Game Title:
Dungeon Hunters:Alliance (PSN)
 |
| Nam-Hu's Character |
Character/Class:
Warrior
(ability points used mostly for actives, max level on slam, whirling
blades and rush were used as regular attack, passives included blood
rage and leadership)
Pros:
- Perfect play online connection every time
- Dropping in and out of an online game was very easy
- Game is priced fairly cheap at $10 to $12 on the PSN store
- Smooth gameplay and easy controls, with slightly above average graphics, comparable to the Gauntlet series, but with better camera control and a good top down view
- Map was easy to understand with bright markers for next objective, and the game had a linear style progression with the main quest and side-quests that you can choose to tackle if you wanted to for extra experience points
- Experience point system was slightly above average with level ups at a pretty consistent rate and potion placement was abundant
- Ability to reassign all skill and character build points gained
- When you put on equipment and weapons your character actually changed graphically on screen, it was nice to see the different weapons and armor on my character on screen while playing and at the title screen every time I started the game
- Transmute-this function was a lifesaver when in a dungeon and you had a full inventory
Cons:
- Three classes (warrior, assassin, mage)
- leveling (although abundant) gave only minimal gains 1 point for skill tree and 2 points for character build
- Backtracking was boring, once a dungeon was cleared then you and your partner are just running back through an empty dungeon for 5 min, no re-spawning of monsters until you left the area(dungeon) completely and returned. Even then if your character level was to high when returning, you got no exp...so no incentive to go back and try and level your character
- Town placement was not well thought out, you run through a dungeon and your inventory is full so your expecting to go back to town so you can sell your goods, equip your guy, mess around with skills and points etc.but nooooo, you get pushed into another dungeon and then have to transmute everything, so you end up spending ten minutes standing in one spot trying to strategize
- Minimal exploration factor, reach a dead end get a treasure chest(maybe) then have to backtrack through area until you reach another path, in town cannot go into any houses or talk to many people just the merchant and whomever needs a quest done, everyone else stands like a statue or just goes about their business and ignores you as if you weren't there
- Story very cheesy and predictable, tries to add humor with the fairy talk but doesn't get it right, these fairies sure aren't Navi, she was funnier and she didn't even talk.
- Looting was average, although the game seemed to give you plenty of items they were repetitive with only a color difference determining their strength
- Loading time was terrible, way to long to wait to go from one area to the next
- Auto-equip feature was not well balanced, the game would auto-equip you with the item that was the most expensive in your inventory not taking into account any of the attributes a particular item possesses.
Recommendation:
Ok
so according to my pros and cons for this game, one would think I am
going to blast this game out of the water in this recommendation and say
look else where to spend 10 bucks and 20 hours. But the truth is I am
not going to do that, instead I am going to actually recommend this
game. The reason for this is that if you (as a gamer) are like me - a
total action rpg guy with the focus being on action- then this is the
perfect game for you to get introduced to the dungeon crawler. This game
is like a lite dungeon crawler with more action elements and no
randomly generated dungeons(phew). This game is more akin to the
Gauntlet series but with less of the action and a bit more rpg elements.
Put it this way if Gauntlet and D&D were to meet at a bar and hook
up....this game would be their child. Dungeon Hunters:Alliance was the
perfect game for a gamer with a background like mine(Zelda, Chrono
Trigger, Alundra, Breath of Fire, Pokemon etc) to get my feet wet in the
dungeon crawler genre of rpg's. Overall for the time and money we spent
on it, this game was a fun to play, especially and I emphasize this
heavily, with a partner in multi-player and online.
Overall Score: 60/100
