Dungeon Fighter Online Mini Review

Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO) if a great new Korean MMORPG from NeoPle and published by Nexon. In the vast world of free to play MMORPG titles available to gamers these days, DFO really does not seem like anything special. It's not a graphically intense game nor does it require a powerful PC to play. It's not filled with vast open 3D worlds to explore but is more of a large 2D side-scrolling world reminiscent of many great classic arcade fighters.

The fact of the matter is however, that even though DFO may seem a bit "Simple", believe me it's no lightweight! It not only caters to the MMORPG fan but the arcade gamer in all of us as well. This game is very hard not to love! I guess that's why that it fast became such a hit on the S. Korean and Chinese MMO ranking charts. Easily surpassing many more massive 3D MMORPG titles.

Being an old school arcade gamer and MMORPG fan I took to DFO like a moth to flame. It easily combined the best of both worlds and I found myself playing it for hours on end. It really reminded me of an old arcade hit I used to love called "Dungeon Magic", a game that I dropped an unbelievable amount of quarters on back in the day. So its no wonder I enjoy playing DFO with my friends and family.

One thing that sets it apart in my mind is then unlike most other MMORPG games, your not competing for space on the battlefield, when you enter a dungeon to fight you have it all to yourself or your party. It literally becomes like a multiplayer arcade game. Once you have completed the dungeon and defeated it's boss your teleported back to town with everyone else. So that means DFO is simply great to play either alone or with friends and family.

The game itself has 5 different classes of characters to choose from, the slayer, fighter, gunner, mage, and priest, all with thier own unique skill sets and sub-classes. Also like any other good RPG, there are quests and plenty of other things to do to keep the game flowing smoothly, there are even times where your caught up on all your quests and you can do some dungeon runs just for the experience or to gather goods or supplies for repeatable quests or later use.

There is also wide variety of weapons and armors available through the shops, monster drops, gamble pots, or quests. Each class has its own set of weapons and bonuses for wearing armor that's well suited to your specific class. You can also use NX to purchase Avatar Items to customize the way your character looks and add even more buffs to your stats!

My favorite class, and what appears to be one of the least played, is the Priest. Out of the Priest's 3 sub-classes of Crusader, Monk, and Exorcist, I went with the Crusader. A sub-class that has a great deal of defensive and party oriented skill buffs that can be a great benefit to you and your party's trips though the dungeons. The Crusader may not have the strongest attacks but he is more than capable of holding his own.

In this gamers opinion DFO is by far one of the best and funnest games I have played in a long time. Now that my oldest kids and friends are playing it as well, the experience is all the better, I can see myself playing this game for a long time to come. DFO offers up the best of many different worlds and is great fun for both the casual and hardcore gamer. It's also a "family friendly" game and that to me is a great selling point. Not only that, but its not hard to learn to play, so its great for any skill level from novice to pro.

If your an MMORPG fan and like good old arcade style gameplay then you have to give DFO a try. Even if your not, this game is in a class all of its own, I bet you will still like it. It's addictive and fun yet you can easily walk away and return later. If I had to rate DFO on the classic 1 to 10 scale, it would easily be an 11!

I am working on a short video to show off some of the gameplay. As soon as I have it finished I will add it to the blog.

Official Website: http://dungeonfighter.nexon.net

The DFO Van. How sweet is that? :)

Company of Heroes "Collectors Edition"

I know this review is a few years too late, that's probably the main reason I am doing it, I did not really decide to give this game a try until now. Perhaps not one of my better decisions.

I am a huge RTS (Real Time Strategy) gamer, and I got hooked on one specific series way back in the DOS days of PC gaming, and that was Command & Conquer. Since then just about every other RTS I have played outside of the C&C series just never measured up. So I pretty much gave up on trying other military style RTS games and stuck to the universe of games I enjoyed so much.

When Company of Heroes (CoH) came out, I knew quite a few people that said how great it was, and it got recommended to me several times. I simply never gave it a second thought. I was still getting my RTS fix in C&C Red Alert 2 and Generals and waiting for more news on C&C 3 Tiberium Wars. Heck I was even still playing C&C Renegade online and moderating one of the then popular servers for it. Now even though I was not a big fan of Generals as a C&C title, it was in itself, still a pretty good RTS, and finding people to play Red Alert 2 with online was also not hard to do since the game was still quite popular.

I was also not so sure I wanted to play an RTS based on World War II. Even though I was a fan of "modern" FPS set in the era, such as the original Call of Duty, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The thought of an RTS based on the period just never really crossed my mind. When it came to my RTS gaming, I was more into modern or futuristic based weapons and units.

When C&C 3 was released, as you can imagine, I got myself a copy and tore into it. Now don't get me wrong, I do like C&C3, I was just not very pleased with changes EA made to the game and its gameplay that had been a staple of Westwood's universe for so long. Westwood being gone however, I adapted, and ended up liking the game a great deal. All this time Company of Heroes was out there and people were still telling me how good of a game it was. Then of course, Red Alert 3 came out and again CoH was pushed from my mind yet again.


Well I was out shopping with my family one day recently and my oldest son and I ran across the Collectors Edition of Company of Heroes, new and still sealed, and real cheap. So we decided to pick it up and at last give it a try.

The first word that comes to mind is "Brilliant", followed by me wondering why in the hell I did not give this game a shot a lot sooner. It has been a long time since an RTS game outside of the C&C Universe had held my undivided attention. So much so that I actually stopped playing Red Alert 3 in favor of CoH.

This game is simply a blast and a great deal of fun. The fact you can get right down on the battlefield and view the action from the units point of view is incredibly fun, there are virtually no camera angle restrictions at all. When you take your camera down to ground level the game presents itself more like an FPS or third-person shooter than an RTS.

It's also "Squad" based so your not having to control individual soldiers. This is very nice since you can take weapons and such left on the battlefield and use it. So you can easily take a squad of six soldiers, direct them to take a heavy machine gun or mortar left on the battlefield, and you now have 2 different squads at your command. One soldier, the other a HMG or Mortar squad. I can not count how many times this has worked in my favor in a battle.

The AI is also quite impressive, it's easy to see that Relic took a great deal of time to make the units behave like real soldiers would in a given situation, such as taking over on thier own when they come under fire. This cuts way down on "micro management" and lets you focus more on the entire battle. It makes for a much more impressive battle since you can actually see all of it as it happens and you not stuck making sure each and every unit is doing something and not just standing there getting killed.

The AI in Skirmish matches are no pushover either. I find myself playing the Skirmish mode a lot and really do like the fact the AI seems to play harder than you would expect.

The other plus is the graphics, when all of the setting cranked to maximum, it really does immerse you the battle. I was very impressed with the games "eye candy". The ability to view a freeze frame of the entire battlefield after the match is over is very impressive. It really does show off the games engine and graphics capabilities. Not to mention you can get some really cool screenshots that way.

The last point that really sells me on CoH is the maps although I think they would be better labeled as "Environments". Just about everything in the environment is reactive, there are very few things that are just there and do not react to whats going on around them. You can call in an artillery strike then your troops can actually take cover in the crates left behind. Buildings, non-combative vehicles, crates, fences, just about anything on the map will react accordingly if shot, damaged, or destroyed. This adds a great deal of realism to the game in my opinion and is a HUGE selling point for me.

There are just too many good points to this game to mention. What I can say is that I really do regret not trying it a lot sooner than I did. It also makes me wonder if I should have given World at War more of a chance that what I did. Who knows, perhaps I will go back and give that game a try as well.


On a side note, I was quite amused when I noticed in-game that Relic had put "EASUXS" (EA Sucks / Electronic Arts) on thier allied jeep in the form of leet (1337) speak. If you look, its printed on the jeep in 3 locations as 3A5UX5 (It's also located on the front bumper). I really got a good laugh out of that and it just looks perfect on the jeep. If you did not know what you were looking for, you would probably never see it. I often wonder if they put it there as a way to express thier dislike as to what EA did to the C&C Universe of games, mainly with Generals at the time CoH came out.

Perhaps that's why I like CoH so much, it reminds me of all the things I used to love about the old school C&C games from Westwood, just "modernized"...

All I do know for sure is if your an RTS gamer, and have not yet tried this game, you have no idea what your missing. Company of Heroes has got to be one of the best RTS games I have played in a very long time, and I don't say that lightly. Great job Relic Entertainment!