Should you find things too hard, you can use up gems gained from boss treasure chests to gain new weapons. The weapons are one of the few positives I can grant to the game, as each one has some variation to them. Some have healing properties, like a heavy attack can occasionally summon a giant healing circle for you and your time, or another weapon can inflict damage over time or pierce through enemies. This is immensely helpful if you happen to like a weapon but want it to do something different, such as shoot a ton of arrows instead of rapidly firing a single shot. The only downside is grinding for gems. This can be done slowly by fighting and defeating mini-bosses over and over before dying, or you can gain a ton from defeating a boss or accomplishing certain missions, like defeating a certain boss with a certain weapon, not buying a single continue, and many other tasks.
However, there was an update a while ago to make the experience somewhat easier on a few fronts. But it also helped highlight one thing: close-range fighters suffer from a lot. Due to how some enemies can swarm you, especially in multiplayer, a slow attack rate, and how some take a ton of damage to kill, you’re likely to use up a life just trying to survive, or at the very least a ton of health. I was ready to state how bad archers were in this game, but the update improved the reloading, making them one of the better classes as they can avoid damage while getting more coins to upgrade. Money is also important for spending at shops in the dungeons. As mentioned earlier, they are the only way to gain more charges to use ultimate skills, but also in recovering health and gaining continues, the latter of which being especially important. There is sadly no way to buy upgrades for your weapon while in the dungeon, as that can only be done at the end of the level.
Then we have the skill life steal, which felt necessary in dealing with the bosses and was the only way me and my friends beat this game on our own. With this ability, by attacking an enemy, you can regain health. I used a crossbow that kind of functioned like a shotgun, launching a volley of arrows in a burst. While also including upgrades to increase the arrow count, this made sure I had a ton of health in every situation, and thus could defeat the bosses much easier, even as I was pounded relentlessly with near bullet-hell levels of attacks. It was needed even more as the game also likes to throw a ton of enemies at once, some of which even have barriers to block arrows unless super close. And somehow, even that could not stop me. The game suddenly went from unforgiving to a cakewalk as long as I had life drain and maybe another ability or two.
Unfortunately, aspects are made worse in multiplayer. I already mentioned the hordes of enemies coming out of nowhere, and all of other problems in single-player remain present. However, the game can’t seem to maintain a connection for too long with other players. It only takes one player to drop out, intentional or not, to cause the game to end abruptly. Combine that with a dead multiplayer audience, you will need friends to try and gain the most out of the game, which is hard when you can’t even maintain a good connection, which just leads to more frustration. The one interesting thing it does is adapt the dungeon layout to the number of people playing, though mostly just the puzzles. These usually involve throwing teammates over gaps, waiting on a pressure plate to raise bridges, etc. But even that has problems thanks to the depth perception, which makes trying to throw a teammate over to a switch while jumping infuriating. Fortunately, the camera doesn’t remain fixed when a teammate dies, and if they die somewhere troublesome like a spike trap, you can just move on ahead and they can use a life to revive themselves later.
The game seems to be meant to for speed-running. The reasoning for that is sometimes, you can run right past enemies and not fight until you get to an area that requires the death of all enemies. Another reason is the threat meter. Over time, it gradually fills up, and should it pass over a certain threshold, monsters will be summoned automatically, forcing you to stay on the move, or attempt to fight them off. However, given how necessary some upgrades are to take on stronger foes, sometimes you may have no choice but to fight for the coins. Well, until the meter is maxed out, and then enemies no longer drop coins. It’s easily one of the worst features for a game that already throws more than enough enemies at you and has the potential to kill a run just because your team isn’t fast enough. My final reasoning is the reward for beating the big bosses on the final levels. All you get, aside from a ton of gems, is a 1% bonus to a certain stat, like health. These are meant to accumulate over time, encouraging more runs. The problem with this idea comes when all other issues from before pile on, making this a rather weak reward system given the big difficulty with major bosses. This could be fixed with players just having character levels alongside different difficulty levels. And sadly, none of this is even fun to play, feeling more like a chore than anything else. Points also hardly even matter save for the leaderboards, and to see who did best in the daily/weekly challenges, which are mostly just running through a dungeon with no modifiers. There are no other extras besides those “challenges.”
Overall, there are so many problems, I cannot honestly recommend it, even with the update that fixes some things. Despite having a plethora of DLC, it never feels like its fee-to-win, though only because none of the DLC aids in that area. Super Dungeon Bros has some dungeons and bros, but it is most certainly not super.
| Review Score | |
|---|---|
| Overall |   |
Review copy provided by publisher.
