Dauntless

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Online)

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP

Dauntless is a free-to-play Action-RPG where players hunt down monsters and use their components to craft new armor and weapons. The game plays very much like a simplified version of Monster Hunter.

The presentation, when it works, is overall pretty good, with slightly-cartoony 3D visuals somewhat like Overwatch‘s art style that works pretty well for the game, and make it probably the best-looking free-to-play game on the Switch… when it works (but more on that later). The game also has decent animations, and decently-acted voiced characters.

The gameplay in Dauntless generally consists of getting missions and crafting equipment in a central hub, and then venturing out to an instanced area (along with up to three others connecting online) to explore the area, collect resources, and fight a large monster.

The combat in this game is fairly rudimentary and a bit repetitive, but it works well enough, and there’s a good enough variety in the weapon types that different players will likely be able to find something to match their own playstyle (I gravitated towards the chain blades).

This game’s microtransactions are thankfully not very intrusive, and while the game offers a premium membership, the added perks offered in it are not especially compelling, so it’s pretty easy to ignore them. I’d say that those worried about microtransactions ruining this game needn’t worry… however, there are other problems.

Like Monster Hunter, this game is designed to build on a simple gameplay loop of fighting monsters and gathering components, and building yourself up back in town, and this works really well… in theory. Unfortunately, with the Switch version at least, there are some issues that really hinder the enjoyment you can get from this.

Firstly, the hub area is plagued by terrible lag and horrendous drops in framerates. The framerates get to be so terrible, I can name only one game I’ve played on the Switch that was worse, Onigiri… and I gave that game an F grade in my review in part because of its framerate issues. While fighting in the field is thankfully free from this problem, there are still issues of input lag, which really hinders the otherwise fast-paced combat.

Then there’s the other thing, and I had hoped I would be able to avoid this… the Nintendo Switch version of the game is buggy. I actually held off on reviewing this game for a few weeks to give the developers the benefit of the doubt and give them time to address this problem, and to their credit, they have released one patch that has addressed some of this game’s issues… but not all of them. One particular issue that still plagues me is that quests fail to show as completed once they’re finished unless you exit and restart the game. As you can imagine, this really kills that feeling of progress the game fosters as its central compelling element. Perhaps at some later time I will come back and re-visit this game, but for the moment, its various issues on the Switch turn an otherwise great game into a disappointing one that goes between moments of greatness and moments of frustration.

At its core, Dauntless is a game I still really like, and I will be very interested to play more of it when this game’s issues are addressed. But right now, between the horrible framerate issues, the input lag, and the bugs, I simply cannot enjoy this game on the Nintendo Switch, as much as its good parts briefly give me moments of fun.

tl;dr – Dauntless is a free-to-play Action-RPG that plays like a simplified Monster Hunter. Unfortunately, it currently suffers from a multitude of issues on the Nintendo Switch, including terrible framerates, input lag, and bugs that really hinder the experience. It’s unfortunate, because I can tell the core gameplay here is good, but getting to it requires wading through too many problems.

Grade: C+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2019 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Most Overrated, Most Disappointing

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