Dungeon Hunter 5 Review - App Review 4U

Dungeon Hunter 5 Review

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So, Gameloft has taken the beloved -clone and mixed into it the trappings of a digital card game, and a freemium one at that. On paper it reads like a recipe for disaster, and in some respects it is, as Gameloft sadly cannot let go of some of their more greedy IAP ploys. But there is in spite of said ploys a game of genuine value at core. Really, at the end of the day the ARPG meets digital card game is somehow a winning recipe, and if it weren’t for the fact that ploys to squeeze money out of players is written into code, this would have been a five star game. As it stands it’s a tough mix of extremes, but at the end of the day, it’s a game I can haltingly recommend, at least for now.

The fifth entry in the franchise is one part -clone, two parts collectable card game and maybe a half part base defense title. The -clone facet is overall fun and well put together. You play as a medieval bounty hunter, kicking ass and taking names in the aftermath of the Demon Wars, a reference to the plot of . The story—something concerning bounty hunters, an archmage and a pair of warrior-women, one antagonistic, the other vaguely sycophantic—is entirely forgettable. Typical RPG-fare, the narrative seems to boil down to revealing a cast of stock fantasy characters who primarily exist to send your skip tracer off on various stripes of fetch and kill quests. Generally it’s pretty satisfying stuff, if you’re into that sort of thing. Unfortunately, any sense of narrative flow is persistently interrupted by the game’s steep difficulty arc. In typical freemium dev fashion, Gameloft spiked mission to mission difficulty curve to make leveling your character and gear numerous times between missions a necessity. Unlike the majority of the freemium games I’ve encountered, however, grind is actually kind of compelling.

I had mixed feelings about the between-mission mini-games, which eventually comprise the lion’s share of gameplay. On the one hand, card and stronghold games are often fun; on the other hand, they grow repetitive after a dozen or so hours of play and often enough feel like a complex graft job designed to con players into buying more of the great variety of IAP stuff is hawking, more on that shortly.

It also must be said that ARPG gameplay is as solid as its graphics are pretty. The visuals, resembling of all things , have a soft, hand painted quality, making the title’s characters and environs look like a scene off the cover of a sci-fi/fantasy novel. And the title’s combat works and then some; it’s lively and satisfyingly visceral, with blows and explosions that often dazzle and always carry the illusion of impact and weight.

And the loot? This is a -clone after all, and what would a self-respecting -clone be without a mountain of glittering loot. This is where parts ways with its brethren and much vaunted daddy as is a collectable digital card game, and every scrap of loot you acquire exists in-game as a card.

Begrudgingly, I found collectable card game pretty engaging, if maybe a little overwrought. Besides belonging to one of five elemental types, each piece of gear is gauged first by whether it’s between a one star (common) to five star (super rare) item. For each star a player can level an item a set number of times that grows progressively larger with each new star, with top-tier five star items peaking at level 125. You level up your gear, usually armor, weapons and spells by other items to them. Eventually, when your item hits its peak level, you raise it to the next tier of levels by the item, and effectively adding a star to it. You do this by these special, crazy to it, most of which can only be acquired via , special missions that offer up different depending on the day of the week.

I found building mega weapons and uber armor compelling, especially when enjoying the fruit of one’s labor often meant obliterating players ten levels my superior. Unfortunately, however, the only items I earned over the course of the first half of this epically long game were two star uncommons, which could only be evolved by way of a ton of digital footwork to lame three star rares, a class of gear that might, at best, take you halfway through the game. Ultimately, if you hope to play for free and win the -clone aspect of , you are either going to lay down some money to buy some new rare gear or you’re going to dedicate a whole chapter of your life to getting it done.

The other challenge players will inevitably run up against is gathering the vast pool of loot they’ll need to level up their gear as much as three stars and 200 levels. And no, that’s not a typo. To counter this eventuality, devs created the stronghold mini-game. In the stronghold game you set up your holdfast with monster minions guards, who somehow generate gold and quartz (the latter is a resource used to fuse and upgrade minions). And then you go raiding. You charge into another player’s stronghold. You kill all his monsters then make you way into their inner sanctum to face off against the stronghold’s master, an AI controlled, asynchronous depiction of same said player. Usually you’ll be able to fell players several levels above your own by playing smart, and ultimately this aspect of almost never gets old. Almost.

So, no doubt this all sounds like some pretty cool stuff, and generally it is. Unfortunately, a number of greedy design decisions significantly mar what would have otherwise been a superb video game. When you die in a mission, for example, the game asks for five gems—fair enough, you have to pay to resurrect. That’s OK, I guess. But then if you refuse the offer, the game dangles all the items you would have won in front of you while asking you to essentially pay to resurrect. They pull this tactless move not once but twice before letting you continue. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Squeezing the player into constantly spending to play rather than simply charging for enhancements is unfortunately Gameloft’s MO, and their dubious approach to selling IAPs is, over the long haul, fully operational in . For example, remember the aforementioned spiked difficulty curve? Apparently it’s not enough that the mission to mission difficulty curve is so steep that most players will find it necessary to invest in some three to five star items, sold unfortunately via a kind of lottery system, wherein at five dollars a try, you’ll mostly win lame three star items.

Gameloft yet further monetizes by making gameplay cost resources that can only be replenished with cash or downtime. Unfortunately, this crappy, time-honored freemium ploy is integrated into both the single player missions and the stronghold game, but whereas the missions’ resource—an ‘energy’ gauge—is rather generous, your stronghold resource—called ‘stamina’ for no reason—depletes completely after just three raids. What’s worse, because of the way in which the game’s various elements work together, you’ll eventually hit a paywall if you’re playing on a budget, during which you’ll be able to play for a *maximum of ten minutes every three hours or drop about fifty dollars an hour buying gold. Worst of all, in my game, because I never won any five star gear via arms lottery (after spending fifty dollars at five dollars a pop), I hit the game’s paywall at level 30, found myself too weak to raid and had to submit to interminable mission-replay grinds to raise the money I needed to level up my avatar’s gear.

It is exactly here where this potentially great game loses both its way and major pointage with us here at Hardcore Droid: For throwing up a paywall at the 20-25 hour mark, where the most dedicated gamers are sure to be tapping away at their screens, deserves a whopping 2 point drop. Penalizing your most dedicated players, because you can—because clearly they’re the players who are most likely to pony up some extra green is a bum move on a good day. Doing the same in what many consider a seminal bastion of hardcore gaming—the vaunted Western ARPG/-clone is something far worse.

You’d think that some of the folks at Gameloft might, especially since they are actively lifting so many development ideas from Blizzard, take a cue from their marketing book as well and provide players with a fair return on their investment. And while it’s true that Gameloft deserves to be commended for making a freemium grind that’s actually worth playing, it’s also true that most of us here at Hardcore Droid found ourselves disappointed by this merely adequate game, wishing that like a top-notch freemium title, like, say, Blizzard’s Hearthstone, consistently provided players with genuine value for their money, rather than incrementally offering less for more, and over the long haul penalizing their most dedicated players. Who knows, maybe if they had done things differently across the board, we’d be looking at a game as legendary as the one strives so hard to emulate, rather than at this decent video game that ultimately will soon be forgotten.

Supply Hardcoredroid

Dungeon Hunter 5 Review - App Review 4U