The Monster Hunter franchise earned a special place in my heart over nearly more than a decade ago when I picked up the first portable entry in the series in my teenage years. As Monster Hunter World is a current Playstation 4 exclusive as of now, fans of the franchise quickly yearned for something to satisfy their cravings of slaying monsters. So it is no surprise that when I heard a Free-to-Play (F2P) experience that aims to capture the charms of Monster Hunter on the PC, I was excited and wanted to play it.
Dauntless, for the uninitiated, is a monster hunting F2P game in the veins of Monster Hunter produced by Phoenix Labs. It takes the formula well-known by fans and makes it its own, delivering a fast-paced yet methodical, skill-oriented, and extremely rewarding experience best seen in games like Dark Souls. It is not an easy to pick up game, and has some ‘barrier of entry’ due to its emphasis on skill and mastery but its something fans of the series love nonetheless. So how does Dauntless open beta deliver on its promise? Let’s take a look and find out!
Gameplay: 7/10
- Pros: When you’re hunting monsters and fighting them with your trusty weapon, it feels so freaking good. The weight on the weapon and movement of the monster and your player character feels great, and delivers on that key element of monster hunting.
- Cons: There was a particular mission that felt very negative to me, where the monster ran off after taking a certain amount of damage but I was unable to find it on the map, spending the last 20 mins of the fight running around till I was forced to take a ‘forfeit’ of sorts. This felt very unfun, especially if you’re doing it solo. However, it could be due to inexperience and doesn’t bog down the experience as much as I felt it should.
User Interface/Options/Controls: 6/10
- Pros: THEY LET YOU USE A CONTROLLER! And that’s a huge reason for me to love the game more than I should, as it really made it much more comfortable for players coming from the Monster Hunter franchise (which were console exclusives for a long time) to adjust to the controls. It also offers the option to rebind your keys to let you find what fits you best and that is doing it right!
- Cons: However, the control rebinding option is weird as some commands like Jump and Interact are bound to the A button on the controller. And when I wanted to use the A button to bind to my Dodge command, it still allowed me to do so, and the Dodge command now initiates a Jump command too, and caused me to get hit by the monster. Outside of that, the UI is functional but doesn’t do much unless you already know what the information it wants to show you.
Story and Atmosphere/World-building: 7/10
- Pros: The story is… decent, providing the player with the plot vehicle to proudly understand why they need to go slay these monsters and works well enough. The world-building looks interesting, though I have not gone far into the game to fairly judge it, but I really enjoy what I’ve seen so far.
- Cons: The story is much too bland and it really just wants to push you outside to fight monsters, and it just does that job well.
Art Direction: 8/10
- Pros: I had a friend that commented the game looks a lot like Fortnite, and I can agree to that, it looks quite sleek and the art lets its distinguish itself from similar games like Monster Hunter or God Eater. And with how popular Fortnite is nowadays, it’s very hard to say that it’s a bad choice.
- Cons: The monsters feel quite bland, early-game wise. Clocking in at around 2-3 hours and the monsters feel boring so far, but looking at gameplay videos online show stronger, much more interesting designs later in the game. Characters in the game also look kinda weird, because of the artistic direction it takes, but it’s something I think players can grow into after a while.
Overall: 7/10
In conclusion, the game is worth checking out, even though it is in beta right now. There still are bugs to iron out and technical issues like FPS drops during your time in the town hub area. But the fact that we Monster Hunter fans have something to play while we wait for Monster Hunter World to come to PCs is amazing. Furthermore, the developers have been working hard to get the beta stable in the first few days of launch and is still working around the clock to iron out bugs and glitches and I have little doubt the game will grow into something awesome in the future. Happy hunting!
Sherman
Image taken from: https://sanshee.com/collections/dauntless
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with sanshee.com and this article is not sponsored. I’m just using the image header.
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