Nexon has established themselves at the forefront of the free-to-play MMO market, thanks in large part to the runaway success of a little game called MapleStory. Not content to have the RPG market cornered, they’ve branched out into other genres, including the FPS genre (Combat Arms) and now the beat ‘em up genre with a game called Dungeon Fighter Online. Well, it’s actually a beat ‘em up/dungeon crawler/RPG title, but the side-scrolling beat ‘em up elements are what you’ll notice first and foremost.

Dungeon Fighter Online features five different classes, each with a different style of game play: the melee-weapon wielding Slayer, the brawling Priest who uses his fists, the magic-wielding and creature-summoning Mage, the gun-wielding Gunner and the close-range combat Fighter. In addition to different fighting styles, each class has different attack strengths, defensive capabilities and agility. For example, the Slayer has a high attack but cannot wield a shield, while the Mage has a weak physical attack but is agile. South Koreans players have access to a sixth class right now, the thief, but it’s unknown if that class will be coming to the rest of the world. Don’t be shocked if it doesn’t.

The core of Dungeon Fighter Online’s game play is going to be very familiar if you’ve ever played the likes of Final Fight. Basically, as your character, you progress across the land, entering dungeons and beating up anything that stands in your way. The only real difference this time around is that each of the characters has many different attacks they can learn, upgrade and use in their quest. Each is mapped to a different key on the keyboard, but for some classes, this can be a pain in the butt, since it requires you to not only remember which attacks are on which buttons, but you have to know which attacks are effective against different types of enemies. It can, at times, slow down the whole beat ‘em up feel the game is supposed to have when you have to move your fingers from jamming down the A key to hitting the H key, but that’s perhaps a complaint of any modern MMORPG. Besides the button-pressing problems, the actual combat in the game is pretty fluid and fast-paced, or in other words, how a beat ‘em up game is supposed to be.

Article Author: Brian Szabelski

Brian Szabelski is the Assistant Gaming Editor at Blogcritics.org as well as Associate Editor at Tomopop. He also maintains his own blog on IGN, "The Minus World".

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