Dungeon Hunter: an amazing gaming experience

Evil flooded over the land of Gothicus. Dispel the darkness in your realm, uncover your memory about the terrible events and fight the evil queen who tyrannizes the kingdom. Choose your class of hero: Rogue, Knight, or Mage and set forth in your quest to destroy the wretched queen and her henchmen. Dungeon Hunter is an elite title that was highly anticipated among handheld gamers. How does it measure up against the likes of mega-hit Assassin’s Creed or Hero of Sparta? Let’s equip our armor, ready our weapons and commence the battle to see who ends up on top.

Gameplay:

The meat of the game is in the battle mechanics and the fun factor of “hacking and slashing”. For me, that’s where the game delivered. From the minute that my hero awoke in the dungeon, to the 3rd fairy I’m fighting for, crushing demons and slashing monsters has never been so fun.

I’ve played “Hero of Sparta” and I thought that “Dungeon Hunter” was much more rewarding and exhilarating much because of all the full customizable character feature. From the head to the toe, you can accessorize your hero with the best of equipment to enhance your abilities in battle. I was only in my 1st hour of playing the game and already I had a plethora of weaponry to choose from. And every piece of clothing you throw on the Dungeon Hunter will change his appearance, especially if you change his “Torso” clothing, he takes on a whole completely new look.

There are hundreds of ways to mix and match your weaponry and equipment that fits the current setting and enemy types. Many people will spend much of their time weighing out the options of having a “ring” that enhances your “MP” ten points or regenerates your HP 0.5 seconds faster. But for those manly gamers that think that accessorizing your hero is like putting different clothes on your Barbie doll, there’s the “Auto-Equip” option that automatically computes the best combination. The only problem with this feature is that I found that other combinations turned out slightly better than what the Auto Equip occasionally put out. It’s a little frustrating at times, but your better off just doing some minor tweaks every so often than relying on your Auto Equip for the majority of the game.

Leveling up, like in most RPG games, awards you with both a skill developing point and two character points for your common statistics. For different classes, they have their speciality for instance, the “Rogue” class should have more stat points in Dexterity. Also a wonderful feature about the game is that while you are battling foes, there’s a green bar on the bottom of your health bar that keeps track of when you will level up. So if you’re about to hang up the game and that green bar is close to full, you know you can pull out a couple more skirmishes so you get to that next level.

The level design is beautiful and has great diversity in each land that you travel to. From the “Thamos” your main village, to the the deep dark dungeons that your quest takes you to, every place has a different soundtrack and different types of enemies. And for folks who hate when RPGs have too many dungeons, Dungeon Hunter’s dungeons aren’t as daunting as the classic caves that you are used to seeing. There are not meant to be like a maze for you to weave your way through. It’s straight up and each dungeon is different, so it avoids the feeling of monotony. And the cherry on the cake would have to be the ability to pause the game and exit the level. Once you’ve completed your task of say, finding the son’s stolen goods and you made your way through countless rooms of the dungeon, you don’t have to fight your way back to the exit. You can simply pause and “Exit Level” to the world map. At anytime. Lovely.

The “fairy” addition was a nice touch. Instead of adding characters to the party, your hero goes around rescuing fairies and they become your allies that assist you in battle. So now, you have become Peter Pan, the Dungeon Hunter. They come complete with different attributes and various elements to give you the edge in your quest to dethrone the evil queen.

Controls:

Even some masterpieces have their flaws and if Dungeon Hunter has a glaring weakness, it’s the controls. You have your choice between controlling it with the “Virtual Stick” which is like the D-pad they use for Assassin’s Creed or “Touch” which is simply like any Diablo or Command and Conquer game you may have played. I started off with the Virtual Stick but I found it difficult because it didn’t provide the kind of liberty and freedom that you have in Assassin’s Creed. The movement felt a little cramped, and to make matters worse, the joystick isn’t based on sensitivity.

So for instance if you want to go forward, it’s full speed forward or not at all. In Assassin’s Creed, you were given the ability to tip-toe, walk, or run forward to your destination. You may think that this is a different kind of game, but if it was then why would they give you the option to be a “Rogue” class warrior, which the game says that his specialty is “sneaking around”. Without that simple control feature, it makes maneuvering around the level and even around the town much more difficult.

When I switched to the “Touch” control feature, things were a better but still I ran into some problems. Although I found it to be a tad more convenient, the “Attack” icon and “Spells” icons get in the way when you wanted to go to the lower right most of the screen because that’s where the icons are positioned. Also, I occasionally used a spell by accident or worse, I used a potion by accident trying to maneuver my hero.

In my opinion, the touch feature is more if you want a “Diablo 2″ feel and the virtual stick feature is for gamers that loved Hero of Sparta and Assassin’s Creed. EIther way, there’s both pros and cons which will get frustrating after a while, but with time you’ll learn to reduce your mistakes and learn to work around the issues.

The menu hud for customizing your character and the skill tree developing is very user-friendly. Everything has good spacing and is described to you in the “Help” section. What’s convenient is nothing takes a precise touch to activate, and almost everything about the controls can be customized to your tastes. If your left handed and you want the icons to be on the left side instead, there’s an option for that. If you want to control your multiple spells by having every single icon fixed on the screen, you can do that or you can choose the “Scroll” option and scroll through them in the heat of battle.

What We Liked:

+ Awesome addicting gameplay

+ RPG elements

+ Extraordinary depth

+ Skill developing tree

+ Optional side missions/quests

+ Easy accessible world map

+ Limited backtracking

+ Multiple player accounts

+ 3 different classes of hero

+ Saves game automatically

What We Disliked:

- Controls are a little shaky

- Inconsistent Auto-Equip feature

- Spell “Scroll” icon feature doesn’t function properly

- Boss fights are a little one-sided at times

Final Verdict:

Is Dungeon Hunter an elite app to be placed among the top-tier games like Assassin’s Creed? In my opinion, it is. Although Assassin’s Creed has better controls and is more unique, Dungeon Hunter delivers an incredibly entertaining hack ‘n slash game that has the depth and elements of an RPG, and is just an amazing gaming experience that no one should miss. Slaying demons and evil doers has never been so invigorating and will leave you coming back for more. It may have it’s slight control issues and bugs that hurt its stock but what app doesn’t? The issues are not enough to hold back the Dungeon Hunter from being a solid extremely polished game.

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Tags: best iphone RPG, diablo iphone, iPhone RPG, Review

Category: Games