Arc System Works has become a premier developer and publisher of modern fighting games. Along with its increasingly popular original IPs like Guilty Gear, the success of titles like Dragon Ball FighterZ and Granblue Fantasy Versus has drawn the attention of other companies looking to collaborate on their own fighter. DNF Duel is another result of that trend: a one-on-one fighting game based in the best-selling Dungeon & Fighter universe and co-developed by Arc System Works, Eighting, and Neople. While it's clear that the game is fundamentally simplistic and somewhat cobbled together, DNF Duel is also oddly unique and undeniably fun.
Unlike other fighting games, the roster of DNF Duel is made up of different class archetypes rather than more specific characters like Ryu or Chun-Li. These classes are all lifted from successful online beat-em-up Dungeon & Fighter, and players choose from a lineup of 16 fighters that have titles like "Berserker," "Ranger," "Grappler" and more. Each character has a relatively small array of moves, and all of them can be performed easily using the Smash Bros-esque input system that ArcSys previously experimented with in Granblue Fantasy Versus.
Despite the game's anime aesthetic and ArcSys' always-impressive presentation in Unreal Engine 4, DNF Duel eschews many common elements of the typical "anime fighter." There are no universal double jumps, air blocks, air dashes, advancing guards or their associated systems from the subgenre. Instead, DNF Duel creates a much more grounded game with huge potential for comebacks; guard counters are the only defensive mechanic, and every player gets access to a big-damage one-button move as soon as their health falls below 30 percent.
That doesn't mean DNF Duel is slow or lacking in exciting combos, though. Eighting (which also co-developed the sometimes comical Marvel vs. Capcom 3) hasn't held back on this game either. Almost every character has some screen-filling move (or moves) that can be linked together for absurd damage once your opponent makes a single mistake. In most cases, the only thing limiting a combo's length is the unique MP system, which swaps out a super meter for a pool of magic that is used for every special move.
The total MP at the player's disposal goes up as they take damage, meaning a player with low health can potentially be more dangerous than a player with higher health (for better or worse). However, those big punishes aren't terribly hard to learn and execute - characters are designed to be easy to pick up and play, and that's the crux of what makes the game so enjoyable. Like the lesser-known fighting game Fantasy Strike before it, DNF Duel successfully streamlines the learning process with simplified inputs and broad hit confirms to allow all players to perform optimal combos as soon as possible.
The fundamental simplicity of DNF Duel is both its greatest strength and its most debilitating weakness. Although each character's playstyle is distinct from the others on the roster, their individual gameplans remain largely the same in most matchups. The small movelists combined with the lack of overheads, EX moves, or supers mean that most characters have very limited options for higher-level strategies. There's some intentionality behind this in DNF Duel - each character is based on an archetypal class, after all - but those rigid playstyles reflect the same problem that games like Street Fighter 5 have. DNF Duel also replicates one of Street Fighter 4's biggest problems with its excessive zoning and generally limited mobility. The sheer strength of zoning could have been reduced by adding at least one more defensive mechanic, whether that be air blocks, advancing guard, or even parries. As it is now, though, more than half the game's roster can be shut down by a decent zoner.
When it comes to content in DNF Duel, the modes on offer are nothing to write home about. The game comes with a standard selection of fighting game options: arcade mode, survival mode, training modes with trials, and a basic story mode. The competitive modes are the obvious focus here, and the quality of them has been relatively mixed at launch. Online lobbies aren't very functional at present, with painfully long wait times, error codes, random disconnections and no way to search by connection strength. Ranked play, on the other hand, is generally much smoother and takes advantage of ArcSys' rollback netcode. It may not be perfect in every match against anyone on Earth, but the netcode is definitely solid and it's great to have another Japanese fighting game that implements well-designed rollback.
All in all, DNF Duel is a raucously enjoyable fighter in spite of its seemingly haphazard design. Eighting, ArcSys, and Neople have thrown a lot of moves and systems at the wall to see what sticks while also simplifying the high-execution hijinks of other titles. It's not a mechanically deep fighting game, and some genre veterans might get bored fast, but DNF Duel succeeds as an entry point for other players who've been intimidated by the skill barrier and overwhelming meta of other fighters. While the post-launch and competitive future of DNF Duel are still unknown, at least everyone can have fun hitting each other with their over-the-top attacks in the meantime.
DNF Duel is available now on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and Steam. Screen Rant was provided with a PS5 code for the purposes of this review.
