Arcade beat-‘em-ups have been in serious decline over the years, with the freshest content being old titles repackaged as console downloads. Dungeon Fighter Online revives the old-school formula and makes it shine.
DFO tasks the player with cleansing the land of Arad of otherworldly beasts and monsters. There are five classes to choose from; Fighter, Mage, Slayer, Priest and Gunner, and the U.S. release adds the female Gunner. Each class also has four subclasses (Priest has three), ensuring diversity among the high-level players. When starting out, every class has a backstory presented as a manga-style cutscene, and although it’s nice to see the origins of each character, all you really want to do is get in there and start busting baddies.
The button-mashing action truly steals the show. Anyone familiar with games such as Streets of Rage or Final Fight will feel right at home. This is a 2.5D sidescroller (limited vertical movement) with three buttons relegated to jump, attack and special attack. Skills can be executed with hotkeys, but the beauty of DFO is that each skill can also be performed by a button-combo. To have a truly authentic arcade feel, DFO also supports gamepads, which are an absolute joy to play with.