Played a bunch of Dauntless today, that hot new game that's basically a Monster Hunter knockoff. Just gonna list my thoughts here since I've got nowhere else to ramble about videogames.
Positives:
- Monster Design is excellent. I was worried at first about the kinda generic cell shaded graphics, but I really love how the creatures look and feel. The more bestial dynamic versus. Monster Hunter's dinosaurish one works really well.
- Monsters change up their attacks quite a bit, which is great. Beating the pants off of a dude then having him get pissed and start mixing up his strats is fun as heck.
- Combat and the Weapons feel great. They're distinct enough from MH to not feel like a simple knock off. Combos are satisfying in a simple-to-learn difficult-to-master sort of way, at least from what I've seen so far.
- The Menus are great. This is a weird compliment, but I love how they're all set up. From the Weapon and Armor smiths to Quest Selection and your own Loadouts. Feels better than MH to be honest.
- It feels very accessible, but not in a MHWorld kinda way where it dumbs stuff down. Weapon and Armor skills state very clearly what they do so you don't need a Wiki, you can see what Combos your weapon has at any given time just by pressing Select which is genius, the tutorial is actually really well done and, more importantly, not two mushroom gathering hours long. The whole thing kinda feels like Monster Hunter Lite, but that's fine, and it does a really great job at being exactly that.
- The story is barebones as hell, but it works well for what it is and gets you into the action right away.
Now for the Negatives
- Holy shit this game performs like ass. This is subjective to a point based on your Rig and my PC is far from amazing, but when I can run Overwatch at a consistent ~110 FPS, there's no way an Unreal Engine game with PS2 graphics should struggle this much. The Tutorial runs at about 10 FPS, and the City bounces between 30 and 4. Thankfully, actual hunts seem to be fairly smooth, but certain weapons and enemy attacks become difficult to use or dodge just because they drop your frames so harshly.
- The graphics aren't very good. It's still in pretty early open beta and I'm running on Low because of the aforementioned performance issues, but even on max settings the game just isn't much to look at. It's fine, I mean I've sunk a thousand or so hours into the 3DS MH games and those are choppy as hell, it's just sort of a let down.
- This'll probably be fixed when the game's out of beta, but the Text and HUD in general need a massive overhaul. There's no Minimap, for one, which sucks. There's also a lot of very light text against very light backgrounds, leading to times when you can't make out anything at all. If you're looking for a specific Monster Drop, the text is in plain white and I didn't even realize that you could see what you got until a few hours into the game.
- Some Hitboxes are really... off. I will say that it's better than MH in this regard, but there are definitley times where an attack looks like it's nowhere near you and you're still somehow sent flying by it.
- You can't walk through teammates which is one of my biggest complaints. Videogames figured out that being bodyblocked by your allies is shitty a loooooooooong time ago, but it's out in full force here, which sucks. A lot. Trying to sprint to the monster and getting stopped by your teamate who's gathering some flowers sucks, and it's even worse in combat when you've got 4 people trying to whack at the same body part. You can't hit allies with attacks, which is a welcome change, but being impeded by them just sucks.
Now for some more nitpicky issues.
- The Sword range feels way too short. Its entire design is based off of the Longsword from MH, but it's plagued by an ironically minuscule hitbox. It feels like you need to hit the enemy exactly with no room for error, which is weirdly punishing in this generally less intense game.
- The game has elements that are visually confusing and don't make a lot of sense. Monster Part Drops, for example, are big Green orbs that kinda blend in with the grass. I figured they were Health Pickups or something at first because I've played a videogame before, but nope. Some big flowers you can Gather, others you can't without any distinction, stuff like that.
- Your health bar does't have that giant red thing that lets you clearly know you've gotten hit and for how much, which sucks. Attacks feel kinda floatly when they hit you, so it'd be nice to know exactly what you're dealing with.
- There's this stupid Slowmo effect and sound effect that happens whenever you get hit, even if by a tiny baby attack that does 2 damage which gets really old really quick.
Positives:
- Monster Design is excellent. I was worried at first about the kinda generic cell shaded graphics, but I really love how the creatures look and feel. The more bestial dynamic versus. Monster Hunter's dinosaurish one works really well.
- Monsters change up their attacks quite a bit, which is great. Beating the pants off of a dude then having him get pissed and start mixing up his strats is fun as heck.
- Combat and the Weapons feel great. They're distinct enough from MH to not feel like a simple knock off. Combos are satisfying in a simple-to-learn difficult-to-master sort of way, at least from what I've seen so far.
- The Menus are great. This is a weird compliment, but I love how they're all set up. From the Weapon and Armor smiths to Quest Selection and your own Loadouts. Feels better than MH to be honest.
- It feels very accessible, but not in a MHWorld kinda way where it dumbs stuff down. Weapon and Armor skills state very clearly what they do so you don't need a Wiki, you can see what Combos your weapon has at any given time just by pressing Select which is genius, the tutorial is actually really well done and, more importantly, not two mushroom gathering hours long. The whole thing kinda feels like Monster Hunter Lite, but that's fine, and it does a really great job at being exactly that.
- The story is barebones as hell, but it works well for what it is and gets you into the action right away.
Now for the Negatives
- Holy shit this game performs like ass. This is subjective to a point based on your Rig and my PC is far from amazing, but when I can run Overwatch at a consistent ~110 FPS, there's no way an Unreal Engine game with PS2 graphics should struggle this much. The Tutorial runs at about 10 FPS, and the City bounces between 30 and 4. Thankfully, actual hunts seem to be fairly smooth, but certain weapons and enemy attacks become difficult to use or dodge just because they drop your frames so harshly.
- The graphics aren't very good. It's still in pretty early open beta and I'm running on Low because of the aforementioned performance issues, but even on max settings the game just isn't much to look at. It's fine, I mean I've sunk a thousand or so hours into the 3DS MH games and those are choppy as hell, it's just sort of a let down.
- This'll probably be fixed when the game's out of beta, but the Text and HUD in general need a massive overhaul. There's no Minimap, for one, which sucks. There's also a lot of very light text against very light backgrounds, leading to times when you can't make out anything at all. If you're looking for a specific Monster Drop, the text is in plain white and I didn't even realize that you could see what you got until a few hours into the game.
- Some Hitboxes are really... off. I will say that it's better than MH in this regard, but there are definitley times where an attack looks like it's nowhere near you and you're still somehow sent flying by it.
- You can't walk through teammates which is one of my biggest complaints. Videogames figured out that being bodyblocked by your allies is shitty a loooooooooong time ago, but it's out in full force here, which sucks. A lot. Trying to sprint to the monster and getting stopped by your teamate who's gathering some flowers sucks, and it's even worse in combat when you've got 4 people trying to whack at the same body part. You can't hit allies with attacks, which is a welcome change, but being impeded by them just sucks.
Now for some more nitpicky issues.
- The Sword range feels way too short. Its entire design is based off of the Longsword from MH, but it's plagued by an ironically minuscule hitbox. It feels like you need to hit the enemy exactly with no room for error, which is weirdly punishing in this generally less intense game.
- The game has elements that are visually confusing and don't make a lot of sense. Monster Part Drops, for example, are big Green orbs that kinda blend in with the grass. I figured they were Health Pickups or something at first because I've played a videogame before, but nope. Some big flowers you can Gather, others you can't without any distinction, stuff like that.
- Your health bar does't have that giant red thing that lets you clearly know you've gotten hit and for how much, which sucks. Attacks feel kinda floatly when they hit you, so it'd be nice to know exactly what you're dealing with.
- There's this stupid Slowmo effect and sound effect that happens whenever you get hit, even if by a tiny baby attack that does 2 damage which gets really old really quick.