the exclusion of all else.
Nippon Ichi’s Z.H.P. is therefore a breath of fresh air. It does follow in the tradition of the Mystery Dungeon games to a degree, but it takes tremendous liberties with the formula and plays unlike any other roguelike out there. Z.H.P. draws much of its inspiration from the Disgaea games, with which it shares a fair amount of creative talent.
