Dauntless Review

Dauntless Dauntless is a free-to-play action RPG published by Phoenix Labs where you are tasked to join hunts for huge creatures called Behemoths, kind of like we used to see in the Monster Hunter series. The game is currently on Closed Beta for founders but will be completely free to play on launch. Let’s see how Dauntless holds up for now.

First thing you’ll notice about Dauntless is that it features a more stylized art than what we see in classic MMORPGs, like the style we see on Fortnite, Sea of Thieves or Paladins. This detail fits the world perfectly and makes it different than its biggest competitor, Monster Hunter World.

Creating a character is an exciting procedure since you choose two parents and your facial details are chosen based on that. Of course there are sliders and other changes you can do to change your appearance but that offspring looks mechanic is a nice touch nonetheless.

Fighting in Dauntless feels natural and follows pretty basic controls. If you are using a mouse instead of gamepad you’ll see that left click is a light attack and the right one a heavy attack, with not much to learn from there. You have lots of other abilities and combos based on the weapon of your choosing. For example, with the hammer you can shoot projectiles like it was a gun and the sword lets you dash to avoid attacks.

Biggest thrill of the game though are the hunts. After you choose your monster target the matchmaking begins and you are grouped with 3 other players to join the hunt. If the matchmaking takes too long you will be thrown into battle alone or with 1-2 more players.

Behemoths are amazingly created, have their own battle patterns and dynamically get tired and injured as the fight progresses. After you slay it you will be awarded with sever ingredients to craft new armor and weapons as well as upgrade the ones you already own.

This kind of gameplay can get kind of boring after some hours. Even though its progression and crafting systems are stellar, it needs a lot of grinding to get what you want. The gameplay gets repetitive as you have to slay the same Behemoths again and again to obtain ingredients.

However, the game is currently on Closed Beta so we might se some changes when it goes live. For what it’s worth, Dauntless is a fun to play and thrilling title so you might as well grab some friends and try it out when it releases.