Nexon has spent a lot of time building the hype for this game. Much of the game is left to the eye of the beholder. Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO) is a traditional side scroller beat em up in MMO form. By now I believe it is around 5 years old but the problem is that each of the other versions of the game has IP bans on countries that are outside that region making it difficult to play with players from other parts of the world. This review was a bit late though. CB ended nearly 2 weeks ago but I haven't had much time. Hopefully I'll get around to Aion CB review some time soon.

IF YOU DO NOT LIVE IN THE U.S. OR CANADA YOU MOST LIKELY CANNOT PLAY THE NEXON VERSION.

Story:

I didn't care about this. Something about special people called Dungeon Fighters. Then after that I stopped reading.

Graphics:

For an older game, the graphics are done nicely. The characters and enemies are in 2D while the backgrounds are in 3D. Some of the high end skills have very nice effects while the low end skills aren't as impressive. The main problem is the lack of character customization. Character customization only exists through the item mall. Otherwise many of the characters are identical other than the weapon they are holding. All slayers look like, all fighters look alike and all gunners and witches look like everyone else from their class.

Gameplay:

The most annoying thing at the beginning is the fact that you can only create 2 characters a day. If you wanted to claim a name for each of the characters first, too bad. Odds are someone else will beat you to it. That's all you get to do though. Choose a name and a starting class. No option to change the look of your characters. All character customization features are from the item mall which was not implemented at this time. Each class gets an upgrade at lvl 18 that allows them to specialize in 1 field of that class' possible skills.

There is a simple tutorial for players. The only problem is the lack of an option to skip it. It enters into the first of several quest chains directly as well. The tutorial unfortunately leaves out some of the advanced techniques and only covers the basics. They introduce a few new things a few quests in, but this still feels lacking to the other features.

The classes play very differently. The ones available were Slayer (Swordsmen), Fighter (Fists), Gunner (Guns), Priest (similar to fists), and Mage. They all have multiple branches at the first promotion but their name gives you a general idea. Due to their differences, some are much easier to play than others. Gunner for example requires the least work and acquires the most style points the fastest. The game makes the classes heavily rely on each other due to lack of easily obtainable healing items. Slayers are the tanks and the heaviest damage dealers. Mages are for ranged attacks but also require the most items to deal with because healing items aren't readily available (they require victory points from PvP). Fighter has a lot of knock back attacks but have a very short reach compared to other classes.

The entirety of the game is focused around a central town. The town is divided into separate regions with a general level range for each section. Players can gather at the region near their level and try to obtain a party there. The problem with this is that players can become heavily clustered making it difficult to find players that you are looking for or to click on them to form a group. From that town, you can enter certain parts of the map to trigger dungeon areas. Each dungeon is instanced for each group of players. Each dungeon is futher divided into difficulties. The higher difficulties unlock when the previous difficulty is completed. The difficulty goes Normal, Expert, Master, and King. Higher difficulties have more enemies that are stronger and sometimes even new types of enemies appear but they yield much better rewards and have a higher chance of rare items.

There are two types of experience. Normal experience and skill experience. Normal experience rewards the player with level ups and higher stats. Skill experience rewards the player with skill points when it fills up. There are also rare items that will boost a player's stats and skill points but they are one time rewards from some of the quest chains. They may not seem like much but over several quest chains they can add up to many stat points.

Quests are quite numerous in the game but they consist of either clearing stages, killing enemies, looting enemies, talking to npcs or a time attack. Most of them follow under the clearing stages category. The quests themselves provide a decent amount of experience but are primarily for money and items which are much rarer. Some of these make the game unnecessarily long. For example one quest had you clear Thunderland, then Frozen Thunderland, then Poison Thunderland then go back and clear Thunderland on Expert difficulty. Others disguise stage clearing quests as loot quests by telling you to get an item that is only dropped by the boss on a certain stage.

An annoying feature in the game is the invincibility frames. Bosses and all enemies in the game have an invincibility frame. During their special attacks, they are resistant against normal atatcks and won't budge. Some of them even have the opportunity to counter your attacks in addition to the invincibility frames. They make boss fights harder than they really are beause of it. It also doesn't help that healing items are very difficult to come by due to the PvP requirement on them.

There are at least 3 significant problems with the game. The first is the latency issue. During the testing phase, there was an enourmous amount of lag and when I played with other people, sometimes the clients would be out of sync and made it impossible for players to continue the stage. Hits against enemies won't register properly or might even have delays.  You would have to quit the party and the stage and then start over and try to complete it again. There was just no way to fix it. I had difficulty playing with a group larger than 2 often resulting in disconnect and lag. Lag is deadly as hits won't register against enemies but all their hits against you will register.

The second problem is the grind. Early on, you already have to start grinding. Most of the game is spent grinding to your second job change so that you can enjoy the other features of the game and the high level content. Without the first class change, much of the game is very plain and boring but the class changes provide lots of passive bonuses as well. Once the second class change is completed, most of he skills are already unlocked.

The third problem is the stamina system. Like other games coming out now, they place a limit on how long a player can play and then it resets once a day at a certain time. Each stage costs a certain number of stamina points. When you run out, you supposedly can't enter stages any more and have to wait until the next day to continue playing. They give you a big number making you think you have a lot, but it quickly disappears. During CB it was around 500 but the average stage lasted about 5-8 minutes for a slow player soloing and costed anywhere from 8 to 20 points to run once. A bigger group can do the same stage in maybe 3-4 minutes. That means in 2 hours, you could have burned through all of your stamina points.

Guilds:

N/A

Overall:

If you like classic beat em up games, then Dungeon Fighter Online is not bad. The primary problem is the lag that can sometimes make it unplayable with people in certain regions of the world. The stamina system and heavy grind combined makes it difficult to play the game for fun. After about lvl 20, you have to seriously start putting time into the game otherwise you won't get very far. However this contradicts the stamina system which makes it impossible to do so. The PvP feature is required if you wish to buy healing itemsIf you enjoy 2D side scrolling beat em ups. Dungeon Fighter Online isn't a bad idea.

Final Score:

6/10 - It had potential, but lots of new minor touches have really turned the game from something good to something that feels like it was poorly made.