Dungeon Hunter

Dungeon Hunter takes place in the Kingdom of Gothicus, once ruled by a fair and just monarchy until the evil Queen seized power by force. As the story goes, the Prince of Gothicus made plans for his marriage with his beloved. All the peasants, nobility and faeries came together to celebrate their wedding. But then his beloved was struck by a sudden illness and died on their wedding day.

The Prince unwilling to accept her death, began experimenting with necromancy in hopes of bringing her back to life, eventually he succeeds. As she awoke from her eternal sleep, she grabbed a dagger and plunged it deep into the Prince.

Shortly after his death, his beloved took over the Kingdom of Gothicus. Two years after his death faeries bring the Prince back to life, giving him a chance to right all the wrongs. And thus your journey as the Prince begins as you try to undo all the damage the evil Queen has caused.

Dungeon Hunter is a hack and slash RPG, reminiscent of Diablo, played from an isometric viewpoint. There are town areas where you can buy/sell items from merchants and take on quest given by locals. Not all quest progress the storyline, side quest are still useful for gathering additional loot as well as experience to further develop your character.

The quest don’t vary much, most are straight forward kill these guys or bring back this item. Regardless of the quest, you can be sure there will always be lots of killing involved. What is that Father Dominic? You want me to deliver some goods to the church across town and kill everyone along my path, sounds like my kind of quest!

The enemies in Dungeon Hunter were a bit repetitive, I didn’t find any enemies that really stood out in the way they fought. In most cases I’d just walk up to the mobs of enemies gave them a few hacks and be on my way. What made the game fun for me was not the enemies, but finding interesting ways of disposing of them using a variety of skill combos.

As you progress through the game you’ll gain access to a variety of faeries, each faery has the ability to cast an elemental area of effect spell. Some enemies are resistant to certain elemental spells, so it’s best to test out different faeries at the start of each stage to see which one does the most damage.

Dungeon Hunter’s controls are quite flexible, you can choose from two main control schemes virtual stick and touch. Virtual stick is your standard D-Pad located at the bottom left corner with attack and spell buttons located at the bottom right. In the touch control scheme the D-Pad is removed, the character follows your screen taps.

I personally prefer the virtual stick control scheme, my fingers didn’t obscure my view and I didn’t need to repeatedly tap to keep moving across the screen.

Spells located in the lower right can be scrolled through, or you could have the icons at fixed locations. I found it better to use fixed locations, it was easier to access the spells when I needed it, with the scroll setup I’d have to scroll once or twice before getting to the skill I wanted.

One of the downsides of RPG is the constant back and forth between quest and towns. You know the drill, you go questing your character maxes out on loot so you have to go back to town to sell your loot to the merchant to make room for additional loot. That whole process gets old pretty quick, luckily Gameloft has included a transmute feature in Dungeon Hunter to remedy this very problem.

In the menu options you can actually choose what grade of items you wish to transmute on pickup, meaning the item will be traded in for gold. Now there is one slight downside to this, you won’t get as much money from the trade in as you would with the merchant, a small price to pay for convenience if you ask me.

The graphics for Dungeon Hunter are relatively good, in comparison to other hack and slash RPGs currently available in the App Store. Although I was a bit disappointed by the lack of graphics for head gear. All the other gear will change the character’s appearance, but the character’s head remains unchanged regardless of what head gear he sports.

The musical score of Dungeon Hunter was ambient for the most part, at times it did pick up in tempo on a few stages. One of the coolest features of Dungeon Hunter is getting access to your musical library. Ok so it’s not the first time an iPhone game has done this, but the way Dungeon Hunter implemented this feature made it so easy to access your musical library. You could choose from your playlist, skip to the next or previous song, all without ever leaving the gameplay screen.

In terms of replay value, Dungeon Hunter has a lot to offer. With three character classes to choose from you can be sure each play through will be a unique experience. And thanks to the deep talent trees, you’ll have plenty of room to experiment with different class builds. For example, on my first play through I created a defensive warrior, I maxed out his protective passive skills to boost his shield block percentage. Then on my next warrior build I went all out offensive, focusing on boosting damage with 2-handed weapons. You could go on and on with varied builds for each class.

Gameloft did a great job with Dungeon Hunter, it’s currently the best hack and slash RPG currently available in the App Store. The game offers players three unique classes to play, and each class is highly customizable. You could play through the game with the same class and still get a different experience by choosing different talents. I enjoyed obtaining gear for my character, not only for stat boost, but also to see my character go from rags to shining armor, that’s always fun.

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