Dark Dungeon Warrior

Genre: Third-Person Action

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen / Local Wireless)

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Review:

Dark Dungeon Warrior is a Third-Person Action game released in 2023 on Nintendo Switch. Taking place in a medieval fantasy setting, this game has players fighting orcs and other fantasy monsters spawning in one of a handful of enclosed areas, trying to take out as many enemies as possible within the time limit while meeting specific goals.

The presentation here is pretty poor, with simple, unimpressive 3D visuals with clunky animation backed by a dour soundtrack and unimpressive sound effects. Also, the game’s loading times are pretty bad, and this game does something odd when it’s loading where it adds a dark filter over the screen but doesn’t turn it completely black, like someone forgot to turn the darkness setting all the way on.

The gameplay here has some potential, with the controls being vaguely similar to a First-Person Shooter, complete with gyroscopic motion controls. There are also a variety of weapons to pick up in the heat of battle. Honestly, after getting through the game’s brief tutorial, I was feeling a little optimistic.

Unfortunately, that optimism didn’t last. While this game does offer both melee and projectile weapons, the overwhelming majority of them are melee weapons, and apart from different sorts of swings, and different amounts of speed and strength, there’s little to set them apart. Also, every weapon has limited durability, meaning you won’t be able to hunt for your favorite and keep it for the duration of a match. Oddly, not only do melee weapons have limited durability, that durability drops down every time you swing, even if you whiff.

Combat is far too clunky, with impacts stunning enemies for a surprisingly long moment, but despite this they don’t seem to have any sense of impact to them. Hit detection is awful, and enemy AI is horrendously bad, with enemies making a very slow beeline toward you after they see you, with no noticeable variation in strategy. This means that you’ll get in the habit of circle-strafing right next to them as you take swipes at them with your melee weapons, as they’re too slow to be able to turn to counter you.

Multiplayer is basically just the same thing, but with multiple players competing to take out the most monsters. They can damage each other too, though combat is just as sluggish and unsatisfying even with a real person as your target.

I feel like Dark Dungeon Warrior is perhaps a half-finished game, something where its creator came up with some decent basic controls and had some medieval fantasy character models and an idea of a fast-paced Action game, but then had to rush to get everything together and published in time for a release. Whatever the reason for it, this game’s action is highly unsatisfying in both single- and multiplayer, and I absolutely do not recommend it.

tl;dr – Dark Dungeon Warrior is a Third-Person Action game that has players fighting hordes of spawning enemies in a medieval fantasy setting. This game’s combat is highly unsatisfying, and its enemy AI is as dumb as rocks. This is not worth your time.

Grade: D

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