An Utterly Charming Blend of Zelda and Persona

Summary

• Debut game Dungeons of Hinterberg is an attractive, cozy, action-adventure experience with 25 dungeons and a Persona-like structure.
• Player days in the game are structured in quadrants, allowing for dungeon exploration, socializing, and relaxation in a unique setting.
• The game features a delightful cast of NPCs with backstories to uncover, a self-dictated pacing system, and a challenge level that may be too easy at times.

For those who can afford to take a break, where else to go but the Dungeons of Hinterberg? Microbird Games’ debut action-adventure is structured something like the contemporary Persona games, with players traveling to a resort-styled Austrian village with one key draw: 25 dungeons packed with puzzles and combat. Utilizing an eye-catching style that mixes the qualities of cel-shading, rotoscoping, and Breath of the Wild‘s overall vibe, Dungeons of Hinterberg is an attractive and cozy experience with a substantive 20+ hour runtime, and should attract fans of its inspirations and anyone else looking for a lower-stress dungeon-crashing adventure.

As Hinterberg’s newist visitor Luisa, player days are structured in quadrants: the morning is when to decide what region to visit, afternoons are often spent in a single dungeon of choice, then evenings allow for chatter with fellow tourists or townsfolk, or even just a moment to decompress with some solo time. Then, late at night, it’s time to veg out in front of the tube, browse a tome of local history, or catch some early shuteye.

At its heart, Dungeons of Hinterberg is about daily rhythms, with a down-to-earth narrative that almost anyone with a grueling day job will relate to. Except, here, instead of hitting the mountainside to burn off some mounting stress, Luisa mashes through monsters with her sword or blasts them with spells and skills…although there may be some time to hit the slopes, yet.

Settling Into Hinterberg

Even Lawyers Need To Smash A Few Monsters Sometimes

Luisa settles into the local traveler’s hotel with quaint top-floor lodging on her arrival to Hinterberg. She travels light, reflecting on her excitement to explore this curious destination pastime and get away from her dissatisfying law firm job for a spell, with a life path that feels like it’s at a crossroads. Like many travelers, a key part of her experience is geared towards shaking up routine, puzzling out what she should really be doing at this point in her life, with mind and heart open to the universe.

She’s soon introduced to a few of Hinterberg’s movers and shakers. There’s the glad-handing mayor, a few dungeon-delving social media stars – treated here like top-ranked attention-hungry Twitch streamers – and a former dungeon-crashing adventurer who now runs the tourism board and helps newcomers get acquainted.

If today’s not the day to fight, Luisa can call an audible and pursue other simple activities, like resting before a gorgeous vista or meditating in a forest.

Right off the bat, Luisa discovers that nary a visitor has completed all of Hinterberg’s dungeons thus far. They’re each found throughout four distinct regions of the landscape, all of which are atmospherically tied to a particular season. The start of the day means charting a course, as two areas can’t be visited in the same afternoon, and finding the portal to the dungeon is often half the task. And, if today’s not the day to fight, Luisa can call an audible and pursue other simple activities, like resting before a gorgeous vista or meditating in a forest.

Shmoozing With Hinterberg’s Tourists and Townies

Meeting Dungeons of Hinterberg’s Delightful Cast

While the interactive bulk of Dungeons of Hinterberg resides in its 25 titular encounters, the game is packed with NPCs to meet and befriend, from start to finish. They each have their own little tale to tell, with personalities and backstories opening up readily as Luisa’s relationship with them develops over the days.

The cast represents a nice mix of archetypes, and virtually all of them feature greater depth than might first appear. Friendships don’t just reveal the inner lives of these people, but often imbue Luisa with combat bonuses, grant shop discounts, or even provide a nice piece of gear or new attack skill at higher tiers.

We spent approximately 19 hours completing
Dungeons of Hinterberg
with more than 60% of the relationships fully maxed-out, so total time to beat will depend on how invested players are in the various storylines.

While none of the game’s social interaction is especially deep, the characters are well drawn and detailed and the dialogue is sweetly funny and a little sarcastic. The dungeon districts are fully free-roaming, and the wider world of Dungeons of Hinterberg has a palpable sense of life and character that deepens as it goes on, and it’s effective enough at providing tangible stakes and drama for the more straightforward process of racking up dungeon stamps.

Luisa is never pressured to finish up every dungeon or complete every relationship against a ticking clock, and there are no grander time constraints whatsoever … so players who want to go ahead and squeeze out every dialogue bubble can spend their afternoons and nights interacting with characters with no strings attached.

Better yet is the self-dictated pacing of the game; Luisa is never pressured to finish up every dungeon or complete every relationship against a ticking clock, and there are no grander time constraints whatsoever (even when the game pretends that there are). This means players who want to go ahead and squeeze out every dialogue bubble can spend their afternoons and nights interacting with characters with no strings attached. The dungeons will still be there when they’re done, and the additional upgrades they obtain from the social gameplay will only make them easier.

Challenge Peaks and Valleys

Dungeons of Hinterberg Can Be A Little Too Easy

That’s maybe part of a central issue here, which is that Dungeons of Hinterberg is never particularly tough or threatening. There are three difficulty levels on offer if anyone wants to add some superficial challenge to the main game, but the puzzles and combat sections trend toward the easier side, especially after Luisa upgrades her attributes and abilities.

The most curious aspect of combat is the game’s deliberate restriction of magic, where each district empowers Luisa with only two new spells. Two of the districts feature mobility magic, which makes navigating them faster and more fun, but the loss of this speed can cause the other two to feel frustratingly slower to move around in. Surprisingly, there’s never any magical crossover, so the wintry area’s wonderful snowboard spell can never be used in the forest area.

All combat in the game is arena-styled, where a circular barrier kettles Luisa in with her foes. There’s a nice variety of enemies, from small pesky scrubs to larger brutes, spellcasters, and miniboss-like elites. Failure typically results in a minimal penalty and a restart, and we found some fun challenge in attempting to complete higher-level dungeons earlier on; while this was a superficial way to make the game harder, it also meant that going back to older dungeons made them far, far too easy, combat-wise.

Discovering each dungeons quirks and surprises is a big part of Dungeons of Hinterberg’s draw, so interested players should avoid any mechanical spoilers when possible.

The puzzles are, like most everything in Dungeons of Hinterberg, fairly breezy but fun to figure out. The game’s superb variety is a constant draw; much like the Nier series, certain dungeons changed camera perspectives or offered new interactions, with rarely if ever any outright repeats. Even with the lesser challenge, this is a game where entering a portal is sure to bring something unexpected and fresh.

Final Thoughts on Dungeons of Hinterberg

4/5 Stars – “Excellent” By Screen Rant’s Review Metric

The ski-trip analogy persists throughout Dungeons of Hinterberg; the tutorial dungeon is even offered up like a kind of “bunny slope,” and ski lifts can be found in the snow-covered region, clearly repurposed from their original use to now cart adventurers to portals. It adds a nice uncanny quality to the game’s concept, and much of it feels successfully branded as a restful escape, despite the action.

A helpful journal tracks players progress and categorizes friendships forged with Hinterberg’s residents and visitors; one character named Alex even makes a funny comment on how arguably disturbing it is to keep a book packed with detailed notes on other people. This speaks to Dungeons of Hinterberg’s overall strong writing quality and, even though it does lean towards tropes more at certain plot beats, it’s a sweet and friendly narrative with a touch of snark that effectively bolsters the vibes.

If anything, Dungeons of Hinterberg’s visual presentation might be what skews player attention the most. It almost has a Tom Goes to the Mayor xeroxed quality to it, only infused with color that looks fantastic at far distances and fully dynamic lighting. Performance in the game is also stellar; teleporting between nodes of interest in town is instantaneous, and we never saw so much as a single frame skip, even during some of the more visually hectic boss battles.

Screenshots of the game may immediately summon games like Zelda vibes, but they wouldn’t be exactly accurate, and the wider regions of Dungeons of Hinterberg aren’t packed with secrets and interactive details; it’s almost a dialogue-oriented Zelda-lite sort of experience. Call it “cozy Zelda,” call it “Zelda Crossing,” call it “Persona of the Wild” if needed, it’s really just a charming blend of all these notions, and certain standout dungeons on their own are worth chartering a flight to Dungeons of Hinterberg.