
Back in 2004, Capcom released the first title in the Monster Hunter series for the PlayStation 2, kicking off a long and successful franchise while also creating something of a new RPG sub-genre. Since then, Capcom’s series has remained the undisputed king of this sub-genre, but many other players have arrived in recent years with their own take on the formula. The latest of these is Dauntless, a new free-to-play release from Phoenix Labs that endeavours to remove the more intimidating barriers to entry that Capcom’s storied franchise has become known for. In so doing, it also manages to craft an enjoyable and easily approachable experience that keeps the pressure of microtransactions to a minimum.
The premise of Dauntless is simple enough, perhaps a little too much so. You, a Slayer, reside in a floating world called the Shattered Isles, which also happens to be home to all manner of voracious Behemoths. These apex predators are a serious threat to the ecosystem of the Shattered Isles, not just because of their destructive behaviours, but because they feed on Aether, which is a rare magical substance that keeps the islands floating aloft. Naturally, it’s important that these Behemoths be culled as quickly as possible, so it’s the responsibility of you and all the other Slayers from the town of Ramsgate (no, not that Ramsgate) to hunt them down.

The gameplay in Dauntless follows a familiar yet rewarding loop in which you progress your character not via traditional level ups or stat gains, but purely through the equipment they wear. The only way to get better gear is to hunt monsters, harvest their corpses for valuable parts, and use what you can to prioritize new weapons and armour that will enable you to take on even tougher monsters with even more valuable parts. At its heart, the gameplay is really just that simple, and though it may sound like the sort of thing that becomes repetitive with time, the incentives just beyond your reach have a way of keeping you up far too late in the night for just “one more hunt”.
Part of what makes that gameplay loop so addictive is how streamlined and almost arcade-like it is by design. Unlike its clear inspiration, Dauntless is not a game that revels in wasting your time with tedious ancillary quests or overly expansive arenas. Every quest is solely about killing a specific monster or group of monsters, and the arenas in which you fight them are just at the right size that they don’t feel too large or too small. And while fights can take up to thirty minutes if you’re really throwing down with something mean, most take around ten minutes; just long enough that you can do them one after another for quite some time without feeling too fatigued. It’s clear that Dauntless is a game about getting you to fight the monsters as quickly and often as possible, and though inventory management and exploration play a role in that, they never overshadow or distract from the main event.

Prior to entering a hunt, your prep work will often make the difference between an easy takedown or a long and ultimately unwinnable battle of attrition. Almost every NPC in the small hub town will offer some basic service, such as item crafting or weapon forging, and gear can then be easily assigned and managed via an equipment menu. Most monsters have a specific element they wield, such as fire or light, and though you don’t strictly need the ‘winning’ element to take the beast down, it certainly makes things considerably easier.
You have a diverse array of weapons to choose from as well, ranging from axes to bladed gauntlets, and each of these usually have specific models that are derived from killing a particular monster. For the most part, you can choose whatever weapon best matches your playstyle and roll with that, although some hunts benefit from bringing a specific tool. One beast may have a tail that can be cut off with a sharp blade while another may have a hard outer shell that needs something hefty to crack or break it. We rather appreciated this gentle nudging towards other weapon classes, as it ensures that you must maintain a fairly diverse armoury while also showing you what other weapon types play like. Though they all follow the same basic hack ‘n’ slash principles, one weapon class may favour button mashing while another requires more surgical and thoughtful play. Whatever weapon you choose, controls are always responsive and attacks feel like they have sufficient weight behind each hit, making for a satisfying combat experience.

This is helped in no small part by the Behemoths, which of course pose a stiff challenge and demand that you stay dialled into their every movement. Each monster has specific tells that signal different attacks, and a large part of the fun of fighting each beast is learning where the gaps are in their animations and exploiting them for your gain. The Shrike, for example, has an attack where it quickly flies low to the ground toward a nearby target, but if you know when to start the windup for a heavy attack, you can interrupt its flight and bring it crashing down. The path to mastering a monster’s fight patterns is long and difficult, of course, but defeats and mistakes never feel cheap or unearned. Dauntless is very much a game of knowing when to press the attack and when to be patient, and learning the specific application of either playstyle is part of what gives the gameplay such longevity. You’ll succeed or fail because of your own understanding of the monster and its behaviours, and no amount of gear or consumable items is going to make up for a lack of understanding. You can’t brute force your way through difficult fights, and this focus on a more cerebral and skill-based gameplay greatly weighs in Dauntless’s favour.
To ensure that you keep moving at a measurable pace, Dauntless employs a couple of different tiers of “Mastery Levels” that all ultimately pay into your overall Slayer Level. For example, every Behemoth has specific milestones to hit – such as killing it with a full armour set of its own design or dealing a certain amount of damage to it with a specific element – and fulfilling these milestones will serve to move up your mastery level of the beast.
Additionally, you can raise up mastery levels for each weapon class in much the same way, and when you take these two tracks together, it makes for a nicely compelling experience that ensures you’re always moving forward in some way. If, for example, you’re having a tough time taking down a Behemoth and you don’t have a high enough Slayer Level to further enhance your gear, you can take on other Behemoths or practice with other weapons to push your Slayer Level higher and grant you access to better boons. The point being, progression in Dauntless is seldom a straight line. Rather, it’s a series of gates and barriers that you can pass in myriad ways, taking the path that you feel is best to get there. This focus on freedom helps to keep the experience from getting too stale or restrictive, but it never overwhelms you with options; new weapons and Behemoths are introduced at just a gradual enough rate that you feel ready for new challenges and objectives when they come.

As an online game, Dauntless is also blessedly easy to jump into and play with others. You can always go on solo hunts, but the default setting will matchmake you with three other hunters so you can take a Behemoth down as a team. If you’d rather play with friends, that’s an easily accessible option, too, provided that everyone has an Epic Games account. Perhaps the best feature about this online, however, is the fact that it’s both cross-play and cross-progression friendly; meaning you can play with anyone on a platform that runs Dauntless and that you can carry your progress between those platforms as you see fit. This cross-platform functionality is seamless and simple to use, which makes Dauntless for the Switch a compelling proposition given how easily the console can slot into other areas of your life on the go.
From a presentation perspective, Dauntless, unfortunately, doesn’t manage to stick the landing quite as well. It adapts a low-poly, Fortnite-esque visual style that’s charming enough, but the performance positively chugs whether you’re playing docked or handheld. In the hub area of Ramsgate, we experienced framerates that seemed to dip into the 10-15 FPS range, and though the hunts hold a lot closer to the 30 FPS target, there’s still plenty of dropped frames to be seen. On top of this, loading times (particularly at startup) are annoyingly long, which contrasts harshly with the zippy and otherwise fast-moving flow of the rest of the game. Now, Phoenix Labs has already been active in patching out the more egregious performance problems and has pledged to continue diligently optimizing the experience as time goes on, but the experience at the time of writing is, for lack of a better phrase, less than ideal. If you have another platform that can better run Dauntless, we’d suggest you stick to that one and dip into the Switch version only if you’re particularly taken by the convenience of portable play.

Before closing out this review, we feel some special attention must also be paid to the current balance of microtransactions in the in-game economy. As a free game, Dauntless could certainly keep the pressure on players and gate better content and items behind paywalls, but we’re happy to report that microtransactions are kept to a fair and balanced standard. The nature of the gameplay is to grind for parts ad infinitum, and though paying real-world money can help to cut down on some of the grind, we didn’t feel in any place like Dauntless was leaning too far into ‘pay to win’ practices. The majority of the rewards from paying real money are simply cosmetic things that, while certainly nice, aren’t necessary to take down specific Behemoths. Sure, if you shell out ten bucks for the seasonal pass, you’ll have more resources to spend on gear and more armour dyes to choose from, but we never felt seriously disadvantaged going through the game without paying money.
Conclusion
Phoenix Labs has done a great job with Dauntless, designing a game that takes the better parts of Monster Hunter and pares them down into a rapid-fire and easily accessible action experience that’s sure to demand dozens of hours of your time once it gets its hooks into you. On top of this, you’re never hit over the head with microtransactions and it’s easier than ever to play with friends on other platforms. Though this Switch port mightily struggles from a performance perspective, it’s still enjoyable on a consistent enough basis that such issues can be mostly overlooked. It literally costs you nothing more than time to give Dauntless a try, and we’d highly recommend you give it a shot.
Comments 52
As soon as I found out you have to be online to play, it was a no-go for me.
Sometimes, I just want to play a game and I don't always have an internet connection.
This game needs a offline single player mode. I'd pay money for that.
Yeah, I played this and fought about two monsters before deleting the game. Framerate issues, takes forever just to start one quest, you HAVE to do this online...
No version will make a difference here, but the monsters are flat-out boring. I've seen videos of later monsters and they did the same move constantly.
Played a bunch of hours on the PS4 and it is quite fun with friends. The frame rate was also pretty bad there. Will probably download this version and transfer my character.
i put this down pretty fast, didn't bother getting new armor, used the lance but the move pool was too shallow and the way the character moved screamed online game to me. i was pretty optimistic about thought it'd answer what was stopping me from trying monster hunter(no damage display and at the time seemed there was always the next one announced) but i ended up playing the monster hunter demo more than this. btw isn't it like against the point for the equipment not to resemble the monsters?
@Joeynator3000 don't forget to revoke permission for them to idk something to do with your nintendo account.
A game that's fun in short bursts, but takes longer than you'd think to actually have a decent play session. This is the irony of Dauntless.
I have played both versions (PS4 /switch) both have some lag, nothing to worry about.
At my home i have great internet and almost no lag. docked mode i have no framerate issues only sometimes undocked. But nothing big. Its a awesome game and for free. You dont need to buy the ingame stuff if u dont want.
@Joeynator3000 Your comment is all I need to see to say away from it. Capcom, where's our Switch exclusive MH already??
@Spoony_Tech I just want a remake of 4U at this point. lol
The title confuses "clone" with "rival".
If I want to play Monster Hunter, I'll play Monster Hunter. Also avoiding f2p like the plague.
@Spoony_Tech Unfortunately I don't think Capcom care about a Switch MH game. The success of MHW is all they care about now. they'll see a Switch only game as a step backward and not something they'll want to focus on. Just my opinion of course as I hope I'm wrong
I found it pretty fun in short bursts, and I like playing with the hammer weapon, but it pales in comparison to Monster Hunter. Still not bad though.
@Chayshirin The score confuses a "7" with a "6". Lots of confusion going on here.
smh you forgot the most important pro of the game
Petting the doggo
My daughter (12) has been playing this game for 2 days. No issues with lag, frame rate dips in the hub but seems really stable out in the wild. She's having a great time and it cost me nothing. We DO have really fast WiFi though - don't know if that makes a big difference but I haven't seen any major issues. Seems very playable and enjoyable to me. And we definitely will NOT be spending any $$ within the game - no need.
I felt that once you made through the tutorial, the game opened up a bit more. There are quite a few quests to go on.
The thing that I really liked about the game is that you don't have to spend as much time prepping for a hunt like you do in MH. I also like how the game scales the monsters based on your party, this allows a player to find matches much more quickly. In MH, once I started to fall behind my friends, it was hard for me to find any of my friends wanting to help me on my missions, it didn't make sense, from their progression, to join me.
Tried it on PS4, thought it was decent but not for me. Tried it on Switch today, my opinion hasn’t changed.
It definitely struggles in town, but once on a hunt I didn’t have issues. Granted, I hunted solo. Visually, the game is muddy in handheld mode and my character looked blurry. I’m kind of surprised since all I’ve seen of the game is the town, and then the small zones for hunting. It’s not like MHW where you have vast areas to explore.
I did like a couple of things about the game though.
#1) The chain blades. Weapons like these need to be in games more often as they’re incredibly fun to use.
#2) I seamlessly started the game today and I was instantly playing my level 4 character that I started on the PS4. I don’t even know how as I didn’t log in or anything on Switch. Unless I linked profiles a while back on their website or something. 🤷♂️
@PlayedNSlayed To be fair, Monster Hunter was always a PS game first and foremost. It was impressive that they even made the jump to 3DS and obviously their vision for moving forward in the series just couldn’t be done on Switch. Generations is decent but World is a step forward. No point sacrificing their vision for a Switch port and you know fine well Switch fans would have a meltdown if they got a scaled back entry in the series despite me personally thinking 4U is better than World.
@nessisonett
I just hope the success of MHW doesn’t make Capcom forget about making a Dragons Dogma sequel. I find it to be a far superior game to the MH formula.
I have actually had quite a bit of fun from this game, and that is coming from a pretty hardcore Monster Hunter player. I like how it takes the frills out of the gameplay for a simpler experience. If I want that, I will play Monster Hunter.
Rather just keep playing Monster Hunter World. I can play something else on the GO.
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is a Switch exclusive Monster Hunter game, and a damn good one at that for those looking for Monster Hunter on the Switch. It also goes on sale pretty frequently so subjecting yourself to a watered down, online only, poorly optimized, microtransaction riddled version of Monster Hunter is really not worth it.
Tried this and was very unimpressed. It's super janky.
Has some performance issues, but nothing that stops the actual gameplay during the hunt. Fun F2P game with cross play to boot. Your not losing anything with giving it a try.
Wasn't very impressed deleted quickly , other version are supposed to have technical issues as well. 7 sounds very generous
@NorrinRadd
"And we definitely will NOT be spending any $$ within the game - no need."
So, the game isn't really for me, tried it and wasn't really that impressed. But from what I hear, this game is micro-transactions done right.
I used to play Warframe, and there was "no need" to spend any money playing it. But I did, because people worked and provided a game (that isn't predatory in nature) that I enjoyed.
If a game that's provided "free" is monetised the right way, I will ALWAYS spend (a sensible amount of) money if I play and enjoy it.
Of course, ultimately it's everyone's prerogative to decide if they choose to support a developer (even in a small way), or not.
A lot of these comments suggest that MH isn't an offender of "boring" repeatative combat mechanics of their monsters.
I do not think I have been hit by a Nargacuga once since Tri. Let alone anything a Deviljo has dished out ever.
Not necessarily defending the AI (it has improved since my initial foray in Alpha). However, toting about as if MH has dominated the market with diverse and unpredictable attack sequences in their monsters would be an outright lie.
@nessisonett
I've been playing Monster Hunter since Freedom on PSP, and love 4U, but personally I think Iceborne has been the peak of the series so far. It's literally the only game I play on my (Rathalos edition) PS4 Pro.
I do miss the Meownster Hunter minigame though.
@ObsidianEleven Ooh, I haven’t got Iceborne yet so is it worth getting back into the game for?
@nessisonett
I'm clearly a fanatic, so this is a completly biased opinion. But Yes!
Scarred Yian Garuga makes it completely worthwhile.
@ObsidianEleven this is how I feel about games that are free to play and do the microtransactions correctly, I'll spend money on these games to support the devs. I dropped $30 on Dauntless because I like where they are going with the game, and want to support them continuing to improve the game.
@MisterKorman
Dauntless uses an Epic account? If so then that explains it. I tried Fortnite on PS4 once, and then once again on Switch before deleting it.
Thanks for the clarification.
I mostly play on pc but i've been taking it to bed on the switch and it plays pretty well. It's in need of another optimization pass but Im glad to be able to play the game on the train.
Enjoying this thoroughly on my Switch. Cross play with my PS4 is a blessing. This can def be patched up a bit more but it's not broken or unplayable. You do have to grind to learn the systems but they are not overly complicated. The game is just plain fun.
@Paraka This is kinda my thought process. Monster Hunter definitely has better animations and AI, but I didn't think Dauntless was too far behind. Both of them are pretty easy to game once you get down your timings. It's really more of a test of patience than anything.
Loved Monster Hunter on my PHP and this is scratching the itch nicely. Some things it does better than MH and it is really, truly free (if you choose). Framerate and resolution seems a bit... low at times, but still enjoying it and hope they can patch it up a bit. Also, I love the amount of new content that consistently gets added to these type of games.
Played this for 30 mins, found it too shallow and performance not great/blurry graphics. Instead I picked up MH generations ultimate this last weekend and having a blast with it
I got into monster Hunter in 4U, and I sunk a lot of time into that game. I've been trying to get into Generations Ultimate, but there are just SO MANY gathering quests and small monster quests (I'm one of those people that have to complete every mission). I kind of burnt out early on MHGU. Dauntless though has gotten me back into hunting! Sending me straight into the action along with simplified armor systems and overall less prep time needed between hunts is awesome to me. Perfect to scratch that hunting itch. I do plan on going back to MHGU at some point though. Nothing can replace my love for the incredibly fun and complex play-styles in that game.
@Kalmaro
Expecting free to plays to have an offline mode? But serioulsy I don't think ive played a free to play game without having to connect to the internet yet.
@Big-Pepsi I have, there's tons on the android store. They usually lock a few things behind a pay wall generic stuff like "Oh hey, you want this costume or want this sweet item? Gimmie money"
Stuff like that.
@Kalmaro
Wow, that sucks, I could care less for online games having micro-transactions, but making single player games have some is an absolute sin.
Got to admit it's a chuggy mess!
@SwitchVogel - That's essentially the point. MH has been around for some time, it's not surprising how people respond to a challenge against the one that was practically the only one any can grind their teeth on. Capcom also has a lot of background push for their characters, that had a world built since before it was big. Now many defend it in a way that feels very "hipster." Everyone here is almost likely been in MH before it was popular.
Don't mix it up, I am also believe MH is the superior game. However, mechanically, the game hasn't evolved to make many of the claims early in this thread be, well, realistic. And Capcom has history where Dauntless, it's only way to go is new. New everything.
It has a lot that it needs to iron out on the Switch, that's for sure. Even Fortnite had to do this.
@Big-Pepsi Well, I mean, it's free. They have to make money somehow. Usually though it's cosmetic stuff like you'd see in normal free games. Sometimes though they do premium currency.
The only difference is that it's offline. Such is the life ofobile gaming, I guess.
I have a solid state drive on a 7th gen i7 with GTX 1060 and have long load times... I don't think that's a Switch problem.
The latest patch really improved the load times. It's actually a really fun game to play with friends. Me and my friends actually play it quite often.
@Ragdoll72 Nice to hear about the patch addressing some of the loading issues.
And yes, it's a fun game to play with friends. One of the few games that made cross-play from the start and easy to play with anyone. ^^
As much as I liked MH4U, Dauntless is giving me a more enjoyable co-op experience. As someone who doesn't have friends to play with & has lousy luck finding randoms willing to do anything more than bore through key quests, the matchmaking in Dauntless is a godsend.
I can get over framerate issues for that.
"Dauntless" is the most stupid videogame title I have ever seen. It's like the game designer learned a new word and wanted the whole world to know that he knew it.
@Spoony_Tech it arrived yesterday. It's called Monster Hunter Rise and it's amazing.
@Ragdoll72 @TheWingedAvenger. Ragdoll. Nice name. Are You a snowboarder? Just curious.
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