Dauntless is a free-to-play, streamlined (some might say watered-down) monster slaying game in the same vein as Monster Hunter. It’s not a Monster Hunter clone in the sense that it’s trying to emulate that series in everything it does. Dauntless is a game of the monster hunting genre, but does things its own way.
Your character is mobile – meaning, you can run around pretty quickly, which makes getting from point-A to point-B easy. Gathering ore, plants, and other crafting resources is sped up considerably as well.
The game is colorful with an animated art style. While Monster Hunter goes for the realistic, prehistoric aesthetic, Dauntless goes for an animated, colorful aesthetic. Think World of Warcraft meets Fortnite. The art style, look, and colors on the monsters looks fantastic.
The game runs well. I get 60 FPS on my semi-old laptop with all the settings turned up using my Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050 Ti video card.
It’s easy to get into a hunt. Simply go to your map in your sub-menu and pick a hunt. The game takes a few seconds to prepare it while you run around in the hub area. Then you’re in.
As colorful as the areas where you fight monsters are, there’s no other creatures except you and the monster you’re fighting. It makes the area feel dull and lifeless as a result. Since there’s no map, you just run around until you happen to see the monster you’re supposed to be hunting. The only thing present to distract you are resources for crafting, like plants and ore, lying around for you to gather.
Battling monsters is fun and it feels good to land a big hit on a monster. The attacks they come at you with are unique and keep you on your toes. You can improve your Slayer Level and your proficiency with the weapon you’ve chosen. The game gives you a letter grade on your monster-slaying efficiency after each fight. I assume it’s based on how quickly you defeat the monster and how much damage you take. The highest grade I’ve received so far is S++.
However, if you’re in the middle of a fight and the monster escapes by burrowing underground, there’s no way to tell where it’s gone. Again, you’re relegated to running around until you happen to come across it. In Monster Hunter, you have a map that tells you where the monster you’re hunting is as it moves. As far as I can tell, Dauntless has no map to help you track down the monster you’re supposed to be slaying. As a result, you don’t feel like you’re “hunting” the monster. It feels like it’s waiting for you to find it so the fight can resume.
Overall, the crafting feels watered-down and nerfed. The do-it-yourself crafting that Monster Hunter has always had doesn’t seem to be present in Dauntless. Even though you can collect resources for crafting when you go to fight a monster, you can’t craft your own items, and you don’t have access to your crafting resources in your inventory. The only way to craft is to talk to a special vendor who does it for you. This is a disappointing, as crafting potions and other items is a major aspect of the Monster Hunter experience.
However, crafting healing potions isn’t necessary, as you’re given five of them by default whenever you go on a hunt, and the monsters you hunt are always in an area where there’s a health recharge spot. It’s an opening in the ground where you can hold down the A-button to regenerate health. This waters down the difficulty significantly, which maybe was the point to make the game more accessible to new players.
The missions you go on aren’t timed like Monster Hunter, which I thought was nice at first – but when I realized that there isn’t much to do other than gather crafting materials, it ended up being irrelevant.
Even if you have the crafting items you need to improve your chosen weapon, the crafting vendor won’t upgrade it if you haven’t beaten enough quests. It makes the game feel gated and more linear as a result. If I have the items I need, let me upgrade how I want, please. Thank you.
VERDICT:
Overall, Dauntless is better than I was expecting, but it’s not blowing me away. I don’t think Capcom has anything to be worried about at the moment.
If Monster Hunter is the NFL of the monster-hunting genre, Dauntless feels like the XFL – hungry, colorful, and a little more in-your-face, but clearly not on the same level yet. I’m glad it exists and I hope it improves, but it’s hard to recommend it right now over any Monster Hunter game that’s come out recently.
Dauntless is still young compared to other free-to-play games out there, so maybe with steady improvements and additions over the months to come, it can be a true Monster Hunter competitor – but it’s not at that point yet. The free-to-play model makes it worth checking out, but keep your expectations in check.
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