This past weekend was the Playstation beta test for DNF Duel, a new fighting game being developed by Arc System Works & 8ing, of Guilty Gear and Marvel 3 fame, respectively.
Everybody Was Dungeon Fighting
DNF Duel is based off the very popular(primarily in Asia) Dungeon Fighter Online MMO. The game is essentially a grindy beat-em-up that also serves as a love letter to fighting games, with several character designs and moves paying homage to games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear.
I was initially dismissive of DNF Duel when it revealed itself back in late 2020 because I knew nothing about DFO. That changed in the middle of this past year when I decided to give the game a shot since it’s free and runs on toasters. I’ve been in the vortex ever since. As someone who loves games like Turtles in Time and River City Girls, DFO is like crack. I get to juggle motherfuckers to death with sick ass characters. I love the game and all its characters just from playing the MMO. Once I was properly hooked on DFO, DNF Duel looked way more exciting.
I wanna say that DFO is definitely worth checking out. The game is fun solo and with friends, and very accessible, being completely free and light on system requirements. You can get the game on Steam, but it’s honestly better to just download it from the official website.
It’s also just a pretty exciting time to be a DFO fan. Along with continuing updates to DFO and the upcoming release of DNF Duel, two other games are in the works: Projects BBQ and Overkill.
Dungeon Fighter Online website
DFOArchive, A DFO resource website
The Men Behind The Dungeons
Despite my hype for the game as a new-found DFO fan, I was very worried about how the game would play. Yes, I love Guilty Gear, but if I’m keeping it a stack, 3/4 of the most recent Arc System Works games have kinda left me burned. DBFZ is one of the few games I actively dislike, Granblue Fantasy Versus is nice, but very boring, and GG Strive is a GG game primarily aimed at people who don’t already like GG. I was very prepared to get burned by this beta. Luckily, Arc Sys is not the team actually making the mechanics and whatnot. 8ing is. 8ing has a long track record of making janky, fun games. They made Bloody Roar, Marvel 3, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, and a bunch of other games that sit in that realm of “So bad it’s good”. That is exactly what I wanted for this game, and if this beta is any indication, it’s gonna be just fine.
Beta Dungeon
As expected of a beta of an awaited multiplayer game, the first couple hours were rough. The menu kept disappearing, it was hard to search for matches, and we kept getting disconnected when we finally did get in matches.
Eventually, they went into maintenance(multiple times, actually), leaving us to fight the CPU with randomly selected characters until the issues were resolved. Honestly, compared to the Strive betas, this went much smoother, at least going off my memory. DFO actually has lobbies that make sense, and it only took a night’s sleep for the servers to go from “I can’t play this shit” to “I’m playing muh video game”. Also, the CPU random select did me good since it gave me a chance to mess around with everyone a bit, which is VERY good considering that the beta only had online modes. There was no training mode or offline versus where you could safely learn things.
I personally would’ve loved a training mode, but it’s a online beta, not a demo. I could have tried harder to lab with some friends in dummy matches, but honestly, if we’re both sitting down to play this game, I say we actually play it and not get too bogged down. I did some practice matches with a friend, but I mostly just got in some lobbies and mashed vs whoever was around or said they wanted to play with me. Thankfully, the netcode was smooth enough to do that. I played anybody that pulled up to my lobbies, anybody whose lobbies I pulled up to, and some homies near and far. Games went smooth as butter even when up against a friend on wifi. While I would prefer lobbies and lobby searching up to par with +R, I’m just glad these lobbies are less frustrating than Strive’s if I’m being real.
The Smell of The Dungeon
The game is very fun! It’s not as fast as GG, but it can get kinda hectic. This game has some really big buttons and specials; just about about everyone sans Grappler and Striker have Under Night tier button range. 8ing has done a great job of adapting a lot of character specific buffs and effects into the game: Kunoichi can double jump and charge her moves, Striker has reverse beat, Berserker can enter his Frenzy state, etc. Lots of fun to be had. It feels good to move around, but I mainly played Kunoichi. Still, I didn’t have any real complaints about moving around when using other characters. There are chains, but they’re not as open as an Arc Sys or French Bread game. At least from me, there’s a lot of 2A > 5B >2B > specials. There is the ability to stagger normals, so you can create gaps to catch people mashing or trying to jump away from you. We’ve got some fast, but not invul backdashes,a guard cancel, a forward dodge,no air blocking, and what felt like pretty consistent and rewarding Anti Air moves. The really interesting part is the meter. Like in DFO, you have MP,and MP lets you do a lot of specials. While there is a skill button that gives you “specials”, they don’t cost a resource and can sorta be viewed as command normals while these are the proper specials.
Moves done with MP deal purely red health while normal skills leave some white health that can regained passively over time. Players have the option to use Conversion to convert their white health into MP and cancel an action they’re doing to neutral, working like a Roman Cancel tied to health rather than meter.
The game has very straightforward inputs not unlike Battle For The Grid. You have the option to do MP moves with manual inputs, allowing you to recover MP once you execute the move instead of when the move is finished. Like DFO, it’s combo system is based on juggles, and you’ll do a lot of canceling of your skills into mp skills into more mp skills to deplete your opponent’s lifebar.
While every character is simple to use, they have differing enough gameplans. Pressure, neutral, defense, etc feel different with each character I played, and that matters to me. I like doing different things when I pick different characters even if I myself have a general gameplan that I like to do.
I ended up putting the most time into Kunoichi and had a great time. I loved her mobility, skills, and combos(the ones I found, anyway). I was surprised that the ones I enjoyed the most besides her were Berserker and Grappler, although it makes sense since I do enjoy Strike/Throw characters with high damage potential. Them having decent buttons is a bonus. Seriously, as a HOS player in +R, it means so much to me to land a poke and get a conversion, however small, off it without some resource or a counter hit. I’m so serious.
Honestly, the game doesn’t feel too far removed from what I experienced and watched in DFO pvp. The UI is even the same. That’s a good thing, too. I’m enjoying this game as both a fighting game fan and a DFO fan.
The game drops in the summer of 2022, so it’ll be here pretty soon. Excited to see what else they bring!