MMO Grinder: Dungeon Fighter Online Review
A popular Beat-em-up MMO published by Nexon.
Dungeon Fighter Online
Players:
Publisher: Nexon
Genres: Action, Casual, Fighting, RPG
Publisher: Nexon
Genres: Action, Casual, Fighting, RPG
Release Date: June 9, 2010
Developer: NeoPle
MSRP: $Free
Developer: NeoPle
MSRP: $Free
Dungeon Fighter Online is a 2D side-scrolling, beat-em-up MMORPG, with production values that free to play games wish they had. With pulse pounding rock tunes, six varying playstyles, player vs player arena combat, legions of enemies to slay, and a 200 Million worldwide playerbase, it is definately the benchmark for the Korean MMO genre.
MMO Grinder: Dungeon Fighter Online Review
Posted By ChaosD1 about 1 year, 3 months ago
A popular Beat-em-up MMO published by Nexon. (This is a backlog episode, originally reviewed in September 2011. DFO has undergone recent changes, and some information may no longer apply to the current game. New MMO Grinder episodes are posted roughly every two weeks.)
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Review: Dungeon Fighter Online
This 2D beatdown MMORPG is a testament to the Korean MMO genre. But is it worth the effort picking up?
Review: Dungeon Fighter Online
Posted By James C. about 2 years, 6 months ago
Review: Dungeon Fighter Online
There are few games that I would put on the throne of being the best, and even fewer of the games that are the best, while being a free to play game. Dungeon Fighter Online, an MMORPG by development house NeoPle and published by Free to Play juggernaught Nexon, is available now on the PC, and it scores high in the latter mentioned category. It combines both the 2D hack-and-slash gameplay genre along with the elements of a traditional Japanese RPG, blended with a simple story to thread the world together and to not let the playerbase destroy each other in rampant PVP. There’s no attesting to its staying power, seeing as its playerbase has almost reached 200 Million players worldwide since its original release in Korea in August of 2005, along with subsequent releases in Japan (2006), China (2007), Taiwan (2009), and North America (2010). But even though it is a free game to download, is it worth your time?
| PROS | Flashy gameplay, Great production value, Hours of fun |
| CONS | Chaotic at higher levels, Extreme difficulty curve midgame, Threadbare story |
| WTF?! | Recovery items are extremely rare / expensive as hell |
In my honest opinion, yes, it is worth your time. It’s free to download at Nexon’s website, only about a gigabyte in size, and could probably run off your mom’s computer. It is a simple bliss of destroying whatever horde impedes your progress, or threatens the world on this particular day, by any means necessary.
The world of Arad, the fabled realm underneath all others, is constantly in danger with the hordes of maniacal monsters at every side. Those who reside in the HUB town of Hendon Myre are either superbly strong, resourceful, or smart enough to stay out of everybody’s way. The Dungeon Fighter, your run of the mill soldier for hire, who has found their way to Arad via their own means, are quested to do tasks such as to thin the hordes, fetch quests, escort quests, babysitting quests; You name it, it’s there. Your quests usually revolve around the dungeon area you are currently partaking in, except for the first 2 zones which are considered tutorial.
There's gonna be a lot of this, I'm not gonna lie to ya.
The player has choice of 6 characters, having their own unique, but comically brief, backstory as to how they appeared in the world underneath all. The melee dungeon fighters consist of the Slayer, a swordsman with an arm possessed by a demon, and the Fighter, a Hand-to-Hand combat expert. Representing the ranged demographic are the Male and Female Gunners, masters of projectile weapons, and the Mage, a cute little young’un with the limitless power of magic at her call. Finally, rounding out as the wildcard of the playable characters as a hybrid character is the Priest, a pious man devoted to purging evil by word or by bludgeon.
The story is pretty standard fare for a Korean MMO: Player does quests, player gets stronger, lather rinse, repeat. Typical “Kill the bad guy” of the day narrative. It won’t win any awards, but it ties in the gameplay to work at a standard pace.
7/10
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July 19, 2011 at 02:45pm
Having come back to DFO after a couple months of not being able to correctly download it so i could play it (they fixed the problem), I notice a lot of great new stuff. One thing is that there are often special events that either give you free stuff (coins, items, exp, skill point reset, sales on items that require nexon points, avatar items [though this one is either avatar that don't have any stat boosts but will increase your exp when completing dungeons, or stat boosting avatars that only for a limited time; either way you don't have to use nexon points] and more) and often there are several events at the same time. Another thing is there is now easier leveling, and the fatigue point system has been exchanged for the biltz point system ( which doesn’t in any way prevent you from accessing dungeons when you play too much). Inviting friends actually gives both the inviter and invitee stuff when the invitee accepts the request (though the invitee gets a lesser items that are still very useful). There are frequently new characters added. Also gameplay is hell of a lot of fun. Also unlike other “free to play mmos” who give you the full version but the gameplay is severly limited or less fun unless you use real world currency, DFO’s nexon points is completely unnecessary if you don’t want to buy stuff. The Nexon point bought stuff, may even make you level up easier but is completely unnecessary. Also their curse word system ( the thing that blocks curse words from appearing on chat) only blocks real curse words and not words that seem like curse woods (I’m looking at you runescape).
They also have great anime promos. Also there is (somewhat predictably) an anime of this game: Dungeon and Fighter: Slap up Party, which is a pretty good anime with very funny comedy and great action.G.S.D. is the equilavent of CHUCK NORRIS.
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November 22, 2010 at 09:48pm
I like Nexon but the only game that truly made me want to devote my time to it was Mabinogi. You don’y hear too much about Mabinogi anymore. I did try Dungeon Fighter, though…I also played Mabinogi and got the same impression. It’s odd how I only like Nexon’s 3D iteration, though it is their deepest title yet.
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November 22, 2010 at 04:35pm
I like this game. Good to play with friends, and overall pretty fun. I play slayer. Though the reviewer didn’t mention it the game also has subclasses that adds more depth to it. One of my cons though is that the game is SLIGHTLY reliant on real life money. Especially since you have to pay for a skill reset.
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November 22, 2010 at 11:34am
This is one of the only mmos left I wanted to try, but of course they IP blocked anyone not from the USA so… yeah… >.>
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November 21, 2010 at 05:40pm
I used to play this back when I had an XP computer and it was an okay game.
However, when I built my new computer and put win 7 64 bit on it the game started to have plenty of problems and would lag out and crash for very little reason.
In addition, I didn’t notice anything about the gamepad support the game boasts, being an arcade fighter, you’d think it would be decent, however it is terrible. No matter what assignment layout I chose I could only have one skill and the main attack on my gamepad, despite having eight extra buttons to use. No matter the assignment whenever a button was pressed it would default to the first skill in the slot and would never use any of the other skills.
This review is…okay, obviously reviewing on a basis of os compatibility is silly to expect and I only mention it for anyone else who has windows 7 and the 64bit version, but you should have at least tried it with a gamepad controller in addition to the keyboard to see how that worked out.
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November 21, 2010 at 12:42pm
I played a little of this… it was just another Shitty Korean MMO.
That’s it’s own genre, you know. The good old SKMMO.
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November 21, 2010 at 11:09am
I tried to download another game from the same creator, but my anti-virus program detected a virus in the downloader, so I wouldn’t trust that this game is virus free. Unfortunately I wasn’t paying much attention so I have no idea what kind of virus it was. Ether that or it’s some sort of error and the file was mistaken for a virus. But still…
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November 21, 2010 at 01:33pm
So… about my previous comment about the virus… well, my anti-virus had… “targeted” the downloader because it is a “suspicious file”, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily dangerous, only that it’s unknown(that doesn’t how even means it safe ether).
Well, just saying. -
November 21, 2010 at 04:30am
I think saw some ads for this game awhile ago. I might check it out because of this review :3
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November 21, 2010 at 12:19am
When I tried the Korean version, this game was the no. 1 MMO at the time. However, the majority of players were between the age of 9-12, which didn’t really make me want to continue to play this when I did. May try it again with the english version.
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November 20, 2010 at 11:18pm
saw this game a few times and thought it looked cool. might check it out when I got nothing better to do
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November 20, 2010 at 06:47pm
I really want to play it but can’t because i am in the fucking UK!!
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November 20, 2010 at 06:40pm
I don’t fall for those “play this its free” gimmicks that MMOs shove in your face.
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November 20, 2010 at 03:40pm
Is it just me or does that guy in the red jacket with white hair look an aweful lot like Ragna from Blazblue? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlazBlue:_Calamity_Trigger
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November 20, 2010 at 03:49pm
actually i would say that he (the male gunner) looks like the main character from devil may cry also the slayer has a red demon possessed arm that again (from what i heard. i never played the games) looks like its from devil may cry.
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November 20, 2010 at 06:37pm
Yeah, i can see a bit of Ragna, excuse me, *ahem* Rawgna, in him, this does look interesting might download it, if it is free and by the sounds of it pretty good, why not?
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November 20, 2010 at 03:38pm
Ugh i hate MMO’s, But this look so awesome. I’ll may check it out later.
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November 20, 2010 at 03:32pm
I played this once, but never really gave into it. I can imagine this being more interesting with a group of friends.
Similar to this “MMO Beat-Em-Up” style of game was Aeria Games “Pi Story” which worked and played excellent in Closed Beta, but as soon as it went to open beta/launch, the game was drastically changed as far as quests, drop rates, and general flow of the game. Also the servers ran like absolute shit, with major slowdown once it hit the public.
It’s a pity because beyond the cartoony style, the game was EXCELLENT, and had Aeria continued to back it, rather than abandon it, it could have caught on. Having never opened the in-game cash-shop, it didn’t make them any money, and they pulled the plug within the year.
I wrote an article about it’s closing on a site called Examiner way back when. I’ll see if I can find it.
Here we go: http://www.examiner.com/video-game-in-wilmington/aeria-games-shuts-down-pi-story
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November 20, 2010 at 03:29pm
I don’t believe I’ve played an MMO before, so I think I should give it a shot.
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November 20, 2010 at 03:25pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Joe Vargas and Blistered Thumbs, James Costanzo. James Costanzo said: BT's got a new MMO review for you to read! Dungeon Fighter Online! It's free, it's fun, so why are you still here? http://bit.ly/bJ2p7k [...]
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November 20, 2010 at 03:25pm
I enjoyed the game, and the fact that it’s free is definitely a plus, but when it comes down to it, it’s a time-suck. I’ve wasted way too much time quest-grinding for the enjoyment the game gives.
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November 20, 2010 at 03:24pm
I play this MMO around a year ago. it was the best free to play mmo i’ve played. a few weeks ago i tried reinstalling to play it again because i got too busy to play earlier and a error occured apparently if you have windows vista or windows 7 it won’t install a very important dll file and as a result it won’t launch the game. this file is important to launch any nexon game not just dfo (i tried vindictus and got same exact problem). strangely when i played long ago on windows vista then windows 7 it worked but now when i’m reinstalling it, it doesn’t install that specific file. I’ve also heard that nexon rarely answers service tickets. But when i played it was extremely fun it did have an ingame store that sold exclusive items for real world money but that never ever got in the way. also G.S.D. is apparently the equivalent of chuck norris in the game’s world.
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November 20, 2010 at 03:27pm
I’ve actually had that problem, but this site had the DLL, if I remember right: http://www.dll-files.com/
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November 20, 2010 at 03:34pm
They actually have a fix for that. You have to change the regional setting of your computer to English (US) and it will work correctly. Nexon hasn’t responded about a fix for this yet though.
Also, it’s true. GSD is bigger than jesus.
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November 20, 2010 at 03:23pm
I’ll take a look at it, though I haven’t been impressed by the previous MMO, Maple Story.
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November 20, 2010 at 03:10pm
Wow…this…this looks great…I kind of want Male and Female versions of every class, though…
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November 20, 2010 at 03:19pm
Wait…fatigue points? Limits on playing? Oh, hell no, I freaking HATE that…let me play however much I want, if someone gets addicted, that is their fault.
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November 20, 2010 at 03:42pm
dude consider this, you have MANY other character you can still play with until their fatigue points runout. also even if you already have one type of character you get the same character but instead go into a different class like for example 1)fighter-grappler
2)fighter-zen master
each of these classes give you different skills that do extremely awesome moves. also even if you completely run out of fatigue points for that character it only means you can’t play “dungeons” for the rest of the day with that character with the exception of pvp areas. even if you have 0 fp you can still play pvp. so fp doesn’t limit very much the gameplay -
November 20, 2010 at 03:02pm
I’m not into MMOs, but I’m always interested in hearing about these “free” titles.
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November 20, 2010 at 02:59pm
Geez, why does the game’s logo look so much like Street Fighter 4′s?
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November 20, 2010 at 02:54pm
Wow. A very thorough review. If I played MMO’s I’d consider this.
I may have seriously messed up priorities in life, but for me, there’s nothing sadder than a development team that spent countless hours on a game, only for it to fail. Same for MMOs, because once they go down, they never rerelease & sell them as singleplayer games for hardcore fans to buy for nostalgia. I would totally buy a singleplayer version of an MMO I liked that went down.
8:46 Yes, Angela is the best character ever.
The Stamina Meter to prevent you from playing too much in Beta PISSED ME OFF TO NO END but I’m glad its gone, one thing that pisses me off is in Japan their is a Male/Female Character for almost every character class in this game. I’m not sure if its changed at all yet for character selection in America or not but that is one of my pet peeves with this otherwise pretty cool game.
3:21 I would say is animeish than cartoony.
3:31 1.Make a zerker 2.BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
17:49 try ancient dungeon, there’s still strategies.
btw you didn’t mention the music in the credit is the music for one of the otherverse’s dungeon.