As it stands now, Sentimental Aquifer and the three lake dungeons are some of the most bland and lazy dungeons in the entire game. The Lakes are cardboard cutouts of each other with the exact same enemies, the exact same items, the exact same tilesets, the exact same music even. Nothing about them is different except for which Red Chain you find at the end, which is just there for some reason without even a boss battle for your trouble. Furthermore, these Lake locations are haphazardly slapped onto the game map with zero regard for how it blends into the scenery. Nothing is more jarring than walking through the overworld and seeing the exact same stone entrance sprite from PMD1 with lazy wooden boards leading to it over a random body of water about four times. I would request something to be done about this and have two solutions for such a dilemma.
- Remove the three Lakes entirely but add special requirements to face the bosses, such as clearing Sentimental Aquifer multiple times.
- Revamp all four dungeons so that they’re more unique and stand out in a good light. Different enemies, different items, boss fights, and exteriors that don’t stick out like a sore thumb.
- Replace everything with a single dungeon that gets the job done without having to do three copy pasted dungeons just to get a chance at a reward.
(A personal idea I have would be that the theme for the dungeons is taken from PMD2, where you explore seemingly normal dungeons and then find the lake spirits in unexpected places. Perhaps this could give more flexibility to a revamp?)
It’s worth mentioning that regardless of the path that staff take with this, I believe that Sentimental Aquifer itself should have a revamp due to how empty and bland the dungeon is. Nothing interesting happens for 60 entire floors, no midpoints or story or anything. Cover Fossil is the most rare one in the entire game since nobody ever wants to run this place. There isn’t even post-battle dialogue for the Lake Spirits fights. We’ve had the dungeon in the game for three years without a single change since no one remembers that it even exists now. Put simply, things can’t stay like this without risking the dungeons becoming even more stale and forgotten. Please do something about this, Staff Team.