What is Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon?

Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon is a top-down roguelike adventure game developed by Square Enix.

Developer & Publisher // Square Enix
Platforms // PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC
MSRP & Release Date // $24.99, September 9th 2026
Reviewed On // PC/Steam Deck

Taking place in the Dragon Quest universe. The game is very simple and follows a merchant who embarks on a journey to set up a brand-new shop after being tasked by the King to find his Crown Jewels in a mysterious dungeon. After doing so, Torneko opens up his shop for his wife and kid to help them live their dreams together. Meanwhile, Torneko ventures back and forth in dungeons to bring back gold to expand the shop. It is really that simple a premise for this little roguelike.

As a result, the game is broken into two parts. Torneko’s adventures into the dungeon, and all of the little intricacies of the adventure in between. While I wish there was more of a story component, the overall gameplay experience is deep, fascinating, brutal, and well worth experiencing, despite being repetitive at the end of the day.

An Enduring Adventure

The best way to describe the experience in Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon is how the first dungeon plays out. The game gives you no real hints or any real training on what does what in the game. You are left to interpret and figure things out as you go along. Outside of the obvious basic game logic, such as swords and shields being used for attack and defense purposes. There are tons of different kinds of scrolls, herbs, and even wands that you have to figure out through trial and error.

Each floor of the starting dungeon introduces you to different monsters that can either be easy to kill in single encounters or can end your run the moment they perform a certain action. For example, slimes, slugs, and even bats can be simple kills to pull off. But mummies take multiple turns to kill, deal a lot of damage, and will follow you even across a dungeon. Meanwhile, enemies like the legerdeman, who only move or attack if you attack first, can put Torneko to sleep and attack him until he dies, ending the run overall. This happened to me more times than I’d like to admit.

This dungeon goes on for 10 levels, and once you get the crown jewels for the king, you then have to backtrack out and make it back before you die again. Everything that follows this is essentially the same experience, just with the added bonus of expanding Torneko’s shop with the gold you earn from runs. While this sounds brutal, and it is, the moment-to-moment gameplay makes the journeys into the dungeons worth it even if the shop expansions don’t feel rewarding.

Turn-Based Combat (Sort of)

The Combat in Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon is a mix of normal action combat, but in a turn-based format. Every step you take, every time you collect an item, and every attack you make counts as a turn. The combat itself is the standard Dragon Quest affair, just with no magic. Torneko can attack with weapons he finds, and needs to rely on scrolls to use any form of spell, such as Peep or Bang.

Peep inspects an item to see what its stats are to see if it’s worth swapping out your current weapon or shield for. Meanwhile, Bang hits every living thing in a room with a good burst of damage. I found this to be very useful in some of the levels where you stumble into a “Monster Den”. Monster Dens can either be giant rooms or very open levels. If you find one and do not have a bang on hand, you are pretty much out of luck. Not to mention, items like red hot herbs can deal a large burst of fire in front of Torneko. Red hot herbs can be used as a panic button to eliminate dangerous foes like Armours or Chimaeras.

The gameplay is essentially very hard, luck-based, and depends on you learning the little details to go as far as you possibly can in a dungeon or even survive it all the way through. It is very unforgiving and can be very frustrating at times. Getting 20 or more floors into a dungeon and losing everything is devastating, even if you see the shop expand, which I never found much of a general gameplay benefit to see more upgrades.

Technical Aspects of Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon and Accessibility Settings

I played Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon on PC and Valve’s Steam Deck handheld and found absolutely zero issues both technically and visually. The game looks wonderfully retro, and the music is very simple to boot. There is not a single hair out of place in my hours of playing it.

Finally, the game does have options to make it as hard or as easy as you want it to be. If you want to just see the bottoms of the dungeon, you can ensure no monsters spawn to make it happen. If you want to see the shop fully upgraded, you can double the amount of gold you earn between runs and just throw yourself at the dungeon for as long as you want.

Closing Remarks on Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon

Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon is a neat little roguelike, but I struggle to figure out how to recommend this title. For Dragon Quest fans, it’s a fun little side quest to enjoy. But for fans of roguelikes, it’s hard to think of its place among more modern takes on the genre, such as Dreamscaper or Hades. It is, however, fairly priced, but just go in knowing it’s a very difficult game to overcome, no matter how many hours you spend on it.

Note – PC key was provided for the purpose of this review.