Dungeon Hunter

Don’t you hate when your bride dies on your wedding day before the honeymoon? And, in your grief, you go all Pet Cemetery and use dark magic to bring her back, only to have her stab your heart out and evilly take over your kingdom, because, you know, you’re dead. So begins the story in Dungeon Hunter.

Gameloft’s Dungeon Hunter is a recent iPhone/iPod Touch RPG/Hack-n-Slash cut from the same mold as Diablo I and II, but with much better graphics. A medieval/fantasy setting, you play an undead prince brought back to life to eliminate the evil that has overtaken your kingdom since your death. This game has all the elements you’d expect in a cRPG: multiple classes, XP and leveling character progression, talent and attribute points, quests, gear upgrades, and exploding barrels (well, they don’t exactly explode). Fortunately, this game delivers.

The basic controls are an onscreen d-pad for movement and up to five buttons for combat, with a couple of hud components for health/mana/pot status. The game does offer some customization of the controls: you can change the movement from the d-pad to a cursor where you click where you want to go. Personally, I found the d-pad better as I tended to cover up the screen too much clicking around on it. You also have some arrangement options for the buttons.

The game starts with choosing between one of three classes: warrior, rogue, and mage. There are four character attributes: strength, dexterity, energy and health. Completing quests and killing mobs earns XP. You get two attribute points and one talent point per level. There’s a talent tree for each of the three classes, and talent points are spent as you level. For a platform that considered more casual friendly, there is quite a bit of depth here. They do offer some ways to cut down on the tedium: you can auto transmute (convert to gold) loot based on the level of the gear. This kept the inventory manageable. Also, you can auto equip gear as you get it, though I found the decision making here wonky: the computer kept on making me naked by unequipping gear slots.

Fortunately, you don’t really hunt for dungeons in the game named “Dungeon Hunter”. The mapping feature makes it easy to jump to zones previously visited. Also, the game is very much on rails and there aren’t many different branches or paths to choose from. It would have been nice to have a zone map to see where you are since the screen doesn’t show to much geography, but there may be system limitations at play here.

A few things I think the game dropped the ball on are the achievements and quest details. You earn them, but I’ve yet to find a way to review them once they're unlocked. Also, I didn’t find a list of achievements not yet learned. In addition, quest details are gone once you accept a quest. So, if you get a quest and forget where in the game you are supposed to go to complete it, you don’t get any details on what to do. Since the game is on rails, there really isn’t much to get wrong here, but at the end of the game, there were a couple of unfinished quests that I had no idea how to complete.

There isn’t much use for the gold. I rarely spent it, occasionally on potions. Since your character is undead, there is no real penalty for dying, other than every time you die, the level you are on is completely reset. So you have to redo the entire level if you die, or if you quit the game, it also resets the level when you go back. Also, an incoming phone call on your phone resets the level as it shuts the game down. This isn’t a biggie, since it’s only about 10 minutes at most you are losing, and you do get more XP and loot for repeating a level, but still, it can get frustrating and tedious. Somewhat long load times, which I guess is to be expected, giving the graphical quality of the game, makes this the one true bummer of the game.

The game is pretty easy. There isn't much strategy to it, or challenge. There were a couple of fights that caught me off guard, and I couldn’t go in brainlessly whacking on all the mobs, but those were few and didn't really require more than just spamming potions to get through. However, the quests do drive the main story line, and it does walk you through the story well. At one point in the game you get a companion, but it’s too brief. The fairies aren’t really companions, they are just an extra magic spell and some extra, specific buffs. For example Wetty, the water fairy, give a water damage spell and a bonus to water resistance and health regeneration.

Overall, this is a fun game, but simple. The story is derivative, but sufficient in keeping the game unified. Leveling and loot rewards are frequent. The graphics are great for the platform, as is the music. The spell animations are fun. I think this is a must-play game if you want to play a game on your phone.