The Rebirth of Dungeon Fighter Online

It's back and better than ever!

Dungeon Fighter Online is a rare gem in the world of brawlers and certainly is welcomed back by both veterans and people new to the game.  It is published by Neople, a Korean based company, and they are currently hosting the servers and content. The servers were initially ran by Nexon, who also hosts Maple Story and Mabanogi, and was shut down in 2013 because it was considered "less" popular to their other titles. Nexon originally acquired the service in 2010 and while the North American audience waxed and waned, it suffered issues of content.  In the Korean version of the game, players had access to more content, more classes and better updates while Nexon eventually let the game die out, only releasing three of the seven new classes.

Now we have the Thief, Creator, Dark Knight, Male Fighter, Male Mage and the Knight!

What Makes it Great

Music

The game itself plays like most other games of the brawler genre: Pick a Character, spam that punch, slice, kick, shoot button and collect power ups, (exp) points and gold.  There are multiple facets where this game is diverse from its competition, like the soundtrack which melds both metal sound and synthesizer or orchestrated music.  This can also be contrasted with the K-Pop anthem of the recently released Knight class, Dream4U.  On top of this amazing soundtrack, the character classes have depth in personal specialization and each has a unique play style.

Characters

Every character in this game is sophisticated and some of them rank from an easy style of play to a hard or expert level of play.  For example, while playing a Slayer, who is the standard "I have a sword and I cut monsters", when he hits level 15, he can choose to become 1 of 4 different classes including: Blademaster, Beserker, Asura and Soul Bender.  The Blademaster is the master of all of the Slayer weapons, which include katanas, short swords, zanbatos, bludgeoning weapons and give him unique bonuses depending on the weapon of choice.  He is currently the only class in the game that can use a Lightsabre weapon.  The Berserker uses his Hit Points, which fuel his abilities, to deal massive damage, has access to strong self-healing abilities and can easily tank through fights without using a potion. The Asura takes up the archetype of the blind swordsman who uses magical waves to kill monsters and clearing rooms quickly. Finally, the Soul Bender, whose mastery over demons allow him to make Venn Diagrams demons of death and status ailments.  On top of that, these demons also buff the party he is playing with.

In the current iteration of the game we have access to Slayer, Female Mage, Female Gunner, Male Gunner, Female Fighter, Priest, Male Fighter, Male Mage, Creator, Death Knight and Knight with Female Slayer in the future.  Most of these classes have access to 4 specializations, as aforementioned, with only four having two or none at all, due to their class power.  When you hit level 50 with a character, that character receives a quest to Awaken which awards you with a new class title, new active ability and passive.  On top of that they are also rewarded with access to TP or Technical Points, which specialize your preferred abilities.  The current level cap in the game is 70, with hopeful players dreaming of second Awakenings and the current level 85 cap of the Oceanic Servers.

Controversial Points

Fatigue Points, a restrictive form of time allotment that prohibits players from playing the same character for a long duration.  The issue with Fatigue Points is that is what dictates how long you can play a certain character and it will eventually drain to zero and you have to wait until the game resets, similar to daily resets of World of Warcraft, to play your character again.  This issue hits hard on those that want to play only one character and feel penalized playing only one or very few characters.  The good thing is that by playing two higher level characters, you can easily burn 4-5 hours of real life playing two or three characters beginning from the 30s and extending slowly to the current level cap.  The good news, is that you can easily gain a level or two a day in your 50s and easily a level a day in your 60s.

The Good

• Allows you to play two or three different characters a day and feel like you progressed 

•  Encourages farming on your characters and keeps the game constantly fresh by allowing players to sample characters they normally would not select. 

•  You can have upwards to 20 characters 

•  You make more money, farm more resources and gain more assists (Will talk about this later) because of the Fatigue System

The Bad

• Punishes players for not having alternative characters because they cannot farm as much as those that play 4+ characters a day.

•  Early level gameplay feels extremely restrictive compared to upper level play because of the speed of draining Fatigue Points.

•  Does not allow players to play their "favorite" character all day.

•  Many classes do not shine until their 30s, which means it may not feel rewarding at all to play different characters.

The Cash Shop has always been part of the game due to the Free2Play environment.  In Nexon's day it offered avatars (model changes that gave bonuses to stats) and other varied goodies, like the equivalent of keys to Team Fortress 2 or CS:GO.  So far the Cash Shop in Neople's Dungeon Fighter, we have no clues what will be in the shop, but veterans can presume that avatars will make a return.  Neople has also introduced the Mileage system into the game, where you can purchase items that help your experience, by how much you play your level 20+ characters.  The Mileage Shop currently offers players ways to extended their temporary avatars to last indefinitely, buff potions and two Fatigue Restore potions on separate timers.  The good news is that you can easily gain Mileage and purchase fatigue potions for two of your characters a day, extending the play of your favorite characters.

Should I Give it a Try?

I would recommend the game to anyone that misses the Brawler Genre like Battletoads, Double Dragon or newer games in the genre like Dragon's Crown.  The game plays very smoothly and supports up to you and three buddies to play together in bashing monster's faces in, but suffers peer to peer connection issues which can cause issues with playing with friends or strangers.  The game does support controllers and I am currently using a Playstation 3 controller to play the game, every great once in a while I have an input error where one of my abilities triggers automatically, but in general the game feels fantastic on a controller.  The game itself is dated, with no high definition resolutions (720p, 1080p or higher) and works fine in a window, but at smaller resolutions.  

Direct Link to Game Download - requires a login, which can either be a Facebook account or another separate email.