Dungeon Duel iOS Review

Written on 5:53 PM by AudibleKnight

Dungeon Duel is a neat RPG found in the iOS App Store created by a company called "IPlaySo". It seems like this company is fairly small as their company website has a 404 for the Dungeon Duel page, and their Facebook page is pretty much blank. The one video on Youtube that I could find was pretty much 20 minutes of someone playing the game.

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As for the game itself, I was playing on version 1.1.1 which was supposedly released on August 3rd. When you start the game, you get a tutorial guiding you to pick a mage or knight, and go into battle. The meat and potatoes of the game is a kind of rock-paper-scissors or in this game strike-counter-charge against the computer. You're given 6 cards, or two of each, and run 6 rounds until you run out of cards and get the full set again. If you win a given round, then your character will attack, and if you lose, you'll receive an attack from the enemy. It's an interesting concept, but honestly, as a player, I felt like the majority of the outcomes came down to chance. I guess it's good that there's an Auto mode, which you can turn on, and the battle will play itself out without any input from you.

There's the Arcade, where you can play through sets of 4 monsters (3 mobs and a boss), and an Arena where you can square off against other characters created by fellow players. There's also a store where you can buy items, a forge for improving stats on items

Overall, the game had a nice polish which induced me to play for a few hours. The RPG aspects always hook me into exploring and seeing how the system is set up. I did have some issues:

1. Location of Items Stats: I don't understand why item stats are at the very bottom of the screen. This happens in both the store and equip page, and I easily missed it the first several times I browsed around these screens. I would have much more liked it right next to the item selection, rather than separated by menus used for navigation.
2. Timer: I don't understand why there's a timer for how many rounds you can play the Arcade or Arena. You're set to 15 rounds per hour and 30 minutes. This seems silly, I mean why would you discourage players excited to play your game?
3. Arcade: I'm happy that there's the set for the single player arcade. However I'm a bit annoyed by how it's set up by 3 monsters and a boss. There's a fair gap between the monsters and boss, and you aren't allowed to fight the 3 initial monsters again until you beat the boss. Thus, my one and only loss was due to having no other option than to fight the 1st boss when I was under-geared and under-leveled. 
4. Gold: I piled up over 30,000 gold by level 7. However, I can't buy anything since items are set at 5 level intervals. So even though I have all the level 5 items, I could buy the level 10 items, but won't be able to actually use them until I reach that level. This pretty much makes my gold useless since I could by crafting materials, but why would I waste upgrading an item, if I'm going to get a new one in 5 or less levels?
5. Crystals are the In-App-Currency. You're handed one on the occasional quest, and I had amassed 16 by the time I had reached level 7. Sadly, I'm required to spend 2 for a tutorial quest on upgrading skills. I was interested in one of the prestige classes, but sadly, you need 25 crystals to unlock one.
   The one regular source of crystals is by trading medals received from Arena fights for crystals. I received 16 medals from 6 Arena fights. I can trade 99 medals for 1 crystal. This means I would need to do 30-40 Arena fights just to get 1 crystal.
6. Arena: With a name like this, you're given the idea that you'll fight other characters. Unfortunately this isn't the case. Instead the computer will control a character made by another player. After a few wins, this will usually mean characters with higher levels and better stats than you. Sadly after each fight, you'll get some medals and gold, but no XP.
7. Quests: So you're given quests to kill X number of monsters, or X boss. Unfortunately this isn't duplicated if you unlock another class. Thus, if you completed all the quests for the first area, they won't be available if you start another character. This seems to drain a lot of fun in unlocking a 2nd class, as you'll just end up mindlessly grinding up monsters to level up without the positive reinforcement of regular rewards.

TL;DR: Overall , Dungeon Duel is neat game. It's polished so the art and animations are pleasing to the eye, and there's general RPG elements to add some depth and goals in making your character stronger. Sadly, the meat of the game is rock-paper-scissor, which at the end of the day is pretty light.  Between the In-App-Purchases giving a pretty hefty possible boost to those willing to spend the money, and the fluffy gameplay, I doubt this is a game that I'll seriously invest a ton of time in unless I'm in the mood for watching the computer play itself in rock-paper-scissors.

Posted in iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Review |

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