I have been vaguely hearing about Dauntless for a while now in some form or another, usually from my influencer buddies who have been toying with the beta every so often. I didn't really know what it was, and from afar I thought it looked like a Fortnite-skinned Runescape. I quickly was informed that it's a Fortnite-skinned Monster Hunter instead.
With The Division 2 not wanting me to play its raid and Destiny's next expansion still two weeks away, I dove into Dauntless for a spell to see how it was. I played a bit of Monster Hunter World previously, which I enjoyed, but the longer it went, the more convoluted it became, and I never got past its issues with UI and combat.
Dauntless solves most of that, and it does it for free, supported by cosmetic microtransactions and a battle pass, and a few elements that seem like they *could* veer into being a bit pay-to-win, but nothing all that extreme I've found yet.
This game is Monster Hunter, simply stripped down to its base elements. You're in a steampunk-ish fantasy town, you hunt monsters with a series of upgradable weapons, and farm specific monsters to make armor sets based on the materials you glean from them. There are potions, grenades, a few skills on cooldowns, but nothing terribly complicated, and you're able to hop in very quickly and just get in there and slay.
In one day I went from level 1 to level 11 and capped out a Shrike armor set and axe at the current max, given that neutral upgrade orbs were plentiful. I really, really like the character design and animation, which features a great character customization system and a transmorg system that I wish more games would emulate.
The combat-reward loop is solid so far. I've found myself able to craft a lot more things in a lot shorter period of time than I did with Monster Hunter, and I've enjoyed experimenting with the six different types of weapons, which don't feel overwhelming because there aren't like, two dozen of them. Each has their own distinct feel to them, and I'm looking forward to unlocking more upgrades for them in time.
There are some pretty clear limitations Dauntless has, however, despite emulating Monster Hunter for its core concept. This is a F2P game, while MHW is big-budget, triple AAA. The biggest place you notice this is during the hunts themselves which are giant, empty areas that at least at lower levels, contain nothing but the central monster itself. There are no sprawling MHW zones with smaller bits of wildlife around, and no multiple boss-level monsters on a map that spar with one another. Each zone is simply a boss fight with 1-3 phases, and you go back, rinse, repeat.
