Score: 7.5
This pokemonesque free-to-play mobile RPG is cute and fun with plenty of content but eventually I dropped my eager leveling. My enthusiasm plain died after hearing about the quite recent patch which made endgame pay-to-win.
Dungeon Boss is developed by Big Fish Games and that was pretty much the reason I tried out this game despite its silly name. And one can see very fast that it is very well done and polished. I personally really appreciate the art too – super pretty.
There’s plenty to do in the game without paying a cent. There are really no ads shoved to the players face, just a rare in-game shop offer. The game is easy to get into and it offers replayability as raiding the older dungeons remains beneficial. The turn-based combat keeps the stress levels relatively low while playing. The different game modes, quests and events offer variety and even some challenge to the play.
Instead of pokemons the player collects different heroes which are categorised into different types by their role, armour, speed and element. They usually start with a basic attack and one special attack, and need to be ascended to learn new abilities. There are a couple of ways to summon new heroes or upgrade the old ones, and several ways to collect items for leveling or ascending.
It’s really easy to get sucked into the game and “collect them all” definitely kicks in. I’d give the game a much higher score if it didn’t abuse the micro-payments. I haven’t played to the level cap myself but I’ve been reading that in the endgame people are pretty much screwed if they don’t spend RL money. Also what I’ve noticed from the shop so far, the prices are ridiculous.
I would definitely buy the complete game with 5 euros or something and be super happy with it. But I won’t be spending a huge amount of time leveling up a bunch of heroes that eventually need to be boosted with ridiculous sums of real money.
But as the game is very entertaining, I definitely can recommend it to anyone who thinks they aren’t going to aim for the actual endgame.
Lux Atarnia 