(addendum: also, the rpg system where it's just an attack vs. defense numbers game is limiting for how things scale into late game; DV2 has ways to ensure consistency in the quality of your units as time goes on (upgrading weapons in the cauldron) but DCS does not and gives you trash at end game).

I enjoyed playing it, but I am aware of how good Kairosoft is at this kind of game and have seen them do the kinds of things that are clearly lacking in DCS. It either needs a pretty big update patch, or is a test run for an eventual sequel that fleshes out the concept.

Now I'm gonna play some DV2.

It's a game that needs polish that's aware of how optimal end-game play is not satisfying right now, and to add the layers of interesting things to do that DV2 has (the events system in DCS is super limited and you only ever use 2 of them, and even then they're not great)

I should be able to make a break-room for the monsters to visit and do stuff in, design pre-boss resting rooms where adventurers can interact before being broken against the wall of my boss units, populate towns with the monsters you fought as the mayor in DV2; ways to use non-optimal units!

Conceptually, Demon Castle Story is a very good inversion of Dungeon Village 2, but it has a lot of awkwardness in its implementation (way too many notifications, even for Kairosoft) and a lack of imagination for what could be done with this conceit of building a dungeon and recruiting monsters.

DV2's having multiple maps where older recruits from earlier maps would visit and join back in was really good for keeping a strong roster you'd recognize, especially with your mainstay 5 you bring with you whenever you move. They also actually do stuff, like use the shops and go out and fight.

Also, merging makes the monsters feel very impermanent and you have less attachment to them compared to all the adventurers you recruit and upgrade in DV2, especially knowing that if you want to go for a better score you have to leave all but 1 of them behind anyways.

But you don't want to have that many monsters because that means they're all 20 defense guys who do nothing but die immediately; as soon as you can merge them, you want to have maybe a dozen guys total who you keep pushing their defense up to keep up with the adventurers.

I'm surprised there aren't challenges like from DV2 to unlock special units or new things, or more room types to incentivize designing different kinds of environments to force you to build a larger sprawling dungeon. Rank 5 needs you to have 75 monsters placed, so that needs a larger space...

On top of that, having finished a first run and mostly done a second one, there isn't actually that much variety in your units or a need to build a massive sprawling dungeon. You just need a single guy with 8000 defense blocking a hallway with punching traps and that's optimal.

Notably that when you finished the score attack sequence of bosses, you didn't have to reset to game start with only one unit brought along and all other progress lost; Demon Castle Story does that, and makes the game feel very short and anything you build very impermanent and unimportant.

DV2 introduced like 6 maps for towns to build with progressive buildings and adventurers to unlock/find, where each map had a rotation of monster invasions to fight off that would be your score attack when you fought that map's final boss, and you could go back and forth between the maps.

No idea why they're called that, btw, I think they're also known as Russian Teacakes?