[Review] Dungeon Fighter Online

Kenneth Ellis

Everybody who is NOT currently playing a character in Dungeon Fighter Online, please raise their hands.

Ok, Good. Now I know who I’m not inviting to my super cool Cool Person Parties. Yes, I throw cool parties for cool people AND I play DFO. Coincidence? I think not!

During one session, I jumped down on some dudes, killed them with one hit, sent another guy in the air, air-comboed him, forced him to do his homework, and made love to his wife.

I was a perusing the ol’ Internets the other day, and I came across some images that blew my mind:

Magical girls tearing shit up with monsters.

Guys with guns killing things. A Man using a wooden cross as a sword.

Initially, I was dumbfounded. How could I have missed these parts of Golden Axe? It was one of my favorite games! But then I realized I was looking at something new. Something wonderful. A new side-scrolling, beat-em-up button-masher. *Squeal* So, I looked a little deeper and found out that not only was this game already out, worked on the PC, and was an online MMO, I also discovered it was free! (Oh boy, My favorite word!)

The game was made by Nexon, the company behind other free MMO’s such as Maple Story. For a free game though, Dungeon Fighting has a lot of great features. The game play is about as simple and easy to use as an MMO can get. It’s mostly moving left, right, up, or down and hitting whats not you with a combination of three attack buttons. Anyone familiar with most flash games will catch on real quick. If not, then you may take about 1 second longer to figure it out. It’s that simple, really. But simple controls doesn’t mean the game is easy.

The animation flows really well, too. With no 3d rendering or complicated scenarios to bog down the ram, the game moves smoothly with a high frame rate. You can be out-numbered, fighting a multitude of not-you’s and there’s no slowdown. During one session, I jumped down on some dudes, killed them with one hit, sent another guy in the air, air-comboed him, forced him to do his homework, and made love to his wife. The only thing that noticeably slowed down for any period of time was my masturbation.

Another nice artistic touch are the special intros for each of the five classes: Slayer, Fighter, Gunner, Mage, Priest. Each has a full-color comic-book-style intro explaining their reasons for adventuring, and a brief synopsis of the world and how it applies to your character. Pretty awesome.

Comic-book-style intros aside, each class is fun to play in its own right. They of course fill in the basic jobs for an MMO. Slayers are well-rounded, Fighters are heavy hitters, gunners are quick, Mages shoot things from as far away as possible, and Priests heal and kick major heretical ass.

The game can be played solo, or in a group, which is an advantage over more popular MMO’s, which just give solo-oriented players a stick and a place to put it. Don’t have a group to go adventuring with? Fuck it, go by yourself. No 3-hour wait sessions in this game. But, of course, the real fun of an MMO comes from playing with other people. And murdering other people, in the case of the game’s PVP.

The game has a few problems that need addressing however. The UI often layers onto itself and gets in the way of its own buttons sometimes. Opening a quest box will also open up two other UI boxes that can both be clicked and manipulated while the quest box is still open. The lack of window priority can make a mess and get kind of annoying. It is also sometimes hard to figure out what you are supposed to be doing or where you are supposed to go, because quests can be turned in at any time once the quest is completed. Going back to the quest-giver is not required. While this is convenient in some cases, it is annoying in others since when you complete a quest wherever you happen to be, you have no indication of where to go next.

There are a lot of other cool features in the game, like the item shop where you can buy clothes and outfits for your character so you don’t look like every other Joe Shmo standing around, or leveled-up dungeons for you and friends to try and conquer. All in all, the game is pretty good. Yeah, it has flaws, but seeing as how the game is free I think those can be let to slide a little bit. Check this shit out, and come play with me! Look for Cadmius the Priest. I’ll be the guy making monster cupcakes with a cross.