Review for Dauntless. Game for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 21/05/2019
Take Monster Hunter, add a good dose of World of Warcraft, make it all Free to Play and you will have gotten Dauntless!
As is clear from the very first moments, Dauntless is a hunting game developed by Phoenix Labs along the lines of the most famous Monster Hunter World, which catapults us into a fantasy-steampunk world, the Shattered Isles. In practice, these are huge islands floating in the void, each with its own particular biome (we will have to deal with every type of climate, from the desert to the snow-covered lands) and whose skies are crossed by countless airships. At the center of this floating world stands the city of Ramsgate, a crossroads of goods and people and, above all, home to the Slayers, intrepid hunters of monsters.
The territory of the Shattered Islands is very rich in Aetherite, a mysterious and precious substance that allows the same islands to float in the sky and which, properly treated, also acts as a source of energy for weapons and machinery of various kinds. Too bad that Aetherite often, too often, attracts the Behemoths, gigantic and terrible creatures of various kinds from each other, but all united by the fact that they are more or less lethal. From here, you will understand the usefulness of an entire category of monster hunters.
In Dauntless we will interpret just a new Slayer, committed to slicing ferocious beasts, recovering materials, crafting weapons, armor and various equipment with the remains of downed monsters and so on, as the now solid tradition of hunting games requires. But how does Dauntless differ from her bulky cousin Monster Hunter World?
First of all in the Free to Play formula. If you want you can play Dauntless without paying a single euro. Just download the client and go hunting! Of course, this implies that a lot of material can be purchased with real credit cards in the appropriate stores but, progressing a lot in the game, nothing shoppable gives a real advantage. These are mainly aesthetic elements for weapons and armor or pure contours, such as character poses, banners, enter-game animations and all those nice but useless extras we already know thanks to Fortnite e Apex Legends.
As in the titles just mentioned, Dauntless also has a seasonal structure, each of which with particular goals, improvements and additions. At the time of writing this review, Dauntless is in the midst of hunting season five, as it has only recently been released for PlayStation 4 e Xbox One, while who plays from PC (currently exclusive Epic Store) has been able to access early access since last year.
Graphically, Dauntless has a comic and cartoonish style, graphics managed practically wonderfully by the Unreal Engine 4. Even during the most excited hunting phases, the PS4 Slim on which we tested it has held up very well, except perhaps for some sporadic slowdown. , but very little.
The playability e the activities to be carried out in game are those typical of the genre: hunting, gathering and farming missions. The equipment upgrade section in particular, but the same goes for the vast majority of game mechanics, it turns out extremely simplified compared to the standards set with Monster Hunter World. But this doesn't have to be taken as a defect: Dauntless is meant to be an immediate title, or at least easily mastered, aimed basically at a slightly different audience than usual. Which does not mean everything is easy, far from it!
The further we go on, the more the killing of the Behemoths will represent a real challenge: we must not be fooled by the cartoonish aspect of the beasts we will have to deal with! Fortunately hunting missions can be tackled together with three other slayers, our friends or totally random. The matchmaking, at least starting from May 21, the release date of Dauntless on consoles, still reserves some problems, at times even quite heavy. The game is completely crossplay, which means that the users with whom we are facing a hunt can also play from different platforms, expanding the catchment area (together with the free admission) of the title.
This has unfortunately created quite a few problems with the servers, sometimes causing a game to be stopped as soon as a hunting trip is over or, much more frequently, creating very long queues to access even the game only (we can even talk about 45 minutes!). which understandably annoyed not a few.
However, we keep in mind that this is a game launched globally only on May 21 last, not even a week before the writing of the review, and that therefore this big problem will probably be fixed over time. In the same way, we hope that other types of weapons and equipment will be introduced, something already done in the early access phase with the guns, and that the developers continue to take into consideration the suggestions of the community, already fed at the moment.
Dauntless, ultimately, is a more than valid hunting game, perhaps a little too simplified for the most uncompromising veterans of the genre (let's not forget the controversies that were moved to Monster Hunter World for "excessive ease") but certainly attractive for who wants a fun but more relaxed game and, let's not forget it, completely free. A title with great potential to express, which however depends on the choices and additions that publishers and developers reserve for it in the future.
► Dauntless is an RPG-type game published by Epic Games for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 21/05/2019
