Review: Dungeon Runners
While there are three classes - Fighter, Ranger and Mage - it's easy to cross-train skills for the right price, and there's very few restrictions on what is possible with a character. Mine could shoot lightning bolts and hurl fireballs with the best wizard, all while wearing hilariously oversized plate armor and flailing away with a two-handed claymore that would leave William Wallace wondering about his manhood. The game's instances can also be reset, and a lot of quests can be repeated. So, for example, if you're farming easy monsters for big quest rewards and clear an area, it's simply a matter of right-clicking "Reset Instances" on your character portrait, and everything comes back. The entire game feels streamlined, designed to minimize the screwing around in town downtime; better to spend time frantically flailing away in combat, be it in the monster-strewn overworld, or in the numerous dungeons strewn about, packed full of loot that's just waiting to be ferried off.
If there's a downside, it's that the game's laid-back nature and casual play don't quite deliver the hook of the traditional titles in the genre. The combat is engrossing, to the point that "Can't talk, dungeon running" was my away message and snapped reply whenever someone came to talk to me, but there wasn't anything that dragged me back into killing monsters time and again. As much as it pains me to say it, Dungeon Runners may actually be too low-key, in that you'll have a perfectly enjoyable time when playing the game and killing things, but without the quests or the "Kill Diablo, save the world" storyline, there's little incentive to come back time and again, aside from a few minutes of stress relief here and there. Logging in to mow down hordes of monsters has a visceral thrill, but without the visible endpoint or "winning," there's little reason to climb back on the treadmill.
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If there's a downside, it's that the game's laid-back nature and casual play don't quite deliver the hook of the traditional titles in the genre. The combat is engrossing, to the point that "Can't talk, dungeon running" was my away message and snapped reply whenever someone came to talk to me, but there wasn't anything that dragged me back into killing monsters time and again. As much as it pains me to say it, Dungeon Runners may actually be too low-key, in that you'll have a perfectly enjoyable time when playing the game and killing things, but without the quests or the "Kill Diablo, save the world" storyline, there's little incentive to come back time and again, aside from a few minutes of stress relief here and there. Logging in to mow down hordes of monsters has a visceral thrill, but without the visible endpoint or "winning," there's little reason to climb back on the treadmill.
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