Messing with the dark arts never ends well, as the hero of Dungeon Hunter, the new release from Gameloft, learns after he tries to raise his beloved bride from the dead. Lucky for us, we get to make amends for his mistake as we take him on quests throughout his former kingdom to eradicate the darkness and restore the light

Review

In this RPG, hack & slash game that borrows heavily from the Diablo franchise, you play a prince who has come back from the grave, wandering through a beautifully rendered world full of demons and monsters that you’ll have to vanquish. Choose a warrior, rogue, or mage, each of which has different strengths and weaknesses. You get to further customize your character as you level up and earn skill points which you spend to develop additional talents.

Dungeon Hunter boasts two ways to move through the game. You can set the controls to Virtual Stick, your usual onscreen D-pad, or you can set them to Touch, and guide you character by touching the screen. I found the Touch setting a little trickier to use, but I think it would get easier as you play. Regardless which mode you choose, you also have three buttons to control your attack and weapons abilities. As you play you’ll also pick up gold, weapons, and armor, the latter two often possessing additional magical enhancements. There are so many ways to customize your character; it can be a little overwhelming at first as you scroll through no less than five character screens: Statistics, Inventory, Skill Mapping, Fairies, and Quests. This depth of development is truly impressive in a mobile game, giving you hours and hours of game play.

First you’ll fight your way out of the catacombs, where you’ve just escaped from your tomb. Then you’ll receive quests from members of the local village, which usually involve fighting your way through a forest, or underground well, or various other locations, killing slimes, thugs, skeletons and other demonic creatures. Once you fight your way through an area you can chose to fight your way back out, or simply exit the level and go back to the village.

The graphics are good, they’re not extremely original for an RPG, but there’s an amazing amount of detail for being on a small screen. The background music is suitably fantastical and dramatic, but if you want something different, you can run your iPod music in the background using the in-game controllers, which is a nice touch.

I’m really enjoying Dungeon Hunter, and expect to for a good long time as I play the different classes and develop different skills. There is room for improvement in a couple areas, however. Load times between locations can be long, and other than the world map you use to go to the different locations, there are no on-screen maps. It would be great to have dungeon maps so you get an idea how far you’ve gone, or how to get out of an area quickly. In some locations your view is blocked by trees or walls, very inconvenient in the heat of battle.

Recommendation

Overall, the developers have done an excellent job with Dungeon Hunter. If you are a Diablo fan, or an RPG fan in general, you’ll want to add it to your iPhone (or iPod Touch) right now! Be sure to have wi-fi access or be connected to your computer when you download this one. At 224MB, it will take a little while. For ages 9 and up due to cartoon violence, Dungeon Hunter is $6.99 in the App Store.

Gameplay Video

Photos

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