Dungeon Fighter Online - Fight dungeons, side-scroller style

[UnSub]

Early Access Beta Keys available.

If anyone is a closed beta tester, they apparently have spare keys to give out. I'm not a closed beta tester.

[Severian]

Another one with GameGuard, BTW.

[statisticalfool]

Early Access Beta (which is really just a pre-launch, as characters persist) is open and should be really easy to get into.

So the core streets of rage/final fight gameplay is actually quite nice here: characters open up a decent number of skills to choose from fairly early, you have to figure out whether you want a wide variety of moves or some really powered up ones, and even at low levels, linking together combos from enemy to enemy is satisfying.

The problem really comes in with the fatigue/xp system: you're allowed to play a certain number of "rooms" per day before you have to wait for your fatigue to replenish. You get big rewards for finding the boss in each randomly-generated dungeons, and usually have a bunch of quests which involve beating a dungeon quickly and stylishly. In addition, there's a rather sizable bonus for being in a party, so the most efficient way to spend your fatigue is to get in groups of four and rampage through dungeons super-quick hunting for bosses. Soloing is certainly a lot more strategic/tense, but soloing a dungeon perfectly is several times slower than sloppy group runs.

But still, there's fun to be had here, from pretty early on, and the classes offer a nice diversity of styles.

[Draegan]

I got a key a couple weeks ago and havn't tried it yet, I'm setting it up now as I type this.

Edit:
And it won't let me connect to the servers.

[Nonentity]

The max resolution is either 640x480 or 800x600. When you go windowed mode, it's locked to a window in the corner if your screen, and you can't resize it. Just sayin'.

Also, it's not GameGuard, it's some wannabe GameGuard clone.

[Hoax]

I think anyone can sign up for this, looks more side scroller beat em up then Maple Story and all its clones, did anyone actually give it a shot?

[Draegan]

I finally got a chance to play and the resolution options hurt my eyes.

[statisticalfool]

It hasn't fallen off the first page yet, so SEMI-NECRO

I bring this up not because of the godawful fixed resolution, or the godawful near-perma-lowering of XP if you try to play with people too far away in levels, or the godawful cash shop (RMT to get random pieces of clothing with random stats, and then hope you can trade for things which go together so you don't look like a jester), but because this is one of those rare instances of a US-added grind-a-thon. The Korean and Japanese versions have full advancement for free, but you can buy XP potions to speed things along. The US version is so slowed down that even if you're buying XP potions, you can't level as fast as somebody in the Korean or Japanese version can for free.

Result: lots of forum dissent and people using VPN's to run the other versions. They've recently announced that they're softening the curve, but I've moved on.

But, apparently, adding needless grind is a two-way street.