Punching goblins until they explode: "Dungeon Fighter Online" impressions

OVERVIEW:

The good: Nostalgic sprite-based graphics, easy controls, no-nonsense character progression, good for short gaming sessions, gamepad support [!], FREE TO PLAY

The not so good: Cluttered user interface, must pay for avatar customization, limited eye candy

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To sort of piggyback on Weiss's MMO tirade, I thought I'd shine some line on one of the few multiplayer RPG that I have enjoyed.

Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO) is an online multiplayer beat 'em up sidescroller from the good folks in South Korea who brought you Maple Story, Nexon Games. I have to say that I am both impressed and pleased with the way they approach online gaming, and it all begins with their business model: let people play for free, no strings attached; if they want to make their avatar look unique, or speed up their progress, they can pay incrementally for bonus content.

This is awesome. For one, you can play this game as long as you like without paying money for it, and decide whether or not shelling out your cold hard earned cash is worth your while. You don't need any of the bonus items to progress in the game. Two of my buds and I have been partying up three different player classes and punching goblins until they explode to our hearts' content, and neither of us have dropped a dime.

So, here we go. Character creation. Your character begins in a network of towns, each of

which having a cast of NPCs with/from whom you can trade or buy equipment, obtain skills or acquire quests. As a player, you are given several choices in terms of character class:

• Slayer - heavy damage, "buster" sword wielding, spiky-headed guy.
• Mage - tiny, magical, wand-waving, spell-casting girl
• Priest - high defense, party-buffing, decent-damage doing muscle man
• Male or Female Gunner - suave, ranged attacking gunslinger
• Fighter - quick attacking, grappling, fireball-shooting, female martial artist

Now, what may put most first time players off from this is how everyone of your class pretty much looks identical. At low level your character avatar is virtually unchangeable because, as I mentioned earlier, customizing your avatar costs Avatar Tokens, which in turn cost NX Points, which ultimately cost realpeople money.

So, in actuality, you can be that relatively unique-looking, goblin-punching hotshot - but you need to pay for it, and you can only begin doing so once you hit level 30. I don't have an issue with this. The game is free, I am having fun. I look forward to having the option of customizing my avatar, but I'm not sweating the level prerequisite either, because it keeps people in the game by presenting them with a foreseeable goal. Otherwise, the game would be sparsely populated as many players would spend all their milk money on funny haircuts and provocative outfits, and quit the game before they get to some of the really fun dungeons.

Gameplay mechanics are intuitive and familiar, especially if you grew up with titles like Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, Final Fight, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Game, etc. You have two axes of movement (left-right, up-down), a jump key, an attack key, and a dedicated special attack key. In addition to this, you also have your hot keys to which you can

attach up to six skills and six items for rapid access.

One of my favorite aspects of the gameplay, however, are the button commands attached to your active skills. Per 2D fighter tradition, a combination of directional keys and action keys will execute skills in addition to being able to use them via hotkey. For example, I play the game's Fighter character class, and holding forward and pressing the skill key near an enemy will activate my suplex skill; or, tapping down, forward and the skill key will launch a fireball similar to Ryu's hadouken technique in the Street Fighter series. This makes combat one of the most versatile that I've encountered, and the reason that this is one of my favorite features in the game is because it lends itself so well to using a gamepad.

While the game is playable as it is, it's my personal opinion that it really shines once you employ the use of a gamepad. I personally use a wired XBox 360 controller coupled with the incredible (and free!) key mapper software, Xpadder. There is something completely satisfying about the freedom of using a gamepad to dash around dungeons and pummel monsters to a pulp. Growing up as an avid 2D console era gamer, the accessibility of a gamepad's buttons makes playing DFO a breeze.

The sprite-based graphics are acceptable. There are fewer frames in the animation cycles than in most modern 2D games; however, this is completely understandable as the avatar options discussed earlier are already robust, and each require their own unique animation cycles. You can't fault the developers at Nexon for knowing the limitations of their game design model, their users' systems, and the internet connections between the two.

In-game audio is great. The music is definitely modeled after 16-bit era games, and each character type has their own wide array of vocalizations and sound effects. The NPCs each have unique voice acting as well, with a number of goofy one-liners per NPC.

The user interface gets a little cluttered, as you have your fixed statuses and hot key displays on the lower third of the screen, a dedicated area for in-game messages, while the upper portion of the screen is dedicated to displaying party member statuses, enemy statuses, and map information. I will even go as far as saying it can detract from the overall aesthetics of the game, especially if you accidentally rest your mouse over an item, causing its information pop-up to expand during combat. I think part of the problem lies within the English localization and copy writing: Japanese, Korean and Chinese text inherently take up less space, as they are either pictographic or syllabic in nature. In short, these languages convey more information with fewer characters. If the English localization took more time to trim the fat in some of the copy, we may have seen some improvements in the interface design.

Overall, the game is quick and simple. You don't feel the need for an intriguing story because it seems like it would almost get in the way of the fast paced gameplay. The satisfaction of progressing your character is instantaneous enough to incentivize regular and short bursts of gameplay, and the rate at which you obtain weapons and skills gives the player enough momentum to keep playing on a long-term basis.

I would say that my set-up for playing DFO is ideal; however, it does require several third party applications (namely Xpadder and Ventrilo). If gamepad functionality was better integrated (but in PC gaming, it never really is) and voice chat were available out of the box, it would most certainly diminish the game's existing shortcomings. At the same time, however, the player needs to remember that the game is free.

At the rate I've been playing, I fully expect to hit end-game events with my current character, and then cycle through the other available classes. Do you and a couple of buddies got some free time? Check out Dungeon Fighter Online. If you're disappointed, your game's on me.