I was hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have to write that headline.
I’ve been a Dauntless fan and player for many years now, getting into the game during its final alpha, playing through several beta tests, and watching it evolve from a matchmaking single-hunt multiplayer title to a semi-open Hunting Ground world. I’ve had the opportunity to demo new features with the devs at Phoenix Labs. And like many, I’ve watched the sad, meandering tailspin of the studio as it started to sink.
But even as it made changes I didn’t like and had business dealings I deeply disagreed with, I hoped against hope that the Awakening update would right the ship. That it would herald a comeback story for what has always felt like a plucky and full of character multiplayer title. I thought perhaps people were just dogpiling on the game on Steam because getting mad at games is the hip thing to do.
But I was wrong: The Awakening update is every bit as awful as veteran players categorize.
I went into this update with as clear of a mind as possible, though I also admit that I was carrying that hopeful bias that I described earlier. Obviously I had seen all of the negative reviews on Steam – the game still sits at “overwhelmingly negative” at the time of this article’s writing – but surely it was just a matter of adapting to the new-look Dauntless, right? Sure, a lot of weapons were taken away, but the ones left would be neat. Surely!
No. No they’re not: The weapons that have been left behind, earned either through being a veteran, through completing the mandatory starting tutorial quests, or buying them from the store with weapon tokens, are almost all some “legendary” weapons that have a gimmick that makes them kind of obtuse to use, and the fact that there are fewer weapon types on offer makes the offerings available now feel worse.
Personally, I’ve always loved the aether strikers (aka the big punch gloves) and had several loadouts that used multiple elemental types of this class of weapon. I’ve now been reduced to one elemental type, and if I want to take advantage of elemental weakness (and I do because that’s how you best a Behemoth), I am forced to use a sword or a war pike or chain blades instead.
I should point out that I’m not coming from a position of lack of skill here. I’ve got some pretty strong competency in every weapon type this game offers. I just have preferences, and I no longer have those choices available to me. If I want some ice-aspected aether strikers, I have to literally wait until Phoenix Labs deigns to add them as a purchasable option.
While I’m on the subject of weapon tokens: Remember how Phoenix Labs indicated that players would be able to get them through gameplay? Well, yes, technically that’s correct, but the challenges in question right now only award 10 of these tokens per week and you need 100 tokens to get a different weapon. Whether more tokens will be added later is an open question; rewards for later weekly challenges are hidden.
But hey, there’s a way to improve your weapons by unlocking talents in a tree for them. That’s pretty neat, right? Not particularly. It all kind of feels incremental, like the faux complexity of an ARPG that has a gigantic sprawling skill tree but each node only improves minor percentages – and only after eating a specific number of monster parts and currency. There’s also an infusion system that has you burn a material known as aetherite to juice up weapons, but that’s mostly given out either in the battle pass or by chasing boring challenges.
Are the different weapons that are available any fun, then? Well, perhaps, but again they’re all legendaries, which means they have gimmick moves that I could take or leave. Plus, I have to level them up by grinding it out in the Hunting Grounds for the most part before I could really dig in; the activities that I really enjoy doing, such as escalations, are level-locked to me until I both level up the weapon I like and level up the associated armor sets.
And none of this information was immediately obvious to me before entering a hunting map or escalation, by the way. The UI only tells me that my weapon level is correct but doesn’t take into account my armor level, meaning I was allowed into activities where I could be one-shot or two-shot.
Speaking of armor sets, I do mean that sets are the thing now: It feels as if you’re pretty much locked in to using a single monster’s entire suite of armor if you want to be effective in combat.
This was kind of a thing in years prior, to be honest, but the cells system that’s now in place, where you have to have multiple versions of the same cell either inherently available in armor or equipped to cell slots in order to get the benefit, really forces the issue. Gone appear to be the days when you could used mixed armor sets or use a couple of cells to get a little bit of benefit; if, for example, you now want the Knockout King boost that improves your KO power, you’ve got to have four cells equipped at minimum.
And yes, cells do get eaten the moment you decide to switch them out. This isn’t actually news necessarily – the game tells you multiple times that this is a thing – but the problem is that as you increase the levels of armor pieces, cell benefits that you equipped may suddenly become latent benefits, meaning you’ve effectively wasted some of the items you have because there was no way of knowing this was going to happen until after you leveled up some gear.
Now, I should point out that as a veteran player I’ve got dozens of these cells as illustrated in the screenshot below. That’s not the point; it’s the principle of the thing that matters.
All of these systems – the cells, the armor sets, the weapon trees, the weapon types themselves, the weapon infusions – end up limiting buildcraft, forcing players into what feels like extremely specific holes. And this is all exacerbated by the fact that veteran players are coming back to see all of their progress and their favorite weapons either gutted or wholesale removed.
So then perhaps this update isn’t meant for old salts. Perhaps it’s meant for the new arrivals. But if that’s the case, then the potential for annoying those players into buying things like weapon tokens or materials needed to infuse weapons feels even more likely – and predatory. They’re going to be forced either to grind it out or to open their wallets for the mats they need. Or, if they want the all-new weapon, then they’d better buy up the paid-for battle pass. Or wait for whenever it gets sold for weapon tokens.
What makes this most frustrating of all is the fact that the moment-to-moment gameplay – the slaying of Behemoths themselves – is still fun. I fell right back into some old weapon combos and practice. I almost immediately remembered monster tells (for the most part). I fell into those old gameplay habits and was enjoying myself. While not swapping weapons, by the way; weapon swapping feels completely useless unless you want to earn XP for two weapons instead of one.
I don’t like being angry over video games. There are better things to direct this energy. But my gosh did this game get absolutely gutted. Dauntless now barely registers as a husk of its former self, drained by what can only be assumed is a desperate final cash-out attempt before the whole house of cards finally tumbles over. And that’s a shame because I don’t want to wait for February to play another game like this. I want more of these kinds of titles, not less.
Dauntless had something special. But now that’s been cut apart completey. RIP, I guess.
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