Dauntless Review

Dauntless represents a unique challenge as the first release for its creator Phoenix Labs. Many workers ended up at Phoenix after jumping ship from larger studios such as Blizzard and Capcom.

Dauntless launched in May 2019 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One after spending a year in beta for PC. The game must find a place amid the increasingly crowded market of live-service titles.

Then, there’s the challenge of matching or surpassing the quality of the Monster Hunter games it clearly draws inspiration from. It’s a tough spot for any game to be in, much less for an inaugural project such as this.

Story

Dauntless doesn’t exactly help its case by opening with a plot setup curiously similar to that of Monster Hunter: World.

Upon designing a personal avatar, the player quickly enters the fray as a fresh-faced Slayer. On your way to hunt the mythic Behemoth creatures, you are stranded and forced to fight for survival.

Shortly thereafter, you are ferried off to the central hub town of Ramsgate. There, further hunts are undertaken and the remnant of humankind carries out their various trades.

World-building details are largely relegated to text doled out by the various quest-giving NPCs strewn about Ramsgate. A vague sense of rising conflict and eking out technological progress amid a possible apocalypse does start to come through. But it’s of lesser importance than what players will experience for much of their time with the game.