Dungeons 4 Switch Review

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While in real life I certainly have a few character flaws, in video games I play as the unwavering hero, the paragon of light and justice, and all my interactions with NPC’s are delightfully positive, never uttering a bad word nor ever denying to help a damsel in distress. There’s something good about being… well… good. Dungeons 4 from Realmforge and Kalypso Media take the option of being good off the table to see how the other evil half-lives. What’s It Like? Put on your iron gauntlet, practice your evil villain laugh, and prepare to take over the world as we review Dungeons 4 on Nintendo Switch.

Dungeons 4 devilishly puts you in the spike boots of “The *random title here* Evil One,” who loves all things death and destruction. His not-so-trusty sidekick Thayla is caught up in some family dramas with her charismatic do-gooder brother, Tristan and after defeating him in battle, accidentally snaps you away. In your absence, the world falls back into chaos… I mean peace, and things are looking up. Thankfully, you’re not out of action for long and so begins the quest to raise your army, find a new body to materialize into, and plunge the world back into darkness. While Dungeons 4’s synopsis sounds very heavy on themes, its greatest strength is how it employs its witty writing to inject humour throughout, poking fun at video gaming tropes, other franchises, and frequently at itself. The characters have great banter between themselves and even the narrator and it does a fantastic job of keeping everything light-hearted. No one is safe including Marvel, Warcraft, Microtransactions, and even the game it’s closely related to, Dungeon Keeper.

For those who are new to the franchise, Dungeons plays out in both the underground and the overworld, seamlessly switching between gameplay styles on the fly. Under the surface, the game is a base-building tower defense-style game. You plan out your rooms, facilities, and traps while building up an army and defending against heroes who have entered your dungeon to save the day. There are different tech trees to strengthen your dungeon and army’s factions, which can be funded by gold and evilness, a currency award from doing evil things like sacking a town in the overworld, or killing a “really good” character like a unicorn. There’s some resource management involved as you have to keep your army fed and paid but the game opts to make these mechanics more automated than not, allowing you to focus on the fun stuff. Above the surface, the game switches to a real-time strategy game, leading your creatures into battle against Tristan and his factions of good, all while the banter rolls back and forth, poking fun at everything that’s happening. You will usually have to take over towns or destroy a certain building to complete the mission, as well as achieve bonus objectives like intercepting construction crews trying to undo your destruction for bonus evil points. The gameplay mechanics of Dungeons 4 are well-tuned, and there’s always something to do or work towards which makes upgrading and amassing your army an exciting gameplay loop.

Realmforge has learned a lot from the Dungeons 3 port as Dungeons 4 both looks and performs better than its predecessor on the handheld console. Graphics and assets look sharper, the framerate in campaign mode holds relatively steady, dipping only if there’s a fair amount of units on screen, and the campaign is both hilarious and fun. The resolution can be significantly lower in handheld, leading to a more pixelated look, but still does a decent job of looking great. Graphical effects like the evil spreading and corrupting all around it when you take control of a town never get old, and the comic-style cutscenes do a good job of furthering the narrative along with the fantastic voice acting. There are a lot of small details that come together to make Dungeons 4 on Switch come to life, such as the music subtly changing from a folksy medieval tune to a more dark and brooding score when overseeing your dungeon. The Switch version also features some cheeky exclusive cosmetics such as dressing up your snots as toads, and Thalya herself being able to wear a Princess Peach-style outfit. All of this can be turned off should you wish for a more vanilla experience. Kalypso and Realmforge are opting to provide content parity with Dungeons 4 on other formats as well, so Switch owners won’t have to miss out on future DLC packages should they wish to purchase them.

Unfortunately, there are some downsides to being Evil, and the Switch version of Dungeons 4 has a couple of issues that hold it back from being a truly evil… I mean good game. Framerate issues take hold towards the end of campaigns, especially when there can be 60+ characters on screen, it’s still playable by all means but can make the heat of battle a more stuttered experience. I also spent around 6 hours testing out the online functionality with the new co-op Skirmish mode which was gloriously fun, except we would have a crash to home screen every half hour or so on certain maps, as well as freezing to force an exit to the home screen, and the Storming of Dollaran map wouldn’t even load no matter what we tried. It’s odd because we then had a solid two-hour session with zero issues on the Break Everything map. Thankfully, Dungeons 4 includes an autosave feature so we could reconnect and resume our game, but it did get frustrating when doing it 7-8 times before being able to complete a map. Despite these issues, I still had so much fun (especially in the session that didn’t crash) with my partner managing the dungeon research and finance, while I took to the surface to command the army. In co-op, you can both do whatever you like gameplay-wise, and players will share resources.

For my Evil Overlords after accessibility options, Dungeons 4 has a range of options to make your experience smoother. It features UI Scaling, increasing the text size, hiding XP and health bars to reduce clutter, reducing certain effects like resources and blood spatter, changing multiple sound levels to customize your audio experience, and even having the option to turn off potentially unpleasant sounds. You can even change the frequency of the Narrator and his banter. At $75 AUD, Dungeons 4 is a premium-priced game that manages to provide good value for money, especially for real-time strategy and Management Sim enthusiasts. The main campaign will take you around 25-30 hours to finish, and skirmish will provide plenty of challenges and abilities to unlock to take your game further. There is also DLC which will come in a separate review which adds a substantial Wild West-themed campaign to the game.

While I’ll always be a champion for light and good, Dungeons 4 has shown me that it’s good to be bad with its devilishly wicked humour, fantastic gameplay, and light-hearted chaos. Sure, it could do with a patch to balance out the co-op gameplay and tidy up those framerates, but even those issues couldn’t dissuade me from putting my controller down. Now that I’ve finished writing my review, I’m looking forward to spending some more time perfecting my dungeon and battle tactics. It’s safe to say that Dungeons 4 just might be my favorite game where I can be evil, warts and all.

So, What’s it Like? Dungeons 4 is like Dungeon Keeper crossed with Warcraft 3.

In the interest of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by Kalypso Media, but this doesn’t influence my score.

Dungeons 4

80% Score

Review Breakdown

  • Graphics and Visuals 0%
  • Polish and Performance 0%
  • Gameplay 0%
  • Content and Features 0%
  • Value 0%

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