After reading Colette's little review and reading some of the comments, I caved in and tried it out. After having a few run ins with Nexon and Maple Story (more like Maple Grinding) I wasn't to keen on liking DFO. After playing some saturday, I can say i'm somewhat hooked.

Dungeon Fighter Online is a nice little hack n' slash/beat em up/side scroller MMO that does a pretty damn good job for a cross of genres. 5 Different classes to choose from (with the other coming out soon enough to the states.) You have enough variety in style. Though get used to seeing many clones of the classes as there is no actual way to customize your character outside their weapon. (unless you do the usual pay to buy in game accessories.) The game is not at all hard to get into and does a decent job into easing you into missions/battle/items. Though I do recommend checking out the Wiki page for it as there are things in game that will make you feel rather overwhelmed/lost. (mainly the items and what ever freaking color notation means.)



While the game is simple, it's also still early in its roots as it was only released to the open public about a month ago. Which means a lot of things are released/finished/caught up to compared to the Koreans where this started off with. Some things like the Thief class, opposite gender classes, and the next class upgrade after the first. I do wish the developers thought of finishing the opposite sexes for the class. I wouldn't mind having a choice from the start instead of having to wait years later for something that should be there already. Another thing that bothers me would be just how cluttered the screen can get. Not as bad as say Maple Story, but when you're in a part of town that has a bunch of players on trying to sell stuff, it's hard to keep track of the chat window (actually...I ignore the chat window because it's hardly even seen) and it's sometimes hard to just click a NPC because people decide to stand in front of them. Along with this, the storage system turns me off. This is due to the fact you can only hold a certain amount of items due to weight. Then in order to upgrade your storage, you're forced to pay for NX Cash (which is Nexon's in game item shop cash.) for upgraded storage. Considering you'll be doing a lot of hunting and item stacking, you'll be forced to get rid of many things you may need later.

now moving on to the gameplay, It's pretty damn fleshed out. Clearly think Streets of Rage 2/Final Fight awesomeness with special moves added and a bit of old school dungeon crawling. When entering stages, you have all the time you need to clear the stage. Clearing all the monsters out in the area will allow you to move on to the next part of the map. Sometimes (usually all the time) you have choices on the map on where to move next. Of course the boss area is well spotted with a redish orange door so if you're not done exploring, it's easy to go do without hoping the next area is a boss. I will say I personally have the most fun playing the Slayer and Fighter classes and thought the Gunner class was rather boring. But what do I know? the game is full of gunners walking about. I also haven't tried a partied game yet mainly because I'd rather play with some of the dtoiders who are playing rather than some random Naruto fanboy. (and trust me, sit still long enough and someone will randomly send a party invite...and keep sending until you walk away or log off.)




on top of all this, there's a Fatigue bar which drains as you roam through the dungeons. It's either the developers excuse to stop players from hacking (though I find it hard to even really hack this game.) or to keep people from staying on all day to level. Seeing this game's origin is Korea, I figure it ties into trying to keep teens/kids/adults from sitting at net cafes/home all day losing their social life/lives over a game. I will say i'm not a fan of this but you get more than enough of it that you'll have enough time to do all you need in a day. They reset at 6 in the morning.

Overall, for a side scrolling beat em up MMO, this is really better than I thought. It's not a total grindfest like Maple Story and even though the highest level at the moment is 40, the game is still early so in time it will be raised. If you do decide to give it a try, send a friend invite to ShinOni in game.