Dungeon Hunter: Alliance Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on February 25th, 2012

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Compared to some of the games that it has decided to price itself against, Dungeon Hunter: Alliance looks absolutely pitiful. Sitting this next to Uncharted, Army Corps of Hell or even Ubisoft's own Lumines, exposes Alliance for the cheap, nasty, outdated and outclassed little con job that it is. Expensive at a quarter of the price, this embarrassing waste of space has no business pretending to be a full retail game, and doesn't deserve to be on the PlayStation Vita.

The online mode is also glitchy and seems to make all of the above problems worse. If you can get a decent game going with three friends then this is all perfectly harmless, mindless fun. But it quickly becomes unendurably repetitive. The imagination in enemies and bosses that helped Diablo, and other more modern equivalents such as Torchlight, avoid such problems are not to be found here.

All you get is an iPhone game masquerading as a PlayStation Network game pretending to be a full price retail game, and not even a very good one at that.

Dungeon Hunter Alliance is not necessarily a bad game. It just doesn't do anything to make itself memorable or stand out from a crowd. Luckily, for Gameloft and Ubisoft, at this stage in the Vita's life there really isn't a crowd to stand out from for fans of this genre.

It's difficult to judge just how much demand there will be for this kind of game on Sony's handheld and the pricing seems bizarre after what was essentially the same game sold on PSN last year at a quarter of the price. What Alliance does is add another genre to the launch catalogue of the Vita and in that regard, more choice is always welcome but if there is a large market for dungeon crawlers then we can't help but think there will soon be much better offerings than this.

We all have played Dungeon Hunter in some shape or form in the past. This being the first of its kind on the Vita leaves many possibilities to what the genre can bring to the table of the handhelds. It is a fun hack-and-slash game with plenty of loot for those treasure hunters out there. There will be plenty of life left in this game considering the multiplayer is fun, however some technical hiccups leave much to be desired from this title. The story is weak but when your playing through the relatively short story with friends it can make up a little for the story's shortcomings.

Dungeon Hunter is solid, playable and enjoyable - but its world feels too hackneyed to endure.

So like I said earlier, Dungeon Hunter: Alliance for the PlayStation Vita is a tough sell at $40. If it wasn't for the cheaper versions of the game, I'd say almost without a doubt the game is worth what it was offering. But when you can get the same experience, and in some cases, a slightly better one in the PSN version for ? the price, it's impossible to say go out and buy it. Whatever exclusive content Ubisoft is planning would have to be pretty huge, and I'm kind of surprised they haven't announced what it would be already. My guess is we'll see a price drop very soon - and then without a doubt add this to your Vita library.

Dungeon Hunter: Alliance is a bland port of a bland game doing bland things on an exciting system. Nothing else to see here. Move along.

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