Art of the iPhone

Dungeon Hunter ($6.99, iTunes link) is a hack-n-slash RPG in the same vein as Diablo and features some pretty wicked graphics and an impressively polished interface. It would truly be one of the platform’s gems if it weren’t for some game balance issues (Gameloft seriously needs to hire a level designer). Still, Dungeon Hunter‘s positives easily outweigh the negatives. In the end, it’s fast-paced, hack-n-slash fun, and it has all the makings of a solid franchise—just make it a bit more challenging, please? We rate Dungeon Hunter a 7.9 out of 10, recommended.

Dungeon Hunter‘s graphics and animations are some of the best we’ve seen on the iPhone yet. The animations for magic, in particular, were eye popping. While there are the typical perspective problems that many 3D games suffer (action is sometimes obscured by foreground objects), the overall movement and interaction of the main character with the game world was polished and fluid.

The controls for the game are a simulated d-pad and buttons as well as a menu system for upgrading your character’s stats and equipment. On the right side of the screen is your standard attack button along with buttons for skills and spells. Actually, you have a choice of two layouts for spell/skills: a single button layout where you have to rotate the buttons by swiping right and left, and a multi-button layout where up to three spells/skills can appear on-screen at a time. My advice is that you’ll want to immediately change from the default single rotating-button layout to the multi-button layout. Single button is horribly clunky to the point I wonder what the developers were thinking making it the default.

The game borrows a lot of its visual style from World of Warcraft, from the look of the villages right down to the exclamation points and question marks above NPCs signaling available and completed quests.

Despite the ability to have multiple quests at the same time, the game feels very linear–I had no sense of freedom of exploration. You can wander about or backtrack, sure, but there is nothing to really discover other than the occasional monster.

There are three classes to choose from: warrior, rogue, and mage. Whatever class you choose, you play the main character, a prince who has been murdered by his bride-to-be. The prince has been resurrected by fairies to cleanse the world of her dark magic. Because the prince is essentially the living dead, your character can’t die in the game. You merely start over at the beginning of the level you’re working on. I found the storyline to be somewhat engaging–it did a good job of pulling me along. There is also a lot of clever and funny dialogue with NPCs that makes the cut scenes enjoyable.

We do have a few complaints. There is a lack of difficulty to the game due to balance issues and poor quest design. If you have basic knowledge of RPG games, you can breeze through the game without much difficulty. Potions, in particular, are much too easy to come by and way too powerful. You can win the game by stocking up on potions alone.

Fighting is not nearly varied enough. It tends to follow a repetitive pattern: walk for a few seconds, fight a group of 1-4 creatures, repeat until you get to the boss character. Along the way you can smash open barrels and chests to discover loot. But here’s the thing, there are only barrels and chests in the game, even in levels that don’t make sense that they’d be there, such as a cavern filled with burning lava creatures who’d set the wooden barrels on fire if they tried to move them. Why are lava creatures storing linen robes in barrels anyways?

Conclusion

In the end, Dungeon Hunter‘s saving graces are outstanding graphics and animations, a good variety of spells and skills, and a compelling storyling with humorous dialogue. It’s a framework for a franchise we’d like to see Gameloft take to the next level. But for this first installment, don’t expect much of a challenge, but do expect brainless hack-n-slash fun. 7.9 out of 10, recommended.

Dungeon Hunter is a $6.99 download on the iTunes App store.