Considering the route that games like The Llylgamyn Saga were taking when adapting classic PC RPGs to the Saturn, there's a fun novelty in Dungeon Master Nexus's remix approach. It could have been a straight translation of the previous games with a facelift like was done with the Wizardry series, but Nexus doesn't "replace" the older versions of the game.

Graphically, the game looks nice and clean, if not a bit unambitious. While it feels less monotonous than previous DMs, the dungeon design itself could have used more variety. The new portraits for the returning cast looks great, and in my opinion their design direction blows the original out of the water, even with the limitations of the console taken into account. The monster designs are faithful to the original, and aren't as clunky as they could have been given the Saturn's track record. The sound design is also good, but not great. The music, when the game has it, is really solid but there are large patches of time without any sounds but menu blips and the occasional shuffling of an enemy.

The main blow against this game is just the format and flaws inherit with the concept of "Dungeon Master of the Saturn". Learning how to navigate the menus and interact with the world is a learning experience that took me half of my relatively short play-through to get through. It's not that menu navigation is done poorly. Once it clicks, you realize this was probably the best they could have done given the limitations of a controller, and if anything elements like the spell wheel improve over previous ports like the SNES version, but I still wish I was playing the game on mouse and keyboard.

Damage seems to be balanced around the assumption that the player is going to stand right next to the enemies in the dungeon and hack away, instead of doing the Kings Field "swipe and back off until the gauge fills". You have enough mobility and time to preform the poke and retreat dance, which trivializes most fights. I still prefer that to having to sit there and eat a ton of damage every fight, and there are specific encounters where you have to change up your tactics from "Secret of Mana on cough medicine", but it does result in combat that doesn't get the blood pumping for the most part. I didn't lose a single party member in my first playthrough.

There's a hunger and thirst system in the game that needs to be kept up on. The bars drain so slowly and food is so abundant that this never impeded my progress even late into the game. Again, glad there aren't more reason to break up the flow of the game, but if it's so half baked why keep it in the game in the first place?

Most of my thoughts regarding this game have similar cadence. If they changed elements of the game not to be a cakewalk, they'd be a chore to deal with. The game had these specific changes in mind, and was made by diehard fans of the original who didn't want to change up the formula. I never got frustrated with the game, and even having gotten lost frequently the game didn't take more than 12 hours. If the game was able to move at a faster speed and I knew where I was going, that time could easily be cut in half. For a game that incentives replaying through with different party members, I don't think the game has bad pacing or performance.

Nexus is a jenga tower, pull any block out of place and this falls in upon itself. Made by people who didn't understand what made the original tick, or people unfamiliar with console RPGs this game would have been a slog. As it is, it was a relaxing and enjoyable dungeon crawler that doesn't outstay its welcome, and is a fitting tribute to the classic RPG. Also, HRT Shadow from Final Fantasy 6 is in the game, I got a lot of mileage out of that.