Genre: Action RPG
Year: 2011
Developed by: Gameloft
Published by: Gameloft
Platforms: PS3, macOS, Vita
#333
Feeling Like: Crawling Dungeons
Dungeon Hunter: Alliance is heavily propped up on the 500 by the presence of three other people: Fuzz, Dave and Lipsit. You may recall this group made an appearance in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2. Without them, this would be about 75 spots lower. If you’re wondering why Dungeon Hunter: Alliance gets to be 333, and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 is stuck with 424, the main difference is Halifax in January vs. Victoria in July. No contest.
That’s the power of multiplayer and pleasant memories. I don’t want to sound critical of Dungeon Hunter: Alliance, it’s a fine action RPG. “Safe” would be an apt word, everything feels free of risk – the combat, the story, the mechanics, the level design. If you’ve played Diablo, Torchlight or anything similar, you’ve played Dungeon Hunter: Alliance. Whack whack whack, bad guys go down. Not a ton of strategy, or brains needed.
But that July on Grant St., we didn’t want anything mentally taxing. We wanted a fast, cheap, co-operative experience and we were in luck – it had only been released a few months ago and didn’t have awful reviews. Good enough for a bunch of college buddies getting together for a drunken weekend, just like old times.
Some house rules were quickly implemented. Since any player can access their menu/inventory at any time, it quickly turned into an argument.
Let’s go, new quest time.
Hang on, I’ve just gotta check one thing.
Ok, well if Henry has his menu open, I might as well check my talent tree.
Well if Fuzzy has his menu open, I’m going to open mine for no particular good reason.
Progress was halted. It was like trying to herd four children out of a candy store when the candy is free and their parents are encouraging them to grab more.
New rule: no menu checking, armor equipping, skills allocating, etc. unless everybody has levelled up. Once those conditions were met, we found a nice quiet demon-less corner and spent an appropriate amount of time making our Warriors, Rogues and Mages stronger. As you can see by the title screenshot above, there’s not a ton of personality or differences between the characters, so we did our best to diverge in terms of skills and roles. It worked, from what I recall.
All four of us didn’t make it to the end of the weekend. Nobody died, but one of my buddies had to head home early….I want to say it was Dave but I’m not sure. He did live in Halifax and was in the process of purchasing a house, so that may have had something to do with it. I lack a fact checker (and an editor, you can probably tell), but the only reason I know for a fact somebody left is that I don’t have the four player achievement.
For once, I have proof!
The “One For All” Achievement remains underachieved, and it will have to remain so. I don’t have any desire to go back to Dungeon Hunter: Alliance and unless you have a bunch of pals who just want a care free, dungeon crawling, monster slaying experience, you shouldn’t either.
I will say, the Rogue’s ultimate ability to acquire 200% attack speed made slinging arrows feel like shooting an Uzi. Terrifically satisfying.
For those concerned that my college buddy meetups consist of nothing but video games and drinking, fret not! I have a SECOND screenshot of proof that we DID go outside.
The 500 