I recently was able to go hands-on with Dungeon Hunter 5 at PAX South, and while I’ve been sworn to secrecy until now, I can finally reveal some of what you can expect from the next game in Gameloft’s long-running hack ‘n slash genre. Expect more hack ‘n slash action that the series is known for, but with a load of big structural changes that will try and make this series fit in with other free-to-play games in 2015.
The combat felt very fast and fluid – I chose to use a character wielding dual-crossbows, one of the five weapons you can choose from the beginning, and was able to swiftly deal out damage and progress quickly through the game, with auto-targeting helping out with the combat. The game is level-based, so Dungeon Hunter 3 (Free) haters have nothing to worry about, they’re not going back to the arena-driven gameplay any time soon. The levels have the occasional nook and cranny to find with hidden loot and treasure chests to discover. The game in general is very vibrant and colorful, and in terms of lore, it takes place after the demon war concluded in Dungeon Hunter 4 (Free), so expect a world that’s in a bit better shape than it was before.
Structurally, the game is going to do something quite welcome for RPGs, where you don’t really get locked down into one particular class. You start out choosing one of five weapons to use, but you aren’t locked out of using anything down the road, so if you find you want to change your play style, or just care about using the most powerful weapon you have without regard for fitting into a particular style of play, then go for it. You’re not locked in to anything.
This definitely will feel like a game modernized for 2015 and the current popular free-to-play tropes. You’ll pick up large amounts of loot, and can craft together different items in order to level up and eventually evolve weapons. There is a raiding system not unlike Clash of Clans (Free) and The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, where you build out a dungeon, placing minions and traps, and then have players fight you in order to win loot. The game is still level-driven in its singleplayer, though daily dungeons will also be available.
There’s also an asynchronous co-op feature where you can hire friends and other players’ characters to fight alongside you as an AI-controlled ally. These are features familiar to other games, for sure, but will all be rolled into one for this. I didn’t catch any whiff of synchronous multiplayer, at least in the time I got to demo of the game. The potions system was a remarkably controversial part of Dungeon Hunter 4, and the Gameloft representatives who demoed the game to me remarked that they took the feedback on that to heart, and are trying to make a fairer potion system here, though obviously time will tell how the tweaks they made to timers and currency-spending on potions will work.
And really, long-term is the thing to look at with Dungeon Hunter 5. There’s an intriguing-enough base, and I don’t think we’re collectively sick of loot-grabbing hack ‘n slash games quite yet. But as with this and many other free-to-play games, the question will be over time, will its gameplay and structure be fun after the hours spent playing it, and the days and weeks of interacting and returning to it? We’ll hopefully find out soon – Gameloft’s not ready to announce a release date, but you shouldn’t have to wait too long to play this.
Lonnie sucks.
Thank you for your contribution to this wonderful Comments section.
Could it be...sarcasm?! No, preposterous... ;)
In all honesty, I'm very grateful for this article, because I never knew about this game. It's such a fun little gem!
Lonnie still looks retarded tho
At least his face isn't on the thumbnail... It scares me every time it is... *shudders*
Is Lonnie gettin p-zaid?
What is lonnies accent? It sounds fake.
Like seriously, where is he from?
The Planet Lon
Eli,there is a better youtuber that does not really play ios games but he is super funny and pretty underrated.His name is Dashie,he seems loud but his humor is ridiculously loud.He has his own gaming channel (Dashiegames),1 main channel where he does skits and other funny videos in real life with his friends and some other youtubers (Dashiexp)and his second main channel where he does mail time and stuff like this (Dashiexp2).
Dashie has a lot of subs and.... Isn't that great
Compared to other famous youtubers he is underrated.
What does that mean underrated? Like he is really good but doesn't get the ratio other youtubers get which in turn means he isn't actually as good and this whole sentence was a waste? Lonnie is a waste of time. I think your gonna look back at these videos in a documentary when Lonnie is unmasked as the school yard murder rapist. Like look at that face! Pure SYMR right there!
Ratio? Not ratio, RATINGS
I understand you have a broad audience here at TA, so I won't get into specifics on why this is lazy journalism. But maybe, just maybe you could label the main thread post as "video" and not "news". It would help me, and I assume others that aren't interested in this type of content, to avoid it completely.
Okay changed my mind, I want to ask some questions if your willing to answer. In one of the earlier Lonnie threads you state that your doing them to add variety to the feed. If that is in fact the case then why aren't you highlighting other iOS youtubers?
I think you legitimately just wanted to post some of these, you could be busy ect, but then at some point after reading the comments: " you put your big boy pants on, and decided I'm the boss around here and I'll post what I want" and started trolling everyone? Confirm or deny?
And lastly I'm curious about how much traffic these are receiving compared to your other content. I did some quick numbers myself and roughly 70% of the comment are negative towards the videos. I also understand that not everyone that views them comments. With that said is he giving TA shoutouts in his new videos to increase traffic numbers? Are the number really that significantly higher?
In closing please change the topic description to "video" so its avoided easier. Thanks
Ps: Don't be too upset about the lazy journalism comment, we both know reposting someone else's videos is as easy as it gets.
1) As far as I know, there are no other iOS-only youtubers of the same caliber as Lonnie. If you know of any I'm down to hear suggestions.
2) We only post his vids because we like them, the salty comments are just a nice bonus :) But Eli and I both agree posting a Lonnie vid EVERY day is a bit much, so I believe we'll cut it down to like 2-3 a week.
3) I'm not sure about traffic, that's more of an Eli question, but I'd also guess that he might not be interested in divulging specific numbers. All I do know is that our re-posts of his videos do very well. Re: Lonnie giving us shoutouts, I don't believe so. I think the most he's ever done is retweet us a couple of times.
About tagging these as "video" - We may be able to do something like that. TA runs on a version of wordpress that's held together with duct tape and chewing gum. We actually have a category labeled "Videos" already, but for whatever reason when it's used it messes something up and the post will never show up on the front page. We tag these (and many other things for that matter) as "News" because our wordpress system requires we tag a post with one of a selection of categories. Those categories are "News, Reviews, Release, Upcoming Games, Updates, Sales, Podcast" ALL of our posts must have at least one of those tagged, and unfortunately sometimes there are stories that just don't fit into any of them. So "News" ends up being a really general tag for things. This is probably fixable, we just need to find the time and resources for our backend guy to look into it.
Thank you so much for answering this question and doing so in such a friendly manner. I've been curious about this stuff myself and I really appreciate you taking time out to answer and not just put the asker on blast. I may not love Lonnie, but I do love Touch Arcade and anything the helps TA have continued success is ok with me. If posting Lonnie's videos provide a service that attracts and keeps more users and advertisers than it drives away, well bring on more Lonnie videos I say. Thanks again, Jared.
Thank you! I really appreciate you taking the time to respond. I really do value the work you guys put in, and generally keep my crabbing to a minimum, think I might have just been highly thrown off by the new programming. Thanks again.
What is happening? Is this whole Lonnie thing just an extended joke...?
Guess my comment got deleted. Wasn't rude at all. Was just asking questions.
Question the Almighty power of the TA devs and get, Silenced. Can we please stop getting so offended by people's comments, get off our high troll horses, and run a globally syndicated game forum with a little bit of professionalism?
Your comment was caught in the pending queue, don't be so dramatic.
My apologies sir. Got slightly wound up. Care to answer any of those questions out of curiosity?
Sure!
Wow. I think everyone needs to just calm down. It's just a video. If you see Lonnie in the title, don't click on it if you don't want to watch it. Life is too short to get worked up over something like this.