The nice thing about Next Feast was finding games that you would not have liked at all after playing them. Dungeonborne hit a lot of the keywords and screenshots of what I'd look for in a game. I was almost expected for the “pvp” part but it did say single player or even co-op. So, I thought there must be a single-player experience.
Needless to say, I knew I was, and this game was for me doomed the moment I went to play, and the game warned me that I was playing solo in a team match. Not only that but I would if I got killed lose everything, I had on me.
I’m just going to say it now. I don’t care for lootable pvp games let alone pvp games. There is one thing when a game has options to avoid pvp or ways for you to escape with your stuff intact if you are paying attention. Games like Runescape where if you don’t want to pvp you just don’t go in the areas it’s permited in.
It’s another thing when people enter a battleground with up to three on a team and you are just solo. Thankfully I entered with just starting gear and whatever I managed to loot out of a chest.
I also found it rather strange how long it took to loot or even open doors in this game. If I was actively engaged and able to loot quickly and escape via opening doors, I'd consider it to be a high priority.
Instead, it felt like it took ages to loot. Looting in this game makes you feel like you are leaving yourself open for an easy attack that could get you killed.
I wish games like this would be a bit more upfront that it is a battle royal or whatever you want to call it. Instead, it’s calling itself a dungeon crawler action RPG with player versus environment elements. Yep, I did manage to kill some NPCs before going down. That was about it.
Then you see the small mention of PvP and you think well that must just be an option. Not only can you not play this thing at least during the alpha in a single-player mode as far as I could understand. This is yet another one of those games where there is no way of playing it offline.
I was also not shocked when I checked the forums and found many players like me bringing up the fact this game is not what it's trying to appear as. As you would expect a bunch of keyboard Pvp warriors were going around attacking people looking for a PvE game when the game advertises it is as such.
There are also just some giant red flags that would make me sure to stay clear of this game. They seem to already be in this early alpha rewarding people daily rewards for logging in. That alone is not a reason to not play a game. It makes you wonder why the game is so intent on you building a habit of logging in daily for rewards.
It was bad enough due to the way they have this game tagged that Steam things it’s going to be similar to games like Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, Diablo IV, and Elder Ring. This game is not going to be anything like that.
Then I noticed there is a marketplace icon on the main character select screen that is currently locked. Is this game going to have microtransactions? That is a big nope from me. Even more so since there is no price listed to purchase the game for at a future point in time.
Then all you must do is read the forms and you realize how toxic this community already is for this game and it’s only an alpha test. Add in the fact there was a button for voice chat in the game and I'm already looking into something else to play.
Final Thoughts
It was at least great to find out that what looked like a promising game was not even remotely going to be something I'd enjoy. Who has time these days to spend insane amounts of time gearing yourself up just to get looted by a team? I’ll save myself the trouble now and put this one on the ignore list.
The biggest issue always for games like these where you can be fully looted and take that gear into another game is exploiters and bots. It would be one thing if everyone started off as the same. It's another when leveling up and other things you do enhance your character moving forward giving you an advantage that you can lose due to someone cheating. Which games these days sadly suck at dealing with in a timely manner.
Other Content
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Dungeonborne
Disclosure: This is based on the demo that was available during the February Next Fest event in 2024.
