Although it's clearly visible a lot of stuff got lost in translation from the Japanese original, it still oozes coziness and style. There is a lot of worldbuilding for just 1 village and a tower. From the kind of food they cook to the monster lore, the village interactions and side quests, buildings you can built in the village, all the interactions and relationships you can have. It's quite a mystery what's on the top of the tower. It has the exact same kind of vibe as that made in abyss anime series has, so much that it might have been a direct inspiration (even the lost a parent who was the best explorer part).
The gameplay is a bit to oldfashioned/complicated for me, but i can see people that have the patience fall in love with that aspect as well.

Haven't I seen this before?

Azure Dreams very much reminds me of the film Groundhog Day. In the film Bill Murray constantly relives the same day of his life no matter what he does. How does this relate to Azure Dreams? Because after over 30 hours of playing it feels like I made almost no progress from when I first started.

Before I explain let me get some of the outline of Azure Dreams out the way. This game is a dungeon crawling roleplaying town building date sim monster tamer. Despite this huge array of genre elements forced together many aspects of the game work surprisingly well. You play the role of Koh, a young boy who's father died in the nearby tower when he is younger. Now he is of age it's his goal to be a famous monster tamer, conquer the tower and find out what happened to his father. Pretty simple.

There are two aspects to Azure Dreams the town and the tower. In the town you can use money found in the tower to buy mundane things like weapons and items to more ridiculous things like wallpaper for your house all the way up to theaters and bowling alleys expanding on the town. Most of the new buildings or upgrades don't seem to do a hell of a lot, they add a few (often dull) mini games or occasionally give you access to new girls to try and win over.

There are just over half a dozen girls of roughly the same age spread throughout town of varying personalities needing different tasks to fall in love with you though many you just need to persistently talk to between forays into the tower and choose appropriate responses. to win their heart. I had 5 in love with Koh by the time I gave up on the game (their faces display on your game save when enamored with Koh).

Though needing some refinement the basic ideas of town aspects are pretty good. Interaction with some interesting characters, watching the town flourish as Koh becomes more successful etc. Where the game fails is in the dungeon crawling tower. Even then there are some good ideas. Koh can enter the Dungeon with up to 5 items including familiars (monsters) that will fight by his side to make progressing easier. These familiars can have one of 3 elements, some can equip weapons, and they can even be fused together to unlock dormant skills and add passive abilities. The familiars are pretty fun to use but their AI is often horrific leaving them just moving back and fourth behind Koh in a fight or getting cut off from him completely leaving them just wandering around until you find the elevator to the next level of the tower.

Koh himself can fight in battle but this is where the thought of Groundhog day comes in. Every single time you leave the tower Koh returns to level 1. Koh's familiars do stay the level they are but their MP continually runs down and even they start getting hammered at certain levels in the tower and don't level up very quickly. There are no checkpoints in the tower so every time you go in you start from level 1 on level 1 of the tower. In 30 hours of playing I saw the same looking 12-14 levels of the tower over and over and over and over and over and over.

Though each floor of the tower does randomize so it's different each time there are only a certain amount of templates so it gets old. Fast.

To actually get anywhere in the game you must rely on Koh's weapons and shield to make him strong enough to survive higher up. All equipment is pretty low powered when you first get it with minor variations of added elements, strength or occasional abilities. What makes the equipment valuable is that there are some sands found in the tower that can improve upon them with a +1 in attack or defense in a shields case. The sands are pretty rare though meaning you still have to play the same 12 - 14 levels of the tower over and over and over and over and over and over.

This in itself I wouldn't mind too much, I play a lot of RPG's, I'm okay with grinding, there are other problems. Rust traps that lower your equipment forcing you to use really weak start gear just because it doesn't rust (like a Gold sword with a base attack of 1) and the biggest flaw that you lose all your equipment when you die. I finally managed to get a leveled up sword and shield to progress, died by a trap and my own confused familiar attacking me leaving me at level 1 on level one of the tower with no equipment after 30+ hours of playing. It was almost like starting the game from scratch. Like I said, Groundhog day.

The visuals to Azure Dreams even at the time weren't brilliant though they aren't terrible either. Each character, familiar and dungeon level are all pretty colorful and the character portraits are great in your standard anime type of way. There are plenty of jagged edges around everything though and a lot of the dungeon walls and levels are incredibly simple. Hard to make a call on a game 24 years old though but I don't think it's aged all that badly.

To sum up I have no idea how much life Azure Dreams has because I gave up on the game as I find the constant reset soul destroying. Reading other people talking about the game I gather there are 40 levels in the tower as well as monsters to collect and the town social aspects but I couldn't get even half that far, even half that far. See Azure Dreams even has me repeating myself.

+ Nice blend of genres.
+ Some town building and dating aspects are nice.

- Familiar AI is often frustrating.
- Replaying the same dungeon levels over and over.
- Losing your gear when you die and always starting at level 1 makes you feel like you aren't going anywhere.

This is not an objective review. This is one of my favorite games for the PS1. And yet I've never beaten it.

Another reviewer, Rensie, accurately remarks that the game "oozes coziness and style" and that the worldbuilding for just one town and a tower is robust and thoughtful. The story and the characters are fun and diverse in as much as a 90s Japanese game can be. And thanks to the menagerie of monsters you can collect along with the procedurally generated, though simplistic, levels this game never really gets old. It can be punishing, but all the effort you put into it really pays off as you see your community prosper because of you.

Konami's Azure Dreams expanded the scope of roguelike dungeon-crawling by assimilating monster raising, base upgrades and relationship mechanics. Sadly, much of this stylistic hodgepodge lacks depth and cohesion, even though its teambuilding factor (as usual with collectors such as Megami Tensei, Pokemon, Jade Cocoon, etc.) makes the repetitive-but-fluid gameplay far more customizable than the average. Side quests and a diverse cast add some sense of progression and personality between expeditions as well. But overall, this doesn't seem too different from what Chunsoft had been doing for years with their Mystery Dungeon games. Here, one just needs to run a few more errands after each trip up the tower.

This is a relatively forgiving roguelike in that it lets you keep your monsters and equipment between runs (as long as you survive). It's also good fun: the sheer number of treasures, monsters and traps mean that no level can ever be played on automatic. Just one example: your monster companion steps on a trap that teleports him to another part of the floor. Do you try to find the exit as fast as possible forgoing the exp and treasures on this floor, or hunt around for your companion and continue exploring the floor in your vulnerable state? The dungeon runs are great fun and on some occasions can become wonderfully tense. My small gripes with the gameplay lie in the lack of balance between monster companions (some are next to useless and others can make you virtually invincible) as well as some terribly unintuitive menu hopping (I lost count of how many times I accidentally healed a monster or cast a debuff on myself).

There is also a more traditional RPG town where you go in between dungeon runs to restock and socialize, and while it's a nice change of pace, it's probably the weaker half of the game because of how static the town is compared to the dungeons and how the content isn't all that meaningful beyond bragging rights of how big your harem becomes.

Many of its contemporaries far outstrip it in terms of scale, story, graphics, and amount of content. But I have a soft spot for simple, fun, gameplay, and Azure Dreams delivers it in spades.