Fun game that blends idle gameplay and management alongside the interesting dynamic of character builds and gear collection. It has pvp, leaderboards, and a friendly community that includes a dev who interacts with those who play their game.

It's pretty sad when earlier renditions on the n64 had more depth to the game. Gauntlet isn't a bad game, in fact it's a playable game, but it gets old and boring real quickly. Let's start with the biggest problems:

The camera is the most frustrating thing about this game. The camera is more deadly than any of the mobs. In a game where there are ranged heroes and melee heroes, your ranged heroes are obviously going to want to stay a good distance away from danger, So what does this do for anyone playing a melee hero? It literally forces them to not be able to see anything. Wizard/elf will want to keep distance, but you can't keep distance, but you can't get close because you can't see a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing. Another issue is when the camera moves because someone is pressing along the side of the screen, any aiming devices are instantly pushed in the direction of the camera, making skillshots hard to land.

The second problem is depth. The last gauntlet I truly remember had more depth. You got gold via the levels which were spend on a variety of stats. There were secrets that lead to unlocking new characters. There were combination attacks, specials that ran on a turbo meter, so what do you get in the new Gauntlet? Relics, which cost money and have several tiers of upgrades. Now this sounds like it could be cool, but it's not. Like in lord of the rings, there is one to rule them all, and it's super fancy ability is healing and forcing the mobs to ignore you. The biggest problem with the relics though, is how they're implemented. You don't do damage to build a meter to use them or anything of the sort, you find potions that are always in the same place every level and are scripted into the levels. That's all you have to spend gold on. Oh wait, there's items? They don't do anything, they change how you look, and by the time you unlock them you'll be bored. The only other way to increase the power of your character is done through grinding. And some of the objectives are utterly mind-boggling. Want to take 35% less damage from spikes? Well let them kill you of course! Want to have a lower freeze duration? Well die when you're frozen! Nothing that I've seen so far indicates that any of the bonuses are rewarding, they're just grinding. Want to heal a bit more from food? Eat lots of it. God forbid something along the lines of clearing an act without eating a single piece of food could of been used, give the game a little replayability. Most of the upgrades are utterly inconsequential in any case. 1% damage boost, still 1 hitting everything with a power attack or two hitting with a weak attack, it makes no difference.

Level variety:
This is the big issue with the game. Everything looks the same, even the levels follow the same pattern. Random level -> Level with death -> fight a large group of spawners. Everything kind of looks the same too, the monsters feel the same, the special monsters are just repeated over and over. The first real boss is kind of interesting, it tries to incorporate a 'don't stand in the fire' mmo mechanic, but it's so sparsely used it basically feels like the rest of the previous levels. Kill the spawners, you'll be killing a lot of spawners, and they'll have little to no variety in what they spawn.

On to the smaller problems:

Gold. I'm repeating myself a bit, but the issue above was more about how little character customization there was. This is just about the gold. You want to collect it. But after you get a maxed relic it serves no purpose at all. And the ability to hold two relics is utterly pointless since A. Situationally you will always want to use the one which makes things ignore you since the only thing dangerous in the game is trying to kill spawners without being swarmed. B. And more importantly, relic use is capped by how many potions you have, and potions are capped to the level you're on. If a turbo system was used where dealing damage charged your relics, this would be different, but you'll always without any fail want to use the song.

Graphics. They look nice, but they're bland. Repetitive. Much like the design of the game, so I guess it fits. It's also very easy to get lost on the screen because the colors look, I don't know, washed out? There isn't enough pronounciation of the colors around your characters. Even worse is losing your cursor in the storm of things spawning, spells casting, ascerbated by a good wizard who floods the screen with alternating fireballs/chain lightnings/slow fields. If you're ranged it's not a big deal, but any melee character will find themself using abilities off key which can be dangerous.

The positives:

The feel. It felt like a gauntlet game, albeit a step backwards from previous versions I've played(namely in the gamecube/ps2/xbox era), which is a disappointment. A few changes to the gameplay and how the game functions would make this a 5/5 game for me and my friends.

The jokes. Specifically the little random quips characters will say about things and the taunts when someone dies, the first time you hear them they're pretty entertaining.

In conclusion, I give it a 2/5. It's boring and repetitive, a big step back from the gauntlet games I played in my childhood, and a disappointment from a developement standpoint. The biggest issue is the camera. We're not all sitting around the same screen, let us have our own screen, it would instantly push this game up a whole point from my perspective.

Friend bought this game for me and a couple others, it seemed like a pretty decent looking arcade style game. Roguelike elements which I enjoy, a hardcore mode to make it entertaining, and multiple classes which have both skill and item progression. Sounds awesome right? Wrong.

This game is implemented so poorly that it's not even playable in any aspect. Updates are so far and inbetween and they don't fix anything, it's mind-boggling. Our first experience with the game was loading up a server, after a tedious amount of tinkering we finally were all able to connect, and 1-3 of the players outside of the host would crash after the first few waves. This was consistent, looking to the discussion forums many were having this problem, and the developers met the complaints and requests for assistance with a literal '♥♥♥♥ off coding is hard'.

So the game was placed on the backburner in my mind until a few months later, I just happen to see it on sale once again, and I look at the updates which say multiplayer had been fixed. In fact mutliple patches in a row claim this, this was not the case. If by fixed they meant that players could remain in the game for more than a wave or two, then yes it was fixed, but a new problem arised. At seemingly complete randomness, when someone would level up and allocate skill points, other player's abilities would be replaced or disappear entirely. Control of your character is not common, in fact every game I lost control of my character. All character names were replaced with a single player's name, and level up stats seemed to be utterly broken. There were even times when other people were controlling my character. Once again, mind boggling how this even happens, but ask the developers what's up and you're berrated.

Is there a playable game here? Maybe, if they ever get the multiplayer up and running, but in all honestly the game is so shallow that single player is out of the question for me at least. It's riddled with bugs, the gameplay itself isn't all that entertaining, and while on the surface there seems to be replayability and depth there really isn't. Skill trees are bland and boring, stat points pretty much only enhance a single attribute, but most importantly the actual playing of the game is done poorly. WASD to move, arrow keys to shoot in a direction. You cannot shoot in other directions, just up down left right, which very quickly removes any and all strategy to the game at all. Graphics are done well for what they're trying to accomplish, but that's about the only praise I can offer.

Even if they offered this game for free I wouldn't bother. It's so broken and unplayable in multiplayer that they should be paying us to test and offer feedback. It's so bland and repetitive in single-player that I won't even touch it.

0/5