If Dungeon Travelers 2 is going to suffer Steam’s banhammer, it’s time to bring it to Switch
Sting and Aquaplus’ Dungeon Travelers 2: The Royal Library and the Monster Seal is one of the finest first-person dungeon-crawling RPGs ever created, as we’ve previously argued at great length. Until now, it’s remained exclusive to the PlayStation Vita, which means that it’s becoming increasingly inaccessible as time goes on — particularly since the digital version was delisted from the Vita store, and physical copies often command exorbitant prices.
About a week ago, an entry for a PC port of Dungeon Travelers 2 appeared in SteamDB, but there was no sign of a store page being published, nor was there any announcement from anyone about a possible release. When store assets appear in SteamDB but there is no actual sign of a store page, that usually means a title was preparing for announcement, but ended up being refused admission to the store by Valve at the last minute.
Dungeon Travelers 2 was likely refused a listing on Steam due to its suggestive content. It’s worth noting that it’s not an explicit hentai game, despite being several degrees of spinoff from classic erotic visual novel To Heart 2 — but it does feature some fairly racy images, and was released around the height of anime booby games’ popularity on PlayStation Vita. Thus, back in 2015 its sheer existence made a number of mainstream games journalists very angry indeed — a fact which, amusingly, actually made a ton more people aware of the game than would have ever noticed it otherwise.
As noted, there’s nothing outright explicit in Dungeon Travelers 2, though there are a couple of characters that err a little towards the loli side of things, and this is likely where one of Steam’s reviewers drew the line, since they’re notoriously strict on characters that even vaguely resemble children or are wearing school uniforms.
It’s unclear as to whether or not the Steam version of Dungeon Travelers 2 would feature the few slightly edited CGs from the western release of the Vita original, or if it was intended to be an “uncensored” release, but either way the game never had anything outright offensive in it. In fact, a lot of the humour derived from the sexual element and the main character’s staunch resistance to any monster girls’ attempts to manipulate him with their womanly wiles. In other words, the female characters were typically in positions of sexual power rather than being objectified or placed in a powerless situation.
The sexual content was not the reason anyone played Dungeon Travelers 2 on Vita, though. People played Dungeon Travelers 2 because it was an absolutely magnificent dungeon crawler, featuring a well-crafted world with interesting lore, a cast of delightfully loveable characters, a huge variety of sub-events with each and every cast member that allowed them to respond to pretty much any mechanical happening you can think of, and, most importantly for the genre, incredibly deep and well-crafted progression systems.
Anyone who played it will agree that it’s one of the best games on the Vita, one of the best dungeon crawlers of all time — and a crying shame that its sequel Dungeon Travelers 2-2 never got localised back on its original release. Thus, it’s doubly shameful that people are being deprived a second chance to experience it on a current platform without having to brave second-hand Vita game prices — or indeed score themselves a Vita if they don’t already have one.
The fact that this PC port exists is, at least, slightly promising, however, because it provides a number of interesting possibilities. Firstly, it being refused from Steam doesn’t mean that it can’t be released anywhere else. There are numerous other storefronts out there that are friendly to adult or adult-adjacent content, and I suspect they’d be very happy for the opportunity to stock a game that is in high demand among fans of modern Japanese titles. Whether that means it’ll hit GOG, JAST USA, Nutaku, Johren or any of the other sites out there friendly to adult titles remains to be seen — but fingers crossed.
Secondly, the fact that it’s been ported to PC at all means that someone, somewhere, is thinking about Dungeon Travelers 2 and wanting to bring it to a whole new audience. So why on Earth hasn’t it been announced for Switch yet? Switch is the ideal platform for a game like this, as in recent years it has very much become the natural successor to the Vita thanks to its inclusiveness towards adult content.
Plus a number of previous Vita exclusives — Seven Pirates H being the most recent example — have seen great success on the platform, with companies like eastasiasoft acknowledging that there is not only a demand for these games to be released at all, many prospective players are keen to add a physical copy and/or limited edition to their shelves.
So release it again on Switch. I — and many others like me — would happily pay good money for a new release of Dungeon Travelers 2 on Switch, even having spent hundreds of hours on the Vita original already. Give it an Asia-English physical release like other lewd games if PEGI and ESRB are likely to be troublesome, put together a nice limited edition with an artbook and soundtrack CD (Dungeon Travelers 2’s soundtrack is banging) and watch the money roll in.
Then once you’ve seen how many people will throw money at you for doing that, perhaps we can talk about a localisation of Dungeon Travelers 2-2, no?
Join The Discussion
Rice Digital Discord
Rice Digital Twitter
Rice Digital Facebook
Or write us a letter for the Rice Digital Friday Letters Page by clicking here!
Disclosure: Some links in this article may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on them. This is at no additional cost to you and helps support Rice Digital!
- Letter from the Editor: passing the torch - June 30, 2023
- Super Woden GP 2 is looking promising - June 30, 2023
- Inti Creates is making a 32 bit-style Love Live action platformer - June 26, 2023
