Dungeon Town

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I just wanted to buy some Phoenix Down, man!

A trope usually seen in RPGs; instead of Bob the Warrior being asked by the villagers to travel to the Evil Tower of Ominousness, eliminate its guard Mooks and rescue Princess Alice, the mooks are in the town, Alice is locked in the city jailhouse, and Bob has to fight his way through the streets and houses to get to her. Logically, however, the town is still a town, so Bob can interact with Apathetic Citizen NPCs and buy things.

Many dungeon towns make use of the Absurdly Spacious Sewer, because most big cities have them in real life, and it's an easy space to throw in some Underground Monkeys without breaking the game's immersion.

Related to Adventure Towns, as both tropes involve the characters having to use their wits or muscles to escape or enter the city, although this trope is generally exclusive to video games.

In some rather large cities, it may actually be explainable as you're wandering around the bad parts of the city and are getting mugged, or monsters have come into a city (Where people don't bother to fight 'em out, pretty much condemning that part of the town anyways) and pretty much took up residence in the slums.

Seeing as towns in RPG games often have facilities that are useful to heroes, like inns, shops, healing temples, and the like, a Dungeon Town is often a decent place to grind for XP.

Contrast Dungeon Shop, where someone has inexplicably decided to open a dry goods store in the middle of the Dark Hall of Anguish and Torment.

Examples of Dungeon Town include:

• Final Fantasy VI has several:
  • Narshe, as pictured above. You begin the game fighting in its streets, you fight major battles in its mines, and once the world ends the town is filled with Goddamned Bats.
  • South Figaro after its occupation by The Empire. The first half is a logic puzzle in the city streets, and the second half involves combat in a series of tunnels.
  • Zozo, a town full of thieves. It has random encounters and a boss.
  • Vector. Just try getting near the palace.
  • The deeper parts of Ozwer's Mansion in Jidoor. Strange creatures took over his house and a demon possessed a prized painting of his.
• Bafsk and Fynn in Final Fantasy II. In the latter town, monsters roam the streets, and talking to NPCs initiates battle.
• The continent-sized kingdom of Saronia in Final Fantasy III has Random Encounters and a Bonus Dungeon within its walls. This is done because the army has shot down your airship and locked you in, and also just in case you need to level grind for That One Boss.
  • The First Town also contains werewolves in a hidden corner of town. This game doesn't fuck around.
• Sector 6, Wall Market, and the Train Graveyard from Final Fantasy VII.
  • And pretty much every town in Crisis Core. Only the better parts of Midgar are safe, and even then there's a few events that'll have you fighting.
  • Or the Golden Saucer Prison, where you get attacked by muggers and exploding sphere things while walking around town.
• Kislev prison in Xenogears, mainly the sewer parts. Also, the underground city.
• Every town in Final Fantasy VIII at one point becomes this except Shumi Village.
• Final Fantasy IX: Burmecia pretty much solely exists to give players a Disc One Final Dungeon. Later, Alexandria becomes one once Kuja has Bahamut fry the town.
• Final Fantasy XIII, being designed on the philosophy of the Dungeon Crawler, takes this to the extreme of every town being a dungeon, filled with enemy combatants. The story justification is that your party has been cursed by the local Physical Gods and thus are wanted fugitives, citizens tend to attack on sight when they see your party, and Everything Is Online, thus eliminating the need to shop in a store and browse.
• The GBA and later releases of Final Fantasy I include a few town-based floors in the Bonus Dungeons.
• Invoked in Final Fantasy XIII-2: Proto Fal'cie Adam turns the citizenry into Cie'th to attack the protagonists in Academia 400AF.
• The final level of Wild ARMs goes partway through the residential area of a space station. You also traverse a destroyed town in Wild ARMs 4, and a TV studio in 5.
  • Wild ARMs 1 also has a town (Saint Centour) that becomes infested with monsters. Adlehyde turns into this as well at one point.
  • The Wild ARMs 5 example is justified, you're (unwillingly) taking part in a TV show that's all about monsters fighting humans (and the episode will get low ratings because you guys won).
  • Also from the same game, Mythysmere seems close, as at first, while wandering through the "town" portion, you run into monsters, until you fight the bosses in the dungeon portion, then people are in the town part and you don't fight battles there anymore. (But you can still go to the dungeon portion for battles.)
• All Grand Theft Auto games, by logical extension.
• In the Human Noble intro of Dragon Age, your castle becomes the Noob Cave after you talk to everybody.
• The lost city of Lea Monde.
• Fallout 3 makes downtown Washington, D.C. into a multilevel, maze-like dungeon, with mundane locations such as brownstone houses, coffee shops, toy factories, and comic book publishing houses serving as sub-dungeons.
  • Played with in that downtown Washington, D.C is large enough to have multiple save-havens... including one full-on town (by the standards of the region).
• The Shadow Hearts series makes use of this trope.
  • All of Koudelka takes place in an inhabited monastery, although all items are found rather than bought.
  • Most of the China map in Shadow Hearts.
  • The wine cellar dungeon and a few locations in France, in Covenant.
  • One dungeon in From The New World takes place on the streets of Downtown Chicago and a large hotel. Another is set inside a college infiltrated by a Mad Scientist. A Bonus Dungeon is set in a movie studio in Hollywood.
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army has almost no dungeons, most of the game and combat takes place in and around the city
• The World Ends With You, like Grand Theft Auto, is this by virtue of never leaving the city.
• The City in the Sky from The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, is the home of the Oocca. In addition to occassionally seeing Oocca wandering around inside it, there are handy shops near the entrance.
  • Hyrule Castle Town and Kokiri Forest become this in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time after becoming adult Link. The forest returns to normal after beating the associated temple.
  • Also Thieves' Town from The Legend of Zelda a Link To T He Past
  • The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword takes it to its most logical extent: an entire Dungeon Overworld. While the World in the Sky is largely safe, everything below the clouds—namely, Faron Woods, Eldin Volcano, and Lanayru Desert—is treated as just a half-step below official dungeon status. Players have also noted that, since the overworld itself is already like a dungeon, the dungeons proper have been freed up to have much greater variation from the standard Video Game Settings, resulting in some very distinct designs.
• Most of the "dungeons" in EarthBound; while there are "dungeons," the meat of the plot/challenges takes place in the city. Of particular note are Threed and its zombie invasion, and Fourside/Moonside.
• Many towns in the Blood Omen series, Meridian especially. Then again, your hero is a dangerous vampire.
• Toad Town in Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time, set in the ruins of an inhabited town where the main shop is still open.
• Flower Fields in Paper Mario. While it's not a city in the standard sense, a civilization does exist here. Mario has to go through so much trouble in Flower Fields because its citizens aren't very cooperative. Later on, Shiver City becomes one as well, as Mario has been framed of a murder and isn't allowed to leave the city unless he can clear his name.
  • The Great Boggly Tree in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, where the Punies live. The Jabbis have locked up all of the Punies and set up traps all over the place.
  • The Overthere in Super Paper Mario. The Overthere Stair, the path to reach the city, is the longest stage in the game, and once Mario and his allies get to the Overthere, the citizens are in the midst of a war, requiring Mario to fight his way through the place.
  • All of the towns in Super Mario RPG are at some point either A) Occupied by enemies; B) Under attack from a neighboring area; or C) Contain some kind of Bonus Boss.
• A lot of cities in the Gold Box games.
  • Phlan from Pool of Radiance is perhaps the best example. The party was hired by the town council to liberate the old parts of the town, now crawling with monsters and thugs.
• Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 both feature missions set on Dungeon Planets.
  • Also true for Taris in Knights of the Old Republic: You run fetch quests, play minigames, go bottomside and kill monsters, get into street fights, etc. And this is just the Noob Cave.
• Dwarf Fortresses in, um, Dwarf Fortress. Returning to an abandoned settlement from fortress mode while playing adventure mode leaves you to deal with whatever wiped them out. Armok help you if you run into the Hidden Fun Stuff.
• Some SRPGs have you enter battle in towns. Wild ARMs XF has a few, and so did Final Fantasy Tactics.
• Conshiuto in Paladin's Quest.
• One of the cut features of Quest for Glory 2 was the notion that if you were in the bad part of town, you could run into random brigands (serving as muggers). They cut it because they decided Shapeir should be a safe territory.
• Blue Stinger for the Sega Dreamcast takes place on a research lab/town set on a solitary island. In between roaming the town and fighting monsters, you can raid stores and malls to use vending machines, which dispense almost everything from food to weapons to armor. Dead Space also uses a similar approach to obtaining gear.
• Shin Megami Tensei I's Tokyo. Monsters can be found anywhere (which was a Western RPG tradition of the time that they borrowed), unless something very powerful is guarding the area.
  • Similarly, demons quickly wind up wandering the streets in the original Persona, which played very similarly to the main SMT series at the time.
• Kvatch in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
  • The Imperial City at the end of the main quest.
• Lashute, the final dungeon in Phantasy Star III. No shops to patronize, but plenty of Apathetic NPCs declaring how their evil regime will soon rise to triumph.
• Flanat in Wandering Hamster has lots of random encounters, but you can avoid them by walking on the path.
• Romancing SaGa has South Estamir, where you can run into fleet-footed beggar children (who ask for money, then insult you if you refuse) and bandits (who demand all your money, then attack when you refuse). Estamir also uses the Absurdly Spacious Sewer variation.
  • As does Melvir, which becomes an even straighter example when the city is attacked, forcing the heroes to fight through the sewer and castle to save the king. (They can also take a detour to the dock for an optional boss, if they like—in fact, Hawke's scenario lets the player chase down this boss to finish them off, at the cost of leaving the castle to somebody else.)
• Halfway through Ys V: The Lost Desert Kingdom of Kefin, Xandria becomes a dungeon town.
• The entirety of Alternate Reality: The City.
• In Legend of Legaia, any town you go to (save the Octam underground and Soren Camp) starts out as this before you revive the nearest Genesis Tree and lift the Mist.
• Several in Dark Souls, such as the castle Anor Londo, and the Undead Burg, Undead Parish, and The Depths all make up one big city.
• In Arc Rise Fantasia, the city of Jada becomes one when it's invaded by a summoner of the Undead.
• Nox does it with all of its towns across multiple playthroughs (except the Village of Ix): Brin is always a war zone due to the recent Ogre invasion (even after it is repelled, it remains in ruins), while Dün Mir and Castle Galava are either overrun by the undead the second time you visit them, or populated by the sworn enemies of your character's class from the onset.
• Kaineng City in Guild Wars includes several explorable areas, where the enemies are mostly gangsters.
• In Champions Online, both the main city of Millenium City (a rebuilt Detroit) and the higher level zone Vibora Bay (a New Orleans expy) are teeming with bad guys - gangsters, robots, VIPER agents and more in the former, and werewolves, vampires, zombies, and fallen angels in the latter, among others. And yet, life goes on for the presumeably level 0 civilians...
• The floating stages in Star Fox Adventures.
• World of Warcraft features multiple variants:
  • Lost City of the Tol'vir involves the player and their party raiding a city full of hostile NPCs.
  • Dragon Soul, the final raid of Cataclysm, involves Deathwing's and the Old Gods' forces invading Wyrmrest Temple, the headquarters of the Wyrmrest Accord.
  • The prospective final raid of Mists of Pandaria involves invading Orgrimmar. Whether or not the city is normally a safe haven depends on the player's faction.