Dauntless Reviews
What Dauntless lacks in layered complexity it makes up for with tightly crafted combat and rewarding progression, proving you don't need to cram every possible feature into a game for it to be great.
A fantastic multiplayer experience and vibrant art direction help make Dauntless stand out, despite feeling a little empty at times.
Though this Switch port mightily struggles from a performance perspective, it’s still enjoyable on a consistent enough basis that such issues can be mostly overlooked. It literally costs you nothing more than time to give Dauntless a try, and we’d highly recommend you give it a shot.
I wanted very badly to love Dauntless, and for a time I think I did thanks to the fantastic combat and weapon variety. But the lack of any real storytelling makes the repetitive questing structure a glaring issue in desperate need of some TLC. If you're looking for a new go-to F2P experience, you could do much worse — just don't expect a world drenched teeming with lore and compelling characters.
Mick Fraser: "The variety of bosses is strong and the combat/reward loop is wonderfully addictive. If nothing else, the fact that every Behemoth, armour set and weapon can be unlocked without spending a penny makes it well worth checking out."
Phoenix Labs has crafted a fully realized action RPG with Dauntless that brings together players across all platforms.
Although hardly original in its premise, Dauntless offers an extremely fun and accessible take on the monster-hunting roleplaying game. It wastes no time in throwing you straight into the action and while easy to pick up there's plenty of depth there for fans of the genre. What's more Dauntless is completely free to play, gracefully sidestepping those annoying monetisation pitfalls we're so used to seeing.
As things stand today, Dauntless is still a promising game, crippled by some technical issues (there's still an OB in the software version, after all), but enhanced by a great cross-play feature.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Dauntless offers up a pleasant alternative experience in the monster hunting action genre that focuses on the battles without sacrificing the core appeal. If you've ever wanted to take down larger-than-life beasties to wear their hides and take down even nastier foes, but felt intimidated by Capcom's more deliberate design, then Dauntless will prove a great, enjoyable way to finally see what all the monster slaying fuss is about. The fact that it's a fair free-to-play game makes it all the easier to experience for yourself.
Phoenix Labs has built Dauntless to be the same game for all gamers. That has been their mission from the start and in that they have absolutely succeeded.
Dauntless comes bursting out of early access with one of the best, most original, and most polished games in the free-to-play space. With tons of content, amazing battles, a great matchmaking system, and endless room to grow, Dauntless is going to be around for a long, long time. Beyond highly recommended, Dauntless is compulsory, obligatory, required gaming.
Dauntless combines Monster Hunter and Destiny to create a fun, free-to-play experience.
There are definitely some things that the developers need to iron out, and should if they want to keep their impressive player base, but as it stands right now Dauntless has a very strong base that can be built upon moving forward.
If you're not worried about a major story or a lot of strategy but still want to see what the monster hunting genre is like without shelling out a lot of money, Dauntless is a nice free-to-play game to ease you into things.
If you enjoy going out and fighting progressively tougher monsters while working your way to new rewards, then Dauntless is a game you need to checkout.
Dauntless is fun, plain and simple.
A game with unapologetically singular focus, its distillation of deeper MMOs' elements nevertheless results in an experience that all too often feels barren. Phil Iwaniuk
Although it’s a copycat in a lot of ways, Dauntless has its own perks that make it worth checking out for fans of the genre looking for something that’s very low risk to try, familiar, and fun.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the loop of hunting monsters and collecting their parts to craft better weapons and armor. That being said, its performance issues in the open-world hub and the inability to earn any substantial amount of platinum through regularly playing the game inhibits me from giving further praise. However, with some improvements, this game could be a sleeper hit within the library of free-to-play Nintendo Switch games.
Dauntless is a great entry point to hunting games that is easily accessible to players who have yet to experience the thrill of the hunt.