Dungeon Hunter 2 Spells a Winner
by Dave Loft
The sequel to Dungeon Hunter was recently made available for Android and it’s improved over the original in every way. I enjoyed Dungeon Hunter but I stopped playing after a couple hours. Dungeon Hunter 2 has sucked me into several hours of compelling gameplay and has shown me no sign of letting go.
When the game starts you have your choice of three classes; warrior, rogue and mage. Once you get going you will have a further options to customize with one of two specializations and dozens of skills. The game is easy to use, which really goes a long way to making it accessible. The menu and character customization screens are easy to navigate, which is often an issue with RPG’s.
The controls feel much better than the first, especially with the 3 spell buttons being separated which makes them much easier to hit in the middle of action. The only issue I had with control was often getting stuck on objects around the world.
One of the big benefits of the game is in it’s save game simplicity. Since your game save is done automatically. If you have to quit and take care of something more important, your right where you left off when your ready to resume. Which is essential for an RPG on a mobile phone.
For anyone familiar with the first game, you’ll be impressed to know that Dungeon Hunter 2 is five times the size of the first. The variety of levels and enemies are also more diverse, keeping things from getting boring. Dungeon Hunter 2 has a total of 14 Acts and a maximum character ranking of 100. My character was only at level 25 by the time I hit Act 9. So if you find it too difficult, just grind away till you rank up a few levels before taking on that hard to beat story mission. It’s surprising how quickly those earlier challenging enemies become a cakewalk.
The graphics in Dungeon Hunter 2 have improved greatly since the first one. The textures are crisp, the animation is smooth and the lighting effects are impressive. The framerate has dropped a bit from the first game but considering the style of gameplay, it’s not much of a hindrance.
My biggest issue comes down to the dialogue and character interaction. There are no voice actors at work here, so expect lots of reading. Considering the sheer amount of dialogue and the tradition of RPG’s to not use voice acting, it’s not surprising. But it would have been nice to have more camera angles and character animation during this interactions. It may be nit picky but it does leave the world feeling quite static.
It’s great to see them add online and local co op play allowing you to take your character online or off at whim. It’s a great experience when played with someone you know. But you will want them to be beside you when you play so you can coordinate better. Playing online and having no way to communicate with one another takes away from the experience and just makes it more difficult. I would love to see some voice chat capability, this is a phone after all. But it’s hard to fault the game for something that no mobile game has implemented thus far.
This is a traditional Action\RPG through and through and doesn’t make any changes to that tried and true formula. It really is just Diablo II for Android and ultimately it doesn’t get much better than that.
Score: 9.5
Official Website: Gameloft.com
For those interested, the game is only for high end of phones and must be purchased from Gameloft directly. Games can be paid with credit card or PayPal and with some carriers, carrier billing is an option. Any game purchased can be easily re-downloaded by heading to gameloft.com on your phone and selecting ‘My Downloads’ at the bottom of the page. Login with your email or phone number and any game purchased available for that model will appear. Dungeon Hunter 2 will occasionally check for updates when launched and download them automatically if needed.
email: android.support@gameloft.com
phone: 1-800-910-3186
Letters from Dave 
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